Beauty, Identity, and Raising Conscious Children with Dr. Shefali

0:00Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. I have such a phenomenal guest with us today. I am probably one of her biggest fans. I've been following her work for quite some time and she is truly a thought leader and such an inspiration in the clinical psychology space and her work really speaks for itself. So without further ado, please welcome the New York Times bestselling author and clinical psychologist, Dr. Shefali. Welcome Dr. Shefali. I'm so honored to host you. Hi, so fun to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to dive in because you have spoken on so many important topics around parenting and honestly psychology at large.

0:33And I think it's such an important conversation, obviously, as you know, I mean, across the board when it comes to health. But I want to actually start by learning a little bit more about you and like what really got you into your field and what really sparked that interest for you in the beginning.

0:49Dr. Shefali:Well, I always wanted to help people. I was just naturally that, you know, sensitive, empathic child. But then in my 20s, I began to become a seeker. And I began wanting to understand why we suffer and how to suffer less. And that took me to Eastern mindfulness and spirituality and meditation. And so in my work, I have now combined my Western psychology with Eastern philosophy. And I pioneered the movement of conscious parenting 16 years ago and wrote my first book, The Conscious Parent, in 2010. Now it's 2026. Before there was any real focus on the parent. Yeah. Now everyone on TikTok and Instagram talks about the parent healing themselves.

1:41Dr. Shefali:But when I began this work 16 years ago, there was really no one talking about it. and I felt really lonely. And it was a scary thing to talk about because parents were not ready to face their own fears and to even look in the mirror to acknowledge that they could be a little bit accountable, a little bit at fault. It was not the thing you told parents because we grew up with the adage, parents know best. So back then it was very revolutionary. And since then, I've written nine books. My next two, number eight and nine, are releasing any day. As we speak, they're about to hit the press and come out.

2:27Dr. Shefali:And these two books, Raising Conscious Sons and Raising Conscious Daughters, are my gift to parents to give them a blueprint for how to raise children today in the digital era. Because parents are lost. Children are undergoing the most acute mental health crisis of modern times. And parents are unknowingly messing it up. Unknowingly. Parents don't realize. And my book is to help them realize what the red flags are and how to combat these red flags. Wow, that's really, you know, it's so interesting what you just said, because when we talk, we talk so much about longevity these days, you know, it comes up in almost every single topic.

3:16You know, every time I open my Instagram or something, I'm seeing longevity everywhere. But when it comes to emotional regulation at an earlier age, in that childhood phase, no one's talking about that. And I would love to get your take on this in terms of, like, where does that emotional regulation piece really come in when we talk about longevity? And how do you really view that overall?

3:40Dr. Shefali:In longevity or in parenting? I think probably from the parenting side, but the longevity of a child and as a human being as we're growing up, you know, because longevity starts, as you know, like when we are born, you know, it's really a concept that's within us. So yeah, from the parenting perspective. Well, I always say you cannot regulate yourself emotionally if you are not willing to do the inner work it takes to begin to trace the cause of your reactions to something inside you. The reason we become dysregulated is because we react to the external world as if the external world is the reason for our falling apart.

4:25So the first thing is willing to look in the mirror to say, you know, the trigger is on the inside.

4:32Dr. Shefali:And when you begin to realize the triggers on the inside, you now take the steps to regulate. And to regulate doesn't just mean counting to 10. It doesn't just mean snapping a rubber band on your wrist. it really means that you are internally stable, meaning you are consistently stable. You have created an inner wellspring of power and bounty and stability so that when your flight gets delayed or your kid throws something at you, you are not taken off your internal central access. you are able to stay on your focus and stay grounded you know if a two i remember as a mother when my two-year-old would unhinge me right i'm saying my two-year-old unhinged me and i realized it's not her who's unhinging me i am unhinged like i am a i'm a hot mess and i'm able to say this with humor with complete lack of self-consciousness because every person, especially parents, are unhinged to some level and we need to look at ourselves in the mirror.

5:51Dr. Shefali:So I'm able to be very self-deprecating. It's not even self-deprecating, just honest about myself because I'm willing to look in the mirror. And therefore, I can work on myself. And then when you work on yourself, you enter abundance. And when you enter abundance, these little, these things begin to be little things. And trust me, I've seen parents lose their shit over a three-year-old, a four-year-old, because for us as parents in that unhinged moment, it is not a little thing. It is catastrophic, cataclysmic. But if our best friend came inside and saw us, they'd be like, you are going crazy.

6:30Dr. Shefali:It's just a three-year-old. What's wrong with you? Well, what's happening inside is that we're getting triggered because the child outside is excavating and touching on the pain points that we have carried in our own life from childhood. That's why I write about parenthood is because the child will trigger you to feel exactly what you were never allowed to feel in your childhood. And if your child doesn't listen to you and you were not listened to as a child, you're going to lose your shit instead of just understanding that children have a hard time listening. You understand? So emotional regulation is so important for longevity because if we don't have emotional regulation, we are disconnected.

7:18Dr. Shefali:And if we don't have connection, we have a very poor quality of life because at the end of the day, our quality of life is determined by the quality of our most intimate relationships. That makes sense. That's actually profound. And it's interesting what you said about feeling unhinged. And it's like, we're so quick to blame, whether it's our children or whatever's here in front of us, like, this is my reasoning for feeling this way. But where do you think that balance starts for us as adults? Like understanding, like almost like viewing yourself, right? from the outside in and saying, these are my pain points.

7:59And I know they're there, and I know that they can get triggered. So where do we start on that journey of that self-awareness journey?

8:08Dr. Shefali:Listen, it is so hard to be self-aware. No one wants to be self-aware to the point of wanting to change. See, it's one thing to be self-aware, oh, I like the color blue, or I'm somebody who loves to read fiction. That level of self-awareness is not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is self-awareness to the point of being willing to change. Now, in order to be willing to change, you have to accept and admit that there is something to change. But if one is so insecure and fragile, it's one thing to be self-aware to know these superficial things about ourselves. I like the color blue.

8:51Dr. Shefali:I want to be a doctor. I like traveling. It's another thing to be self-aware to change. That means we have to accept and not be fragile enough to not be able to accept that we are imperfect. We need to evolve. We need to shift. We need to adapt. We need to let go of our dysfunctional habits. We need to change our belief systems. Most people don't want to change at that level. They don't want self-awareness at that level. They just want superficial self-awareness and they want the other person in their life to change. Yeah. No, that's really interesting you said that because coming to the new books that are coming out, I know you've written one about raising boys and one about raising girls.

9:40And this is such an interesting topic because when I look at, for example, I talk about beauty a lot on this podcast, you know, and I think with beauty, this realm of like mothers projecting onto their daughters and like, you know, a lot of that comes up, even if it's unknowingly. I would love to get your take on this in terms of like, where do you think that really stems from when it comes to something like beauty or like the appearance of a child or, you know, how they're projecting themselves? Where does all of that, you think, Where does it stem? Oh, my goodness. This is the Pandora's box.

10:14Dr. Shefali:I know. It is just, okay. It's a long history of a real effed up situation for us women. When we used to live in more indigenous ways as hunter-gatherers before the last 10 ,000 years, we lived in more clearly egalitarian ways, even though it was that men stayed in their lane and women stayed in their lane. But both were seen as very egalitarian in their contribution to the fabric of social life. and like in all animals in the animal kingdom, the female had a lot of power. Even right now, the female in the other animal kingdom, besides our animal kingdom of human, they have a lot of power. You see it with the peacock trying to get the peahen's attention.

11:18Dr. Shefali:He has to have the best plume of feathers. He has to strut around. He has to get her attention. He has to compete with the other males. He has to look fabulous. He had to look fabulous. Not the female, the male. If you look at legends and stories of lore, King Arthur, he had to show his skills as an archer in order to get the queen's attention. He had to take the sword out of the stone, Excalibur, you know, in our Indian mythologies, always the king or the prince had to show his strength to get the queen, always. What does that mean? The female is and was the chooser, not the chosen, the chooser.

12:08Dr. Shefali:And when you are the chooser, you can sit back on your ass and choose and let the male look all good, go to the gym, hone up on his singing skills, you know, in the mannequin birds, people can look up mannequin birds. The poor male mannequin bird, oh my goodness, has to be the most amazing singer and chirper and dancer and look good. And the female is looking quite ordinary and she chooses because she has the mating opportunity, right? She has the golden vagina, so to speak. Well, now look at what has happened in the last 10 ,000 years with us moving to agriculture and to the ownership of land and home.

12:52Dr. Shefali:Now man has begun to own women and children and animals and the land. And now suddenly they are like, hello, we don't want to be the chosen. we want to choose so you become the chosen now the minute that began to change and the female fell into the trap okay you can choose me now we foolish women are going around competing with each other choose me choose me choose me and the males are just loving it loving it and we idiots are just competing with each other, not realizing we don't need to compete with each other, not realizing we are the choosers, not realizing we have the golden vagina. They need us.

13:41Dr. Shefali:And this is not about us against them, but we are killing ourselves. And so this is where it comes from. And now we are fully trapped in the beauty ideology and standards, which is a white, skinny rich female standard really it's not a brown standard yes it's a white standard and we are all falling into the trap and therefore we pass down to our daughters the same trap yeah no that's really really interesting that you said that and i'm so glad the the last thing you said about the standard and how it is still that skinny white female standard i absolutely like It's something that I just do not understand why we cannot as a society move away from this.

14:29It's interesting because I had a conversation recently where that came up and I was talking to an Indian model. And I asked her, I said, there is so much hate right now against women online about Indian women. And I'm like, I'm trying to figure out where the hell that's coming from. It is? Yeah, it's crazy. I grew up as a millennial. I never saw it in my own, you know, friend group or whatever. But when I look online now, young girls are like, oh, well, they are saying this about me. And it's just the most terrible things. And I just wonder, I'm like from a parenting side, if my child came to me after school one day or something, right, and said, well, mom, they're saying that I smell bad or that I'm Indian.

15:12So I look like, you know, like something about my appearance. I would be enraged as a parent. And I mean, my gut reaction would be like, who do I talk to at school? What do I do? How do I make it stop? And I'd love for you to speak on this because I know that kids are going through, I think, you know, probably what we've always been through, but I think on a more broad scale now with the way social media is evolving and stuff, you know, so I'd love to get your take on that in terms of what parents should do. Yeah.

15:39Dr. Shefali:I love it. I love it. So first we need to understand that we are not living in a vacuum. So even if you think your daughter is beautiful and you keep telling her she's beautiful, it doesn't matter. If she doesn't look like the standard normative idea of beauty and perfection, she's not going to feel beautiful and culture is going to tell her she's not beautiful. So you as a parent need to combat that happening to your daughter and give her the skills and the tools to combat that. So one of the things you do is from a young age, you tell her, people are going to tell you that because you don't have blue eyes and blonde hair and white skin, you are not so beautiful.

16:15Dr. Shefali:But is that true? Right? And you begin to teach her at a young age, right? You show her her little dog and her dog has brown eyes. And you're like, do we love the dog? Even though they have brown eyes, do we think the dog is beautiful? Yes, mommy. No, I think the dog should have green eyes. No, mommy, the dog has brown eyes. Exactly. So the dog doesn't need to have green eyes, correct? Same for people. And you begin to arm her in a very, very systematic way with an awareness that people are going to tell her, you don't look like the standard. So in my family with my daughter, you know, you can see if people are watching YouTube that I have green eyes and my daughter has brown eyes.

16:55Dr. Shefali:And I knew right away that people will compare her to me or say, oh, your daughter didn't get your eyes. You know, such stupid things like that. Right. I've literally heard people say in front of her to me, oh, so sad your daughter didn't get your eyes. I'm like, are you a bloody moron right now? The child is listening to you. The child is listening to you. And you and I know, you know, you are in the medical field and me through research that blue eyes and green eyes are actually defective genes, if you want to call it like they're recessive. They're not the best genes that bring out the strongest eyes.

17:33Dr. Shefali:They're actually recessive. My eyes are weak compared to brown eyes. Okay. I should not be happy about having blue eyes, green eyes. I should be happy if I have brown eyes because that's the best for the skin, for the sun and for the heat. And my eyes are weak. But because we live in an Anglo-Saxon white, rich, industrialized culture, which is the majority, we have begun to idolize green and blue eyes to the exclusion of other eyes. Now, idolize whatever eyes you like, but you cannot idolize eyes or skin color to the exclusion of other colors and pretend like this is somehow superior. But we all know that the white race has decided it is superior and decided to tell all the brown people that they are inferior.

18:21Dr. Shefali:And brown people have largely believed it. And that is where we as parents need to come in, not to put white people down, but to not put ourselves down and not to give white people the idea of perfection. When I came from India to America, I 100 % had brought into my awareness, brought with me this awareness that I'm inferior compared to white people. I had to do a lot of work in America to realize I am damn good enough. And it took me a long time. And I look, you know, I look, I can pass as something else than Indian, But in my psychology, I had been so embossed with this idea that to be Indian is to be inferior and white people are superior.

19:11Dr. Shefali:I mean, I'm just talking frankly that I had to do a lot of work to undo that and to find beauty in myself. I did not find beauty in myself. I did not find beauty in my hair, in my skin color, in my contrast, in my thick thighs, in my curves. and it took me years, decades, and it was only in my late 30s, actually once I became a mother, that I decided to change the internal script of beauty standards and favor it to myself and to people who look like me. But it took me a long time. Yeah. No, I mean, that's such an important message. And also on the topic of just also motherhood in general. I feel like mothers, you know, we try our best, you know, you can always try your best, but I think it's always, there's always a disconnect between like, you know, what should you be doing and what, you know, like, what are you doing?

20:07And I want you to talk a little bit about this in terms of like, if you are a mom of a boy, of a son, you only have sons, you don't have daughters, how do you navigate that world of like, well, I wish I could see myself, you know, out here in the world. Like, I wish I had a daughter to like, kind of look at, you know, like, how do you approach that as a parent? Like, because I know I've seen that a lot, you know.

20:27Dr. Shefali:If you're a mother raising a son alone, you need help. You need to go get some adult trusted men around because boys need male role models. And I know that this may sound sexist, reductionistic. I don't mean it to be. Boys need women around too. But after the age of nine or 10, as they're approaching puberty, they need males to tell them about puberty and their sexuality and how to integrate their desire with restraint, just like a young adolescent pubescent girl needs a woman to guide her through that phase. So if you're a single mother, go get help right now. The most important thing for a son that we need to know is that boys are wired physically.

21:16Dr. Shefali:They are very physical creatures. I'm not saying every boy, I'm not saying girls cannot be physical, but for the most part, boys have testosterone 50 times more than girls. You know, a lot of testosterone. I'm just talking about the range. It could be 15 to 50. And that testosterone gives them the drive for risk-taking and adventure and pursuit and the unknown, that's how our ancestors could go out and hunt for food in the dark of the night. We women are wired with a lot of estrogen, which is the enhancer for oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone. So we are wired for connection and relationships.

22:02Dr. Shefali:That doesn't mean we are lesser than. Many feminists who listen to this think, Like, oh, she's putting me down. I'm not putting you down. It's a great, amazing, fantastic skill and strength to be a connector, to be in relationship, to be the networker, to be the community builder. Who wants to go out in the middle of the night and hunt for deer? I don't. Do you? So let the male do it. And if you go to any construction site and look up at the cranes, who is up there? It is the male who is doing it. And then I don't hear the feminist going, let me do it, right? What I'm trying to say is that there's so much beauty in being a male, and there's so much beauty in being a female, and you can identify with whatever you want.

22:47Dr. Shefali:But biologically, neuro biochemistry in that way, we have very unique hormonal blueprints, and there's so much beauty there. So as a mother or father of a boy, we need to understand boys are wired to be physical. So don't try to make him use his words. Try to have intense face-to-face conversations with him. He's not going to want to do it. He does it through action. If you want him to go brush his teeth at the age of three, make him look for his toothbrush in a scavenger hunt. If you want him to be regulated, let him move. Make him physically exert himself to the point of exhaustion. If you want him to feel focused, give him a purpose.

23:34Dr. Shefali:Let him help you with the light bulbs. Let him help you bring the laundry in. Let him help you carry your bags. Invent work for him to do the work so he feels like he's competent and he's contributing. A boy who doesn't feel competent or contributing will wither away. And all that testosterone energy that is being used in a chair with a video game is going to eventually erupt in drugs or substance abuse of sexual violence or aggression out in the world. Because testosterone is a dangerous hormone, cannot sit in a chair and just play video games all day. Testosterone will involute and mutate and explode.

24:19Yeah, no, that is such an important topic that you bring up. And it was honestly one of my biggest questions for you was this idea of on social media, on the internet, all the time we're seeing, you know, women are going through more assaults. We're going through a lot more domestic violence. You know, I think the stats are just getting worse and worse every year. And the conversation always arises of what can we do as parents at a young age for our children, whether it's the girl or the boy that we're raising, to make sure that they understand that their actions have repercussions that they, you know what I mean?

24:53They have to be accountable. And I'd love for you to speak on this topic, especially from the perspective of a parent raising a boy, because I think there's a lot of like a big gap in the knowledge we need in terms of what should we be teaching boys from an early age so that they develop this intrinsic respect for their, the female counterparts out here, you know, in the world.

25:15Dr. Shefali:You know, the reason I wrote this book, Raising Conscious Sons, is because parents don't have a blueprint for raising conscious masculinity. And boys are lost. They are being told not to be like a girl, but don't be like an asshole. So he's like, how do I be? I don't know how to be. And many fathers don't know how to emotionally regulate themselves, leave alone, help their sons. So boys are a missed population and we keep getting angry with the adult man, but we don't ask what happened to this man in childhood to make him like this. We keep getting angry with the man. We need to go deeper and ask, how do we raise the boy that will one day become this man?

26:01Dr. Shefali:So what can we do differently so that this boy doesn't become this man who is a perpetrator, sexual abuser, pedophile? how do we help our sons? And I've given a whole blueprint. There's seven pillars and every chapter has conscious tools that if you follow this with awareness, you will change the game. But the main things for boys are these. Number one, they're wired to be physical. Everything is through the body, not through the words. They need to express themselves physically. Number two, boys feel as deeply as girls. They are as sensitive as girls. They just show it differently. Number three, boys need to feel purposeful and contributing.

26:41Dr. Shefali:And that's what gives them capacity and confidence. Number four, boys need a tribe. They need their brotherhood. They need their uncles, their mentors, their cousins who are male. Number five, boys need to be initiated into their sexuality. If they're not initiated into their sexuality and just left to have a wet dream at night at the age of 14 and ejaculate into his socks and nobody even talks to him, the boy is going to feel shame as if something is wrong with him. And that shame is going to make him eventually be the cheater, the liar, the betrayer. But it starts from childhood because no one initiated the boy into his healthy sexuality.