Kristen Boss (00:20):
You are listening to the Kristen Boss Podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week, I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance, and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning. All right. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode. I’m super excited about this interview we’re going to be doing. If you don’t already follow him on social media, we’re going to link that in the show notes. When I say just a normalized human conversation about emotional health, and I wanted to bring him on because I think A, you’re just going to benefit from everything he has to share, but B, I think sometimes we’re in the era and I’d be very curious.
(01:19):
Do you want me to call you Dr. Chris? Chris, how would you like me to do it?
Chris Lee (01:23):
You call me Chris. We could take this the pretty woman style and you call me whatever you need to. Just Chris is fine. Chris is fine.
Kristen Boss (01:31):
Okay, Chris. So Chris, I’m excited about this because I still think, and I’d be curious your take on this. I still think nervous system intelligence, I still think we’re relatively early to the conversation with that becoming mainstream and people understanding just how important that is. And I’d be curious if you agree with this. I think slowing down and understanding your nervous system and emotional regulation is a hard sell
Chris Lee (02:03):
For high performers. Yeah. It’s the hardest sell. So I work with executives all day. I have a consulting firm. We take companies from seven to IPO all the time.That’s how I originally got started in this whole thing. And I quickly realized that all of that has to do with communication and our ability to manage risk internally. But most people don’t come to me until they’ve tried everything. They’ve tried the Tony Robbins, they’ve tried the mindset, they’ve tried the ayahuasca down in Peru, they’ve tried no coffee, they’ve tried all the coffee, they’ve tried Adderall, they’ve tried psilocybin. And they’re like, “I just don’t know. I just can’t figure out what the thing is. ” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s you. The call’s from inside the house. It’s 100% going on inside of you. ” And that’s what got my whole journey in nervous system regulations started too is like, “Well, I need the next strategy.
(02:53):
I need the next thing. I need the nut.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s not it. No strategy on the world will work in a dysregulated system.” So I agree.
Kristen Boss (03:01):
Can you unpack that more because I know that you don’t have to tell me, but help our audience.
Chris Lee (03:07):
Oh, 100%. So if the flower doesn’t bloom, you don’t blame the flower. And this is the core of my philosophy inside of nervous system regulation is if the flower doesn’t bloom, if you’re not blooming, if you’re not thriving, which doesn’t mean that every day of your life is going to be kittens, rainbows, cookies, and sunset kisses, that’s not the reality of it. Being regulated is not the end goal, but it should be home. That’s what I tell most people. So there’s a lot of information out there around mindset. And while mindset in and of itself is beautiful, it needs to have an environment that it can grow.
Kristen Boss (03:43):
Yes.
Chris Lee (03:44):
And where it grows is inside your nervous system. So when we get stressed out, certain areas of our brain turn off and other areas turn on. It sounds very basic, but if you’ve ever tried to teach somebody algebra, when they’re being chased from a bear or if you’ve ever had to try a therapy session in the midst of a hurricane, you’re not going to make very far grounds and you’re not going to learn anything.
(04:06):
And this was me. So I lost my dad to suicide, got hit by a car and suddenly was a single parent all at 24. So I’m trying to figure all this stuff out of like, I had so much potential and I could go do all these things. Why do I hate myself? Why do I feel stuck? Why do I feel like I just can’t? Why do I feel all these different things? And on top of allowing myself to process and go through the emotions and the grief of that, I just really put my head into self-regulation and the nervous system. And that was the thing that allowed me to make that turn. And it’s not a fix. There’s no silver bullet to high performance. There’s no silver bullet to healing. There’s no silver bullet to relationship. There’s all of it. There’s no quick fix. If anybody ever sells you the quick fix, you just run the opposite direction.
Kristen Boss (04:51):
Oh, preach. That’s why you’re here.
Chris Lee (04:54):
Yeah, but there is strategy to it, right? So the best business strategy in the world is leadership development and you can’t tell me differently.
Kristen Boss (05:03):
I agree.
Chris Lee (05:04):
Having taken so many of these companies to IPO, taken so many of these companies to sell, we’ve made … I think we’ve done probably 10 Phoenixes and three unicorns, which if you don’t know what that language means, we’re picking companies up that had good ideas and IP that was registered and they died off and we’re picking them back up. So Phoenix from the ashes and then we’re going and selling them or we’re taking unicorn companies that are IPO’d at over 100 million to a billion depending on what you’re talking about. And it’s all leadership. It’s always all leadership. And it’s their ability to not only manage their emotions, but co-regulate and get everybody on the same page. And until leadership understands that, it doesn’t matter how good of a consultant you bring in, it doesn’t matter how good the product is, you’re always going to fall flat.
Kristen Boss (05:47):
I think this really speaks to, I’m going to call it strategic and content burnout. I think we’re in a time where content is so available to us now, especially with AI. I honestly think we’re going to be seeing a shift with all the digital courses we see out there. In fact, I had one. I had one a year ago and I kind of saw the writing on the wall. I was like, listen, I’m teaching people all these strategies, sales, marketing, the conversations, all of those things, all the tactics. But again, it only worked with somebody who was able to regulate. I wasn’t able to quite identify it yet, but I was like, okay, why do some people thrive and why do some people fall apart? Why does a one size fits all? It could be mindset. It could be anything. Why is it not working?
(06:33):
And so kind of looking at that, I saw, okay, with information being so readily available, information isn’t going to be the problem. I don’t think information is going to be what’s behind paywalls anymore. I think it’s going to be about how people implement and integrate the information that they’re taking in. And so I’ve been joking, it’s kind of a term I’ve been calling it infobesity where we have so much intake. Yes. I mean, tell me, you write it down, man. It’s just like we’re intaking so much, but I’m noticing the lack of implementation and I see people shaming themselves.
Chris Lee (07:11):
It’s decision fatigue, I think.
Kristen Boss (07:14):
Very much so. The overwhelm, the cognitive load. But here’s what I noticed. I’d be curious if you agree with this. I noticed two camps. I see the camp that is often stuck in like they’re the overwhelmed, if I just research more, grab more content, surely I’ll, or the next strategy or the next thing, I’ll have clarity. They stay spinning and stuck, no action for forever. Or the ones that just shut down. I see it full blown like nervous system is shut down.
Chris Lee (07:44):
It’s the same thing inside the nervous system.
Kristen Boss (07:48):
Yes. And then we have the other camp that I’m going to call the hyperactive camp. They are like the, I’m going to take the thing, I’m going to bulldoze through it. I’m going to ignore all of my body cues. I’m going to go twenty four seven until I hit a wall. I see two camps. Is this something you see as well with … Yeah.
Chris Lee (08:07):
Yeah. I saw it 30 times. It’s 2:00 PM in the afternoon. I saw it 30 times a day.
(08:12):
And the issue is they’re both an overstimulation problem, I think. One of them is rooted in decision fatigue of there’s so much information right now. So what you had mentioned, I think that integrated iterations would be my version of what you’re talking about. And what that means for me is you understand what brought you here and that from here to there isn’t going to work. So identifying and integrating means understanding the strategy, let’s call it, of how your emotions are pulling up these roadblocks. And then what an iteration is, is improving upon a pattern, right?
Kristen Boss (08:48):
Yeah.
Chris Lee (08:49):
So there’s patterns that we need to destruct and there’s patterns that we want to improve. And that’s what an iteration is, is we want to build and strategize. And this is what we do for businesses is that we want to build on leadership that’s already working, clear out what’s not, and then continue the iteration and build up on that. But the overstimulation, I’ve never not seen someone, never not seen. I’ve not witnessed to this day someone that has like two hours or more of social media time not be stuck in these cognitive decision fatigue issues.
Kristen Boss (09:25):
Yes.
Chris Lee (09:26):
And that’s why for myself, while I post on a lot of these different places, I use them as community. So I’m trying to do outreach. I’m responding to messages, but I don’t participate in social media that way. I follow, I think, less than 20 people right now and I check in with three or four of them, but people that I really want to connect with, my inner circle, it’s five people. And so that’s five.
Kristen Boss (09:48):
Yeah. And when you call that your nervous system hygiene. 100%. I show up, this is like, I’m on this platform to be a creator, not a consumer, because when I’m a consumer, I notice that it dysregulates or I notice how I feel coming off the platform.
Chris Lee (10:02):
100%. I bought all these books behind me from Goodwill so I could have a bookshelf, but if I ever do get around to reading them, which is a joke, half of these are my daughters and half of these are mine, but the point of reading is slowing down enough to recognize I like this idea and then having a safe internal environment to say, “I don’t agree with that idea. That conflict doesn’t make sense to me or I don’t enjoy that. ” And it’s creating a relationship with information instead of the constant scrolling that we have right now. The information is just being like, you’re getting like foi grod forced fed this information. And what that does to your nervous system is it scatters it because it’s so many different categories and so many different sections and so many different bite size pieces that it’s this constant, “Oh, that’s true.
(10:50):
Well, this one’s totally different.” Or, “Well, that one makes kind of a lot of sense.” And you never give yourself the process to integrate and actually understand things. And that’s a huge issue right now because it’s quite literally addictive.
Kristen Boss (11:02):
Okay. Can we talk about what I’ll call socially acceptable addictions when really it’s just you’re seeking to regulate and what could eventually become self-harming? Because the whole goal of regulation is to return to baseline to be connected with oneself. And I’ll share a little bit of my story where I thought I was doing the work and I was just a master at dissociation and I could write a dissertation on my emotional status, but not feel it. But this idea of, I don’t know, the addictions, like how much of that plays into, because we haven’t been taught to regulate.
Chris Lee (11:46):
100%. Yeah. And no one is taught to regulate unless you grew up in it. My daughter’s seven now and she is now recognizing in different dynamics. She’s like, “Why do people not communicate the way that you and I do?
(12:03):
Why do people not do … ” And she’s just looking at these different things and she’s starting to get the picture of like, “Oh no, our house is slow.” Our house is so slow. Our TV a lot of days is in my closet because it’s just not available. We do music. And we talked about before we started a British TV. My daughter makes a cup of tea at four in the afternoon for her and I, and we sit and we read books or we color and we do these really low stimulation things because in this modern world, if you don’t create that, it will be taken from you because there is every form of addiction and addiction is anticipation of a reward, an easy reward, pathway of least resistance. So dopamine is 2Xed when there’s an anticipation of reward and that’s how social media works.
(12:50):
So there’s an anticipation that something’s going to make sense or I’m going to get the aha or I just have to do a little bit more research. And we’ve all told ourselves these stories of like, oh, just one more just like, this is the next one or I just need to check this one thing. And it’s like, that’s the addiction. And what the addiction does is it folds back on itself with your personality inside of it and it says, “Oh, well, I can lie, cheat and steal.” If I only tell Chris, “Oh, just follow this one more neuroscience.” The next time you see that neuroscience article you need, then you can be done. And it’s like, well, no, that’s what an alcoholic would say.
Kristen Boss (13:24):
Just
Chris Lee (13:25):
One more and I’ll be done. Or like, oh, that’s what somebody that’s on opioids would say, “This is my last week. This is my last pill. This is my last whatever.” Or somebody in a toxic relationship, just one more time. They made a mistake, just one more time. So if you start to frame it up in that way, it creates a lot of contrast and I’m not doing this to shame people,
Kristen Boss (13:44):
I’m
Chris Lee (13:44):
Doing it to maybe create the perspective of like, “Oh, maybe this isn’t quite the thing for me.
Kristen Boss (13:51):
” That’s so good.
Chris Lee (13:52):
And there’s a healthy way to do it. There is a healthy way to, I think, use these modalities as well of take one 60 second video and put it on a piece of paper somewhere. And I like that something in this is sticking out to me. Something inside of this is connecting. What is that? And learning to stretch your ideas again and have creative insights, it’s like a lost art, it seems like.
Kristen Boss (14:16):
I think it is. I think even everything is so quick in our society. I want something fast, Amazon Prime, Instacart it, one click of a button, like so much of everything we could possibly want is at the click of a button. And one of the things I noticed with, because a lot of people that I worked with were aspiring entrepreneurs or just starting out. And so they would be the delayed gratification in a culture of instant gratification and realizing there is so much grit that has to be put into entrepreneurship. And it goes … Honestly, everything about entrepreneurship goes against our wiring. We’re not wired for success, we’re wired for survival. So most of the things we’re doing in entrepreneurship goes against what feels safe in our nervous system. And so trying to teach people those things. But what I would love to circle back to is, because not everyone listening is going to be an entrepreneur or business owner, but most people, they can hear this and be like, okay, cool nervous system intelligence and productivity, efficiency, leadership.
(15:21):
But I’d be like, no, it touches every area of your life. And the fact that you brought up your relationship with your daughter and how you’re teaching her to … I’d love to hear what you share with her. I also have an eight-year-old daughter, so we do a lot of co-regulation and I’m also reparenting myself inside of that. So it’s complex.
Chris Lee (15:43):
Yeah. Kids don’t care what you say. They mirror what you do. So as much as I … And I’ve had to realize this a lot of like, I can tell her things now because she has more of the cognitive capacity for it, but Seneca, I think, said, “Give me the boy till seven and I’ll give you the man.”
Kristen Boss (16:04):
Yes.
Chris Lee (16:05):
And that stuck with me because I was a young dad. I was a young single dad, no mom was around and I’m trying to figure out so many of these things and it’s like, well, how do I raise a young woman in a way that makes her powerful, resilient and honest to herself despite circumstances?
(16:27):
And it’s like, well, the only way to do that is to raise a young man to be that same version. So I have to get out of my own way before I even consider showing her to create a pathway for her own. And that’s the way that this nervous system is set up too. Attachment and theory, while it’s still a theory, has a lot of grounds and a lot of great research behind it that kids are looking to relationships and all the mirror neurons are clustered in very specific parts of like the fusiform gyrus, which is looking for facial recognition and facial patterns and communication. And then we’re looking at Broca’s area of how we build language and we’re Nikki’s of how we understand them. And all of that is based on a perceptive input of how we observe relationships as children. And so many of us when we’re kids, we’re never taught or never shown or never had the experience that we want to stand up for our truth, even though it might be wrong, we get wronged for wanting to be right.
(17:26):
So conflict never has become safe.
(17:30):
And this is why I think we’re in such this turmoil of people being emotionally unavailable. And this is why I think relationships in this modern world are falling apart because no one has been able to have a partner recognize that, oh, that thing might not be accurate for them, but they’re willing to die on this hill. Let me emotionally validate that I see, hear, and understand exactly where you’re coming from without belittling them, without telling them that they’re insignificant, without proving my point to make them seem insignificant. And that’s just down to regulation. It’s your ability to go, “Oh, this is conflict and I am surviving. I’m battling it out for who’s right and we’re both losing.” And being able to do that with our kids of like, “She has no idea why she’s wrong. She’s just emotionally responsive right now because she’s seven.” So yeah, process.
(18:21):
Tell me what’s going on. Why are you feeling that? Yeah, totally get that. That makes sense why you’re experiencing that. Yeah. Listen, I remember being frustrated about something like that too. That makes a ton of sense to me. Yeah. Well, the reason that we’re not doing that, if you’re ready to hear that … And so it’s always building in like, how do we emotionally validate and then course correct any story that might not be serving her into the future
(18:44):
When the emotion is out of it, right? Because you can’t regulate before … If you try to reframe a circumstance, dysregulated, all you’re doing is building a new dysregulated pattern. It’s regulate, then rewire.
Kristen Boss (18:56):
100%. And in order for us to even facilitate that process as a parent, we have to make sure that we ourselves are regulated to even be able to have that conversation. Otherwise, we’re just adding tinder to the fire, so to speak, or fuel to the fire. But that was something … My daughter has a very big expressive personality and very big feelings, but it’s all the things I want for her and I want to keep that. I want to keep her expressive and bold and all of those things, but it makes for when you have a toddler with a certain worldview or a young person and they feel like they might be wrong, but they are having a huge emotional response to it, which feels in their body, their nervous system, doesn’t matter. It’s true to them in that moment. So we have to-
Chris Lee (19:41):
It’s true for us as adults.
Kristen Boss (19:43):
Precisely.
Chris Lee (19:44):
Right. It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, it’s true to them.
Kristen Boss (19:47):
It’s a felt experience. I can never argue with someone’s felt experience, right?
Chris Lee (19:51):
100%, right? And that’s our capacity to let … This is a loaded dynamic. Our capacity to let our partners, our husbands, our wives be safe to be angry at us and then create an opportunity if they so choose to be humble about, “Hey, this wasn’t…” What I said earlier, it was not about you. I needed to get that out. Thank you for holding space. And anger, I don’t have a tolerance for neglect, abuse, anything like that. There is a difference between somebody being emotionally expressive though, and then you being a safe space for that. Doing that for our kids is so valuable. Doing it and showing our kids arguments as adults even more valuable of me and this person, we don’t agree on this thing, but we’re not screaming, we’re not throwing books, we’re just recognizing that we need to take space. We’re recognizing that this right now, we’re both at ends.
(20:53):
So instead of us letting this thing spiral or go to poor areas or turn into the need to validate chaos addictions or whatever the heck it is, it’s like, “Hey,
(21:06):
This is not a good dynamic.” And I had to do this with my daughter. She was just spiraling out one day and I was like, “Hey, we’re not going to make progress right now. I’m going to go to my room. I’m going to invite you to go to yours and in 10 minutes I’m going to come out and I’m going to ask you, would you like to spend time together or alone, alone?” And she wanted to spend time together alone, which means we’re in the same room and we’re just not talking. And afterwards, we both got regulated, came back and she’s like, “What happened?” And I’m like, “Nothing bad. You just got upset. And when we get upset like that and you’re upset, you’re not supposed to be able to notice this, it turns into that and it’s okay. That’s normal.” And it’s her availability to see it now, she’s like, “Oh, I have these huge…” She’s like, “I have big feelings.” And I’m like, “Great.” But she’s not scared of them.
(21:55):
She is learning to take responsibility for them and then when she can’t, that’s okay. You are safe to be upset and frustrated and confused with me and I will never shame it.
Kristen Boss (22:05):
I think it’s so good too providing that safe space for our loved ones that they can express their emotions and that we can hold space for it without internalizing it, personalizing it, making it about ourselves, or rushing to fix and repair, having a codependent response to it or just being like, “Oh my gosh, you’re uncomfortable. Now I’m uncomfortable with your uncomfortable and now I have to fix you so really I can fix me. ” Right?
Chris Lee (22:30):
Yeah. So I do IFS therapy, internal family systems and parts where-
Kristen Boss (22:34):
Huge fan.
Chris Lee (22:35):
Huge fan. So I have a rescuer part that is a very strong fond response where somebody that I love and I care about is uncomfortable. Me and all my tools will come to the rescue and get them out of their discomfort. And I’ve integrated this part a lot into my life now and it’s such a disservice to them where the best thing that I could do is to hold the boundary and just say, “Hey, I recognize that you’re in this capacity right now. A lot of that is directional at me and I recognize that we’re not taking responsibility for it. ” When you’re open to taking responsibility and connecting instead of conflicting, I’m 100% here for that instead of, “Oh yeah,” and it’s so much responsibility for somebody else’s emotions, but then they never learn emotional regulation. So you learn emotional dependency. When I get frustrated, this person makes it better.
(23:31):
Instead of, when I get better, I’ve learned skill and strategy to internally regulate, take accountability, take responsibility. But that’s emotional regulation is an animal because it doesn’t make sense. It’s non-linear. It’s multidimensional. And until you can take accountability and responsibility, it just feels overwhelming for a lot of people. And I don’t mean this derogatorily, especially for men in this modern world, to get three emotions, happy, hungry, horny. Anything that’s a mix of those two or less, it’s like, we don’t know what to do. And it’s like, well, there’s so much more. Let’s broaden the horizon. Let’s masculine vulnerability and stuff, which I
Kristen Boss (24:12):
Fucking
Chris Lee (24:12):
Hate that language so much, but people get it. So it’s like, God damn it. Anyways, I digress.
Kristen Boss (24:19):
Yeah. Well, I often found … So when I noticed that people were getting stopped up with like, “I have all this information, but I’m unable to move forward.” And we realized there was just a lot, there’s dysregulation happening in the moment. So it’s like, how do we regulate so that they can move forward? And one of the things I noticed was that when I would ask people, “Hey, can you name the emotion you’re feeling right now?” What was so interesting, I said, “How does that make you feel?” I was surprised by … Now, I have so much hope with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, our kids, I have hope for the emotional literacy we’re teaching them, but I will tell you, when I have coached Gen X, a lot of millennials, boomers, I say, “How does that make you feel?” They actually can’t name an emotion
(25:04):
And they struggle to actually identify where it’s happening in their body sensation. Sometimes I have to even be like, “Can you give me a sensation? Do you feel tightness in your chest, tightness in your shoulders? What does that feel like? ” And oftentimes, again, very limited emotional library where it’d be like angry, happy, sad, mad, whatever. Or I’d say, “How does that make you feel?” And what they would say to me is like, “Well, it makes me feel unappreciated. It makes me feel like they don’t see me for who I am.” I was like, “That’s so interesting. That’s not an emotion.That’s another
Chris Lee (25:32):
Story.” That’s a story. It’s
Kristen Boss (25:33):
Adding to your dysregulation. So one of the things I would give people was a little feelings wheel. And what was interesting, how often people were blown away by how much was available with emotional literacy. Wait, there’s this many expressions of anger and sadness. And so I would watch adults look at the wheel for maybe 10 minutes before they could name one. But I will say, when you say emotional regulation as a beast, you’re not wrong. And I think some people, they don’t have an accurate … They have an unrealistic expectation of what that work looks like. And I think they have a, “I’m going to go fix myself. I’m going to go learn this or a one and done.” We see this in the mindset world or the self-help world, I’m going to fix this and then they’re like, wait, surprised that it comes back up and then they have shame.
(26:30):
Can you speak to that a little bit?
Chris Lee (26:32):
I can only speak to what’s true for me, but yeah, I can talk a lot about that. So if people aren’t familiar with parts work, I kind of already talked about this rescuer part. So when you get overstimulated, overwhelmed, parts work and IFS references back that we will fractal identities of ourselves, which will break off a piece of who we are and it’ll create these exiles and defensive strategies that are a chunk of our personality that in some way, shape or form are protecting us
(27:05):
And they’re typically unhealthy coping mechanisms. So my rescuer identity, I identified it and IFS would call it like it’s a version of me stuck in a time loop in that version when I was like 13 years old. And during that 13 year old version of me, I saw that people in my life were doing unhealthy habits and I was like, “Oh, I still have this intrinsic need to be loved and accepted by those people. So I am going to take care of their emotional needs, not taking care of mine because if I take care of them, then eventually they’ll learn to take care of me.
(27:41):
So let me take care of their needs first and let me rescue them from their own emotional stuff. And then eventually I’ll be able to get love that I actually need from them without condition. So let me fall in love and build this avatar that falls in love with potential instead of actualization.” And it’s like, oh, okay, this is so great. You got really uncomfortable. Oh, start sweating through that. So when we start to fall in love or we start to recognize that, and this is just my own shit, right? This is just my own stuff that I’ve worked through. And I’ve been doing this for six years now is, okay, I’ve identified this part and I see it and I recognize it and I know where it’s caught up and I know the stories and I know the narratives and I know the tactics should just go poof, right?
(28:25):
Yes. Why is it not going away? Why are these things coming up? And that’s because I need to meet the need of that emotion, even though it doesn’t make sense. So I need to hold space for it to be seen, heard, and loved through the pain, through the suffering, through the can’t, you can’t fix this. You can love that person as much as you could possibly love a single person. You could hold space for that person as much as you possibly want to hold space for a person. You could keep giving all the stuff and still it’ll never be enough and holding space for myself to actually experience the abandonment that comes with that.
Kristen Boss (29:05):
Yes.
Chris Lee (29:06):
Experience the heartbreak of losing a person who was my father and just not being able to save him. Only people can choose to save themselves until that internal part of me recognizes that and fully comes home and that’s where something that’s defensive turns into a gift.
Kristen Boss (29:29):
Yes.
Chris Lee (29:29):
So these patterns though in our lives, the reason that they come back is not because it’s a punishment. It’s not like some karmic circle. It’s because our brain takes in situations and circumstances and compares it to the past and your brain doesn’t ask, “Oh, what is this? ” It says, “What does this look like? ” And then it picks the path of most familiarity.
(29:49):
So this is why in past dynamics in my life, it’s like, “Oh, that person has so much potential if they only.” And it’s like, “Oh, wait a second, that actually Oh, that’s my rescuer trying to go do this thing. So now I can pick those things up. Now I can see these dynamics and I can more easily communicate to that rescuer. Hey, I see you over there. Are you able to recognize this thing knowing that it’s a brain circuit looking for familiarity to meet a need? And then you do the foundational work of not only the emotional stuff, but also, hey, so we have this narrative, state determined story, determine strategy.
(30:31):
So then we reverse engineer that and say, great, I want this regulated state, which means I have to tell a different story, which means I need a different strategy. So a different strategy is building relationships, friendships mostly of people that love me period, not love me, people that love me unconditionally, that can support me through the bullshit, that it’s not transactional, that they’re just holding space for all the broken parts of me. They see me as worthy, they see me as enough, they co-regulate with me, they celebrate my wins and they hold space for my losses. And then, okay, that’s changing the story because I’m participating in that every single day. And that’s changing the state from which my nervous system references circumstances and details. So I’m proving through intention and evidence that I am the person by reverse engineering state, story strategy and going strategy story state.
Kristen Boss (31:21):
Yes. So good. That’s what we, some of the things we teach in our program as well is like first separate the facts, what’s fact versus fiction. And then my interpretation of it and based on my interpretation, it puts me in a state and from there I have a response or a reaction. And when we slow down, we can have a response, but if we’re dysregulated, we’re reacting. And I believe that’s why some people are just chronically fatigued. I actually think that’s where some burnout can come from. I think there’s actually many levels of burnout, but one level of burnout I think is somebody that’s constantly living in a reaction to all the stimuli and all the narratives that they’re never, ever checking. And they wonder why they’re chronically exhausted. I’d be like, I’d be exhausted too constantly putting out fires and reacting to everything. And so I love that you were honest about one of your parts that you learned.
(32:10):
This was something I did a year ago where I went away and I didn’t realize it was IFS at the time, but they had like all these little flashcards of these different characters doing different weird things. So someone like with 15 things in their hands, like loading up a car before a trip, someone like in a classroom and she’s like, “Okay, when you feel this way, how do you want to respond?” I’m like, “Well, that. ” And so one of my parts is the strategist. And it’s like I soothe by if I formulate a plan, if I can strategize my way out of this, then I’ll be safe, I’ll be okay if I’m the one solving the problem. And so understanding and having sympathy for that part of myself and empathy and compassion and being like, “Okay, so why is my … ” We called it the strategist.
(33:04):
Why is the strategist? Why is that part showing up thinking, “Okay, this is my job, everybody. Let me just step in. ” And she actually, one of the things I did was she’s like, “Give a mantra.” If each of these parts had a mantra, what would it be? And I think there was, I don’t think it was my fixer that said this, but one of them was like, “If I think it, I don’t have to feel it. ” And it was my part that essentially, “Oh, I had a runner. It was my runner.” So
(33:36):
Understanding each of those parts and realizing that those parts are always going to be with us, but it’s never going to go away, but I’m going to recognize when that part shows up and greet that part as I would like maybe a friend and be like, “Oh, you’re here.” Okay, this is a sign for me to ask what’s the story. This is a sign. What do I need? What emotional need do I need to meet right now? And I will say, it took me hitting a life crisis, a massive burnout to see the value in this work. And unfortunately, I feel like that’s the case for a lot of high performers that are so busy going and doing. And I was asking my therapist the other day, I was like, how can, and this is why we want the podcast is we just want people to start at least asking the questions and starting the work, no matter how rudimentary and elementary and basic and small it is.
(34:32):
If they’re asking the questions, there’s hope. But I’m like, how do we get people to recognize the importance of this work before life falls apart? I had to go away for an intensive treatment for a week and my life had to completely fall apart for me to be like, oh, oh.
Chris Lee (34:51):
Yeah. So I mean, this is the root of it of like, my dad was a good man, right? Never in a million years did anyone expect that he was going to take his own life.
(35:01):
And it has changed me for the better now. There’s the grief and the loss and he never got to meet my daughter and all the other parts and all that sucks so hard. And it is the thing that has also gifted me the choice to do and be who I am today. And I’ve been able to support people through suicidal challenges in their lives and to help people that are before that, recognize what’s actually important at the end of the day. It’s awesome to scale a company and to go do that, but your daughter is never going to forget that you missed ballet. Your son’s never going to forget that you missed T-ball. And for the board meeting, like what was the board meeting about 10 years later? And it doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice a career in order to become a hippie in the woods.
(36:00):
It just means that the thing that we call balance is truly boundaries
(36:05):
And it’s a capacity to prioritize priorities. So if your family is actually first, you better show me. Show me what the … Do you know what’s on your kid’s docket this week? Are you showing up for that? You and I were talking about my kids’ educational goals make more sense for me to homeschool her. So I built a team so that she not only gets the socialization that she would’ve gotten in traditional school, but she’s also getting homeschool dynamics that are in agreement with how I want her to learn how to think instead of what to think. It’s the harder path. It’s squirrely and it doesn’t make a ton of sense all the time, but I will not regret efforting towards something that gives my life and the people that I love more of me or allowing them to see opportunities and environments to give themselves an opportunity to show up more honestly for themselves.
Kristen Boss (37:02):
That’s so good. One of the things my husband and I say is like, you know someone’s values pretty quickly by two things. You check their calendar and you check their bank statement. Where are they putting their time? Where are they putting their money? That will always show you someone’s true values. They can speak out of their mouth, but I’d be like, show me your calendar and show me your bank statement and I’ll know you’re true. I’ll know what you actually value. So what would you say, just to kind of like wrap this up for our listeners, what would you say to the person that hasn’t begun nervous system work, but they’re like, “Okay, I’m hearing this. I’m seeing this. I think I want to … ” What is a simple, approachable way to just start the work that doesn’t feel intimidating? What is something simple that they can do?
Chris Lee (37:50):
I tell everybody to get an aura ring.
Kristen Boss (37:52):
Yeah. Say more.
Chris Lee (37:54):
Yeah, 100%. So all of my executives that I work with have to have an aura ring. I buy 300 of them at a time and I send them to these companies and I’m like, all right, the foundation is physical, right? Sleep, diet, exercise, habit formation. So we start with sleep. Are we getting good sleep habits? Are we taking care of … Do you have routine setup? What’s your relationship with light? Some people are super sensitive to light and it destroys their sleep. Some people are not, but the problem with self-regulation, I think, especially with some of the stuff you see online is it’s very cookie cutter, but that’s not how your nervous system works. My nervous system is so different from the needs of my nervous system yesterday. I had a shitty night of sleep because I ate spicy food and my body does not like spicy food.
(38:39):
So I woke up and I’m like, “Something doesn’t feel right.” And I got poor sleep. So I set up my schedule the next day to accommodate for that so it doesn’t derail me for the rest of the week. So that’s a very binary way to get started in that world of like, this is yeses, this is nos, this is how this worked, this didn’t work. And that’s where I tell a lot of people just to get curious instead of judgmental. And then you could start doing the mental work. Then you could start doing the regulation, certainty, predictability, outcome type of stuff that makes you a more powerful executive.
Kristen Boss (39:13):
Yeah. And just for the everyday listener that’s like not an executive, I’m just a mom trying to keep my wits about me within an overly stimulated environment.
Chris Lee (39:23):
Yeah. Self-care learning, you have to … So your kids, this was a hard one for me to learn. Your kids are going to learn their self-care from watching mom and dad self-care.
Kristen Boss (39:34):
So true.
Chris Lee (39:36):
So I, as a single dad, am learning to show my daughter how to slow down. I don’t have to take 45 minute showers and stuff like that, but I am like, oh no. So I am going to shave my face very intentionally with healthy products and then I’m going to put aloe on my face so that the razor burn that I gave myself unintentionally. I’m trying to teach her those things. And then I’m also, I don’t mean to brag, but Dutch braid, I can French braid.
Kristen Boss (40:09):
Oh, you can brag. That’s great.
Chris Lee (40:10):
Oh, I can kill hair. And I’m showing her that it’s okay to be nurtured. So I’ll brush her hair for two hours during a movie and I’ll braid it and then I’ll unbraid it and I’ll rebraid it so that she knows what it means to be nurtured too. I also get her flowers every Tuesday. So she’s got flowers in her bathroom. She’s got flowers and it’s just showing her small things. Our cup of tea at 4:00 PM in the afternoon is something that she took over. So she makes a cup of tea for her and I, and we sit and we talk. She’s learning that self-care for herself too, that when she gets back from when she goes to the cohort for homeschooling or she goes to summer camp, she’s coming home, she’s taking a shower, she’s conditioning her hair, and it’s taking her an hour to go do that.
(40:57):
And then she’s coming into the office library that we have, she’s picking a book, she’s making herself like a cup of tea or she’s making herself a iced matcha or whatever the heck she wants. And then she’s sitting down with her silk pajamas on and she’s like, “I just need some time.”
(41:16):
Girl, fuck yeah, you do that. Hell yeah. Love that for you. So I can’t flip my camera around, but I’ve got two floor couches in here and you can’t see the door. So she’ll sometimes just come sneak in here and she’ll sit on the ground and just stare at the ceiling or color or draw or small stuff like that. Or she’ll come in here and brush her hair or we’ve got the ice rollers and she’s seven and she’s just learning and I’m like, “Why are you doing that? ” And it’s not, “I’m doing this so I can be beautiful. I’m doing this so that I look good.” She’s like, “It just feels good to take care of me. ” And it’s like, “Well, perfect.”
Kristen Boss (41:54):
Those are so good. As my daughter, who’s a year older than your daughter, it’s just she has her things too. In the morning she makes an iced latte with me and people can judge me. I don’t care, but she has her little glass, her little-
Chris Lee (42:10):
People that are judging can kick rocks. I don’t care. I can’t
Kristen Boss (42:13):
Kick rocks. I’m like, listen, my daughter is happy drinking a latte with me. And the other day we had a huge parenting win. I told my husband, I was like, “This is a big freaking deal.”
Chris Lee (42:24):
This is the shit. Yeah, write it down. Put it on the fridge.
Kristen Boss (42:26):
Put it on a fridge. The big win was she was super dysregulated, big mood, big feelings. And two days ago, I had bought her one of those rubber band bracelet making things that she can … It’s a loom and she could do that. I thought she had just taken herself to her room. We’re like, first of all, great. She’s decided on her own to calm down a huge deal. She’s removed herself. That was wind number one. Wind number two, she came down, completely different child and was like, “Look at this bracelet I just made.” I was like, “Wait.” I was like, “Did you make this to help yourself calm down?” She’s like, “I did.” She’s like, “Why are you crying?” And I was like, “I’m just so proud of you. ” Seriously. So beautiful. I was like, “You went and found something to soothe yourself.
(43:11):
You created something. You came down.” And by the way, that calm child that comes down the stairs, that is the child that wants to repair. That is the child that says, “I’m so sorry, mommy. I don’t know why I blew up like that. I don’t know why I did that. ” It’s always like, how can we contain the massive explosion of the moment? How do we safely contain? What does she need to hear to feel safe, to feel loved? It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to punch me or bite me. It’s okay. Those feelings are fine. It took me quite a few tries. I really love that you told your daughter earlier in the episode when you told her, “Hey, I’m going to be back in 10 minutes.” It took me five tries to realize, because I would say, “I’m leaving to go calm down.” And I couldn’t figure out why that would activate her even more.
Chris Lee (44:01):
Make it worse. Yeah, uncertainty. And she needed to
Kristen Boss (44:03):
Hear, “I’m coming back.” And so once I started to say, “Mommy needs to go calm down because I don’t want to do things that when I’m angry, I’m going to go calm down, give mommy 10 minutes, I’ll be back in 10 minutes.” And I noticed that she was much better about letting me go when I told her I’m coming back. But as an adult, sometimes we’re just not realizing, “Oh, what she needs to hear is I’m not leaving. I’m not like, I can’t handle you. ” I’m
Chris Lee (44:30):
Not abandoning you. I’m
Kristen Boss (44:31):
Not abandoning you. You’re not too
Chris Lee (44:33):
Much. Yeah.
Kristen Boss (44:34):
Correct. And so once I started, it’s these tiny little things where for … And for me, it just took a lot of practice and noticing like, wait, why did it work that time and not that time? Oh, this time I said, I’ll be back. Oh, that’s what it was. I’m going to do that again this time. So just for someone who’s listening, it’s like, it’s going to be so messy and so hard, you’re going to get it wrong. But what I have endeavored to be is a parent that is really good at apologizing. My kid, they’re going to hear, “I’m proud of you and I’m sorry more times in their short life than I probably heard it in all of mine.” And so I’m not afraid to say, “You know what? Mommy blew it. I’m so sorry.”
Chris Lee (45:11):
Yeah. And your ability to do that is also teaching her grace and humility, which how hard is that for high performers? “No, I never mess up.” It’s like, no, messed up. Yeah, I was frustrated. I was upset. The way that I spoke to you was not something that I want to repeat into the future, so I’m going to do this differently next time. The same way that everyone deserves a relationship like that of like, “Hey, I recognize that it did not communicate effectively over here. Do that for yourself. Do that for your kids. When you mess up or you don’t treat yourself kindly or anything else, okay, I can understand why I did that. It makes sense. And I would prefer to do this differently in this way next time.”
Kristen Boss (45:50):
One of the most impactful things I heard in relation to that and honest relationships and connection is like ruptures are guaranteed to happen in relationships. And actually, and I used to be rupture averse. How do I not create ruptures at all because I’m afraid of them because based on how I see them, I see them if not safe. Right. And so once I had somebody say, Kristen, every rupture offers an opportunity for repair. And when there’s repair, secure attachment happens because a child that is able to see rupture is normal, but also we repair every rupture. They say a child that is able to see that and experience, oh, this is a rupture and then it got repaired. They actually have more secure attachment than a child that never saw conflict because now that child thinks I can never, ever, ever be in a fight.
(46:41):
Fights are bad. Conflict is terrible. And then that child learns to operate in a way that’s like, I will never upset anyone ever for fear of rupture. So that’s something that I’ve, as a parent, because I think we can, sometimes for me, I would get to the extreme of like, “I don’t want to cause my child any pain.” I’m like, “You know what? No, that’s just not possible. I’m a messy human. I’m going to get it wrong, but every rupture is an opportunity to repair and have a conversation. And while it’s hard work, it’s beautiful work.”
Chris Lee (47:12):
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It’s the necessary work to exist in this world.
Kristen Boss (47:17):
So good. I feel like we went 15 different directions in true fashion, but- True
Chris Lee (47:23):
Podcast form.
Kristen Boss (47:25):
I love it. I know our listeners will take a lot from it, but we’re going to link your stuff in our show notes so they can give you a follow, hear your amazing content. And I just want to thank you again for just coming on the show and offering just your time and such valuable insights and honest conversation about what it means to be human.
Chris Lee (47:43):
Yeah, it’s absolutely amazing. And you’re going to be on my podcast soon. So we’re making time jamming on that one too, so keep an eye out for that one too.
Kristen Boss (47:51):
Yes. Sounds good. All right. Thanks so much for being on, Chris.
Chris Lee (47:54):
Thanks. See everyone.
Kristen Boss (48:08):
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenboss.com.
