Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: I cannot wait. We have known each other for a while now. I've been really, and working through these ideas that you present both in the book and in my own life. The ideas that we're going to talk about today have helped me so much in my life and I think will be very helpful to so many families out there. So, I'm so excited that the book is finally coming out and we can get here and share it with our listeners.

Denis: Beautiful. Thank you.

Andy: What is The Blame Game? The name of the book is The Blame Game. Why did you spend 10 years thinking about the idea of blame and working on a book about blame?

Denis: Well, everyone knows about blame. Everyone knows about the blame game and everyone has their opinion on it, and I was no different. And before I'd even started my awareness journey, I knew about it and I knew I blamed a lot, but I didn't think that there was anything to even consider, because it's just something that I'd accepted is a normal part of life. And it wasn't until I just started to go on my own self-awareness journey around the world and learn so many different things from so many different people about how we selfheal, how we could become more aware, how we can become more spiritual and all of this stuff to be a better person.

I did all of that really intensively, but I did feel like it was always finding different ways to control, and I was still blaming myself for so much and I was still blaming everyone else in my life for being the reason I'm not happy. And I can't remember the moment, but when you blame, you immediately become a victim. You go into that victim mindset. And then I could look back and go, "Oh, I'm the biggest victim I know in my life." And that gave me the fuel to then go on another journey around the world, unpacking myself from that angle. So, it was a very selfish start. It was all about me. I needed to heal.

And that was what drove me into all of these weird and wonderful ways of healing. But it was only until I realized the impact of blame and how it turns into a victim, that I got interested.

Andy: Well, I even noticed, I find just thoughts of blame coming up, even just small things like, as a way to let myself off the hook for things like, "Oh, well, no, I was just an asshole to my friend because I'm so stressed out, it's been such a long day." Or. "Because we keep doing whatever to me and, no, it's because of this thing that happened, or it's because of the way that you just said that to me, and of course I snapped at you," or whatever. It's a way to maintain this version of myself that's like, "Oh, it's not me, it's because I'm awesome. I'm not an asshole." And so I think that we do that in so many ways throughout our day and throughout our lives as just almost a way to take it easy on ourselves sometimes.

Denis:
Yeah, and what's really interesting about what you just described there is you said when you are stressed, that's when you'll snap. And so what you'll realize now I'm going to say this, is that we'll have the most argument, stress in your life when you are physically tired. So you've had a long gym session, you've gone for a run, you've had a late night, you've been drinking, whatever it is, long day at work. It means you haven't got the energy anymore to keep the rug on top of all of your stuff. Your ability to control your honesty isn't there anymore. So that's when your honesty shoots to the surface and now you're telling people how you honestly feel. As much as that might make you feel bad, it basically creates a situation where the more you are in that blame cycle and you try and control it, it creates more stress, not less, which then seeps into your family.

Andy: I just think that part of the problem that we have in families or why we feel like we have, I think difficulty sometimes with relationships in our family. It's like, oh, it seems like, yeah. It's easy to have just a small, tough conversation with someone during the day. You're only going to see them for a half hour, or you just have lunch with someone and you can keep yourself together for this little bit of time when you're talking to your boss or you're having lunch with a person that annoys you or something and you can just be nice and keep a smiley face. But your family, your kids are with you all the time and they see you at your worst. Or like you're saying, they see you at the end of that long day, after you've been just, were up super early in the morning, you've been rushing around, you had all this work to do. And now a lot of times our family members are seeing us when we are our most stressed out and tired and at our worst and aren't able to keep the lid on our feelings anymore.

Denis: And if you want to go into a bit more of the philosophy that I'm offering, the other reason why family becomes a lot more stressful, if you like, is because of the labels that come with family. So a lot of the discussion around labels doesn't take into account that mom, dad, brother, sister, son, daughter are labels. And each one of those labels comes with a conscious and unconscious list of what they should and shouldn't do. And so actually what's happening in families, everywhere, but what's happening in families, people are talking to the labels in their life. They're not talking to the person behind the label. Very few people know the people behind the label because they were brought up with just interacting with mom, just interacting with daughter. And that in itself will create such conflict because they're not matching your ideal.

And the question is, where did that ideal mother, father, son, daughter come from? And so we're all trying to be this perfect ideal version that actually doesn't exist. It's just what Hollywood told you or a TV showed you how it should be. But there is no universal way that you should and shouldn't behave. So when I'm working with clients, as parents, they're so stressed, but they don't realize they're stressed because they're not matching a fake ideal of what they should be. And that's what creates a lot of the blame.

Andy: "I would be that perfect mom that I'm supposed to be if only it weren't for that, and it weren't for that and this other thing. And then you, it's your fault."

Denis: Even when I run corporate programs and I take people through that idea of labels, and you are angry with your boss, you're not angry with Claire, it's the boss that you are angry with, because they're not matching your ideal of what this ideal boss should be. But that ideal comes from such a narrow paradigm of possibility around what that person should and shouldn't do. You don't realize that they might be acting in a way to save your job. So that's why they might not be as friendly as they were last month. And so we have all these projections that I'm offering that they're all blame based, and that's what creates the physical and emotional tension and the mental illness that we're seeing today.

Andy: I can't help but wonder now if we start to recognize all this blame in our lives and how we're just blaming situations and blaming other people, is the alternative to that, that we have to blame ourself. Then means that if it's not anybody else's fault that we're stressed out and losing our composure, that means that it's just us. It's our fault.

Denis: You hear that, don't you? You hear that so often from the motivational gurus nowadays. Whenever they talk about blame or victimhood, it's always along the lines of, "Don't blame anyone. It's all your fault. So you take control and you just create the life that you want." And it's, "Don't be a victim." And it's all that very masculine gung ho, control it, conquer it, get rid of it, and just power on through. That's exhausting. And it also, what they don't realize they're doing is that basically, they're saying, "Don't blame anyone. Just blame yourself." And that literally will make you insane because now not only are you still unconsciously blaming everyone else, you are not allowing yourself to acknowledge it and you are doubling up on your own. So that's why there's so much imposter syndrome. That's why there's so much anger issues. That's why there's so much self-hatred because everyone's being told, "It's your fault for messing up in life."

Andy: Yeah. And it's another should and shouldn't that gets even stacked on top of. So I should be this perfect parent who's always patient and has an equanimous or whatever. Always says the right thing and knows what to do and say, and keeps my cool. You should be this amazing child who's respectful and works hard and treats me this great way. And that's not happening, which makes me mad, but no, but I shouldn't be feeling like that. And now that's all my fault. But now I am blaming you, but I shouldn't be blaming you. So instead I should be blaming myself. So now it gives us another layer of things that we shouldn't be feeling or shouldn't be doing, that we then just reflect back on ourself and the whole never ending cycle.

Denis: And so that's why I say we are swimming in blame like a fish in water, and we don't realize it. We really don't realize that blame is in pretty much every conversation we have. And so the way you just described it, it's hectic the way you were just talking. It's like blame here and blame there. And it's like, and that's going on all the time

Andy: Constantly.

Denis: And yes, you might have those moments where you can control it, but it's still going on unconsciously behind the scenes. And that's when the passive aggressive jabs come out. That's when the subtle blame bombs get thrown. And it's like, "Why are you getting upset? I'm just joking." And actually there's a lot of truth in that comment. And so again, everyone's poking the bear, just waiting for someone to blow up. So then the blame comes out.

Andy: So this is why we need to get lots of rest and meditate and really keep ourselves super centered so that we can always not get to that point of being all stressed out and losing it.

Denis: And again, all of those things that you've said, they're great coping mechanisms, they're great escapism. And that's why someone will meditate for 10 minutes or then 20 minutes twice a day and then half an hour and then an hour. And now they're looking to meditate two hours if they can because they're escaping reality. So all the time that they can even go to the gym or go on their walk, their trek, their yoga, the session, their meditation, it's all great, it's all healthy, like anything, is it turned into a distraction? Are you doing that instead of the actual real healing that needs to take place? And that's basically what the book's about or the whole philosophy's about is, "I did all of those coping mechanisms and they helped me carry on. They helped me survive another day, another week, another month. But it was getting to the point I couldn't handle it anymore. And it was only until I started to honestly heal that my life then reflected that back coming so much more peaceful, harmonious, and effortless." And that's what I want to help people with.

Andy: One of the things I really have noticed from working on this book with you and working with you in person is just really how I didn't give myself permission to feel a lot of emotions or I would mislabel my emotions or just mostly I was labeling a lot of emotions as anxiety or I'm stressed out, or I just got a lot going on right now. I'm really stressed out, instead of really allowing myself to feel more complicated emotions and be more connected to myself emotionally. And I wonder if that's common or if other people have similar experiences that you work with as well.

Denis: Yeah. What I realized is that there were, even when you go through some meditation practices, they will say, "Listen to your body." But what I realized when I was doing that before I knew about the whole blame thing, and there's a lot of people out there that are very prominent in the new age spiritual circle that will tell you that your thoughts aren't your own. And they will teach you how to just let those pass through you or you just let them go. And what they don't realize is that is blame. And they don't realize that you are missing out on a healing opportunity, because the idea is to use our thoughts, even if we think they're ugly and they're painful and aren't comfortable, they're designed to help you find out where the blame, the victim, and the fear is being held in the...

So what I felt is that if you just tell someone to feel their body, they can't do it because there isn't enough context of what they're supposed to be doing in that moment. So obviously it would take a lot more of an explanation than we've got here. But to keep it simple, it is about getting better at a skill of listening to your physical body. So if you think of your daughter or your son and it creates a tension in your stomach, the skill is to be able to get better at listening to that tightness in your stomach and just observing it without trying to get rid of it or blaming it for being a bad... That's what's so alien. Because we're constantly told that our mind and our body is malfunctioning.

And it's the greatest myth we've ever been sold because your mind and your body are working tirelessly together to help you heal. But because of our blame addiction, we've been taught for thousands of years to see it as malfunctioning, as broken, that something needs fixing. And that is why people can't feel, because they're constantly trying to fix something that isn't broken. That's so counterintuitive for the way we've been trained. And that's why the listening process, the feeling process takes a little bit of time.

Andy: Okay. But what about things that are really obviously broken, like a broken arm or if you hurt your knee, it's just sprained and you can't walk. There's clearly some things that really, we do need to fix, right?

Denis: Yeah. So when someone comes to me and they've got either a chronic condition that might be classed as incurable or they've got a broken bone, that's obviously acute that's just happened, I will still treat them both in the same way because I can see how, for example, when I was working with a client who had back pain and the doctors would say "It's a slip disc. There's some degenerative disc erosion there as well, maybe arthritis." And they're giving him all of these application labels of what it could be. And one, I helped him with his blame against his father. And already when I helped him with that, his pain subsided maybe 80, 90%. And then when he came back months later and there was pain there again, I asked him what he's doing in his life and it was actually that he was going to go on a trip that he didn't want to go on.

And that's the big thing we don't realize with our physical body, is the body will help you out of situations. It will give you excuse. So how many times have you not wanted to go to work and you've got a cold leading up to that or I've had people, as crazy as it sounds, that have planned to go on a stag do, but they really don't want to go. And so they've literally, days before, sprained an ankle or broken an arm, which means they can't go and do what they, if they were being honest with themselves, didn't want to do.

So to answer your question, yes, the bone might be broken, but it can heal so much quicker when you realize you don't need to fix the arm. You need to realize what was the honest reason the arm broke. Look at it that, it's almost like reverse engineering. Once you look at it like that, the body can now heal in timeframes that you will think is impossible, because you are not trying to fix the bone, you realize the body was helping you with something. And that in itself, is a completely different way of looking at healing.

Andy: As part of this panel a couple weeks back for the parents and just talking about how a lot of times our teens are trying to maybe tell us things or share feelings with us. And it's hard to know whether it's something that we should really entertain or whether it's just something that they're trying to get out of something. Or even just something like a stomach ache and "Hey, my daughter is really, she's complaining this morning she doesn't feel well. She's got a stomach ache." So some of the parents were saying, "Well, so you have to..." Yeah, obviously you want to have empathy and talk about that and stuff, but you ought to know, it's like, well, she's just trying to get out of that test she has in history today. And "No, no, no, no, no, you're going to school."

But I think that it's like what you're talking about where there is some sort of maybe deeper reason why these things are going on. And I think even the parents in this group were picking up on that, that a lot of times there's something physical that's going on, but there's really a deeper, maybe a reason why that's happening. And I wonder, if you're in that situation and you see something like that happening, how should we respond as a parent when the daughter does have a stomach ache and we know there's a test today in history or something? Is the answer to say, "Okay, great, you don't have to go to school"? Or how do we balance that or respond to something like that?

Denis: And obviously when those types of scenarios are suggested, there's obviously so many different elements to consider. You don't know if that's the 10th time that the daughter has done that. To answer that specifically, there would need to be a lot more context. So for me to answer it in a general sense, when parents come to me with similar types of scenarios and they say to me, "So what should I do? What should I do?" And I say, "My role isn't to tell you what to do or how to parent, my role is to help you get to know you better. And once you know you better, then your environment, your ecosystem, your family becomes more harmonious."

And I think that's the other thing with parenting, a lot of it is externally focused. Parents come to me and they ask me, can I fix their son or daughter? When anyone says that to me, I say, "I can help them, but I'm going to help you first." Because I've seen it too many times now where the parent changes and their kids just naturally change after that. And that's why I like working with teachers, because it's the same thing. When the teacher changes, all the children in the classroom feed off that different energy from the teacher.

Andy: Totally.

Denis: So that's one of the most uncomfortable things for parents to learn from me and my philosophy, which is, I'm saying on some level, if I'm going to really generalize, if that daughter is in pain and they don't want to go and do a history test, I would say to the mother, if it was the mother telling me this, I would say, "What are you looking to avoid? What are you not doing? Are you acting like you've got a pain as an excuse to not go out Friday night or to go on the holiday or to do your own test that you've got?" Because I see everything as a reflection and can get really uncomfortable.

Andy: "No, this is about my daughter. Wait, hold on now."

Denis: Exactly. And so when I get them to describe the things they don't like about their daughter, and I say something like, "You just described yourself," the defenses go up. "No Way."

Andy: "No, no, my back. I really do have back pain. This is not... Yeah, no. It's..."

Denis: Yeah. And even the characteristics. "My daughter's so stubborn, she's so rude." And then to think that you're stubborn and you can be rude seems abhorrent and that's the defensiveness that comes in. But once I get the parents to really appreciate that mirror effect, that reflection, the relationship with their children completely change because they start looking at themselves, not in a blame, but in that healing way that I take you through. And then once that healing takes place, the daughter stops reflecting back that trait you don't like about yourself, and then the harmony arrives in the household.

Andy: I think that's just so often where we find ourselves as parents is, we're trying to fix what's wrong with our kids or all we can do is look at them and see these problems and these issues. And, "How do I handle this? What do I do about that?" And we don't think that it has anything to do with us. "Because I'm awesome, I'm fine, everything's fine with me. I'm a great parent, I'm pretty patient and stuff like that. This is an issue with my child."

Denis: I've spent a lot of time in nature in all different places around the world, and I know that's helped me so much. And what I realized at some point, the more time I spent in nature, I realized there's no blame in nature. So that's why it can flourish so effortlessly when we are not part of it. Because otherwise it would be like the tree blaming the flower or the mushroom for doing something wrong. And it's like, no, the tree knows what the tree's doing. The mushroom knows what the mushroom's doing and all the elements are doing their own thing, but they all are symbiotically working together and adapting.

And arguably, that's the complete opposite to a family. It's like you are going into that ecosystem, you are doing it wrong, you are doing it wrong, you are doing it wrong, as opposed to realizing there's something going on in the ecosystem that needs addressing. And all I'm offering is what needs to be addressed is that blame addiction I'm saying we've inherited for thousands of years. And once that is no longer in the ecosystem, it flourishes just like nature flourishes, because there's no blame over there.