What to do (and not to do) When Raising a Child with Anxiety Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Regine Galanti: it’s okay to be anxious in front of your kids. But when you model the way you don’t want them acting, they are learning the way you don’t want them acting.

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn, joined here by the lovely Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Hello. Hello, everybody. How are you?

JoAnn Crohn: We are doing something very close to my heart today, because we’re interviewing a two timer guest, Regine Galanti, and she has a new book out called Parenting Anxious Kids. And I was an anxious kid, and I think it’s so important for parents to know this information just to help kids through life and develop those skills.

Brie Tucker: Yep. I’d say like I was an anxious kid. I am an anxious adult and I’m a parent of anxious kids. So, you know, hands up in the air if you think y’all can relate.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. So really, really pay attention to this episode because we’re going to go through the ways that parents make anxieties worse in kids and what to do instead. And it is no shame here. Brie and I totally copped to doing these things ourselves.

So Regine Galanti, she’s the founder of Long Island Behavioral Psychology, a private practice in New York and author of Parenting Anxious Kids. She specializes in helping kids. teens and parents manage anxiety through cognitive behavioral therapy and specifically giving them tools to help them face their fears. We hope you enjoy our interview with Regine.

Welcome back to the podcast, Regine. We are so excited to have you, especially because your new book comes out today, Parenting Anxious Kids. So welcome.

Regine Galanti: Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Brie Tucker: You know,

JoAnn Crohn: I, see. I see.

Brie Tucker: I was going to say, I’m always excited to have a two timer on the show. I got it. I got to throw that in again. Got it. We got to get her, we got to get her club jackets. We got to get her

JoAnn Crohn: a club jackets.

Regine Galanti: can I get a jacket for being a two timer? Right.

Brie Tucker: Yes. Yes. Be like, I’m a two timer with the No Guilt Mom

JoAnn Crohn: Right now it’s an imaginary jacket. We’ll send you your imaginary jacket in the mail and you could imaginarily receive it and put it

Regine Galanti: I’m wearing it right now.

JoAnn Crohn: So yeah, you have it right now. Exactly. Wearing it right now. I see on the wall behind you your book, Anxiety Relief for Teens. And like, I was just talking with my daughter about you because that’s how we initially found you. She was dealing with some anxiety issues and I found your book on Amazon. And I’m like, I should just contact her. And here you are. And you’ve been in part of like our summits and interviews and.

Regine Galanti: I’m so happy that that happened.

JoAnn Crohn: Me too. and this book you’ve written, Parenting Anxious Kids, is so needed because in our balance community in particular, parents are dealing with this a lot. And, I don’t know what you’ve seen, but, have you seen a rise in anxiety, especially since the pandemic in your

Regine Galanti: Yes. That’s the short answer. But I think that my practice was very full even pre pandemic and then the pandemic hit and it was just like, like the, there’s no way me or anyone I know can keep up with the demand.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, when I was reading your book, something struck me like that. It’s not necessarily that there’s more anxiety happening in the world, but people are figuring out that they might be dealing with anxiety or may have had undiagnosed anxiety before. And I thought back to like when I was a kid, I definitely had the undiagnosed anxiety as a child that is now diagnosed in my adult life.

And I know like strategies to deal with. If I had known it as a child, I always think like, how would my life have been different? How much less fear would I have had in elementary school, like in social situations? Or how much more would I have put myself out there if I had known that, Hey, these feelings I have, other people have them too. And there’s a way to get through

Brie Tucker: Well, I think hold on. I got to throw in there to having a child that has anxiety right now, too. I am having. that is a huge mic drop right there. Because getting them to understand that they’re normal doesn’t have to be normal. That there is a, is a less stressful normal out there that they could get to if we could just work with this anxiety.

Regine Galanti: Oh, that’s so heartbreaking though, Joanne. Like, I think that’s kind of why I wrote this book. Because anxiety is everywhere and it doesn’t have to be. This terrible thing that kind of like don’t look at the monster like hiding under your bed we can face it and learn strategies to deal with it and we can do that on a bunch of different levels. It doesn’t always have to be. Hey, wait till your kid is old enough and let them handle it. There are things that as parents we can do to help our kids be more successful.

JoAnn Crohn: Because something that you touched on, which I think is really important for everyone to know, is that not all anxiety is bad. Can you tell us a little bit more about why we need anxiety in

Regine Galanti: Right. Well, the short answer is we need anxiety so we don’t die, right? Um, you need to look both ways before you cross the street. That is a little bit anxiety, like you’re afraid of getting hit by cars. So you look both ways so you don’t get hit by cars. That is good. It’s almost like anxiety is a smoke detector, and we have smoke detectors in our homes to tell us that there is a fire, right? So anxiety keeps us alive. Almost like if you imagine a caveman that’s like a chill surfer dude or like super chill about issues

Brie Tucker: Yeah. I like that. I don’t know why suddenly I could totally picture a caveman on a surfer board.

JoAnn Crohn: Caveman on the beach

Brie Tucker: Encino man is what I’m picturing.

JoAnn Crohn: has medicinal plants by the cave. Like it’s

Regine Galanti: it’s gonna try to pet the tiger when it comes around right And bad things happen when you pet the tiger So anxiety

Brie Tucker: the tiger. Don’t pet the tiger

Regine Galanti: Don’t pet the tiger.

just don’t right. So that’s anxiety that tells you don’t pet the tiger That’s a good thing except when it’s not a tiger And it’s public speaking or like. You know, doing your homework, then that’s not a tiger. But your brain’s like, Hey tiger, let’s, let’s not take this risk.

Brie Tucker: Ordering, a drink, ordering your

JoAnn Crohn: at Starbucks.

Brie Tucker: right? Yes, that’s a therapeutic goal in our household to be able to order her drink at Starbucks,

Regine Galanti: But that’s a good one, right? Because it’s also like values driven, right? what teenager doesn’t want a Starbucks drink. So it’s like ordering or don’t get it. Okay, mom.

Brie Tucker: Exactly.

JoAnn Crohn: And specifically what you do to help kids with anxiety is you use a type of therapy called CBT. Can you explain that a

Regine Galanti: So what I do is cognitive behavioral therapy and I’m mostly like on the behavior side So it’s a short term very symptom focused approach to anxiety Where my goal is basically to have kids do things and make them uncomfortable Things that they want to do that they’re not doing because their anxiety is saying don’t do that. That’s scary Don’t text your friends. Your friend doesn’t want to hear from you. You probably don’t even have friends, but we know objectively

JoAnn Crohn: I hear that in my house a lot. That’s why I laugh.

Regine Galanti: Me too Right just because you’re a therapist doesn’t mean that your kids don’t have anxiety also so you could be doing mostly everything right and still fall into these same patterns, which is a tough one.

Brie Tucker: mental health does not discriminate.

JoAnn Crohn: No, and I, and I like how you break it apart with how CBT, breaks apart anxiety into those three different parts, how it’s your thoughts, your physical reactions and your behaviors because, I never thought of it that way and seeing it in terms of a triangle. And if you break one part of the triangle, you actually help the anxiety.

Regine Galanti: it’s almost like it’s a cycle, right? So they’re all spiraling on themselves. That’s not really a thing that things do, but I’ll go with it. so you have these thoughts of danger, but then you also have your body just fight or flight. One thing I notice parents do a lot right is like it’s okay You know, it’s not real so you can just do it But your body is giving you a different message your body’s saying like whoa. No, my heart’s beating fast I’m sweating like my brain might be saying this is okay, but my body’s like nope not okay, right?

Brie Tucker: It’s hard to ignore the body. That’s a hard one.

Regine Galanti: right and we teach kids not

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Cause your body sees it

Regine Galanti: Right

JoAnn Crohn: and even choose not to.

Brie Tucker: Yeah.

Regine Galanti: when do I pay attention to my body and when do I not is kind of a therapy goal,

JoAnn Crohn: It gets you into like this weird area because what anxiety did at least to me is that it led me to this distrust of my bodily symptoms because all these adults around me were saying, Hey, like it’s no big deal. But my body was like, Oh, heart beating fast, like neck muscles and shoulder muscles all clenched and. It’s led me not to trust my body and not to trust what my body’s saying. And I think a lot of people get into that situation.

Regine Galanti: right? And that’s so hard because your body is giving you accurate information about how it feels It’s just that feeling is not what you want to be doing, right? you’re feeling all tight and tense Because, let’s say, I don’t know, you have to speak in front of a crowd, and that’s going to make you want to not speak, but speaking is something you want to do. So it’s,

Brie Tucker: have to do. Like, right? Let’s just be honest.

Regine Galanti: right. So you have to be able to take that information and say, oh, my body is saying I am in danger. But I know that that’s incorrect, so I’m going to have to make a different decision based on the cues that I have available to me, like the whole picture.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Which is so interesting. And I know like you have ways that parents can help with this and things that they do to hurt with this. And we are going to get into these things that parents may be doing that do not help kids with anxiety right after this break. So, Regine, in your book, you tell this story about your daughter and a hairdryer in the public restroom. Can you share that story with us?

Regine Galanti: So. This was my youngest, who’s now six, and thankfully outgrown this, but I shouldn’t say outgrown this because I think we worked on it, used to freak out in public restrooms, like freak out because there was the loud dryer and those things are super loud. So she would just not want to go to the bathroom.

She’d be like, Hey, can we go home? they’d be in Trader Joe’s and she’d have to go to the bathroom and she’d be like, we need to go home right now. Like, I have to go to the bathroom, so we need to go home. We cannot use this bathroom. Right. And as a parent, you’re very torn because you’re like, I don’t want to make my kids suffer. And also I don’t want to leave my cart full of groceries in the middle of the grocery store and give into this. and even as a psychologist, it’s hard to know what the Right. answer is, because emotions take over, right? Like emotions are like, Oh, I have to protect my kid. I have to save her from this anxiety.

But again, like, therapist hat on, we can’t let this be a thing that my kid is never gonna be a kid who goes to a public restroom, like, we don’t do that. We do hard things in my family. But it doesn’t have to be like, shove you into the bathroom, close the door, and like, turn on the dryer, the dryer, and let’s see what happens, because that’s kind of mean.

JoAnn Crohn: That’d be a little traumatic.

Regine Galanti: We don’t want to do that either. So it was more like, we took steps. So sometimes, I started bringing headphones with me to, public places so she could put them over her ears so it would dull the sound. and still, she needed the encouragement. Like, sometimes I’d, I’d bring stickers also, like, give her a sticker after she went into the bathroom, even though she’d still be freaking out. But it dulled the sound enough that she was able to use the bathroom and then a lot of encouragement and a lot of, like, praise for, Hey, you did the whole thing. I’m so proud of you. And now she is a successful public restroom users. So yay.

JoAnn Crohn: There needs to be a badge for that, an award.

Regine Galanti: With the,

JoAnn Crohn: There’s like a lot of like anxieties around public restrooms though. Um, the flushing, automatic flushing toilets I know was like a big anxiety among a lot of

Brie Tucker: Oh, still is

JoAnn Crohn: daughter was growing up.

Brie Tucker: Someone who recently ran preschools still is

JoAnn Crohn: Stop. No, you get

Brie Tucker: post its are the official like helper of all preschool programs that have self. Flushing toilets.

Regine Galanti: Cover the sensor because also it’s not even fair. The kids are too like,

Brie Tucker: I know

Regine Galanti: you know, they don’t weigh enough.

Brie Tucker: poor kids. Oh goodness gracious

JoAnn Crohn: Easily suck down that toilet when it’s flushed, like, I mean, as a little kid, that would be terrifying. I remember being scared of being on the toilet as a little kid and it flushing. I couldn’t even imagine if it was an automatic thing that like you had no control over. That

Brie Tucker: good thing to help people kind of relate to this situation because that is a very well known very common fear of kids, especially when they’re potty training of a toilet flushing and it’s not always just the, I’m afraid I’m going to fall down the toilet and get flushed away.

It’s like, it’s the noise, it’s the sound, it’s the water spraying, it’s all that stuff. And we think about how we help support them moving through that. And it just kind of like, it just, to me, it kind of just shows how it doesn’t seem that unusual now to hear, Regine, your story about your daughter having issues with sounds.

I mean, that’s. That doesn’t seem that out of left field yet. A lot of us still have that first thought of like, well, you just got to do it. Let’s just deal with it. You got to push through it. And that’s not always the best method, right?

Regine Galanti: We don’t always have to push a kid off the deep end,

JoAnn Crohn: leads really well into one of the things that you say, a way that parents can make anxiety worse, which is avoiding risk. How do you, have you seen parents avoid risk? That makes the anxiety worse than a kid.

Regine Galanti: right? Well, if you only stay in your comfort zone, always. You will never learn new things. You’ll never learn like, hey, I like that food or I like this Activity because you would have never tried it,

Brie Tucker: right? Yeah.

Regine Galanti: But then that would sound Crazy, if you said that in other areas, like, oh, my kid doesn’t like vegetables, so I’m just never going to make them eat vegetables, which honestly, I see that in my practice too sometimes. Discomfort is part of life,

Brie Tucker: Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, it is totally part of life.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, like the whole like speaking in front of people. It’s nerve wracking. It causes a lot of anxiety for some people, but you’re not going to be able to get through life and never have to speak in front of people. That would be a very, very hard found life to not have to face that.

JoAnn Crohn: I have seen this happen in real time, the avoiding of risk and the repercussions of helping a child avoid risk where, someone was 26 years old and refused to go on escalators. so it’s, it’s, big. It’s big when we avoid risk for our kids because then they never confront the things that are seemingly benign in society to overcome them and to get there, which leads me to the next way that parents can make anxiety worse is and this one really hit me because I’m like, Oh, shoot.

I think I do this and. I think we are, we easily do this. It’s the inconsistency, like telling child to face their fears one time and then to validate their emotions and not face their fears another time. And I read that and I’m like, Oh my gosh, how do we even, how do we even like fix this? Regine? Cause this is like all in us. This is like our, like, Oh, we just don’t know what’s best in the given

Regine Galanti: Right. And sometimes we even do it in the same moment. Right? Sometimes you’re like, no, no, it’s okay. You know, all your fears are valid, but also okay, but now it’s time. you had enough lead up time. Now go do the thing, right? It’s like your fears were valid for five minutes, but now they’re no longer valid.

So like, let’s, let’s get a move on, Do this when you’re ready, but that has to be now.

JoAnn Crohn: It does. I, I see.

Brie Tucker: I’m laughing because I’m like, yeah, 100 percent that would be me sometimes. Like, I’m like, I’m starting with the gentle of like, Oh, I have to listen to you and support support my, my kid and this feeling that they’re having. And then like, after a few minutes, you’re like, Oh, wait a second, I’m just making this worse. How do I back out of this slowly? It’s like that Homer Simpson gift. Like I’m just going to walk quietly back into the bushes and pretend like this didn’t happen. Where’s that reset button?

Regine Galanti: Right, let me try this again, but right, the good thing about parenting is you will have an opportunity to try it again because we have so

JoAnn Crohn: Over and over again, the same situations come up. It’s like Groundhog Day, but every day of your life. Parenting! Yay! That’s how I look at it. the third way you say that parents make anxiety worse is accommodation. What does that mean?

Regine Galanti: that is the things that you do for your child’s anxiety that you wouldn’t do for let’s say a sibling that didn’t have the same anxiety. Right? So, your kid doesn’t want to go to school, and maybe your older kid is fine going to school, so you just, nope, you’re going to school, going on the bus, but your middle one, when they say they don’t want to go to school, you’re like, oh, they can’t handle this, so you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to drive them.

Brie Tucker: Been guilty of that. Oh, I was sitting here going like, ah, crap.

Regine Galanti: Yeah, so there’s a,

JoAnn Crohn: How do you get over that? Like, if you, if you see that child who’s like, Oh my gosh, they’re having such a freak out because they don’t like their bus driver and it would just be easier in my morning. To drive them like,

Brie Tucker: For easier my

JoAnn Crohn: the other approach?

Regine Galanti: why we accommodate our kids because it’s easier in the moment. So you’re not thinking about yourself next month where you are the chauffeur to and from school and it’s ruining your life. You’re thinking about yourself this morning that my kid has to get on the freaking bus. So get on the bus

Brie Tucker: a fair point, right? There’s a time and a place in parenting where we do need to think about what can get us through in the moment, but that’s for your typical situation. This is where it’s gotten bigger than that. Like, where, again, like, you’re dealing with like, actual anxiety, not just the don’t pet the tiger anxiety.

Regine Galanti: Right. Right, there’s always a place for some accommodation, like, right, the the word accommodation is like, okay, if the kid is struggling reading, you make the assignment easier so they can handle it. Right. But you also need to have that method in place for how the kid’s going to catch up, right?

JoAnn Crohn: that’s true. It’s like an education. We called it the least restrictive environment where we give them the accommodation to succeed, but we don’t accommodate them so much that they. Fall behind and fall behind their peers and fall behind social. Cause I could see like not getting on the bus, like you’re missing a social skill there of dealing with a situation that you feel uncomfortable in. Like, what do you do your whole life will be not getting on that bus. Which I’ve seen happen,

Regine Galanti: Right.

JoAnn Crohn: and I can’t go into specifics, but it is a good thing that you are bringing this message to parents because we definitely don’t want to have our kids be 30 years old and not getting on buses and us driving them everywhere still, um, which can occur. So, we’ve gone through three of the ways parents can make anxiety worse. We are going to hear your fourth way, which we actually really embrace here at No Guilt Mom and is part of like our whole mission and we’ll get to it right after the break. So we’ve talked about how parents help their kids avoid risk. We’ve talked about how parents can be inconsistent and how they accommodate their children. This fourth way, I am totally aware of myself doing. And that’s when we model our own anxieties for our kids and how we deal with our anxieties affects our kids as well. How have you seen that play out,

Regine Galanti: Right. So I feel bad because I throw my husband under the bus for this one all the time because My favorite example of this is my husband is afraid of spiders and, We have in Long Island. There are these jumping spider cricket things in the basement. They’re terrifying,

JoAnn Crohn: Freeze right? there with your husband. Out of there.

Brie Tucker: The scariest things, they could be, like, the top of a pin, I don’t care! If it jumps, I’m out! Oh, my God!

Regine Galanti: so right like One of my kids is sitting in the basement and she sees one and she starts yelling and my husband comes down and he starts yelling and now I have two people freaking out and now she’s just learning to be afraid of the freaking spider and to run like What’s the answer here? Run and yell. That’s the way we handle anxiety. We run and yell, right?

And again, it’s like in my house, we don’t do this. Sorry. Turn back around, go back in and you’re going to kill that bug. And you’re going to try to do it without it’s okay to be anxious in front of your kids. But when you model the way you don’t want them acting, they are learning the way you don’t want them acting. Even if all the words you say is right, when they have to do something hard. You are giving the inverse message of what you want, right? What’s the big deal if you make a mistake? Everybody makes mistakes and then you like, I don’t know, screw up the measurements of something when you’re baking and you’re like, this is terrible Now my dessert is ruined like ah, I ruined Thanksgiving or whatever because of my cake That is not the message you want your kids to be saying, to be seeing

Brie Tucker: Sometimes when

JoAnn Crohn: true.

Brie Tucker: you’re lucky, like, when, oh, I don’t know, somebody here on the podcast might have dropped their pumpkin pie on the floor literally 20 minutes before we had to leave for Thanksgiving dinner. Sobbing mess! And the kid walks up and goes, it’s okay, mom. We’ll figure it out. Just say sometimes, sometimes we do well and they show up.

Well, like I, I, I’m curious about that though. I have to throw this into my own personal experience. Sorry. A second experience. I am terrified of heights, terrified. And I don’t even know how it necessarily started. All I can tell you is that the epitome of it was when I went to the top of the, Statue of Liberty, had a panic attack, and they had to bring the paramedics up to get me down. And that thing to be carried down on a stretcher down that tiny little, like, like, little spiral staircase, that was a lot of fun. Anyways, er, uh,

Regine Galanti: just saying

Brie Tucker: Yeah. Yeah. So ever since, like, I just, I have a hard time with heights and I 100 percent can tell you my son’s fear of heights is from my own reaction to that. But I do push myself and try to do things, especially around him that I am terrified of. Like you will see my legs shaking, but I’m doing it anyways. So I’m like, see, it’s okay. And my, my teenage son though is still like a hard, Nope, ain’t gonna do it. No way. No how. So that, that can be,

JoAnn Crohn: Silence.

Regine Galanti: but it’s almost like the foundation that your kid is going to learn the skills based on, based on saying, okay, mom pushed herself. I get that I have to. I’m not ready yet. Like, my parenting is not enough right now. Maybe, like, I don’t know, if he gets a job on the 50th floor of some building, then he’s gonna need therapy to work that out.

Brie Tucker: I have to bring that up to him like he wants to be a computer programmer and be like, Hey, the best jobs are at the top of the building. It’s all I got to say. It’s all I got to say.

JoAnn Crohn: Not always, but I think that’s a great point because like, I’ve seen that in my kids, I have high anxiety. I know that I have modeled stuff for them that I do not want them to react that way. And it’s like one of those things that I give myself self compassion about it because it came out when I was in just a state of. fear.

Brie Tucker: Like a jumping

JoAnn Crohn: yeah, like a jumping spider. you can’t be your kid’s therapist. And even you as a therapist say this over and over again. I learned this from you, Regine, and I felt so much better. Like you’re not a therapist to your kids and you do this for a living. so this idea of them needing extra help and therapy is something that I took to heart.

And I mean, both of my kids are in therapy because I see the same anxiety that I have and I took from you. I’m like, I can’t do this alone. I need help. I need the help and guidance of a professional. And so getting them in that therapy is a great and wonderful thing. And we’ve seen great results from it.

Regine Galanti: Right. It’s the best. Even if the therapist is saying exactly what you would say, it’s so great for them to have someone that’s not their mom.

Brie Tucker: That’s the key right there. It can’t be us. It, no matter how many times we do it, it’s still, it’s somebody else said this and it, you know what, mom, it’s amazing.

Regine Galanti: And you’re like,

Brie Tucker: Another example of holding things in Not not showing the behavior that you don’t want them to have right like Yeah,

Regine Galanti: think the emotion part is important here, right. If we’re going to go to back to that side of the triangle, that one of the reasons why parents can’t be their kids therapist is because we have our own emotional reaction to what they’re going through. So sometimes we’re going to have to be like, okay, like I am suffering with you and my suffering with you is going to make things worse for you. So I need to figure out a different way through and sometimes it’s recognizing that because I’m suffering with you, I’m not the one to give you the solution here.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. We need to look for some outside help. And even looking for additional help for yourself as an adult is a wonderful thing as well so that you can process your own things and learn how to deal with them better and not cause yourself so much pain because that’s important. No

Regine Galanti: what this came out of was because I was working with so many parents, right? It’s like the line between, like, how do I parent my anxious kid and how do I figure out what’s good for me is not such a distinct line. It’s hard to tell where

JoAnn Crohn: No, it’s not. So your book comes out today, Regine, Parenting Anxious Kids, Understanding Anxiety in Children by Age and Stage. we talked a lot about what’s in the front of the book in part one in this episode right here, but we didn’t even delve into your part two. Can you tell them what they get in that part two where it’s like broken apart?

Regine Galanti: Right. So what I really wanted was a book that could grow with your child, with, I guess, with you as a parent. So, I broke it up by ages and stasis. So if you have a toddler, like, what should you be on the lookout for? What should you do to kind of prevent? Anxiety if possible.

Brie Tucker: that

Regine Galanti: and then as kids grow, what skills do you as a parent need to support them as they kind of become more independent? Because we know that that’s what happens, right? middle schoolers need different things from their parents than teenagers who need different things than emerging adults who still need parenting, right? just because you hit 18 doesn’t mean you’re like, well, you’re an adult now, so you don’t need anything. I am done Yeah. Um, so it’s more like scaffolding your kids to parents know what skills you should be focusing on as your kid grows.

JoAnn Crohn: I love it. And then toddler through high school or an adult, like it’s for every parent.

Brie Tucker: That’s fantastic.

JoAnn Crohn: for joining us again on the podcast. It has been amazing. And, I am of course going to take all of this knowledge and skills that you have and try to apply it to my own parenting in some new way that I’ll be able to talk to you about next time that we have you on the podcast. There

Regine Galanti: Yes.

Brie Tucker: I gotta come up with a better title than

JoAnn Crohn: are always new books. It’s like the trilogy,

Regine Galanti: That, that’s actually what my husband was like. Yeah. You need to go for the trilogy. I’m like, is that a thing in nonfiction? And I don’t think we go for trilogies, but you know,

Brie Tucker: It certainly can be.

JoAnn Crohn: Gotta go for it. Well, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Regine Galanti: thank you.

JoAnn Crohn: I saw you smiling during this interview, Brie, at so many things that Regine mentioned and you’re like, Oh!

Brie Tucker: Oh, yeah, I, I have. And, you know, we sat on after the interview was done for like an almost another like 20, 25 minutes just talking about all the stuff that we have in our own personal lives that we can’t always share online or on the podcast or keeping privacy for our own families. But I mean, there was so much.

And yeah, there was just so much on there that I’m just like, yeah, yeah. And I absolutely love her book, especially the way that it’s set up. It’s like an easy user manual for parenting in this day and age.

JoAnn Crohn: It is. Well, the whole thing about modeling our own anxieties, I’m always so aware of with my own kids. Like, cause my husband, he just went to Singapore and India and you went through this anxiety with me cause I was texting you instead of putting it on my children where, uh, he was on 15 hours ahead of us. So, it was never a good time to chat, like 15 hours when it was like 6 p. m. here, it was like 9 p. m. at night there. And so I texted him when we got home from something and he didn’t respond, and he didn’t respond. And I was like, okay, well, it’s nighttime. I just woke up. I bet he fell asleep. I bet he fell asleep while watching YouTube videos.

I bet that’s what happened. And I was texting you, Brie. And like here at home, I’m like trying not to show it to my kids. And I was just like, yeah, like, I wonder why dad hasn’t responded. And I’m telling them the logical part of my brain. I bet he fell asleep. But inside I’m like, Oh my gosh, he like had a heart attack in the hotel room and he’s waiting there.

And I should really call somebody so that they go check on him to make sure he doesn’t have a heart attack. And maybe I should call his phone. Like this is my voice going on inside of me that I was really, really tamping down with logical

Brie Tucker: Well, you know what, and I would say. Okay. Okay. You are not alone in that. Like did you ever watch the show? This is us And it right and how like I forget which which character was because I only watched like part of that show But there is the uh, the brother the adopted brother him and his wife would like when they had really stressful things They’d be like, okay Worst case scenario and they just start dumping all the terrible things And I remember watching that on that show and being like, oh my god Other people have that thought process.

It’s not just me with this whole like doom with thought process So sometimes i’ll unload that to my husband And he’ll, be like, whoa, that’s a lot.

JoAnn Crohn: feel like I’ve been ruined by some TV shows because you know, great drama, those unexpected things and I was a big fan of TV shows. And so when you watch TV shows and you’re not Don’t have that much experience in real life, what actually happens, you start believing the TV show experiences are real. And that’s what happens. Like lost, break apart in turbulence. That’s what happens.

Brie Tucker: my God. Mine is just like, I need to, I need to get it out. So it doesn’t keep running circles around in my brain. Like literally the crazy thoughts just keep going around and around and around. Like, okay, I need to, I need to empty them out. So that I can have somebody else look at me. And like when, cause like you said, When you were texting me, you were like, I know that this is very unlikely that this scenario is what’s happening, but my fear is afraid that it’s, it’s X, Y, Z, and you would talk to me and you were able to talk through the steps and that’s the thing that helps with the anxiety that we, those are some of those skills that Regine talks about, like that we can help our kids by being like, all right, I know I have this fear.

I know my heart is racing. I can breathe. I can do these other things and logically X, Y, and Z. And so your plan was right. I’ll keep myself busy until X, Y, Z time. And if he doesn’t text me back by X, Y, Z time. Then I’ll figure out a plan B. And it worked, right? There was a

JoAnn Crohn: And it worked. He did text me back. He was like, on my way to the airport. I’m like, great. I wasn’t worried at all.

Brie Tucker: But I mean, it is, I mean, we live in a day and age now where anxiety is much more rampant. The world is connected in a completely different place. The rules and the expectations and or the strategies that were popular back when we were kids in the 70s, 80s, 90s don’t apply here. Or they can, but they’re not going to.

They’re not going to be as successful because we live in a different time. ignoring the huge pandemic from a couple of years ago and the impact that has had, we can’t keep acting like we don’t have our own mental health issues that we’re working through our anxiety, our depression. We can’t pretend like it’s not there and expect it just to go away. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It’s not, it, I have yet to see a single, single mental health like publication and or a therapist that’s like, Oh, well just suck it up and you’ll be fine. Oh,

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. No. No, that never happened.

Brie Tucker: this works. That’s how you become traumatized,

JoAnn Crohn: Yep. The emotions will always come out in another way. Always. Always. Like you have to work through emotions. You cannot push them aside or stuff them down. And that’s something like I have learned.

So so and improved on throughout this podcast and through everyone that we talked to, um, knowing that you have to share your feelings in a way that’s, you know, good for you and doesn’t hurt others. Uh, but. Going from

Brie Tucker: Well, so if you, I was going to say, so if people really liked this episode with Regine, like you mentioned, she is a two timer here on the No Guilt Mom podcast, check out her first episode. We had episode 125, helping our kids manage their worries and anxiety. So that was a fantastic episode with Regine.

It’s actually one of our highest rated episodes. So lots of pristine, great information in there. And if you loved this episode, go grab her book. It’s fantastic. And it is like, again, I love the way that, that she put it together, how you talked about part one and part two. It’s a very, easy to read, easy to digest, easy to implement, easy to understand support.

I think that’s going to be like a new, a new present I give to like all my, all my friends that ask. Here, here you go. I’m not saying your kid is anxious. I’m not saying you are, but I’m saying that you’re going to probably thank me for this book at some point in

JoAnn Crohn: It’s a good one. in the show notes. So remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later.

Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.