Episode 195 - When Connecting is Hard with Miriam Campbell
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Sometimes we have all the skills in place but something is still missing.
That was me my first few years married. I listened to the shiurim, I had the vision---but something was off.
Either I was playing the part of "good wife" and felt totally robotic (in my mind, being "good wife" meant majorly turning down the volume on my emotional and creative side) or I'd be myself--and drop all my newly learned skills.
The secret, as I discuss with this week's podcast guest, Miriam Campbell, is for us to USE the skills for a greater purpose. (This is true in any relationship.)
Active listening isn't a goal, it's a tool. Saying supportive things isn't a goal, it's a tool.
When we focus on the greater objective (connection!), we can use the tools in an authentic way.
And...there's a lot more to it. Definitely check out this week's podcast for the rest. 🙂
WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:
Dealing with respect in our relationships
Relating to the self
Reflecting where a person is at
Negative feelings
What's the balance of personal responsibility and judgment
Yelling comes in many forms
Working with Miriam
FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE:
See Miriam's bio below
You can learn more about working with Miriam here: https://bookme.name/skillsforconnection
Miriam Campbell, MA SLP-CCC, MSW, is a trained Speech Language Pathologist, social worker and teacher who empowers parents with tools to support their children’s social emotional development. Skills for Connection is her practical, emotional, language, and cognitive approach that empowers parents and children to transform conflicts and challenges into growing opportunities. To join her Parent WhatsApp Group, get 1:1 coaching and hear about upcoming courses, email skillsforconnection@gmail.com.
Ep 195 - When Connecting Is Hard with Miriam Campbell ===
<00:00:00> Kayla Levin: When connecting is hard with Miriam Campbell.
<00:00:02>
<00:00:14> Kayla Levin: Welcome to How to Glow, where we get real about building the marriage of your dreams. I'm certified coach Kayla Levin and I help married Jewish women go from surviving and overwhelmed to thriving and connected through practical tips, real life inspiration, and more than a little self-awareness along the way.
<00:00:32> Kayla Levin: Hey, my friends, I think you're gonna find this episode so inspiring and also really interesting, so get ready for a great listen. I brought in my very good friend Miriam Campbell to talk about how we deal with relationships. All over the place, right?
<00:00:53> Kayla Levin: How do we deal with when someone else feels kind of like they're threatening to us by who they are? Like, how do I connect to someone if, you know, they are completely against what it is that I need? You know, they're trying to come over when I'm in the middle of bedtime or, um, you know, my kid won't go out the door or my husband is, is behaving in one way and I just feel like we need to have more structure in order and he's being super spontaneous.
<00:01:13> Kayla Levin: These are things that come up a lot in my community and I really wanted to talk to Miriam because she works. On, you know, her business is called Skills for Connection. She works so much in social skills, but also personally as her friend. She's someone who is able to connect to so many people in such a very real way.
<00:01:30> Kayla Levin: And I wanted to kind of pick her brain and see where she's coming from and, and how that works for her. So we got into a lot of really interesting topics. I know you're gonna love it and enjoy.
<00:01:44> Kayla Levin: Thanks. Thanks for coming on the How To Go Podcast.
<00:01:49> Miriam Campbell: Thank you for having me here. It is so great to be in a place where I've learned so much, so thank you.
<00:01:55> Kayla Levin: That's awesome. True story.
<00:01:56> Kayla Levin: Most people in my life, I see them on the screen all the time, and then when I see them in person I'm like, yay, there's no camera, there's no computer between us and like we're the opposite. I see you usually in person, Miriam is one of my good friends and now I'm seeing you on the screen. I'm like, Ooh, this is clients experience.
<00:02:11> Kayla Levin: This is fun.
<00:02:13> Miriam Campbell: It's like funny to like talk with you. I'm like having a wig on my head,
<00:02:16> Kayla Levin: you know? Right, exactly. Yes. This is very strange. Um, okay, so basically, you know, Miriam. Doesn't really know exactly where we're going with this conversation. I have just had lots of different ideas. And Miriam, you should know that you're one of my gurus in life and Oh, whoa.
<00:02:31> Kayla Levin: Very much so. In terms of how I strive to connect to other people. And one thing that everyone should know about Miriam Campbell is that like she just makes everyone feel so important and she just has the capacity to hold so many people and to to think about them and to know what's going on with them.
<00:02:49> Kayla Levin: And me on the other hand. I have such a tendency sometimes when I like, wanna connect to someone and they ask about me, this is what I do with you, probably, like, I'll just tell you about what's going on with me. And then the conversation ends and I'm like, oh, but we didn't connect because that was so one-sided.
<00:03:03> Kayla Levin: Like, I wanna know what's happening with you. But the conversation's over now , so that's why you're my guru cuz I'm always thinking like, you know, how would Miriam do this? Or what would she think? Or how does she, and it, and it's, it's a beautiful thing to see. It's really a beautiful thing.
<00:03:15> Kayla Levin: You know, I wanna have you share a little bit about like professionally and also maybe personally, like how you. Became such a guru in this that you just found out you're a guru. Um, but also, no,
<00:03:26> Miriam Campbell: I'm, I'm like, Kayla, what are you talking about? Like, I like have come to you so many times and like, I listened to your podcast, like a podcast junkie person cuz like, I learned so, so much.
<00:03:34> Miriam Campbell: So like I'm grateful that, um, to hear that I've been able to share that with you because I feel like so much of the way I think about things is based on what I've learned from you. So
<00:03:44> Kayla Levin: I guess that's what makes a good though, right?
<00:03:46> Miriam Campbell: Yes. Yeah. As my aunt used to say, mutual.
<00:03:51> Kayla Levin: Um, So I also kind of wanna bring this into, you know, this came up in the call last night.
<00:03:56> Dealing with respect in our relationships ---
<00:03:56> Kayla Levin: That's why like, you don't really know this random turn that I'm taking, but it's inside our community. We were talking about this very common thing where, where a woman will feel like she's like the responsible one in the relationship and he's kind of just like not so serious or not so responsible. And I think there's so much socialization of like, oh, girls are always told like, oh, you're much more mature than boys and.
<00:04:17> Kayla Levin: Take it or leave it if there's truth to it, but we're definitely told it. Right. And so then what does that do? When we come into a relationship with a guy we're supposed to have respect for, and we've been told our whole life that we're way more mature than him, and then it can create the system where like then we take over all the responsible, mature things and that just exacerbates the problem because.
<00:04:36> Kayla Levin: Now we're like this serious mature person, which we're like, I don't wanna be serious. I wanna, I wanna glow, I wanna be able to be light, I wanna be able to, you know, not be annoyed when he said something spontaneous or gives an idea or something like that, or is wild with the kids at bedtime, whatever the thing is.
<00:04:49> Kayla Levin: And I was thinking about how, what I wanted to kind of get your professional opinion on, and so just start this conversation, but then I, again, I want you to introduce yourself, but is how do we connect with somebody else, whether it's. Our husband or uh, a neighbor or a, or a child, when on some level their, their way of being almost feels like a threat to what's important to us.
<00:05:12> Kayla Levin: Like so for our kids, right? Like, I'm trying to get out the door, this kid feels like a threat to me. Like, how am I supposed to connect to you right now? Right? And, you know, uh, we can get into the model or not, uh, but I really wanna sort of focus more on what you, you know, what you share and what you bring to the table.
<00:05:27> Kayla Levin: Um, and so that's, that's kind of where I wanna start the conversation, if that's cool for you.
<00:05:32> Miriam Campbell: Yeah, totally amazing. Yeah. As you're talking with, um, so introduce
<00:05:35> Kayla Levin: yourself first though, because we wanna, I, I wanna make sure everyone knows who you are and like what you do.
<00:05:40> Miriam Campbell: So I, uh, help support parents support their kids with social skills.
<00:05:45> Miriam Campbell: , and I believe that social skills always come from the underneath skills, cuz like, there's a lot of like tips and tools of like how to, you know, make. Connection, nav, you know, navigate like, just like surface level. Um, but we don't want just for our kids or for ourselves just to have like, okay, I know how to like have a conversation during kiddish.
<00:06:02> Miriam Campbell: That is an important skill to be able to start a relationship. But I teach about the skills of how to make the relationship actually be able to be something that they could have long-term friendships and long-term relationships and, you know, hopefully for our kids to be able to have marriages and lives and, um, So the, the tools that we work with are like the underlying skills of self-awareness, relationships, skills, problem solving, you know, learning how to navigate ourselves so we can connect to other.
<00:06:26> Miriam Campbell: As you're talking, I feel the emotions of this disconnect when it's like, I want. To be a self in this relationship in a certain way. And I feel like I can't because of other, and sort of like that space when like the other has their self and I have myself like I wanna leave the house, for example.
<00:06:47> Miriam Campbell: And the other is having their own world of their own process, of their own experience. Or I have how I wanna show up as fun during bedtime, but I'm scared that the other is going to perform X, Y, Z. And so I'm not gonna be able to be myself or I'm not gonna be able to, you know, That sort of the conflict between, of the dissonance between self and other.
<00:07:08> Miriam Campbell: That's what I'm hearing in that question. Did I get it right? Did I, like, did I hear what you're saying?
<00:07:12> Relating to the self ---
<00:07:12> Kayla Levin: And I think, you know, I guess where, where like I come in too is that it's not even necessarily dissonance between self and other, it's also, it's it's dissonance between self and my perception of other meaning.
<00:07:24> Kayla Levin: Yes, her husband Yes. Isn't necessarily immature, right? But if you're operating from that story, but you, you could still say the way that they're showing up in that moment might still feel like, Might still feel like a threat. It might still feel, yeah.
<00:07:37> Miriam Campbell: And I find like it was all the time, like a parent will tell me.
<00:07:40> Miriam Campbell: You know, I don't see my child as capable. I don't see, like, I see my child as like awkward or I see them. So like, I sort of like, like they're trying to say something to me. They're trying to connect. They're doing it in such an off way that like, it's so hard to connect to them. It's so hard to actually see them and actually respect them and actually even enjoy them and love them and you know, just cause they're so, they're doing it in such a difficult way.
<00:08:01> Miriam Campbell: They're being so difficult. And one of the things that I think about for myself, like whenever I'm working with a client or working with a parent, like the step one is always, always, always, Connecting inwards to finding our bigness to be able to then connect to the child's bigness. So like for example, one time I was one time, ha ha freak recently I was feeling very frustrated with one of my children and I was just, I was like, I felt myself.
<00:08:28> Miriam Campbell: I was like gonna lose it. So like I went to my room. And I started to like really process like, okay, like I'm so tired. I woke up three times last night with the baby and then the, this one woke up at five and this one, whatever. And I'm, I just physically feel tired and I was just like thinking about all the things I had said to them that was, I was trying to, you know, get them to school or get them to do what they need to do.
<00:08:48> Miriam Campbell: And, and I started like to think myself, like, oh, of course you're tired. Of course you're feeling at your edge and like, You are trying so hard to take care of these kids. And even during the night you were taking care of them. And even during, you know, and like, sort of like, let myself really feel, feel that like, you know, like the, the exhaustion of it and the even the resentment or the um, the frustration of that, of my own self and my own process.
<00:09:10> Miriam Campbell: And as I did that, I was like, oh my gosh. Like, whoa, look how many things today, just today you did to try and take care of your family to try and take care. You are such a good mother. And I,
<00:09:20> Kayla Levin: I wanna break the apart, what you head just said and make sure that like, everyone's hearing the nuances here because, you know, we talk a lot about allowing our feelings, processing our feelings, and it can be confusing in the beginning because someone could think, okay, so if I wanna allow my frustration with my kid, either that means I'm gonna go scream at them.
<00:09:36> Kayla Levin: Or, well,
<00:09:36> Miriam Campbell: I think this is gonna show, I think, I think this is gonna show how it, it comes. Sorry. Do you mind if Go, go, go. So like, as like I sort of visited inward and like, as you say, Kayla, like dip into the feeling, like allow yourself to experience it. Like, you know, really like, uh, visit what's happening in my body, visit, what's happening in my thoughts.
<00:09:54> Miriam Campbell: You know, and I, and I did it by myself. I went to my room because I didn't know what was gonna come out. If I did, when I did this, like I was a little bit nervous of myself, you know, I was not feeling in my nurturing, loving space. And as I dipped into this, I actually found my wellspring of love, cuz then I was like, oh my gosh.
<00:10:11> Miriam Campbell: Not even love of them, but love of myself. Like, wow, I'm such a good mother. I did that for my child. I did that for my child. I did that for my child and any mother.
<00:10:18> Kayla Levin: But you did yourself that way. How did you know to speak? That's, that's the piece that I wanted you to pull out.
<00:10:23> Miriam Campbell: Oh, well one second and I'm gonna to the end part, which then I could come out and talk to my kids in a way of loving, cuz I identified as a loving person and then I could connect to them.
<00:10:32> Miriam Campbell: Mm-hmm. But now let's break it down. But the point is that like the, what you were saying is like the fear of connecting with our feelings. Is like actually our gateway to actually connecting with other, like in order for me to then actually re-access my child and be able to connect with them and figure out, okay, so what is actually their problem when they can't get out the door?
<00:10:52> Miriam Campbell: What is actually their problem when they can't have to be inflexible about this game or when they don't know how to respect another person's boundaries? Like, I can't even see them. Yeah. When I'm in myself, I think I'm relating to them. I think I'm problem solving. I think I'm, but like, I'm sort of like doing it outside of myself with my hands and like, it's not.
<00:11:09> Miriam Campbell: Like sometimes I need to do that. Sometimes you need to do that. That's just how you know. But like when we have the opportunity to connect inwards, to be able to like say like, okay, ugly starting space. Yep. Not pretty starting space. Okay. Visit it. And then through that visitation, like at our cores, we are in Shama, so like when we actually allow ourselves to dip inwards and to like experience who we are in our core.
<00:11:33> Miriam Campbell: Past the frustration, past the difficult thoughts, past the difficult emotions is our core nma. So like, it's almost like our gateway, like it's, we don't have to be like, oh my gosh, if I, if I visit this negative thought, I'm going to then, you know, scream and yell. I'm not leaving the space until I could find a place of goodness because that is at my core.
<00:11:52> Miriam Campbell: I'm not really at my core to connect. Until I found that goodness. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's there. It's gonna be there. Mm-hmm. Okay. Sorry. No, I just, I felt like that was connected to it. Like it's, it's connected to like that fear of, that danger of I don't wanna visit it, but we don't have to be afraid to visit it cuz we're gonna find the goodness and then we find our energy.
<00:12:13> Miriam Campbell: Cuz at our court, shas gonna be the one who's energizing us cuz he's at our, at our course.
<00:12:18> Kayla Levin: I think we'll find it if we understand that what it means to visit our emotions is not to. Danielle, stir them up. Meaning when we say go and, and, and dip into what's coming up for you, that doesn't mean go into your room and think about all the times your husband betrayed you or disappointed you.
<00:12:38> Kayla Levin: Like maybe no, maybe you need to a little bit, but, but it's, that's not the process. The process is not, let me really dive in to this and like,
<00:12:49> Miriam Campbell: you don't have to invent things that you're not feeling in that moment. Right.
<00:12:53> Kayla Levin: Right. And I think that if a person is new to the idea of allowing their emotions, they might think that that's what they're supposed to do.
<00:13:00> Kayla Levin: That what they need to do is to now like really like, okay, if I'm supposed to feel angry now, like let me feel all my anger and let me like dredge it up. Maybe not, maybe I'm wrong, but I just feel like that that could, thinking that they're supposed to do something else, could maybe almost put them on the wrong path and then they won't naturally find what you're talking about.
<00:13:17> Kayla Levin: What you're saying is on the other side of all that emotion is your nma is you. And that's beautiful and that has all the right intentions and all the connection and all the love that you're looking for, right?
<00:13:29> Reflecting where a person is at ---
<00:13:29> Miriam Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. And I think like even, let's say like what, to get back to what you said about like what people are concerned about is like, Parents will tell me all the time, like, you know, their child falls and they'll be like, you know, we like so many people now all the day, are saying like, oh, don't say you're fine.
<00:13:44> Miriam Campbell: You're fine. If your child's upset, then say like, oh, you're upset. But here's the thing that's interesting is we wanna be honest. So like we try and mirror back what they actually are feeling like. I think that's why like when you go to Shiva house, you let the person talk first because you'd wanna mirror where they're at.
<00:14:01> Miriam Campbell: Like if, let's say they're in a place where they're not ready to grieve an X, Y, Z place, they don't want you coming in and crying more than they're crying. That's not being there for them. Mm-hmm. That's like creating, you know, all the resentment of the husband that you're not actually feeling in this exact moment, but like maybe you're feeling X but you're not feeling Y Z.
<00:14:17> Miriam Campbell: So like that sensitivity to actually be with our kids or to be with ourselves. That honesty of knowing, okay, this is where I'm at. I'm not inventing something that's not, I don't have to tell my child, oh my gosh, you have this wound on your leg and it's so painful and it's oozing blood, it's cascading or whatever, think you're gonna die.
<00:14:35> Miriam Campbell: We could just try like reflect back where they actually are. So like that moment of pause of just sort of looking and seeing other, mm-hmm. You know, and then being able to reflect back where they actually are. So like what you had said was, um, Not, it's the honesty of like when we dip in words and when we dip to into the other, reflecting accurately what it is, so that way they feel seen.
<00:14:59> Miriam Campbell: We're not gonna do less. Like they're really upset about what happened at school. So, Oh, honey, Tamara, you won't notice it. They're not actually reflecting back an honest representation of what they're experiencing. They're not actually gonna even be able to process or learn how to dip into their own selves to be able to move beyond if it's not even something that's an accurate, uh, reflection
<00:15:18> Kayla Levin: back.
<00:15:18> Kayla Levin: And the, and the reason that we're doing that is we're so uncomfortable in the moment, right? Like, why do I try to.
<00:15:28> Miriam Campbell: Right. If I, if I like, tell my child how hard it is for them, then they're going to think, oh my gosh, it's so hard. Like, I remember I had a friend who was like, um, debating if she should go to therapy over something that had happened and she's like, I don't want it to be right now.
<00:15:39> Miriam Campbell: It's like, you know, 15% of my world. And I don't want, if I go to therapy and talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, for it to become 90% of my world, if it's really only 15% of my world. Mm. And. It makes sense logically, except if you understand how the psyche works, which is if you have part of your brain that needs to protect that 15%, then it's not really 15%, it's really gonna be 15% plus anything that's near that 15% that's coding it to protect it, and then anything that might remind you of it, and then at the end of your day, A lot of your brain is being spent trying to protect yourself from reviewing that 15% versus if you spend 90% of your day for, let's say, however much time, I can't give you a timeframe of how long process takes, but of addressing it.
<00:16:22> Miriam Campbell: Then after that, you know, short window of. Time of processing it, then you actually have your whole brain available to you, and then you can actually use that 15% of experience to help make your whole brain wiser, make your whole brain more loving, more compassionate, more, you know, engaged. Because it doesn't have to avoid that component of it
<00:16:40> Kayla Levin: you're saying.
<00:16:40> Kayla Levin: So if you, if, if you're, you know, say you, you validate the kid and you are there and you are really responding, it could be that they're gonna now it like meaning now we're putting on a micro cause, right? They, they could be that now all of a sudden it becomes a hundred percent of the situation is how much it hurts, but then they're able to move on.
<00:16:55> Kayla Levin: As opposed to, we talk about this all the time with our thoughts, right? Like, you don't wanna think that your husband is a little bit disgusting sometimes. Let's say, you know, like, especially with like Millie Mary, they're like, I can't think that about my husband. I'm supposed to love him, right? And so then we're like not thinking it, not thinking and not thinking it.
<00:17:10> Kayla Levin: And then it's like actually this thing that we're trying really, really hard not to avoid. And when we just look at it and we're like, sometimes boys are smelly, oh, okay, fine, we can move on. You know, like it doesn't have to be like such a big thing. I wanna, I wanna circle back to kinda what you were saying about the, like though when you're, if you're not able to connect to yourself, then you're kind of like, you know, your hands are doing the parenting, but like, not your whole self.
<00:17:30> Kayla Levin: And this reminds me a lot of what, what I see and so much my experience as a newlywed was like in the beginning, you know, feeling like very triggered left and right because like all of a sudden, like everything is now, this is the rest of your life, right? Like, so. Everything is suddenly very, very concerning and like important and needs to be dealt with.
<00:17:50> Kayla Levin: And then I didn't like that and I went to like all the Shabi classes and read all the books and then I was like a really, really great robot wife that sometimes totally fell apart. Right? And I see this even, even with coaching sometimes to be like, oh, well I'm using, you know, I know that there was, I made lots of mistakes.
<00:18:03> Kayla Levin: I'm like, what are you talking about? It's that, you know, if we, we, we learn all the things of the shoulds, which we do wanna know, we wanna have a picture of, you know, what is. You know, if I don't know that, like it's my responsibility to make sure my children have clean clothes or that I, you know, try to listen to my husband Stora and remember anything that he said, so then I'm, I'm functioning without tools, like you said in the beginning.
<00:18:24> Kayla Levin: Right? But, but, but you know, to do it in a robotic way, then we are not even there in the relationship. There's no one for them really, truly, truly to connect to. And that's kind of where I, that's where coaching for me came in was, you know, sort of like all the sha ba stuff. Created like a really nice robot most of the time, like 80% of the time.
<00:18:45> Kayla Levin: But then I had to sort of get into something that allowed me to show up to that and me to be okay with the difficult emotions and me to be okay with, how do I deal with like disappointment or frustration or all the stuff that's coming up for me so that I'm doing these things Cuz I want to, not because I'm trying to, that you're there, good wife, I'm there and I wanna connect to him and these are my tools to create that connection.
<00:19:10> Kayla Levin: What are your thoughts on that?
<00:19:12> Negative feelings ---
<00:19:12> Miriam Campbell: So many, so many, but mostly right now I'm just feeling the feeling of it, of like that. Um,
<00:19:22> Miriam Campbell: And I'm thinking actually of the, of the model, one of the most brilliant things that you said to me, um, is in the model of, I, I don't know how many of our listeners are familiar. If they're not familiar, then they should become familiar by joining your group. But, um, I remember one of the, one of the calls you had mentioned, I, I talking about like where what you put in your results.
<00:19:43> Miriam Campbell: Mind and how that really was a paradigm shift for me because if let's say you think about your results as connection, then your should is not going to be your result. Meaning, like, I'm not describing explaining this well, but the, the idea of like, if my goal is connection and my goal is being playful, you know, or being, bringing my myself to the relationship, not just doing the robotic action, but actually allowing my heart to be there, then like I have to think.
<00:20:12> Miriam Campbell: About really how, what works for me to get there. Not like, you know, saying, acting the act. I remember when I was newly married and I would have like, my husband would do something, you know, and suddenly I'd go into like judgment mode. So, And so then I would start being very polite and then I'm like, oh man, where did you go?
<00:20:30> Miriam Campbell: I'd be like, I can't tell you. And he'd be like, why? He's like, I'm like, cause it's too mean. I can't tell you what I'm thinking cuz it's just too mean. And he is like, oh, it's way meaner to act distant like this.
<00:20:42> Kayla Levin: It's way meaner. So I would sometimes say something
<00:20:45> Miriam Campbell: like, well, I'm judging you for. Putting your yaa like that or
<00:20:50> Kayla Levin: whatever, or something dumb,
<00:20:51> Miriam Campbell: you know, really dumb.
<00:20:52> Miriam Campbell: And he'd be like, okay, I'm judging you for judging me about the yaa. And then we could laugh and move on. You know what I mean?
<00:20:57> Kayla Levin: Like that's a great answer. That is a great response. And it's almost like
<00:21:01> Miriam Campbell: looking at what it is, is much less scary. When you take this thing that otherwise is controlling you, like I was saying about the 15% of the brain, when it's controlling us, when we don't, we can't clarify what it is when we don't, you know, which is a lot of the work Kayla, they do is just like sort of like, let's see it in a sentence, let's see it.
<00:21:18> Miriam Campbell: Let's put all those emotions, all this process, all this drama that's happening, that's you, you describe spinning out and let's contain it in a sentence and which is a lot of what you know when people do trauma therapy. Talk therapy. It's like taking something in the brain that feels so, like it's flashes of, of images or colors and ideas and it's so encompassing and it can feel like, so you know that ha, you have to protect that 15% cuz it's just so terrifying.
<00:21:43> Miriam Campbell: And to be able to actually look at it and contain it in words. Will allow, sometimes give your body permission to visit it because like, oh, this is less daunting. And sometimes you have to work the other way where you're like visiting your body and then the words come out cuz it's, you're listening to what your body's telling you those words are.
<00:22:02> Miriam Campbell: It's like a, it's incredible. Hash made us like this beautiful mechanism where like integrated components, when we are honest, it's really like Hashem Seal's honesty. And it comes down to being honest with our experience, being honest with our struggles like. I am frustrated. I am resentful. I am judgmental.
<00:22:21> Miriam Campbell: I am, you know, jealous. And I, I think like it's something that, You know, I, I know like there's a lot of discussion like, oh, don't, an angry person x a jealous person, X like Ash, you can't be in ashina, can't rest. And like, so it's almost scary to think of myself as like, oh, do I have jealousy? Like, oh no. Or do I have anger?
<00:22:38> Miriam Campbell: No, I can't because I can't think of the fact that Ena might not be with me. Like, I don't, I can't engage with the fact that I struggle in this. So like, being able to like, think of it as like, you know, understanding what. First of all, the phraseology of the gamara. Why they said it like that? Who were they talking to?
<00:22:53> Miriam Campbell: Who may have needed to hear it like that versus, oh, I'm x I'm, I'm driven off if I have this bad media to be able to, oh, I'm a human being who has all different types of medias. My child is a human being, my spouse is a human being. And being able to engage honestly with what we're experiencing, that doesn't therefore mean like, okay, I have anger.
<00:23:13> Miriam Campbell: I can melt into my worst, uh, rage, but like I have anger and let me look at it and let me. Process this tool that Hasham has given me because all of our experiences are the tools that we need to be able to access him, to be able to connect to others, to connect to him, to, you know, the other time I was like very, very, uh, tired and.
<00:23:35> Miriam Campbell: My, when my kids said, oh, you know what, like I was like, I'm so tired. I'm so tired of kept saying it like I'm so tired. And so my son's like, what are you gonna do? And I was like, oh, okay, great. Maybe I should get a problem solving in this process. And I was like, Hey, what am I gonna do? And I was like, what can I do with tiredness?
<00:23:48> Miriam Campbell: I can dotage 'em for help right now. Cuz like, I don't, IM not in opportunity where I could rest right now, but I can dotage them. Like all of our experiences, our honest experiences are going to be our venue for connection. And that always starts inside because. We are the self that's connecting to hashem.
<00:24:03> Miriam Campbell: We are the self that's connecting to our husband. We are the self that's connecting to our children, to our neighbor, to our spouse, to, uh, everybody said spouse, to our coworkers, to our, everybody, everyone we engage with. So like when we have an opportunity to, to inwards as self, as wives, to take the time to be like, okay, let me actually see who I am in this space.
<00:24:23> Miriam Campbell: And then to be able to reach outwards from that space to others, you know? And sometimes it's more deep and sometimes it's less deep.
<00:24:31> Kayla Levin: And I think that for people who have had the experience of, of spending if, if, if, if someone's go-to is to release shame or really be very hard on themselves. But I wanna add here is that I think that one thing that you offer, and one thing that I really hope that I, I, I believe we have that's very much in our community, is when you learn to look at yourself with somebody who's looking at you, who sees your best self.
<00:25:01> Kayla Levin: It's an extremely healing process, right? So I know that anyone who's on a call with you, you know, who's doing parent coaching with you, you see their inherent goodness. So they might be scared to stop and tune into themselves in a way, because that's been an abusive relationship. You know, like that's been a not safe place to be.
<00:25:19> Kayla Levin: And, and, um, I think people get stuck with what to do. And, and what I've learned, you know, and there's research on this, is that. The relationship creates that the other person can create that can model for you and, and it, and, and sort of give you those, those, um, those ways of thinking about yourself. And, and it's not even, even necessarily literally, you might not need to feed them the words, but just having someone like you looking at them and seeing their best possible self is in itself a very healing thing.
<00:25:52> Kayla Levin: And something that I think a lot of us. You know, can benefit from, and even just to think about it in terms of the friends that we spend time with, or, you know, when we speak to our parents, like what we wanna bring up, the things that we know will get that kind of, that, that resonant feedback. You know, that we're good, we're doing the right thing, we're on our way, we're trying, we're inherently good.
<00:26:11> Kayla Levin: And from a place of inherent goodness we can handle if we make a
<00:26:14> Miriam Campbell: mistake.
<00:26:19> Miriam Campbell: Hmm. I love this. I wanna
<00:26:22> What's the balance of personal responsibility and judgement ---
<00:26:22> Kayla Levin: say something. I know we don't have tons of time, but I, I, I can't not try to get in this last thing, which is what we were originally gonna talk about, cuz I just really wanna hear what you have to say and I think it's so important what we, one of the things that we talk about in coaching is, you know, is that what causes our feelings?
<00:26:39> Kayla Levin: Is our thinking, not the facts of the circumstance. Right. Of the situation. Mm-hmm. The question that I get a lot is if, if. I'm the circumstance in someone else's model, meaning I am the fact in my husband's life or in my child's life, or in my, my mother's life and she's hurt by something that I did.
<00:26:56> Kayla Levin: She's hurt by something that I said, or he is, or whatever. Um, obviously I believe it's a misuse of the model to use that to I not, I believe it is a misuse of coaching to use that to, you know, absolve ourselves of responsibility in interpersonal relationships. That's not the point. At the same time, there are some people who might be hurt by something.
<00:27:19> Kayla Levin: When we had all the right intentions, we had all the right information, and we know that, you know, if, if someone's, their psyche is not in a good place, you know, they're not in a good place with themselves, they might be irrational, they might, you know, take something in the wrong way. They might be quick to anger, whatever the thing is.
<00:27:33> Kayla Levin: So how do we. How do we come to, to terms with the fact that, you know, as Jews, we're supposed to be sensitive. We're supposed to be caring, we're supposed to take responsibility, and we also know that we can't actually, if we, anyone who tries to just go around and make sure everyone likes them is going to go crazy within about 24 hours.
<00:27:56> Kayla Levin: Like you, it's just not something that we actually can control, that we don't offend anybody and we don't hurt anybody ever. We, everyone likes us. We're pleasing to everyone. That's, to me a recipe for disaster. So where do we, what would you say to somebody, how would you find that? I don't know if it's a middle ground or a third option.
<00:28:14> Miriam Campbell: So I, I think it's, I think like the Halaka talks about this very directly when it talks about, like, we don't say like, there's a lot of things that we do in the world. Um, and then we say a, it, we, we say Aha, we, you know, we make ish, we say abraca, we our candles, we say abraha, but there's a mitzvah, you know, and, and there could be whether or not Sedaka is in mitzvah or if it's just following EM'S ways, but let's say we know, let's say miser or things like that, we don't say a bra on it.
<00:28:41> Miriam Campbell: And some say the reasons you don't say aha on it is because we don't actually know how the other person's gonna receive it. Maybe the money won't get to them. Maybe they won't want it, maybe they won't because there's an other, cuz we have a self. And my intention was to give them ska. But because I can't say brohan it cuz I don't actually know that it's gonna hit home.
<00:28:57> Miriam Campbell: And this is like a, a Torah concept. That's amazing. I never knew that before. Yeah, it's, and we don't say a thing of like, okay,
<00:29:09> Miriam Campbell: we don't say it cuz we don't know what the other person's experience is gonna be. Right. And I think where it comes down to is what you talk about a lot is like, you know, staying in your lane is looking at who am I and myself if I know the other person has a sensitivity and I expanding myself as much as I can because I need to be a person who's like Hashem.
<00:29:26> Miriam Campbell: And a person, a patient's like Hashem, and I need to, for my own self-development, need to, you know, expand myself. Like I remember I used to have a really hard time with the midst of, uh, forgiveness because I always felt like I. I'm not saying personally I had that problem, but like the idea of it, like someone comes up to you, slaps you, and then you didn't ask for 'em to slap you.
<00:29:46> Miriam Campbell: They just have a problem and they came and slapped you and now part of their teshuva process is they have to ask you forgiveness. So now you can slap me out of the blue. I didn't ask for your slap. And now I have to be a big person, find inside myself compassion and understanding, and find forgiveness of myself.
<00:30:01> Miriam Campbell: Like I'm ask granny of this, like, don't slap me and don't ask me for it to be a bigger person and forgive you. Like thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you. And until, you know, having discussed this with many people and teachers and things like that of Oh, cuz it's not about, nothing is about anything other than our connection with Hashem and our connection of our own process of growth.
<00:30:21> Miriam Campbell: Mm-hmm. If it's always about growth, then that person needs to slot me cuz I need to grow in my capacity of processing the pa, the thing of forgiveness. So someone has a sensitivity around me, that's them in their other space. I didn't ask them to have that sensitivity. It's really inconvenient for me.
<00:30:39> Miriam Campbell: It's very frustrating for me. But I, that was sort of just what was presented to me and now I as my own self and part of my own ODA is to find who am I in this space? How much can I give them? How much can I give them? Who can I extend myself? So can I, can I do something for myself that will gimme energy to be able to do that for them?
<00:30:58> Miriam Campbell: Yep. And that it's coming from a place of me and my, it's not even about them. It's never really about the other, other than that, that's the sort of the, the stimuli that's being presented to me in this moment. As far as my development. Mm-hmm. So this sounds like very mechanism and very in mechanical and very cold.
<00:31:15> Miriam Campbell: But like, if you think about like, the way RO Desler talks about is the more we see other as our cell and we include them within my, like, this is my definition. I start here, I end here, this, you know, these are, this is my boundaries, this is where I start being. But if when I include the other in my boundaries, they sort of arm me.
<00:31:30> Miriam Campbell: And then it becomes more about taking care of myself. Which is much more loving and feels much less mechanical. But I find that sometimes the safety of thinking of like, okay, I still maintain my own self in the face of their dangerous problem that they're presenting to me, of them asking me for forgiveness or saying that they need me to answer every text, that they respond in five minutes.
<00:31:50> Miriam Campbell: Otherwise I'm, I must be mad at them, or whatever their own process and their world is. I maintain myself. If I think about the fact that it's me and Hashem. How can I find compassion in my heart? Can I try and think about what's happening in their world? Can I have love and develop those things? So it's always gonna be about self connecting to other, and self is always about me and big, my biggest self, like, um, I remember there was this, uh, this, I was part of this forum and there was this person that posted on the forum saying, I don't know what to do.
<00:32:26> Miriam Campbell: Um, I'm going to my mom's birthday party or something, and he, he was somebody on the spectrum and he is, he wants to have his, bring his big bunny rabbit that's like life size and helps him feel safe in a crowd. And it, you know, and I wanna be able to bring it. He knows his mom hates it. And so all the things on the group were like, you have to take care of yourself.
<00:32:45> Miriam Campbell: This is what you need to self-regulate. This is how you're going to take care of yourself. Focus on yourself, you know, and. I was just a little bit surprised cuz part of his self is that he is a son who's going to the mother's birthday party for the sake of his mother. So like if let's say both were taken care of and to say like, whoa, you really need a way to self-regulate, this way of self-regulating is very harmful for the people around you.
<00:33:10> Miriam Campbell: It's very hard for them like to be able to think, I have a self. I need to figure out how to take care of myself. But maybe I can do it in a way that I'm also thinking about other for myself, because they're saying, oh, your self is your G that needs to take care of your body. But you also have a soul that is connected to others and has capacity to be bigger than.
<00:33:30> Miriam Campbell: Where your boundaries are in this present moment, and someti, sometimes what that looks like is saying no for the sake of saying yes. Like I know I wanna invite this. Like this person's always asking if they can come, they wanna come. I'm gonna say no now because I'm going to Then when I say yes no, that I actually am choosing to say yes.
<00:33:45> Miriam Campbell: I'm gonna have more patience in my heart to say yes. Mm-hmm. You know, that, that these games that we could play with ourselves, so that way we feel like, oh, I have this safety, I have this self. I'm, I'm gonna be okay. The other person's problems aren't going to bulldoze me. I'm choosing not to respond to this text now.
<00:34:00> Miriam Campbell: Now I just, you know, had a, have relaxed in the outside for a little break, some fresh air, wash my hands in hot water, drink a hot tea, whatever it is that helps ground you. I actually feel like I can respond to this text right now. I don't have to decide every single text in the future what that's gonna mean.
<00:34:16> Miriam Campbell: And, and the other thing that, I'm thinking about is also the piece of transparency to say like, I see you're having a really hard time. I wish I could be there for you more now. I'm not available right now, but I wish I could be there for you. I see you're having such a hard time where you're sort of acknowledging the other, and when you in yourself, you really don't have that space.
<00:34:37> Miriam Campbell: Having humility to say like, I'm, I wish I could be more right now, and I wish I could have more patience. I wish I could be more loving right now, but right now I can't. I can't do it right now, and, but I still see you. You are still allowed to have a self with your struggling of people not responding to your texts within the first five minutes with your struggle of, you know, not wanting your son to bring a bunny rabbit, you know, because it goes both ways, you know, like for the birthday, like to be able to have self and to be able to see self and process self and be able to have space for other, to make space for other.
<00:35:11> Miriam Campbell: Cause it's really part of ourself. It's not really separate.
<00:35:14> Kayla Levin: Like what you're saying to me is, is I think, you know, when we look into, lemme say this a different way. I don't wanna, I don't wanna come down on who's not doing this, you know, like the, the worlds that are not doing this. But I think what you're saying is, is this, you know, this is, I think this is kind of like the missing super skill sometimes when we talk about marriage and, and.
<00:35:37> Kayla Levin: For sure with parenting. I don't know if it's more common with parenting, cuz it's not my area that I focus on, but, but we, we can forget that first of all, our personal growth is something we want, like we want to grow and that it's not, we're not growing for them. Like, right, like, like you're saying in this example.
<00:36:00> Kayla Levin: And that, that is, it can be very motivating. Like if I'm in a situation where, My husband's doing something and I'm like, okay, I'm trying, you know, I've got a thought about it, but I'm not quite there and whatever. And like sometimes the answer might just be, cuz I wanna be a be a bigger person, I wanna practice this.
<00:36:15> Kayla Levin: I wanna see if I can grow and we can kind of bypass a lot of of other things. When we tune into that part of ourselves, it's like, well we are, you know, we're going through our lives, we're going through day, like from one day to the next and we can. Use that opportunity to become bigger versions of ourselves, become better, as you said, like become more expansive, become more like a shim.
<00:36:38> Kayla Levin: We're gonna be going through it anyway, so you might as well, right? Like grab the growth opportunity on the way. And I find that it can be really helpful. I'm gonna say it really fast, but I wanna circle back to one thing you said, but I wanna make sure that also, that you can share a little bit more about like how people can find you and work with you.
<00:36:54> Yelling comes in many forms ---
<00:36:54> Kayla Levin: Um, we're gonna have to do something again. I just like, this is so fun, but, um, it is so fun. You know, I think, uh, you know, and what you were sort of alluding to earlier, I think, or maybe it's sort of parallel to what you were saying, is this idea that when we think of, you know, going back to like the robot mom or the robot wife, like trying to do everything right, is that if our thought is.
<00:37:14> Kayla Levin: I shouldn't yell at my kid. Then we wanna check in. Now, I don't disagree with the value, we keep it as a value, but if I, if I'm thinking my value, it could be that when I think I shouldn't yell at my kid, I feel shame. That puts me into a shame spiral. And now I'm withdrawing from my child who just got yelled at and that I'm not being the supportive parent that I wanna be.
<00:37:36> Kayla Levin: Yeah.
<00:37:37> Miriam Campbell: And I, yeah, I just heard a parent say to me like that their child was saying, your words are not yelling, but your eyes are yelling. Oh.
<00:37:48> Miriam Campbell: Like, and she was like all proud of herself that she made her words not yelling, which is in, I think, an incredible feat. You're just, but the child,
<00:37:56> Kayla Levin: amazing. Yeah. But what we can do is we can move the value into the R line or maybe, you know, into the result that we're looking for, into the action. So let's say my action is, I don't yell.
<00:38:06> Kayla Levin: I would even put that as an action. I don't yell at my kid because the goal in life is not, I don't yell at my kid. The goal in life is I'm a supportive parent, or I connect to this human being, or there's something even greater and I'm using, not yelling.
<00:38:16> Miriam Campbell: Sometimes you should yell if your child's running into the street.
<00:38:18> Miriam Campbell: Yell yes for all right. Yell with all your energy. Yes, as much as you can.
<00:38:25> Kayla Levin: But, but then we have, then we work our way back and we're like, okay, so if I want to not be yelling, then how do I need to be feeling? And the, I, you know, we won't go into the whole thing. But it's not shame. It's not the shame that sitting there thinking I should be doing this.
<00:38:37> Kayla Levin: I should have, you know, made my husband dinner. I should have listened when he was saying this thing. I should have what, you know, when we, when we, when we're busy thinking all the values as opposed to putting them into something practical and figuring out what gets me there. Right? And that's what the model is.
<00:38:51> Kayla Levin: That's what we're doing inside the program. So, Then it, it, it can actually like backfire. Cause we wanna know what the values are, but we wanna know how to use them, how to get ourselves on board. Oh my gosh. I love this conversation. I love everything that you shared. Thank you so much for coming on. No fun.
<00:39:06> Kayla Levin: And everyone should work with you if they have children. Are you, do you work with people that don't have children
<00:39:12> Working with Miriam ---
<00:39:12> Miriam Campbell: and people just come to you? Uh, I've worked with
<00:39:14> Kayla Levin: like people dating. Okay. Oh yeah. That's very good for people to know.
<00:39:18> Miriam Campbell: Yeah, I'm saying like you, like what happens? I'll be working with a parent and then they'll say, can you work with my child for dating?
<00:39:23> Miriam Campbell: But in general I work with parents cuz I feel like parents as selves like that there isn't like another way for p for kids to learn skills. Like I remember my math teacher said like, math is non observational sport. You can imagine what type of math student I was. But um, that was really, cuz you know, we can't talk about these concepts.
<00:39:41> Miriam Campbell: We can't talk about like, oh, you should think about his perspective. They only will see it with us actually practicing it with us actually saying like, whoa, I totally lost it. This is how I apologize. And oh, I'm feeling so tired. This is how I can cope with my feeling. And through us showing them. Actually in real life.
<00:39:58> Miriam Campbell: So I I, there, there isn't another shortcut. There isn't like a, a social skills group to send them to, or a one-to-one. They really need their parents to be the ones to be sharing these things in real life. And the biggest question I get is like, I don't know how to do that. So how can I teach my child? And that's exactly what it's about, is like, We don't have to show them perfectly.
<00:40:16> Miriam Campbell: We show them in process cuz they're not gonna be perfect on the day and we're not gonna be perfect at the end of the day. But how do I engage in that process? What does it look like? What tools can I use to develop self-awareness and to help my child develop self-awareness, to develop relationship skills, to develop these core pieces of who we are, to connect to ourselves and to be able to connect upward, outward, inward, everywhere these are.
<00:40:37> Miriam Campbell: And then
<00:40:38> Kayla Levin: you get to do this. It's just such a wonderful growing in the work yourself, which is just bonus. Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, and then the parent gets to do all the growing and the work themselves, which is just like amazing meaning as working on themselves as a parent.
<00:40:51> Kayla Levin: They're gonna see the transformation for themselves as a human. That's amazing. Yeah.
<00:40:55> Miriam Campbell: And then it's not like my kid has this problem. My kid is rigid thinking my kid is, you know, work with my kid. They have rigid, they're rigid thinking, like, that sentence is sort of rigid thinking. My kid is rigid thinking and I'm not saying it laughingly.
<00:41:07> Miriam Campbell: I'm, I'm, I'm in the same boat cuz I'm also human being like, there's no one who's free or exempt from this process. There's no one who's like, oh, I'm as connected to myself as I possibly can be. And. You know, people ask me like, oh, do you only work with kids on the spectrum or only kids with a D H D or only with a diagnosis?
<00:41:21> Miriam Campbell: And no, because there's no one. There's no one who's free from this. Like that's really the idea of it is that like whether your child has a diagnosis or not a diagnosis, whether you have a diagnosis or no diagnosis, no one is all as connected as we could possibly be. And there's real ways that we can actually learn to become more connected and to be able to love more and.
<00:41:41> Miriam Campbell: Connect more and be more joyful and all these wonderful things and more angry even, you know that in just a real, it's a great advertisement. Come and we'll learn how to be more. No, for real. Like to be real in our relationships and show up authentically
<00:41:55> Kayla Levin: and connection. Amazing. Okay. Tell me, we're gonna include everything in the show notes that you want for people to connect, to connect to you, to learn to connect to others.
<00:42:03> Kayla Levin: So give us, just in case anyone's not by, you know, What, what would be the best way for them to be texting? Always.
<00:42:09> Miriam Campbell: I think the easiest way is just to email me Miriam skills for connection.com or skills for connection gmail.com. Either one. They both come to me. Um, and then from there you could join my WhatsApp group or email list or whatever that you can just get these tools all over time or they time,
<00:42:25> Kayla Levin: or they could just start working with you like right then, or just send you a message and say, I would like to work with you.
<00:42:30> Kayla Levin: You were amazing. I heard you on the How to Go podcast. You are my person. And we could do that. Also, be working inside my program, like we could just make this all happen right now. It's perfect.
<00:42:42> Miriam Campbell: I'd love to connect with you, all of you. And Kayla, thank you so much for this opportunity to connect with you, Ash.
<00:42:47> Kayla Levin: Thank you. Always, always a pleasure. All right, talk to you soon. Soon. Bye-bye. All right, you we'll be in
<00:42:52> Kayla Levin: touch.
<00:42:52> Kayla Levin: Hey there. If you know a newlywed or you are one, we have a wedding gift for you. Go to kaylalevin.com/newlywed to get access to my best selling course "First Year Married" you have got to be in your first six months, so make sure you don't wait. And if you've been married longer than that, but you're looking for some more support or this stuff is just super fun for you.
<00:43:13> Kayla Levin: I'd love to have you join me inside of my membership community, How To Glow. It's for women looking for a fresh take on relationship development. Join us for live coaching calls, signature classes, and anonymous q and a. Let's do it.
<00:43:28>
<00:43:31> Kayla Levin: