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Business Book Awards 2023 finalists.

Yael's website and book Work Parent Thrive

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Psychologists Off the Clock podcast.

Transcript:

Helen: I'm delighted to welcome Yael Schonbrun PhD as my guest this week. Yael is a clinical psychologist specializing in treating relationships. She's a cohost for the fantastic Psychologists Off the Clock podcast about the science and practice of living well. She's also an assistant professor at Brown University in the US and a parent of three young boys. Yael's writing on work, parenting and relationships has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Behavioral Scientist, Psychology Today and many other respected publications. Her first book Work Parent Thrive: 12 Science-backed Strategies To Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection (When Everything Feels Like Too Much) was published last year by Shambala. Balancing rich scientific research with friendly, supportive tips and anecdotes, Yael offers a toolkit in the book to help even the most stressed of working parents grow the good while better managing inevitable challenges. Welcome to the podcast, Yael!

Yael: Oh, Helen, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of your podcast and so excited to be here to chat with you.

Helen: Oh, thank you. Me too. And I'm just going to wave your book for people watching on video. There it is. It's an absolutely brilliant read as we're going to dig into in a little bit. And I, I love the title. Did you wrestle a lot with the title and subtitle, or did it just emerge?

Yael: Yeah, no, I wanted, I actually did wrestle with the title for a bit and my publisher Shambala came up with that title and it is really perfect because it really captures the positivity that I'm trying to aim to communicate to folks because we often think about working parenthood as, as really hard and painful and that can be true. And there, there are challenges, but this book is really about growing the good and so I, I love that the title reflects that.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's really good and I am recommending it to every existing and parent to be that I know who's going to be juggling work life as well.

Yael: Thank you so much. That's so kind.

Helen: And I know obviously, there's a lot of people in organizations who have caring responsibilities, either their own children or, or other members of family or friends. So this looking after working parent employees is something that employers are very attentive to as part of their diversity and inclusion strategies and, and their wellbeing strategies. So, on the podcast we talk about thriving in our world of work and how employers can help create organizational cultures to help people succeed and, and perform at their best. And I think although your book is aimed at the individual rather than the organization, there's so much in there that anyone who's wearing this with a professional hat on thinking about their colleagues and their organization, to just help them be aware of things and, and, and recommend some of the strategies as well.

Yael: Yeah, and I think as you're saying from an organizational perspective, when individuals are thriving they're much more capable of showing up to work with as much energy and enthusiasm and commitment to the, the mission of the organization as they can. And when organizations support individuals, they're much more likely to get loyalty and high energy.

And there's a paradox because if organizations can support the individual even in their time off, they actually do get more back on the work side. So even though as you're saying it is focused on the individual, it is really helpful for organizations to be aware of some of these phenomenon that are all backed by social science.

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. And post pandemic, everybody's so much more aware that the person we are at work is just one aspect of, of our lives and, and who we are, and recognize much more openly, I think some of the commitments we have outside of our day job. So, so we'll come back to talking a bit more about managing those boundaries and switching between roles and things.

But let's chat a bit more about you and your career first and I wanted to ask you a question I quite often ask guests as a way to ease into our conversation, which is if I was to wave my magic wand and say to you, Yael, you have a whole extra day this week to use as you would like, how would you spend that time ideally?

Yael: Yeah, it's a great question and I am somebody who is very fully immersed in a number of different roles. So I am a parent to three young boys, their ages are now 6, 10, and 12 and that's a huge part of what helps me to feel happy and content and a sense of purpose and fulfillment in life. But I also really love my work, and I'm committed and passionate.

So if I had to organize my day, I would wake up early and I would go for a run, and then I would make my kids breakfast and get them off to wherever they need to be. And then I would dive deep into my work, into writing or seeing patients or podcasting because that's another hat that I wear. And then at the end of their school day or wherever they're at, I would pick them up, play with them, and, and have family time. So I really do try to chunk my day into a little bit of self-care in the morning, little bit of parenting and then deep into work and then come back into the parenting role once my kids' day is done.

And for me, that provides a really good balance because I can get a break from work when I'm in parenting role, and I can get a break from parenting when I'm in my work role. And the more that I can show up fully to each of those roles, the the better I feel and the more effective I am.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. That's lovely to hear and, and I love the way you think about chunking up your day into these different roles and different activities, and we'll chat a bit more about the benefits that that full immersion in whatever role you're wearing, you are in at that point in time can bring and some of the conflict that wearing multiple hats can also bring as well.

Yael: Yeah, and we can even chat about what do you do when it doesn't work out so neatly, which I've just had, a, a week with my kids home and lots of illness and viruses running through our house. So sometimes it doesn't turn out as I would like and there are strategies that we can draw on from, again, social science and clinical psychology that are quite helpful.

Helen: Okay, great. That would be fantastic because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this like myself are thinking, I always have good intentions about managing my day. I

Yael: And then life happens!

Helen: Totally! Something happens whether it's me catching COVID at the end of the school holidays or whatever it is. There's something that unexpected that you have to then adapt to, isn't it?

Great. So can you tell us, for the benefit of listeners wondering how, how you get into the role and work that you currently do, what led you into this line of work and the expertise you've built up over the years of your career?

Yael: Sure. So I'm trained as an academic clinical psychologist so really research was my bread and butter until, and, and I, I did do some clinical work before I became a parent, but not that much. I was really heavy into academia. And my research interests were about relationships, so I studied marriage and, and the interaction between marriage and mental health and how to support people in long-term, committed romantic relationships.

So I think about things very much from a relational point of view. And when I became a working parent, I was prepared to have it be hard, but really thought that I would also be quite effective because I had a job that I loved, I had a supportive partnership, I had a healthy pregnancy. I was very excited to become a parent. I really enjoyed my work and so it was quite a surprise to me that I was pretty miserable that first year. When I would be with my kids I would feel like ashamed because I thought my clinical, my professional colleagues were Being much more productive, lapping me.

And when I was at work, I would feel really ashamed that I had passed my child off to virtual strangers and that I wasn't going to be there for all of the firsts and the small moments. And it really, I found myself crying on the way to and from work every day and really miserable at night. And so I started thinking about this concept of the way that my roles related. So again thinking about this from a relational perspective and I realized that there's not much in the literature that talks about the relationship between work and parenthood, at least not from a psychological perspective.

And so I started diving into the academic literature and of course, there is a lot that has been looked at in terms of how the two roles conflict but the other part of how I'm trained and how I like to think about things is through the lens of positive psychology, through happiness science, and I was really excited to discover this concept that's called 'work family enrichment'.

That is really the heart of my book. And what that basically means is that, there is a relationship between our two roles that is a positive one, that they can feed each other, and that doesn't mean that the conflictual relationship doesn't exist. In fact, that is also true. They're both true. They kind of exist side by side, but by recognizing how our roles can help each other out, how they can have this positive relationship, we can actually take advantage of that more and using tools from social science, we can do that really strategically.

And that really does harken back to the way that I think about relationships between partners. That conflict itself isn't bad, it's how you respond to the conflict, and it's really learning how to amplify the positive connection, the enjoyment of one another, the ways that your differences can counterbalance one another that makes for healthy, long-term, sustainable, happy, satisfying relationships. And we can approach the relationship between our roles in the same way. And so, to come back to your original question, how did I land in this position of studying the relationship between work and parenting is as a relationship researcher and because I realized that I had something that was different to say about the relationship between roles, right?

I think it was in 2014 and I wrote a piece, just an op-ed piece about working parenthood, and it was during my kids' nap and I said to myself, I have something to say about this. And at the end of the nap, I typed in my Google search engine how to submit op-ed piece, and the instructions at the top of the page were how to submit to the New York Times.

So it got accepted there and it went viral right, it opened this new door of, oh, even though I was in academia this is something that I think there's a hunger for. And so I moved into more of a translational role. So instead of doing the research, I see myself really occupying this space of translating what exists in academic science to audiences who can actually benefit from the science because there's this real gap in the research that's conducted versus what gets out there to the public.

And so, more and more I've gotten very involved in the role of translating science through my podcast, through my writing and then also through my clinical practice. So right now I do a lot of writing about the roles, the relationship between work and parenting roles, but I also write a lot about the roles between people as well, parents and children as well as partners.

Helen: That's brilliant. That's so fascinating to hear how it's evolved, and I really appreciate your honesty about those early experiences of working parenthood and feeling miserable when, but it may be absolutely the thing you've been longing for is to add children to the mix.

So it can feel, you can feel really conflicted just about that, can't you?

Because, I, I came to motherhood late, age 40, and having had quite a long career at that point and progressed quite far in my roles, et cetera, and I found myself thinking, why does this feel so hard? Why don't I always feel competent at managing everything that working parenthood throws you? When I've achieved quite high levels of competence, I'm used to being able to cope and to get stuff done, and that felt like I started to question my abilities in a quite a fundamental way. So I imagine that's just one of the challenges that working parents face, right?

Yael: Yeah, and maybe any parents because your kids are constantly entering new developmental phases and even if you have multiple children, if you think you figured it out with one, the next one has a totally different temperament and different set of needs. So I do think that there's something about parenting that constantly threatens our sense of competency and what we know from, there's a theory called Self-determination theory, which suggests that one of the core human needs that we have is to have a sense of competency and parenting can be really hard on our sense of competency.

And so what's nice about working parenthood or any life where you occupy multiple roles is that if you're not getting a sense of competency in one, you can look to the other to fulfill it while you gain the skills necessary to reestablish a sense of competency in the one that you're feeling a little bit shakier in.

But I do think that ultimately, parenting is just one of those things that it's more about the relationship than it is about mastery. It, it has to be more about the process than about the outcome because our kids are just constantly evolving, as most relationships are constantly evolving. But they've got the added piece of going through new developmental phases, month to month, year to year!

Helen: Yeah. Which then throws the challenge back on us as parents to keep adapting and evolving and thinking, what am I learning? What do they need next from me? What do I need to do differently? Yeah.

Yael: Totally. Yeah darwin has this great quote that I love where he says, "it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change". And I do think, as you're saying, parenting really throws the need to change at us at on a constant basis. But one mindset shift to have about that is that this is a skill: to be responsive to change isn't something that we do and then we're done with. It's a skill that we have and that we're always growing because change is the constant. And so our ability to take it in stride and instead of questioning ourselves to say, oh, well this is part of the process. What do I need to do here? Can be quite helpful because then you're not judging yourself for the lack of knowledge. Instead, you are figuring out what is it that I need to do to adapt, if that makes sense.

Helen: Yeah. So constantly thinking where am I now? What am I noticing? What am I seeing? And I love your point in the book and what you were just saying about often, we tend to focus on the conflict or even when we think about working parenthood, we tend to associate that with conflict and difficulty around the juggling. And, and actually your book very much encourages us to apply positive psychology and, think about the enrichment opportunities that come from that. So there was an example you gave in one of your early chapters where you said, "no matter how much I had done that day or week, I could only see what I had failed to accomplish".

And that really spoke to me because, everybody I speak to who's a working professional, and particularly if there's children in the mix, have a really never ending to-do list; always trying to feel like they're making progress or staying on top of things, or not dropping a spinning plate. But actually what we tend to fail to do is acknowledge all that we have managed to do each day, even if it's just getting a meal on the table at roughly the right time when we've been really pressed. And that's one of the things I loved so much about the tone of the book, it was so understanding about these many situations that can stress us out, that we find ourselves in, and really encouraging us to celebrate, I guess, all that we do manage to accomplish and to take pleasure and satisfaction and pride in that. And I guess that's, that's one aspect of the enrichment, right? You talk about spotlighting the things you're doing well?

Yael: Yeah. Yeah. And being compassionate to our minds for noticing what's not going well, that is just a part of how our brains are wired. We skew negative, right? And this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, because we don't want to ignore what's not going well. And in fact in pre-modern times, that could be the difference between survival and imminent danger or, or death.

So our minds are trying to protect us to really enhance our likelihood of success and, and survival. So the fact that we notice what isn't going well is, is very natural and we can thank our minds. This is an exercise that we do in the treatment that I practice, which is called acceptance and commitment therapy.

So it's like, thank you mind for protecting me for, noting that there are things that are important to me that I want to make sure I get done and done well. But also work within the wiring of your mind to be more deliberate about looking for what's going well and celebrate those things.

Because when we do that, it actually helps us to be more resilient. It's a both and, right? We can be compassionate for the things that are not going well, use that to inform us, inform us in terms of what growth we need to do or what we need to take care of, but also be very deliberate about pausing to notice what's good.

And, one of the things too is to really take advantage of what your mind is telling you isn't going well of the conflict, of the internal conflict because it can guide you, teach you, connect you, make you wiser, make you more resilient, make you happier. So it's not about ignoring it, it's not about toxic positivity, but it's about finding that balance where you can use that conflict, but also not allow it to take over everything.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the strategies you suggest in the book is around being very aware of the labels that we create and, and use consciously or unconsciously and also the stories we create for ourselves. So we don't see the world absolutely as it is, we see it through a very filtered view and we make sense of it through these stories we tell ourselves, I guess consciously or unconsciously, and we reinforce through the language we use. Can you say a little bit more about how we can change the way we hang labels, use labels and stories to help us enjoy those multiple roles better?

Yael: Yeah. And so you're pointing to something that I think is really important to just understand about the mind, which is there's this statement that a narrative researcher shared with me when I was interviewing people for the book, which is 'bower birds build bowers and humans tell stories'.

This is something that the mind does and it helps us create a sense of coherence and competence to move through a pretty complicated and sometimes overwhelming world. And so we're not going to stop doing that, but we can be strategic about how we allow our, our minds to label and tell stories, particularly when we notice that the labels or the stories aren't very helpful.

And so I'll share a story of a, a working parent that I interviewed, which was a comedian who I interviewed and she was telling me that often when she would prepare to go out at night to do her comedy shows her oldest son, who at the time was in fifth grade, would say something snarky like, oh, you're going to hang out with guys in seedy bars instead of being with your family! Right? And it would just make her curdle with guilt and shame and, oh, I'm a bad parent, but also I really love this part of my, my world. And she was otherwise mostly a stay-at-home parent and she would think to herself, I'm a bad working parent'. It would cause her to, to feel less generous with her family, but also less funny when she would go out to her comedy role.

And so as I was interviewing her, I was prompting her, to think about some of the ways that her roles can help each other. And so she said, instead of thinking of myself as a bad working parent, I wonder if there are other ways to think about it. And she actually, it opened her up to ask her son, what do you really think of me being a comedian? And he said to her,' it's the coolest thing ever! I actually think it's really neat'. And it was this loosening of the relationship between herself and this title of bad working parent that opened her up to even just be curious. Is that all there is?

And in fact, there was a lot more nuance to it than that. Did he wish that she sometimes stayed home at night on the nights that she had a show? Probably. But he also thought it was pretty neat to have a parent that was a comedian. And so this is a story that informs the way that we tend to get very rigid about labels in ways that are not very workable.

So when we tell ourselves I'm a bad working parent, or I'm a bad mom, or I am not as competent at my job because I don't spend as much time as colleagues who don't have kids, it causes us to get very narrow in how we look at the world. And then our mind does things like most people have heard of confirmation bias.

So once we already have a belief, we tend to look for evidence that confirms it, and we tend to filter out anything that disconfirms it. And so this is the problem with labeling and with rigid storytelling. And so the exercise is to loosen the grip that our mind has on particular labels or particular stories.

And one very simple way to do that is to, instead of saying, "I am..." to say "I'm having the thought that I am...", so "I'm having the thought" gives you a touch of distance. It loosens the grip that your mind has on that label and offers an opportunity to see greater nuance.

Now, we don't want to see nuance about everything, because part of why our mind does this is to reduce the complexity, but this can be a very useful activity when you notice labels and or stories causing you to engage in life or in roles, in ways that aren't consistent with how you most want to show up. So if you are saying to yourself, I'm a rotten working parent, or I'm a rotten, whatever in my role, and it causes you to be grumpy or nervous or not be able to fully be mindful and engaged with the people and the activities that you care about, then that's a sign of, oh, maybe I can try this loosening the hold. Okay, my mind is telling me. And then to ask, might there be other ways to look at it or labels that could help to open you up? So that you can show up more in line with the person that you want to be in that given role or circumstance.

So it, it's really about figuring out when those labels or stories are interfering with your ability to show up as the you that you most want to be, that you can work to loosen their hold. And that doesn't mean that your mind isn't going to generate new labels, but you can be more deliberate about which ones you pay more attention to and which ones you turn your attention away from.

Helen: Yeah, that makes so much sense, and I think it'd be really helpful for anyone listening who feels often that sense of guilt. I hear a lot of working parents say to me when I'm coaching them around time management is that I feel guilty that I'm not with my family when I'm in work and then I feel guilty when I'm with my family that I, I'm not catching up on work stuff.

And one of the things that really helped me when I read your book was to really embrace whatever hat we are wearing at a particular point in time. And I realized from reading your book that I am seriously guilty and it's quite ironic as a time management expert of, of switching all the time in a way that frankly is quite exhausting.

So, I'll come home from the school run; I'm technically in mum mode I'm not in working mode, but I can't resist just checking my work emails while I'm cooking tea. And then, oh something's popped in, so I've got five minutes while the potatoes boil, I'll just send an an answer off and, and then I start to feel my stress levels rising if it's something I can't actually respond to properly at that point in time.

So your advice on, leaning into each role fully and fully detaching from the other role has been really helpful. Can you say a bit more about the benefits of switching into different roles and how that can help us from a rest and creativity point of view?

Yael: Absolutely. And, and let me just also note, because guilt is something that comes up so often for working parents, particularly working mothers, and it feels epidemic. We, we can't avoid it and it feels like it's everywhere and guilt is one of these emotions that is, it's hardwired into us like all emotions are, and it serves a functional purpose.

And what emotion function researchers understand is that it's a very interpersonal emotion that helps us to protect our relationships from anticipated harm or from harm that's been done. So it has a very good purpose. So we can thank our minds and our bodies for feeling guilty because it, it does serve a protective purpose.

But the problem is that guilt can really interfere with us showing up in line with the people that we want to be and, and being effective. Because what it does exactly as you're saying is it really interrupts our focus. And wherever we're at, if we're feeling guilty, we're not fully there. So we're not with our kids when we're feeling guilty at work, but we're also not paying attention to our work. And so you have this double whammy.

And so what I talk about in the book as you're noting is the utility of noticing the guilt, but coming back to whatever role that you're in, recognizing that it has benefit for the role that you're in, because then you can pay more attention to the work that you're doing or to playing with your kids, whichever you're doing. And it can provide a reprieve, a restful break from whatever role you're not in, and also a creative benefit for whatever role you're not in.

And so again, guilt is going to naturally come up because we care and we're wired in these pre-modern ways of like, okay, if I'm not paying attention to my kid, then they might be in danger of being eaten by a predator, so it's going to happen. We're going to have those flares of guilt when we're not with our kids. Same thing goes for whatever work we do, because we're also wired to want to be in community and to want to do right by whatever the community is that we belong to. And so when we're not working, we're going to have those flares of, oh, I should be attending to this.

But in this modern world, we're not actually under imminent threat of being ousted from our company or of our child being eaten by a predator. But what we are in danger of is having what bridget Schulte, she wrote a terrific book called Overwhelmed calls 'time confetti' where we're not fully anywhere and our time is so broken up and as you're saying, we have this exhaustion of switching back and forth and back and forth. And so the, the antidote is to do some form of mindful or deep work. Wherever you're at, be there. And what helps to alleviate the guilt is recognizing, again, that it's beneficial for the role that you're in, and it's also beneficial for the role that you're not in.

So when it comes to the role that you're not in, there's this very fancy term called psychological detachment, which basically means shutting fully off from wherever you are not. And that is really the, the cornerstone of reducing risk for burnout. So one of the reasons that work burnout is on the rise is that we never fully turn off and so we never have a chance to totally recharge our work batteries. Same thing goes for parenting because parenting burnout is also on the rise, right?

We're always available to our kids, they can text us anytime, the school can always reach us because we always have our phones on. And if we never fully turn off, it's a little bit like a battery that's constantly being expended. And so by being more deliberate about turning off from parenting for a period of time or turning off from work for a period of time or whatever role is very demanding, you actually have a chance to recharge that battery.

So, if I've had a tough day at work and I go home and I'm fully immersed with my kids, I'm much more likely to be ready to return to work with a bit more energy than if I go home from work and I'm with my kids, but I'm checking my work email and I'm trying to respond to a crisis. Then I'm going to return to work the next day feeling pretty worn out.

And the same thing goes for parenting. I have a memory of when my youngest was an infant. He was a terrible sleeper and I just really was obsessed with his sleep! And I remember at four months I went back to work and we hired childcare and I was physically exhausted, but I just remember the reprieve of thinking to myself, I don't have to worry about whether he naps today or not. Somebody else is going to worry about that. I was tired, so I drink a lot of coffee, but it was just restful to not have to worry about that element that had been plaguing me for so many months. That fatigue.

And then to the side of creativity, one of the things that we know is that when we're not consciously focused on a problem, these creative networks in our brain called the 'default mode network' get activated. And so if you're struggling with a problem at work, one of the best things that you can do if, if you've hit a wall, is step away and not think about it consciously.

And so having that pressure to be there for your kids can actually give this eureka effect of, you know, when Archimedes was in the bathtub and he had this realization about buoyancy, that's probably more myth than fact, but the science is actually really consistent with that. It's sort of the tip of the tongue phenomenon when you're like in the shower and you finally think of the perfect retort to the fight that you had the day before! It's because your unconscious processes, your default mode network, are actively working out at that problem. And that's a part of our brain that can get much more creative than our conscious processes.

And so again, we can target that guilt by giving ourselves permission to step away from whatever role we're not in, knowing that it's actually going to be good, both for the role that we're in and for the role that we're stepping away from.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. That's so helpful to hear and I've been trying to consciously. compartmentalise, I guess, those different roles since reading your book and, and it is quite a sense of relief. And if I go out for my run in the morning instead of thinking about, oh, I've got this to do today at work, and oh, I have must remember to do that. I'm like, what? I'm just going to let it all go and enjoy that half hour of not thinking about it. And I notice how much when I come back to my desk, I am really ready to get stuck in instead of feeling like I've really slightly compromised that very precious half hour to myself and didn't really notice anything on my run! I always feel a sense of disappointment about that. So, yeah, it, it's great to hear about the psychologically proven benefits of that.

And when you talk about fully switching off in the book as well, you also talk a bit about the benefits of just idling, of having proper daydreaming time and savoring micro moments.  That's something that I've really enjoyed doing is whatever it is I'm doing, whether it's reaching for a cup of tea or noticing the rainbow outside, just linger a little bit longer in in the moment, and that can add these little moments of enrichment right into our day?

Yael: Oh, totally. Yeah. I think the busiest among us are those who have multiple roles and we feel like we don't just need to be doing one thing at any given moment, we have to be doing 12 things if we're to have any hope of getting through the to-do list! And fortunately it's this paradoxical effect because when we're doing lots of things at the same time, we end up being ineffective and making errors and then feeling guilty and ashamed of, what we didn't do well.

And so the antidote when you have a lot of things going on and many demands on you is actually slow down. Slow down and be in the moment. And it feels like the wrong choice because that makes no sense. How am I going to get through all the things? But if you slow down, you'll get through them more effectively.

And also and I don't know if we'll get to this, but, subtract the stuff that is trivial or not consistent with what is most important to you so that you can be more effective with what is and be present for what matters most.

Helen: Yes. And in the book, in the chapter where you talk about subtracting, you have a really handy grid for figuring out what can I let go of, which will give me the greatest benefit whilst presenting the least risk. So I thought that was a really nice way of doing it, because quite often we feel, well, everything's urgent, everything's important, I can't possibly not do that because I'm going to be letting someone else down.

So it gives you a great framework of saying actually, let's look at that picture a little bit more thoughtfully and recognize that some things probably could come off your plate.

I have a lovely practice that works really well for me that comes from the practice of bullet journaling where every month I have a running list of things I want to do. I call it my memory list rather than my to-do list per se. And then at the end of each month, you review it, and you decide what of the stuff you haven't done, you carry over into the next month and you create a new list for the next month and you can add to it during the month.

One of the things I love about it is that a) it's an opportunity to take stuff off the list but b) also you notice that some things you haven't got round to doing and it really didn't matter. And the window has gone by and it's a really good mental reminder that not everything is quite as essential as we think it is at the time!

Yael: Yeah. No, that's so true. I think that in the moment we do feel like everything is the most important. If I don't do this for my kids, they're going to miss out on an enriching opportunity and be angry with me and sitting on the therapist couch when they're an adult saying, oh, my mom totally dropped the ball!

But mostly that's not true. And one of the things ,that your list I think is really helpful with, and that some of the exercises that we do in acceptance and commitment therapy are really helpful with is to step away from the emotion and do some perspective taking. Because in the moment the emotion feels like, oh, this is so important and it will be a disaster if it doesn't happen.

But that emotion can sometimes be a miscue, sort of mislead us into thinking that things are more important than they actually are. And then we  lose the forest for the trees, right? Because we get caught up in all the minutiae that we miss the, the really important stuff or we're doing it, but we're only half present for it.

Helen: Yes. Yeah, that's really helpful to understand and I guess coming towards the end of our conversation here, it's, it's been so helpful to chat through some of these challenges and potential sources of conflict that working parents can experience, but also to understand better how they can also be sources of satisfaction and happiness and growth and enrichment.

 And I think a big message I'm getting from our conversation is how much it can pay off to just notice our reactions more, notice our emotions more but not be constantly driven by them. And to take time to reflect on what we're seeing and feeling and hearing and to ask ourselves, is there another way I could be looking at it?

So thank you so much for all the fantastic advice and insights you've been sharing during the conversation. And if people want to find out more about the work you do or connect with you professionally, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yael: Well, you can check out my website, which is workparentthrive.com. I'm also just about to start a newsletter called Relational: the Art and Science of Growing Connection that will be about the relationship between partners, between parents and children, and also the relationship between roles and really diving deep into some of the science and some of the tips that we can take away from what we know from research. So you can sign up for that through my website, and then you can also check out my podcast. If you like Helen's podcast, you might also like mine! It's called Psychologists Off the Clock and what we try to do there is bring ideas from evidence-based psychology and translate it into ways that can help you flourish in your work, relationships, and health. So you can check us out there.

Helen: Fantastic thank you. I will put links to all of those in the show notes. So if you're listening head to the website, the episode page, and you'll find easy links to connect with Yael in those ways.

Thank you so much Yael for giving us your time and your wisdom. I feel like I've had a masterclass in how to manage life a little bit better and it's been fantastic and I really appreciate all your time and, and input in the conversation. Thank you so much for being a brilliant guest.

Yael: Oh, thank you so much for being a brilliant host. I really appreciate it. It was so much fun chatting.