The iceberg behind your child's behaviour with Dr Abrar Hussain

Gauri Verma: Hello and welcome to this episode of A Tune In. I'm thrilled and very grateful to be joined by Dr. Abrah Hussain. Good afternoon, Dr. Hussain. Good afternoon, Gauri. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Thank you so much. It's great to have you here. I'm really grateful for your time and your expertise. it'll be great for listeners to sort of hear this conversation because I'm going to now read out your bio just to share all the things you've done and all the expertise that you have. And I think, as you know, the listeners here are parents. who may not have a background in psychology or psychiatry, but are very keen to understand how they can take little steps in family life to sort of boost connection at home for children's wellbeing. So Dr. Abra Hussain is a consultant psychiatrist specializing in general adult psychiatry and liaison psychiatry, working at the interface between psychological and physical health. He leads a specialist NHS service for functional neurological disorders. Your approach Dr. Hussain is holistic and trauma informed, integrating pharmacological and psychological treatments. You're accredited in cognitive analytical therapy or CAT therapy. You are an EMDR Europe accredited practitioner with a particular focus on relational patterns, traumatic stress. and recovery orientated care grounded in compassion, collaboration and safety. Dr. Zane is widely published in scientific journals, presented nationally and internationally and is regularly invited to speak to clinicians and trainees. He is a TEDx speaker and currently serves as chief clinical officer at Nervous System Economy, where he works at the intersection of mental health, leadership and organisational wellbeing. Alongside clinical work, Dr. Hussain is deeply involved in education, mentorship and research, being course director for the London based MRC PsychCAS program, also providing postgraduate training to psychiatrists across the UK. I mean, it's such a vast, vast sort of experience, so much contribution to this field. So thank you for all that you do. And it's really nice to sort of meet a fellow psychiatrist and you're a consultant psychiatrist who also works as a therapist. And maybe we could start the conversation there because I think when I was working in medical psychotherapy, what struck me was how, you know, we see people at one end of a spectrum and actually there is a process. And I wonder about how people could intervene maybe earlier or what little small steps could be helpful for parents to take to support children's mental wellbeing based on what you see in your practice. Thanks Gauri. I am an early psychiatrist. So in my clinical work, I see patients over 18 and above. But as part of my training, I have spent some time with the child adolescent departments. And whatever we are today actually is a product of early life and our childhood and how we have interacted with our caregivers, shapes, who we are and how the future will also unfold. So what I find particularly interesting is relational understanding that a child and a parent develops. And I think that's a fundamental part of a child's wellbeing and upbringing. Couldn't agree more. And I do love the word relational. I think we probably don't use it enough. in terms of sort of the fact that the environment in the early years and the way a child feels about their caregivers shapes the way they relate in the future. And obviously you're a parent by the way, aren't you? How many children do you have? So have two children, two girls. you, you know, having been through that process as a parent with the knowledge that you have, is there anything in particular that you wish parents knew? Because as you know, and we talked about this last time, you know, we as parents are juggling a lot. There's so many competing things on our time, our attention, and it isn't always particularly easy to be attuned, but at the same time, it is such an important time in a child's growth, you know, their developing brain, their mind. Is there anything in particular you kind of wish all parents knew? Well, I think the first thing to say is that we are all relational beings. So who we are and how we make sense of who we are actually is embedded within that dynamic of, you know, how our caregivers are with us and how we are with our children. So whenever I think of how I interact with my with my children, part of me thinks of actually what was it like for me as a child growing up. And I pay attention to that because invariably our childhood experiences will shape how we talk to our children. And there's a lot of depth, I think, in this conversation. And the main focus is around, I guess, how can we make our children be their authentic selves and have that channel of communication where we can build that dialogue and the relational aspect, which helps us understand what our children go through and again help the children talk to us about what they are struggling with in today's world, which is changing at quite a rapid. Absolutely. So real sort of creating a dialogue, creating a dynamic where children can express themselves and not shy away from their authentic self. And I would love if you could just maybe describe or expand a little bit on authentic self because that as a term, wonder whether many people, because I think what does that mean? I mean, I know what I think it means and I know what the literature speaks about in therapy. But if you were to sort of describe it in words, how would you describe authentic self? So I'll go back to my own journey and rightly said, cat and trauma work has largely shaped my psychiatric work. But I have been heavily influenced by another model. called IFS, Internal Family System Model. And my understanding of the self comes from CAT and IFS. So when I say authentic self, I think I refer to the part of us that wants to collaborate, wants to grow and thrive, wants to help others, wants to be curious, wants to be creative. And sometimes that authentic self is not allowed to flourish because of difficulties in the system. And my system, I mean immediate system, in the family system. and wider societal systems. So the stress and strain that a child feels in their relationship with their caregivers, their parents, their friends, their peers, their schools, their teachers, all of that will shape and affect how they express their authentic self. A child that, in my view, has more alignment with who they are at a very deep level, at an authentic level, at a self level, that child has more avenues and more tools to actually flourish in life. and to help other people along the way. Thank you so much. That's really nicely described. And what I'm thinking about is examples of why a child can't express their authentic self. And actually modern day parenting and modern day family life, you know, with exam pressure, you know, sometimes there's sibling rivalry, there's now digital tech. often there are two parents working and we may not be sort of raising children with lots of other, with our tribe as maybe in some cultures happens. And what I sort of found interesting when I used to sort of be in the psychotherapy space was the idea of defences which kind of come up. So the authentic self is the self that we are when we're not being sort of triggered or we're not feeling threatened or we're not feeling unsafe. So the nervous system is regulated, but the reality of family life is of course our nervous systems are always getting prodded and children when they're competing for parental time, competing with their siblings, competing with their phones, children then put up maybe defenses and those defenses end up sort of staying with them unless they're sort of, unless someone's attuned probably, unless someone's able to say, right, okay, you know, for example, a sibling is jealous of their other sibling. They don't feel safe and then they become angry and that's a defense. That's not their authentic self. That's a defense. I think parents may be understanding that concept about defenses versus authentic self. Yeah. I think the key word is safety here. So if a child feels safe, then the child is able to regulate their own system. And that means that a child is actually receptive to things we tell them and is receptive to actually looking after its own. needs, their own needs. And when there is lack of safety, when there is a lot of threat around the child, child will then behave in ways which are misaligned with their authentic self. So when you say defenses, defenses are actually protective. They help the child to get through some certain difficult experiences or traumatic experiences. And any behavior that feels like It's not part of someone authentic self is actually an entry point. I think for a parent to examine what's going on here, can I understand this behavior in a wider context and without blaming the child, can we actually go behind the symptom or the behavior, understand what's going on for them? And I also have to think of the analogy of an iceberg. I think what a parent is seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. And quite often to understand the full picture, we need to take some time. We need to make sure that we are as parents, first of all, regulated well enough. We are open and receptive because often we bring our own biases, our own expectations, assumptions, our own childhood stuff, and that can get in the way. Absolutely. I could not agree more. And that's so well sort of articulated that if a child's behavior isn't as one may expect or it deviates from their normal behavior, we need to be curious, but then we have to be regulated to be able to be actually accurate and open and sometimes we're bringing our own stuff. And so you've mentioned sort of regulated and we're thinking about nervous systems. What are your sort of thoughts around nervous system regulation? And obviously there's a nervous system economy, which you work on. What are your thoughts in terms of what parents could benefit from understanding? Yeah, I think the main thing to understand is that we all have ways of dealing with stress. And when stress hits us, one of the ways that we first try and solve that is by in a fight of light when things don't seem to work out. And if that doesn't work out, then we go into a more collapsed state. So our nervous system works all the time to keep us safe and keep us protected. In the nervous system economy, we are trying to look at what actually is going on at a deeper level that helps us make changes and sustain the changes. So just being able to just being willing to change may not be enough in itself. It has to also depend on where our own, we call it anchor in the NSC language. Where is the anchor based? Are we in a place where we can be regulated and open to change and collaborate with the other person, with our children? Or are we in a threatened state and are we feeling driven by our own sympathetic nervous system, which makes us very hard to actually accept feedback, give feedback and work collaboratively. So when we're talking about connection and family connection and collaboration, really what you're saying is your nervous system needs to be not in a state of fight or flight and how long in your experience does it take? Let's say something triggers a child. Let's say that the child's train is taken in a play group and the child's now gone into full blown fight. How long does it take in your experience? Because I read somewhere that it can take 15 minutes before the nervous system can sort of bounce back to, to regulate it. you sort of? Yeah, there are some variables here. So it depends on the age of the child. It depends on level of maturity and it depends on how their own past experience has been. A child who has been bullied in the past and who has come to understand that they must fight back when their train is taken away will find it much harder, will get triggered more easily and will go into a fight or flight more easily. Whereas a child who might be more settled, more regulated might see that act of the train being taken away from them as something from a curious point of view. And then instead of going into a fight or flight response, they might want to understand why that happened. And they might approach the whole act from a very calm perspective. And they might understand, might ask the person to the trainer what's happened. They might try and step back and without blaming themselves, without having to jump into a situation, they might have enough space in their mind to think about what happened, mentalize what happened. Okay. Lovely. So I think that's really helpful for parents to think about the baseline state of the nervous system. And that gives it more. autonomic resilience to bounce, sort of not necessarily go into fight or flight. In terms of what a parent can do to maintain autonomic resilience in their child. things like, you know, so what I sort of talk about nature a lot, so spending time in nature, there's evidence. There's evidence I'm sure I read somewhere recently that if you There's evidence that shows that if you just look at nature, even if it's on a screen, that reduces the time of that dysregulation. And obviously it's so healing being in nature, seeing greens and blues. Are there other sort of things that you find are really helpful for parents to maintain autonomic resilience? I think nature is a good example. So nature is very calming and relaxing and something about very connecting about being in nature. So certainly that helped. I think finding shared activities where a parent can collaborate with them, with a child and even play with them. A game that brings out a sense of being part of a team or being able to collaborate, be creative together, that helps. I think having times off screens in a very kind of protective way is also quite helpful. So I make sure that I monitor how much screen time is available for my children. And quite often we'll play a little game after dinner where we would either play Scrabble or some other board game. And that... time spent with a child, think, fosters connection. And often through play, kids will also tell you what's been bothering them the whole day. And you open up the dialogue in a very kind of non-judgmental way. Lovely. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Regular play and you're really giving that space to the child to be able to bring things forward. And obviously as children hit the teenage years, they're less wanting to come forward with their sort of anxieties or what's happening. So, We almost have to be proactive, like you're saying, to create those spaces. And it's such a great investment of time because I think, you know, nipping things in the bud early. So if there's something going on at school, you know, it's better just to nip it in the bud and sort of rather than let it foster and ossify into a bigger problem. And in terms of, mentioned cat therapy, cognitive analytical therapy and IFS, eternal family systems. I'm a huge fan of both. And I love, I just love the fact that. You know, things which are so complex are just made quite simple or there's a structure to something so complex. And I would love to sort of share that a little bit with more people so they can understand that actually there are structures and tools around that are very, very helpful for a developing, for a parent to observe in their developing child. So in terms of cognitive analytical therapy, are there any major features that you think... could be helpful for a parent to understand? So I use a CAT model in a variety of situations, both in clinical work and well, as well as in educational work. I quite often I use the reciprocal role part of the model, which I find really fascinating. So a reciprocal role is a dynamic between two people that you draw on paper usually. You depict a line between two people. Usually the top pole is the parental position. and the bottom pole is a child position and you connect those two with a vertical line. the idea is that when we were younger and we were in a child position, the interaction we had with our parents and caregivers had a particular impact on us. So the action of the parent at the top of that reciprocal role had an impact on us in the bottom of the pole as a child. If we've experienced a particular pattern of behavior from our parent or caregiver, and we responded in a particular way and that repetition happened a few times. Then we would carry that reciprocal role through us, through life with us. And when in adult life things look like they are very similar in that role, we get triggered and we would respond again in a very similar way of how we did when we were younger. A positive role might be around listening at the top and listen to at the bottom. So if my K.K. was in listening mode and I felt listen to, then it's easier for me. to then find situations where I feel listened to. Whereas if I never had that experience, even if somebody is listening to me, I might not be able to connect with that sense of being listened to. So it becomes quite hard for me. And for me, how that interacts with the IFS again is that with IFS model using the sense of self. IFS talks about sense of self with 8 Cs. And if there are difficulties, then there are parts of us that can get activated and that can take on some extra roles. And they do that to protect the self. But sometimes the show is driven by these parts and the defenses we talk about could also be seen as parts that go into extreme form and the self gets pushed to one side. So these models are very helpful in understanding what's going on for us and our children. Yes. I mean, that is amazing. I just want to pause on the first bit and then I want to talk about IFS. So the cat, what you've just said is quite profound, I think, for parents because we know that the early, what we experienced in those early years, maybe first seven years, And that typically is parents, teachers, caregivers. That feeling is what we then are drawn to later on because it's familiar. So if in the early years you've listened to, that's familiar. Then growing forward, going forward as an adult, you know, in work or with friendships or relationships, that will be familiar. And that will end up probably being repeated and that becomes a pattern. So what we're saying then is that as parents, we're in a really great position because we can sort of intentionally say, right, these are the healthy things that I would want my child to be drawn to as an adult. And that's what I'm going to try. If I'm intentional, if I look after my own nervous system, if I'm kind to myself, compassionate, if I'm creative, I'm going to really think about what do I want my child to be drawn to. And I'm going to be mindful about that because I think, I don't think parents necessarily know this and I think it's really empowers us as parents to think we have a huge role here. We could actually almost set the train track to go in the right direction for them. But equally at the same time, if we're not intentional, if we don't know, if we're sort of reactive parents, tired, reacting, we're not looking after our own nervous system. And let's say for example, I I snap at my children quite a lot, you know, because I have three and we're trying to get out the door. I probably need to think, you if I'm snapping a lot, then that's normal for them. And maybe that's what they'll be drawn to, a snappy person. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, there two main questions here. So the first question is, as a parent, I think, what is the impact of my behavior on my child? So I take a minute to just take a breath, step back and think about, okay, what should I say and how should I say it? And how would that land the other side? So I'm demonstrating awareness. as a parent into my behaviour and the impact of my behaviour on my child. And if I understand that, I can step back and do that in a very mindful way, then we're already in a better place. Because then I can then have a wider choice of behaviours or responses and then I might be able to actually demonstrate more flexibility in how I respond to my child. The other question is around asking myself, what's triggering me here? Why is it upsetting for me to see this particular behaviour in my child? And that can again be something that I can draw on from my own experience as a child. Sometimes there are reciprocal roles. The parent starts to occupy the bottom pole, the impact pole, and the child becomes more powerful. So quite often I think parents relate to the fact of feeling powerless in relationship with their children. And because they become more powerful because of the behavior and where they come from. So understanding those roles for ourselves and the impact on our children is quite helpful as a first step. Yeah. Wow. And so are you, are we talking there about intergenerational patterns? So if a child, if a parent feels helpless because the child's, I don't know, having a tantrum or there's a teenage door slamming situation, does that remind us when, you know, the parent, when they were younger, when they were helpless with their own parents? Is that what we're sort of talking about? Yes. So that is the background to it, but also depends on at an individual level, how did I respond to, for example, not being listened to when I was a child? Yes. So I could have gone both, I could have become over compliant and I made sure that I will not upset anybody or I'm have rebelled and I may have become angry and I may have become more rebellious. Based on how I as a child responded back then, can I draw, can I map out what's going on now in my current with my child? And that's quite key I think. So there's no, although we have a model, I think for each person it's about working out what's going on for them. and then map that to what's actually happened in their own childhood. So the CAP model is a way of really tackling intergenerational patterns head on, basically, because you kind of map it out, you look at it on paper, that this is the role I had in my childhood, and now this is what's repeating with my own children. And that's how we can sort of interrupt unhelpful patterns or carry on with helpful patterns depending on if they're serving us or not. Absolutely. And we have the option here to break that chain of generational trauma because if we can understand where it comes from and how we can then change our behavior or do something different so it doesn't get carried on next generation, then it's already setting a whole generation to a different pathway. Amazing. It's very profound, think. The thing is profound. I agree with you. It's high impact, such high impact. mean, it's amazing and thank you so much for sort of explaining it. And in terms of... I want to move on to IFS in a second, but in terms of CAT, apart from the reciprocal roles, is there any other sort of tool or structure or strategy within the model that you think is helpful for parents? Yeah, the other part of the model is where we map co-pain. So co-pain is the deeper psychological pain that leads to various behaviors in CAT. So if we can understand as a parent, what is that co-pain that we probably are carrying from childhood? And maybe it's getting triggered in our current role as a parent, because a child is trying to obviously, teens you talked about recently, as a teenager, they're growing into their own adult self and that's the training kind of become, you know, adults. And if we get triggered by their behavior, is that actually a reflection of our core pain being triggered? And if that deeper sense of understanding is developed, then we can exit the other one cat. We can choose to have exits or aim and work towards having exits, but we don't repeat the same pattern again. Another profound point. So in everyday family life, for example, you may find yourself getting really triggered when your child, I don't know, maybe isn't showing gratitude or isn't saying thank you. And you may get really, really triggered. And that could be because when you were a child and you didn't say thank you, you got really badly told off. And all of the pain when you were young. is now coming back and you're getting flooded, your autonomic nervous system's getting activated when actually the thing, the situation in front of you was not as strong as how you felt when you were a child because now you're an adult. But we're sort of remembering all that pain as if we were a child, but in an adult's body in front of our own child. Right? Yeah. We have, we've had rules as children and we've tied those rules into the next generation and we expect the same rules to apply to the next generation. And that doesn't happen. guess then we get disappointed, we get triggered and then our nurse then become more dysregulated. the rules, that's a really interesting point. It's jogging my memory now. So the rules, so as parents, we can sort of choose our own rules. You know, we don't have to just carry the rules from the generations above. We can kind of be intentional and think, right, which rules were good, were helpful, and which were a bit over the top and a bit harsh. And you can't expect. You know, there's a lot more knowledge now about child development and what is reasonable to expect from a child. And maybe that new information can sort of come in now for us parents. Could we go to IFS? Because I literally love this model a lot. I also love the schema model, but, they're similar, but with IFS, could you sort of just describe in sort of simple terms, the self and then the different parts that we all have. So IFS says that we all have different parts. You know, this is not pathology, this is not clinical. As by virtue of being a human being, we have different parts. And the one that we really want to center with and try and maintain as much as we can is self. But the reality is life is going to bring things to us and we may go into the other parts. So I'd love you to describe those other parts, if possible. Yeah. So IFS talks about there being a self. The self has eight C's. I may not recall all eight C's now but I'll give it a go. So it's calm, connectedness, curiosity, creativity, compassion, actually it's on my wall here, confidence and clarity actually. So the eight C's make up the sense of self and when we are in the self mode, our approach to things very different than we are in a part mode. So parts are not bad. There's a book called No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz who put the model in place and Parts are here to help the self and parts take on an extreme role sometimes because they lose the trust in self. So what the IFS model says is that if we become aware of our parts and if we can work with our parts and get them to step back a little bit, then we have more space for our self to then develop and grow. So the model says that the self is never lost, which is quite an optimistic way to think about things and quite hopeful actually that we all have a self, it might be... push to one side, it might be kind of, know, pushed down by various parts. But if we can work with the parts and gain that trust, actually we're trying to help the self and the whole system as a first step towards having more of a self-led approach to things. And the parts, so there's the protector, the firefighters, manager. Yeah. There's ways of describing the parts. there are parts that, the firefighters, for example, are parts that jump in. at short notice and they make sure that nothing is getting destabilized. And there are parts which are exiled, the parts which are not wanted almost and they are kind of pushed to one side, they quite far away. So, on these parts are quite helpful to think about and for each of us we will have different parts. And going back to your example around, say, a child who is getting angry and irritable, there might be an angry part who is actually running the show because the child has realized that When the angry part was in full flow, they actually got their needs met. They got the train back from the person who took the train away because the angry part managed to that for them. So the needs are met for a particular part and that part then starts to run the show. Yeah. Okay. So helpful. know, as parents listening to this and as a parent myself, I think the real sort of amazing win would be as a mom noticing when my child goes into the different parts. with compassion and curiosity and then helping them, helping them on their own journey, bring them back to cell. And I wonder if you found yourself doing that naturally as a parent, because obviously you have all this knowledge and you see your children going into their parts and helping them with that, because that is an act of courage, isn't it? It's an act of patience. It's an act of curiosity, understanding, and it's not that natural. And the reality is we, our own parts get activated as parents. when those parts come out? So as a parent, I try and be in my self mode as much as possible. first have to understand my own parts and I have to understand that in certain situations, a particular part of me might get triggered and might take over. And if that happened, I first have to my own work and have to first go back into my self mode, let that part step back a little bit. So that ensures that my response to my child is the best possible response I could give. The second thing is that there is no blame here. So we're not blaming any parts. We are not blaming the child for the behavior. We're looking behind the behavior and we're also not blaming our parents. So we talk to generational trauma. That doesn't mean there is blame at any level of the generation. But being in self-mode gives us the tools to then create that safe space in a much more effective way. And then we can reach out to the child and help and work with them. Wow. I mean, this is huge. This is incredible. Can you imagine if all parents everywhere were able to spot when their child goes into a part, but first go in and do their own work quickly so they can bring themselves back to self and then respond to their child. I that's a whole different, you know, that is interrupting reactive parenting, autopilot parenting, interrupting intergenerational stuff. Do you have any little tips or tricks that you use? You know, let's say you get triggered, but you realize I need to come back to myself before I respond. What do you do in those moments? So I pause, pause and sometimes I literally just breathe and I try not to respond immediately. I take some time. I notice what's happening, both for myself within me and the behavior that's coming, coming towards me, guess. And I try and approach things from a karma perspective and I feel more regulated without, without blaming what's happened. I understand, I understand the behavior that is maybe triggering for me. and see where that comes from. And that being in that calm space, being in the self mode, understanding my own reciprocal roles and understanding how my parts can then run the show, that helps me to just stay and stay back and respond in a more effective way. That's the main first step, I think. Okay. So the knowledge is there. So you know, okay, these are the different parts and then you pause and think, right, maybe this part's been activated. You try and stay in self, you breathe, you... notice your child and think, wonder what part is activated here. And with that space and time, you can then respond in a way that's a bit more accurate to what's actually happening rather than just reacting. Absolutely. I want to tell myself, what can I learn here? What can I learn from this behavior about myself? So particular child behavior that might be triggering for a parent is an opportunity to learn about that. In other relationships, we have an out-clause, whereas with the children, they are in our life. We can't say, can't be your parent anymore. It's something that I guess we are stuck, I can use a word in a context, we are stuck till the 18th or till we leave home. So it's an opportunity for us to grow and learn about ourselves and to mend and repair relationships. So through understanding difficult relationships, we get the chance to then repair our own stuff. So you can see it from that perspective as well. I love it. It's such a great way of looking at it that actually our children are almost going to help us learn about ourselves and they're going to give us so many opportunities to get triggered because that's the nature of parent-child connection. But if we do our own work, if we take those moments and almost see it as a gym, it's like going to the gym, for the moment there's a constant workout. Relational gym. Relational gym. And then you can end up with these muscles which can just help obviously the relationship with your child, but also help your relationship with yourself and then other relationships, probably friendships and then relationships with your own work, your passion, your purpose. I mean, it's such a great message actually that, and I suppose what might be helpful for parents is to the knowledge because it's easy to do that with, well, it's probably not easy to do this with the knowledge, but it's going to be a lot harder without the knowledge. So I think learning about parts, understanding that it's completely normal to have different parts. And then having your own strategies in those moments. So taking a breath, taking a pause, zooming out. Sometimes I sort of think about zoom out. So pretend you're like a bird flying over your situation with space. And you sort of notice, you know, as an onlooker, like an objective third party, you know, what's going on here. And then you may go, well, they're hungry. That's why they're moody. Or, yeah, I've got a big talk tomorrow. That's why I'm moody. And actually with that perspective, that space. It can kind of help. And do you feel that for your own nervous system to be able to do what you just said, you have to have done a lot of maintenance support. So you have to have good habits, a good lifestyle, whether it's thinking about your nutrition, hydration, exercise, nature, music, your own relational wellbeing. What are the things that sort of help you? so you can be in self when you really need to be. Yeah, absolutely. I think at a biological level, good sleep pattern, hydration, nutrition, all of those things, exercising, all of those things are stuff that I do for my own self-care. And that's very, very essential because unless I am in that best state of myself, I can't then really effectively parent a child. So I have to first do that for myself, get myself in the best biological state, and then work on my own stuff because every one of us we have childhood experiences that have been difficult, have been, I think we're all traumatized. We're all carrying lots of different levels of trauma and possibly invalidation and not being listened to without any blame on anyone really. And if we can work on that stuff, get ourselves in a psychologically better state of mind, then we have the best option to then work with our children. Couldn't agree more. And I think that's a really important point that, you know, Everyone is carrying wounds and stress to some degree or trauma. And it doesn't mean there's any blame from our parents because there's no parent can be perfect. know, no parent can meet the needs of all their children all the time, because that's just not the way human beings are. And our own parents have been carrying their own generational wounds. So actually everyone's just muggling with the resources and time and knowledge that they have. But But without doubt, we will have stuff of our own. So, I mean, I sort of think everyone should do a little bit of work. Maybe, you know, like folic acid when you're pregnant, it's almost like there should be like a folic acid for this stuff and actually going into parenting with some of this knowledge beforehand. And that's one of the visions of AttuneIn, the platform that I've built, is to sort of bring some of this knowledge to parents so that when they are triggered in those sleep deprived hormonally implosive moments because it's such a biological roller coaster what the human body goes through and it affects both parents, know, the way sleep impacts us. So, I mean, there's so much here and I could talk to you for hours, but I wondered how else, if somebody wanted to sort of learn more about what you're doing, how can people get in touch with you and what are the sort of projects that you're working on? So I'm working on a project with the Nervousness and Economy. So you can look at nervousnessandeconomy.com. And we have tools for various levels of engagement. And we look at what is the underlying capacity of the nervous system to be able to then create and sustain real change. So we make a distinction between temporary change, which could be just an expression of relief and sustainable change where the nervous system actually is in a much better state at a biological level to be able to make that change. So that work is happening. I run my private practice in Reading. and I'm based in Bakshar. So I do run educational workshops. You can just look my name up. I think any initiative that helps to educate people and like folic acid, it has to start from the time that you plan to have a child. That's when you start to look at your own self at least, if not earlier. Those are helpful things. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And we'll have links to your website and to the nervous system economy. near the podcast or where it's going to sit. But just to say, thank you so much. mean, you've shared so much wisdom, so many nuggets, so many, you know, these are evidence-based tools. know, cat therapy is an evidence-based talking therapy that's offered by the NHS. It's offered by private practitioners like yourself. So this, this is out there. think this conversation hopefully is going to help people realize that there's so many rich things that can help them out there and it can compliment their parenting journey. So. Thank you so much for your time and for your expertise. It's been so great to talk. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you.