Dr. Becky Kennedy: evaluation

Transcript context

…So the advice here is, even if it may not feel like your kid wants you to just tell them what to do or your team wants to have opinions and have a big say, in reality, the human brain seeks somebody to lead them. I think that's exactly right. And I think we can all think back on our life. And again, you rarely say thank you to these people, but if you think back on really hard moments, or I don't know, if I was out of control at some party, and I don't know, I was being mean to people, I was saying awful things. Who knows? Maybe someone's drunk. An act of love in that moment would be, at least if it was me and my husband, picking me up and carrying me out, kind of like, "I'm not going to let you self-destruct." And if I was like, "No, I'm fine," I might even look back later and think, "Why did you let me make that decision?" I'll share a story, because some of this comes from it. I think about this teenager I was working with in private practice and she came to me, I'm just doing a first session, "Okay, tell me what to bring you here." She's like, "Well, you can see on my arms, I'm cutting." I was like, "Okay, keep going." And I was like, "Well, how long have you been doing that? " She goes, "Two years." And I said, "You just said I'm the first therapist you've ever seen. So what's gone on in the last two years?" She was so snarky. And she goes, "Oh, wow. My parents tried me to send me to a therapist two years ago, but I said to them, "Oh, so you think I'm the messed up one in the family, and you can send me. I'm just going to lie the whole time and waste your money." My heart always races when I think about this moment. It's so visceral still. And something in me, I don't know, I was on my game that day. I was like, "Becky, just be quiet. Don't say anything." And I don't know, 10, 15 seconds later, everything changed for her. She looked down, and then she looked up, and she just goes, "Can you believe they let me make that decision?" She felt so betrayed and so not taken care of. And it just made me realize, at our worst moments, first of all, at our worst moments we speak, I think, our fears, not our wishes, Number One. And at our worst moments, we're not a good place to make good decisions for ourselves. And we don't want to be punished, but sometimes it is an act of love. And I tell this to people very explicitly when they're like, "I know my teenager needs to go to therapy, but they're refusing." And I'll give them an exact script, "Here's what you're going to say." And it's some version of, "Look, I am going to drive you every Thursday to therapy. Whatever you do in the room, whether you lie, whether you're silent, that's not on me. But my Number One job is making decisions that I think are good for you even if you're not happy. That's how much I care about you. And this is one of those times. " Every parent who told me they'd done that, their kids on some level, they're like, "I needed that." And I think the equivalent in the workplace is, there are moments when things are really turbulent, when people are, they're saying different things because they're anxious, and they're looking for a leader to kind of say, "Hey, I've heard this all. here are moments when things are really turbulent, when people are, they're saying different things because they're anxious, and they're looking for a leader to kind of say, "Hey, I've heard this all. Here's what I'm doing." You might even say, "I'm not going to lie to you. Do I have complete conviction that this is right? No. But I've put it all together, and this is what we're going with, and I feel good about this direction. We'll reassess in a month. Let's go do this, team." And I think everyone is waiting in certain moments for someone to show up that way.…

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