Flusterclux With Lynn Lyons: For Pare...
Parenting isn't easy, and it's normal to worry. Lynn Lyons, therapist, author, and speaker is one of the world's experts on helping parents, kids, and teens manage anxiety. She talks with co-host and sister-in-law Robin Hutson in a weekly podcast full of laughs, and practical advice without the psychobabble. At the beginning of the pandemic, Lynn and Robin started the Flusterclux podcast when their parenting retreats went on hiatus, and they're now 2 years in, talking about anxiety and worry, their love for Mr. Rogers, and the crazy things the mental health field gets WRONG about anxiety.
Anxiety Expert Lynn Lyons has been a therapist for over 30 years. She's an author of 3 books with a new one coming out in October and has traveled around the US and Canada training hundreds of audiences teachers, school nurses, counselors and parents about managing anxiety.
Flusterclux represents that feeling of overwhelm. Each episode is filled with practical advice for parents how to better manage their worry and big feelings like anger and sadness so that they are modeling healthy emotional awareness.
Lynn answers listener questions and gives parents concrete strategies for developing the traits that are their kids' best defenses against anxiety and depression later in life: flexibility, resilience, autonomy, and problem solving. New episodes every Friday at 5AM EST.
Find us at flusterclux.com https://www.facebook.com/flusterclux https://www.instagram.com/flusterclux/
226
Dads, Depression, and Anxiety
So often the moms assume the role of supporting the family’s health and mental health, but dads have a critical role to play. What is that role? And how do you encourage your partner to step into that role? When a man is unsure of how to talk about emotions with his children, what should he say? What if he doesn’t want to talk about them with anyone? In this episode, we get raw and deep reflecting on the men most dear to us.How do we raise boys that have the permission and the know-how to connect with others? And how do we help them now become the available and emotionally literate dads of tomorrow?
48 min
227
Summer Camp & Separation Anxiety
After an atypical year of intense togetherness with our kids, parents may be out of practice being apart from their kids. Today we talk about the separation anxiety parents feel around summer camp, because it really is harder on us that it is on them. How can we best prepare our own kids leaving home for somewhere new? How we can manage our worry when our kids are out of our sight? Why is it so important to learn this skill as a parent?
40 min
228
The Anxious Parent: When It's One of You or Bo...
The Anxious Parent: Most families have one, some families have two. But what important role does a non-anxious parent play? How do worry and control often dictate parenting dynamics that put stress on a relationship? How can you tell if anxiety is in charge of your household, and what can you do about it?
37 min
229
The Real Truth About Phobias and How To Manage ...
Emetaphobia, Astraphobia, Autophobia. Some kids became afraid of a variety of things: throwing up, needles, dogs, thunderstorms, the dark. As parents we want to help, we want to make our kids feels safe and comfortable. We want to address the worry. But how we do that often just makes the worry and fear stronger. In this episode I ask Lynn to explain her effective approach of addressing the process of worry and not the content. Because when we try to address the specifics of what our kids worry about, we invite anxiety to move in and take hold.
35 min
230
Social Anxiety Or Social Awkwardness: What's No...
Do you or your child have Social Anxiety or are we now pathologizing shyness, too? Learn the different between real signs of social anxiety or just a more introverted temperament. What skills do we need to teach our kids to help them connect with others?As we leave our quarantined isolation, some kids might be feeling out of practice being with other kids and teens again. Hear Lynn tell us how to support them.
38 min
231
What every parent should understand about the c...
In honor of May 1st's deadline for many college-bound seniors to make their choice, Lynn shares advice from her perspective over the last few decades of watching her adolescent clients go to college and struggle with anxiety. For parents, how to support academic success for their kids in a healthy way can be a challenge, so Lynn offers advice for parents of kids of all ages.
29 min
232
Panic Attacks Vs. Anxiety Attacks: What's the D...
Panic Attacks. While they are incredibly common, they are often mislabeled and misunderstood. Teenagers, even adults, will casually throw the label around.What’s the difference between those really powerful moments of anxiety and a panic attack?How do you help your family members when they experience them?
43 min
233
Let Your Kids Fail; Don't Let Your Kids Drown: ...
Mistakes and Failures can be some of life’s best teachers. When it comes to letting our kids fail, how do we know the difference between letting them fail and letting them drown? What do you do if your teenager hasn’t mastered the skill of asking for help? Or, what do you say when your teen doesn’t even care?
31 min
234
When Your Teen's Friends Are In Crisis: A Guide...
At some point one of your children’s friends will be in crisis. How do you help your teens help their friends? How do you teach them to develop boundaries with those friends? When your child shares that a friend is feeling suicidal or cutting or other self-harming behaviors, what do you do?
45 min
235
School Anxiety: How To Help Our Kids & Teens
Many families are feeling anxious about changes to their school routine, both kids and parents. How do we support our kids and teens and help them manage their worry about going back to school? And when does this worry become more serious and lead to school avoidance and school refusal?
36 min
236
Families & The Power of Listening
We talk a lot about the power of words...teaching kids to put words to their feelings, modeling emotional literacy. But the flip side of talking—the critical flip side—is listening. What happens when you don’t feel heard? What’s the toll on your mental health, royal or not? When our kids and teens talk, can we tap into the full power of listening? We discuss the way the public health conversation may change after Oprah's interview with Megan and Harry.
17 min
237
The Bad Advice That Makes Anxiety Worse
There's a lot of bad advice out there to weed through when so many claim to be parenting or anxiety experts. But some well-meaning advice will actually strengthen your child's anxious habits, and Lynn Lyons explains why.
40 min
238
COVID Fatigue & The Physical Symptoms of Anxiety
All parents need this pep talk about managing COVID fatigue. And we recast a very popular episode. Anxiety shows up in the body—headaches, tummy troubles, and more. We talk about how understanding the mind body connection can help manage the physical symptoms of anxiety for you and your kids.
40 min
239
Parenting, Perfectionism, and Anxiety: How We R...
Perfectionism and anxiety create a torture chamber we don't want to model for kids. When we reward excellence, how do we know when it becomes toxic? We explain how a parents can check their own behaviors as well as what to look for and say to their kids. Robin and Lynn discuss recent episodes on the Anxiety vaccine, and ways parents can prepare their children better for difficult and awkward feelings.
38 min
240
Romance & Resentment: Co-Parenting Tips You Nee...
This pandemic has disproportionately impacted mothers. It's putting our relationships to the test. So as we work to support our kids, there are traps we all fall into our our relationships. We talk about learning to ask for help in the right way, dropping that defensiveness, reducing that resentment, and how improving your co-parenting will help your kids more than you know,
41 min
241
High Anxiety & Good Grades: Our Toxic Achieveme...
We end Season 2 with a bang of an episode. Finishing off our conversation about preventing anxiety in our kids, we tackle the toxicity of our achievement culture. It’s so normalized it’s invisible to us. And we answer a listener question about how to develop a strong work ethic in her 8 year old twins. Lynn has a must hear answer for kids of any age.
41 min
242
The Anxiety Vaccine pt 2: What Parents Can Do R...
As we face a mental health crisis alongside the pandemic that we really focus on the emotional management skills that we can teach our children. It's an effective way to immunize them against emotional difficulties by talking about their emotions, raising their awareness of them, and parents modeling emotional literacy. Lynn discusses the commons trait that most anxious parents have in common in how they raise anxious kids.
52 min
243
The Anxiety Vaccine: Can Parents Prevent Anxiet...
While we wait for a vaccine distribution plan to address our global pandemic, there is a mental health crisis happening simultaneously. Our numbers for anxiety were alarming even before 2020, and now, yikes. But there ways parents can promote a skill-based immunization strategy for our family’s mental health. Is there really a vaccine for anxiety?
29 min
244
Supporting Teens in the Pandemic: How They Need...
Teens are part of the age group hardest hit by the impact of the pandemic. Missing out on both the social development and high school's rituals, teens are losing motivation, sleep, and connection. Here's how to help them.
43 min
245
Helping Kids With Shame & Self-Harm and the Par...
How do you support your children who feel shame very intensely? They feel shame so intensely that it might include self harming practices. What do you say when children say "I feel no worth?" Or "I can't believe I did that," or "I'm so stupid." How do you support your children who handle their mistakes in such a way that's self-punitive, and they're unforgiving with themselves? Also, we watched the movie soul and there is a message in that movie that we want all parents to hear.
43 min
246
The Most Powerful Resolution: Earning a Black B...
At the end of a stressful year after paying tribute to those in the mental health field, Lynn gives us a road map for what personal growth really looks like. From therapy, to books, to podcasts, when we do this work, what are we working towards? What does it look like when you become a black belt in emotional management?
31 min
247
How Silliness and Laughter Can Be Your Best Par...
Silliness has never been a more a critical parenting tool than in 2020. Here's how to use it to make manage your anxiety and make your kids feel safe. Creating "joy" with your family may sound like too much pressure, so we break it down to a few 2 minute increments of joy. And we discuss the toxic humor to avoid.
32 min
248
Tough Dynamics At The Holidays: Blended Familie...
For some families, holidays bring out their toughest dynamics. How do divorced parents manage a blended holiday putting their kids first? What if you have a house of angry teenagers with one of them recently in crisis? Is it possible to enjoy your holiday at home when all they want to do is fight? On a lighter note, what secrets does Gilligan's Island hold for every quarantined family?
33 min
249
Covid's Excuse: The Family You Won't Miss This ...
What if COVID is giving you a pass this year that relieves you? What if you're glad to miss a family holiday? One listener hates Christmas because of her overbearing and difficult mother? How do you set boundaries with your parents? And is it ever too late?
17 min
250
Santaphobia: Why Santa Freaks Some Kids Out
Santaphobia is real. Santa can freak some kids out. How do you help your child who’s afraid Santa will bring COVID into the house? How do you help the child who doesn’t want to hear anything at all about Santa? And how can the Santa story creep into toxic territory when used as a threatening or shaming tool? Do you do that? What’s a healthy way to talk about Santa?
26 min