The Family Express Kathryn De Bruin and Ronda Evans

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest is Preston Herdt, LMFTA. For this episode, suicidal ideation or thoughts is abbreviated as SI.

All Aboard !
1:10 Preston tells us about how we got started working with youth with SI.
4:00 Preston describes from the beginning that he helps parents "show up the best way they can with their children." He is listening for the emotional pain that is under the suicidal ideation.
5:30 Kathryn and Preston describe that SI in your child can be experienced as "uh oh!" moment by parents, and then the parents' fears are activated and the parent can go on high alarm.
9:50 Preston walks us through the general process of supporting parents, assessing the child and making appropriate referrals.
11:45. Preston describes having an emergency preparedness or safety plan for youth who have a history of suicidal ideation.
13:35 Kathryn and Preston discuss helping parents to assess accurately if this alarm is truly reduced and educating parents about the specific warning signs for their child.
14:40 Preston explores common fears that parents have and how their fears are connected to their attempt to understand if the risk has been reduced: 
19:00. Preston emphasizes the EFFT therapist needs to build a working alliance and trust with the whole family, and that the whole family, not just the child/youth, need support and stabilization.
21:15 Kathryn and Preston describe the different family experience between an externalizing child and an internalizing child.
25:30 Kathryn describes the importance of exploring a child's need such as having someone who is willing to explore and tolerate "the darkness". Kathryn uses the metaphor of a basement.
28:50 Preston describes the importance of the felt sense of emotional safety that a child feels in the therapy room that fosters the child's willingness to explore their own basement of darkness with a stronger, wiser, other person.
29:30 Kathryn and Preston explore that youth who are having SI really want to talk that "darkenss" out with someone. While that can be scary for others, Preston reassures families that talking about is helpful, and he dispels a common myth.
34:30. Kathryn makes explicit that Preston's approach to the assessment and safety planning process is in itself therapeutic.
38:05. Kathryn summarizes key elements of Preston's approach including slowing down the pace, focusing on the goal of de-escalation, being a firm stable presence, and seeking to understand.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin
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You can follow Ronda Evans
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You can follow Preston 
Email: preston@renovasandiego.com
Website
Psychology Today Profile 
Instagram: therapywith_ph
Facebook: Preston Herdt Therapy

Welcome back for the next adventure of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest is Dr. Yamilka Urquiza.

All Aboard !

1:41  Dr. Urquiza tells us about her upbringing in Cuba in a multi-generational households.
10:50 Her research findings included a reciprocity of caregiving between the generations.
13:00 Another finding was for those now grown adults who had been a helper-caregiver during the ages of 8-13 as kids, they now had a positive attitude toward caregiving. Another finding was increased empathy.
16:30 Dr. Urquiza shares her childhood experience of caregiving for her great grandpa in Cuba.
18:14 She describes how through caregiving role/experiences, kids learn to think about others and the experiences of others and thus they grow their perspective-taking skill and empathy development.
18:55 Kathryn folds what she is learning about empathy-building in kids in Sweden through perspective-taking conversations.
19:48 Dr. Urquiza describes the experience of the research participants who described having their own empathy and consideration of others expanded through the caregiving role/experience.
20:24 Kathryn describes the multi-generational context her own kids are being raised in and how she helps them grow their empathy and perspective-taking through conversations with them.
23:49 Kathryn expands their multi-perspective context to immigrant families.
25:10 Ronda describes her sadness about her kid being raised physically separated from his grandparents, and thus this opportunity for exposure to multiple perspectives is more limited.
27:09 Kathryn describes how attachment can be developed across time and space.
31:01. Dr. Yamilka describes how her son now, without prompting, goes to the nearby senior facility to pay saxophone for the elderly.
33:44 Dr. Yamilka describes her joy in finding this positive benefit of fostering empathy from caregiving when previous research had found negative impact and stigma.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin
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You can follow Ronda Evans
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You can follow Dr. Yamilka Urquiza

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest is Allie Zangari, LMHC, LMFT from Florida.
All Aboard !
1:05 Allie tells us how she applied EFT for couples to EFT for families.
3:00 Allie and Kathryn talk about how the flexibility in the EFFT session structure is helpful and at times can bring on overwhelm for the EFFT therapist. They begin to explore the duality of the in inherent EFFT map and structure with the freedom that EFFT offers.
8:00 Allie shares where she can get stuck: in helping parents become accessible, and identifying and accessing parental intent.
10:45 Kathryn validates Allie that when "mining for parental intent" is a struggle, one intervention we do have is to make that explicit in an empathic way, and this piece of work for parental intent may be done in individual sessions.
19:15. Allie and Kathryn discuss the importance of being transparent about emotional safety with a teen or adult child is critical in helping the teen or adult child in adjusting their expectations.
24:55. Allie explores how parents can continue to have influence on their children as they grow up be embracing two goals.
27:00. Kathryn describes the importance of parents reflecting on how they are perceived by others when the parent is in their protective strategy.
27:35 Ronda tells a story from her life about when her child reflected back to her about her protective strategy.
33:07 Kathryn tells a story from her life about when her protective strategy was reflected back to her.
36:10 Allie empathizes that secure attachment comes from the process of rupture and repair. All parents (and people) will have reactive moments and it is in the repair that holds so much attachment value. 
37:10 Kathryn describes the depth and breadth of what can be included in a repair conversation such "what advice do you have for me as a parent? What could I be working on?"
38:09 We explore the complexity that an EFFT therapist needs to respond to when a reactive moment occurs in session in stage 1. We describe how we can keep (or regain :-) our emotional balance in these reactive moments by narrating the structure and safety priorities outloud.
Thank you for listening! 
Kathryn is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.
You can follow Kathryn de Bruin
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You can follow Ronda Evans
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You can follow Allie Zangari
Email:    allisonzangari@gmail.com
Website:   zangaricounseling.com

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Listen along today as our guest Berenice Leon-Fonseca from San Diego, California shares her experience in working with families going through high conflict divorce cases using a family systems perspective. Our conversation is complete with Berenice’s process in the initial stage of assessment and alliance building.

All Aboard !

1:32 Berenice tells us the path she took to get to this destination.
5:19 Parental buy-in starts with a therapist who believes that the co-parenting relationship needs to be the focus.
6:14 Building a co-parenting relationship starts with the intake call.
7:20 The miracle question in the intake call
11:50 In the intake call, building alliance in these families means emphasizing to the parents that they have a voice with you as the family therapist
16:04 The first session is a parent-only session
20:00 To guide the treatment plan, Berenice will follow a court order including how much to involve a parent or whether or not to reach out to a parent
23:00 Getting access to the family system will be slower and the conceptualization will be slower, but it will get the family farther and faster.
23:50 Berenice tells us about a real life experience in which slowing down and leaning in to a parents’ experience can reveal so much about a family’s struggle including the negative cycle
32:35 Berenice talks about how therapists can equip themselves including facing our own fears
and getting support and hope from leaning on others.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin
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You can follow Ronda Evans
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You can follow Berenice
Email: Berenice@renovasandiego.com
Website

Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. This episode’s adventure takes us to the diverse experience of neurodivergence. Our guest today is Kat Austin, LPC, LAC, LMFT from Boulder, Colorado, USA.

All Aboard !

2:40 Kat opens with the vulnerability that it is to be a parent, and that parental shame gets evoked.
4:14 Kat describes the anecdote for shame.
7:15 How shame can show up in a neurotypical parent and a neurodiverse parent.
9:58 Exploring the loss, the discovery of differences in brains, and psychoeducation and how making the implicit explicit for the whole family system (parents, siblings, grandparents, and more) can be helpful and organizing.
11:58 The family is learning together in real-time. Help the family adopt the reframe of discovery and experimentation
13:37 Families are getting stuck around difficulty with emotional regulation. Parents need to have their own strong emotional regulation skills. The goal is for the “most responsivity” to stay online.
14:46 Parents can get blocked by grief.
15:11 Families can struggle around organizational and structural needs such as sequencing, hyperfocus and time blindness.
19:00 Recommendations, resources and referrals for families.
22:50 How can we help families when they don’t know or recognize that neurodivergence is showing up in the family? 
28:15 Kat discusses the philosophical question of labeling or diagnosing, or not.
29:40 Being diagnosed or treated for ADHD can lower risk of depression, anxiety, and substance use and can improve self-identity and self-worth.
32:20 Advocate for your family, especially in the school system.
Thank you for listening! 
Kathryn is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

You can follow Kathryn de Bruin
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You can follow Ronda Evans
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You can follow Kat Austin
Website
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