Reflective Parenting by Curious Neuron

What the Dying Can Teach Us About Living More Fully with Dr. Kathy Zhang

• Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. • Season 8 • Episode 2

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What can the dying teach us about living? In this transformative conversation, Dr. Kathy Zhang, a palliative care physician, shares profound insights from her work with patients at the end of life that can revolutionize our approach to parenting and emotional wellbeing.

Dr. Zhang reveals how witnessing death daily has paradoxically enhanced her appreciation for life's simple joys. Rather than creating fear, regular exposure to mortality has normalized it, allowing her to find deep gratitude in mundane moments like "just waking up." This perspective shift offers parents a powerful lens through which to view their daily interactions with their children.

The conversation takes an unexpected turn as Dr. Zhang introduces her "bathtub metaphor" to explain the crucial difference between rest and restoration. Many parents mistakenly believe that "doing nothing" on weekends will recharge them, then wonder why they feel just as depleted on Monday. She explains that rest merely "plugs the drain" to prevent further energy loss, while true restoration actively "adds water to the bathtub" through meaningful connection with yourself or others.

About Dr. Zhang:

Dr. Luyi Kathy Zhang is a hospice & palliative care physician, TEDx speaker & hypnotist. She has comforted thousands of dying patients and held space for their deepest secrets, biggest regrets and final wishes. She’s made it her mission to share these life-changing insights so people can benefit from deathbed wisdom while they’re still young and healthy. 

Follow Dr. Zhang on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/dr.luyikathyzhang/

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Speaker 1:

Hello, dear friend, welcome to the Reflective Parent Podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. If you are a parent that is truly struggling with feeling like you, have the skills to parent your child, or feeling overwhelmed and stressed because you can't cope with your emotions and never really learned how to regulate your emotions, then you are at the right place. I am a mom of three from Montreal, canada, and I have a PhD in neuroscience. I am the founder and CEO of Curious Neuron, and the goal of everything that we do here is to help you learn how to regulate your emotions. That is my own specialty in terms of teaching you how to regulate the self-awareness piece and, more importantly, how to cope with your stress, how to manage the stress and emotions that come with parenting. And, more importantly, the reason why we recently changed the name of this podcast to Reflective Parenting is because of the model that we've been creating inside Curious Neuron, where lots of parents that we speak with are trying their best to follow positive parenting, but it's not working, and so I think that the alternative to this there's nothing wrong with positive parenting, but I think that we don't have the skills. We have not learned how to cope with our emotions, yet we're being told to stay calm and support our child through their own emotions, and so it creates a lot of stress and overwhelm for a parent, and so if you are somebody that struggles with that, then you are at the right place. I'm here to help you learn how to regulate your emotions, and we touch on all aspects of wellbeing, because all of these aspects will support, nurture or impact or influence in a negative way your capacity to deal with emotions and stress, and so today we are taking a different angle. It's maybe a darker side for some. Maybe talking about death is uncomfortable, but I think that we need to kind of do this thought activity a little bit and work on this together, because my guest today had such a positive outlook on life, even though she works with people who are dying, and I thought that it would be an interesting twist to what we bring here at Curious Neuron as well as this podcast.

Speaker 1:

So, before we begin, I'd like to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute, as well as the McConnell Foundation, for supporting the Curious Neuron the switch has. It's too fresh for supporting the Reflective Parenting Podcast, which used to be called the Curious Neuron Podcast, but I am so grateful for these two organizations as I am grateful for you. The downloads, number of downloads and weekly downloads have been increasing, so I hope that you are sharing this podcast with many of your friends and family members and coworkers. I know that when I sent out an email last week saying that the title of the email was Goodbye, curious Neuron Podcast, I got a few emails saying what are you doing? Don't stop it. But you had to click and read the email to show that I was saying goodbye to the Curious Neuron Podcast, but we were saying hello to Reflective Parenting Podcast, which is the same podcast I'm not changing. However, if we do not continue to grow this podcast, then the funding will stop it's.

Speaker 1:

I don't say this as a threat. I'm saying this because it's the reality of it, and so please, if you have not done so yet, rate the podcast on spotify or on apple podcasts. And if you want a freebie and you're doing this and you want to leave a review as well, send me an email at info at curious neuron dot com. I will send you Meltdown Mountain, which is our most popular PDF on our website. You can get the link to all of that down below if you would like, but I would also like to invite you to follow us on Instagram, if you are there, at curious underscore neuron, as well, as you can follow us at Reflective Parenting Podcast. You can follow us at Reflective Parenting Podcast, and if you're somebody listening to this podcast and you truly struggle with figuring out why you are easily triggered or you go from zero to 100 with your child, or that you just feel so overwhelmed with trying to implement positive parenting, feeling like you're keeping your you know, staying calm and cool collected, but your child isn't really responding well to that and you're having trouble with discipline, then maybe you'd like to join the Reflective Parenting Club.

Speaker 1:

What we do there is I meet with you every single week. We are a small group of parents that meet. There's, you know, lots of people that are in the club, but not everybody joins the weekly calls, because there are people from around the world, and so if you are somebody that wants to get support, we have a course. But, more importantly, I meet with you every week because I know that it's not easy and a course does not suffice. You need somebody to speak with. You need to say, hey, this is what I did last week, or this is what I had trouble with. You need somebody to kind of bounce that off of, to get, um, uh, to help you gain, I guess, a new perspective or see something differently, and so that's why it didn't feel right to just put out a course. I needed to show up every week and be there with you as you are working through our program that covers the four domains of emotional intelligence, all backed by science, because everything here at Curious Neuron, including this podcast, is backed by science. All right, let's move on to our guest. I'm really excited to share this conversation with you.

Speaker 1:

Dr Kathy Zhang is somebody that I came across on social media and dug into her work. She is a palliative care physician and the work that she does is not easy. But, more importantly, I felt that through her content that she was putting out there there, that we had a lot to learn from her, specifically around rest and restoration, which she's going to talk about in our conversation. I just feel that many of us sit back and say I'm doing absolutely nothing this weekend, and then Monday comes around and we still feel tired and exhausted and, like we didn't do anything that helped us, you know, regain some of that energy. So she has an amazing analogy around that. More importantly, I know that many of us are struggling right now, and I think that this thought activity of picturing the end allows us to come back into the present and say, hey, these are things I need to change before the end comes, and it's not to be morbid or dark, but I do think that there's space for us to have these thought activities, and so I personally really enjoyed my conversation with her. When I came up the stairs because I recorded my basement my husband was like you're, you're, you're. You have this big smile on your face and he knew who I was talking with. And he's like do you have a new perspective on life? And he was saying it as a joke, but my response was yeah, I do. I just felt that the conversation I had with her gave me a new lens to look at certain things from, and I hope that you get the same feeling at the end of this conversation. So, without letting you wait any longer, please enjoy my conversation with Dr Kathy Zhang.

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Curious Neuron Podcast. And, as promised in my intro, here I am with Dr Kathy Zhang. Welcome to the Curious Neuron Podcast Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and I'm really excited about this conversation because you're bringing in an angle that I've never brought in before, and so your work is interesting, I think, to many of us, and also scary to many of us, and we wonder, like, how heavy is that? And so can you. I'm always interested to know how people ended up where they are today. What was your path that brought you to the work you do today?

Speaker 2:

Oh, such a good question so I'll try to keep it short. I am an only child daughter of Chinese immigrants, and growing up the pinnacle of success in America was to become a doctor. So I was like, okay, going to go do that. I did that, trained in internal medicine, worked for four years as what we call a hospitalist someone who cares for people who are sick enough to be admitted to the hospital Loved it and then realized at some point that it wasn't providing the kind of meaning that I really wanted and I wasn't having the kind of interactions I really wanted.

Speaker 2:

At some point I felt like it was like a revolving door of patch-up jobs and I wasn't getting deeper. So I went back into training for hospice and palliative care and now I do that, which means I take care of sick and or dying people in the hospital. And along that way, when I first got into hospice and palliative care, no-transcript, no intent on being a coach or a therapist I'm not a therapist but a coach or a hypnotist and now I'm just sharing what I know to help people be able to live a little bit easier amongst the day to day.

Speaker 1:

It's an interesting journey that brought you to this, and a hard one, right With hardship, and that's what kind of guided you to where you are today. It's really interesting in terms of you know death because as a parent, I remember after giving birth to my firstborn, the concept of death became more apparent to me for some reason after the birth. My grandfather had passed away a few months before that and I had experienced for the first time, witnessed death. I had my hand on his chest when it happened, but that wasn't. It didn't make me sad about death, it made me realize that that was part of life. But then witnessing't make me sad about death. It made me realize that that was part of life. But then witnessing life made me sad about death.

Speaker 1:

It was this really weird battle that I had in the postpartum phase or interesting battle, I guess, in my mind of the sadness but many parents that I speak with feel the same way in the sense that this new life brings up this fear of death. What has been now that you are in this field and you've been for a while? Has it changed your perception, or maybe it's the same as before? What is your sort of vision on that in terms of death?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, it's so interesting, the duality of it, because cognitively, I think we're all aware that we're all not going to make it out right, that we're all going to die at some point. But just the, I think, the dissociation between like okay, that's in the future sometime, and then when you have some big life change, like having a child right, I just adopted a dog a few days ago and I know it's not like the same thing at all and it was like, oh, I'm responsible for this life, this being yes, exactly, right, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And the associated emotions and the anxiety that goes along with that can be really jarring to someone's nervous system. I'll say that being around death so often now has made me appreciate life just really bland things. But two also is that I don't think I think most people, if they're lucky, will probably have a handful of experiences with death in their immediate family or friends or that sort of thing. But when you do the work every single day, you're like everyone dies every single day, every minute of every day. It just desensitizes you to the fear of it and normalizes it in a way, not saying that it's not tragic or going to have a lot of negative emotions, because with death there's also so much love and grief that comes with it, but it just makes it like, oh, it just happens to everyone and it's a little bit easier to handle, a little bit Sure.

Speaker 1:

I get that you mentioned being desensitized, so I guess, yes, of course you're around it, but it seems to be also that it kind of brings your awareness a little bit higher in terms of life. Right, what are some things that you've changed in your life, given the experiences that you've had with people who are dying?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So one thing is that, like every morning that I wake up, I'm like, oh, I woke up. Today. That I wake up, I'm like, oh, I woke up today. It sounds really silly, but when you see as much as I do with people who are much younger I'm in my 30s but people who are teens in their 20s, people who are my age, people who are much older, who just are walking, they're fine one day and something happens right, they get hit by a bus, they have an accident, or they just get diagnosed with some terrible disease.

Speaker 2:

And I'm here just being like, oh okay, I woke up today, check okay, body's okay, I'm still breathing, I'm still walking, I have a home, all these things and it just makes you really grateful for the little things. And it sounds so cliche, and I know it does, and from experience from people who have, let's say, had near death experiences, they're just like, oh my God, I see life so differently. You know, I try to make a point to tell my husband or people that I love, that I care about them, and tell them to their face while they're still alive, instead of saving it for, let's say, their eulogy, or you know a special occasion, because you know every day is a special occasion.

Speaker 2:

if you're like, oh man, I could have been dead, you know.

Speaker 1:

It's true, you're like, oh man, I could have been dead. It's true. I find, when it comes to happiness and wellbeing, this is something that I focus on so much with parents here at Curious Neuron, and sometimes we get stuck in this sort of cycle of I'll be happy when I get that home, I'll be happy when I can bring my family on this trip, or whatever it is, and then we get stuck in that like living in that future, possible future. You talked about gratitude and just waking up and saying like, whew, okay, thank you, whatever it is, I'm just happy to be here in that gratitude. What are some changes that we could make?

Speaker 1:

Because many people are stuck in the I'll be happy when sort of mindset and I feel that we miss the little things that are in front of us, even moments of joy. I tell parents to sit in a moment of mindset and I feel that we miss the little things that are in front of us, even moments of joy. I tell parents to sit in a moment of joy. And a moment of joy could be you just finished cleaning your kitchen and like, oh yeah, that's a nice kitchen, it's nice and clean. Like, sit with it. We forget that and so we miss those opportunities because we're still waiting for the when I get that or when this happens.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so and and again, I just want to normalize that, because it's in our society and that sort of thing, especially if we're achievers and we're go-getters, it's just like okay, that's just what we do, right? You, you have the goalposts here, you make the goal and then you just move it farther away so that you know it, it gives you drive and that sort of thing, but it also, like you said, makes you miss out on what's actually happening around us, right? So some of the things that I do is I'll ask myself a question, and these questions can be a little bit morbid, but they really do reframe us, because that's exactly what something like death does, right, reframe us, because that's exactly what something like death does, right? It's just a big perspective shift for us and it's so tied with emotions that the combination of those two really jolts us and we're like, oh man, okay, maybe let me not think about like the future and maybe sit in the present a little bit. So one of the things I say is just ask yourself, what if this is the last time I get to do something or experience something, right? So what if this is the last time you get to watch your child eat, right. How different is that experience going to be? How are you going to savor that differently? Are you going to be thinking about all the things that you have to do? You're going to be like, no, I'm watching you eat every single little thing that comes into that tiny little mouth of yours right, or throw the peas to the ground Right or whatever.

Speaker 1:

It is like chocolate sauce everywhere.

Speaker 2:

So just that question can really help center us in the present moment, because most of us are so distracted, our brains are so hyperactive that it's hard to be in the present moment because we're always processing information and that sort of thing. So that's one simple thing to just ground ourselves in this moment and try to bring it a little bit more sensory and see if that helps us feel like, oh okay, yeah, I feel a little better about being where I am right now.

Speaker 1:

So what would be the other two that we can kind of ask ourselves, because I think these are like the one that you just mentioned, I think they're really important in kind of reminding us about that moment and like living in that moment. So what else can you kind of ask yourselves for that? Or the mindset shift?

Speaker 2:

So the couple of others that in my head it's kind of just like bringing death a little bit closer because it's just thinking about it that way and I talked about these kind of in my TEDx talk.

Speaker 2:

So basically one would be what would I do or what would I think or how would I feel if I were on my deathbed? What would be important to me if I knew that I was dying or if I knew that this person had six months to live? You know, because I think a lot of times again, death feels so far away. So if we bring it a little bit closer, it clarifies things for a lot of people. And people are like, oh, you know what, if that person had six months to live, maybe I'll reach out to them, maybe I'll reconnect with them, maybe I will, maybe we'll just kind of forgive each other, or something like that. Because that's what happens when people do realize they're dying, they're like, oh my God, I need to fix this relationship that I've abandoned for 20 years, and a lot of times at that point it can be a little late.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if you don't mind me going a little bit deeper on that, I know there was one of your posts that talked about either you moved closer to your parents or you see them more often, and I know that could be really complicated for some people because of the relationship right. And so they'll say things like well, I'm not close with my family, or many parents feel lonely, they don't have a lot of friends and they feel that they haven't put enough time into sort of nurturing the relationships that they have in their lives or their friendships. Is this something you've heard about?

Speaker 1:

You know, thinking about those moments on our deathbed, one of my grandfathers, when he was on his deathbed, he said he regretted working too hard, and not because of the working too hard when his kids were young, he didn't get to see them grow up. And he said that those were his two regrets. And it just makes me think he had that regret, but he was not close to them at all, he really didn't know them. Yeah, and so I understand that that's what kind of shifted my life a little bit, because I didn't have children at that time and then I had three and I said I'm not going to have that regret, and so I left academia to stay home with the kids. I took a really dramatic shift to that, but I didn't want to have that regret. So is the connecting with people something you hear often when somebody is under deathbed?

Speaker 2:

Yes, you really nailed that one with that word connection, right, if you think about all of the regrets that people say at the end of life.

Speaker 2:

Some people probably have heard Bronnie Ware with her book the Five Regrets of the Dying, and I see that all the time. But if you really boil it down, it's all about connection. It's either connection to self I wish I had been more true to myself, I wish I had, you know, been more authentic, I wish I hadn't let other people's judgment kind of make me not be myself or it's connection to others. I wish I hadn't worked so hard, I wish I'd been there with my kids more often, I wish I hadn't let these relationships, friendships kind of go sour or just fade away. And so when we really boil it down, it's all about how we're relating to ourselves and to other people and that's what everyone really wants and we know through research and everything that connection is what helps us regulate our emotions better. It helps mitigate trauma. All of these things are so related and in our modern day society it's so easy to be isolated or to feel isolated. And technology is wonderful and sometimes it makes it harder to have those real connections.

Speaker 1:

Right and we get so stuck in the social media. It's not really social, it's not allowing us to kind of get out there and, do you know, speak to people. And this past summer I took the time to interview 100 parents to see like what's going on in parents' lives, and the number one thing that came out was that they felt lonely, that they didn't feel connected to somebody, that they didn't feel that they had a support system and people to reach out to. And so this idea of having that regret later on I love the idea that you have of this sort of thought, activity, right, of putting ourselves a little closer to that death and saying like, what would I change? What regret would I have? And if you do feel lonely, I feel that we have to take initiative, right, and say like, well, I don't want to have that regret. How can I change things so that I could, yeah, not have it one day when I'm dying?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that's what you do really well too is that you have this membership for parents right.

Speaker 2:

And again back to a couple of days ago, I literally was freaking out when I got my dog. I understand, and I had a traumatic experience in the past when I had adopted one. I was much younger and I was a very tumultuous time in my life and we know that the body holds on to emotions, right and trauma, and so I did not expect for me to freak out the way that I did and I used a lot of tools to help emotionally regulate myself. And what really got me through it was connection. It was talking to other dog owners, it was reading Reddit posts and forums about people who have gone through similar things and realizing like, oh okay, I'm not alone, I'm not, you know, freaking out over nothing, and I think having that bond with other parents and knowing that it's just part of this life cycle of being a parent and it's supposed to be hard and it is really difficult, I think really helps people be able to work through challenges a little bit easier.

Speaker 1:

Right, let's talk about that a little bit more. That was the post that really brought me to you and made me say I need to chat with her. You said that you wish in your 20s, you wish you knew the importance of recognizing and regulating emotions. It is the core of what I do as work, and just hearing you say that you wish you would have had these skills before really resonated with me. So what do you mean when you say that and what led to that? You wish you would have had these skills before really resonated with me. So what do you mean when you say that and what led to that awareness for you?

Speaker 2:

So yeah, and again, I say a lot of things about things I'd wish I'd known my 20s, but that is literally the number one thing, because I feel like, had I known that, it would have saved me so many different heartaches, so much pain and suffering. To be honest, the example, what really brought that about, was COVID and the trauma of having to take care of a huge number of acutely dying ill people and the emotions associated with that for the patients and their families. Right, so you know, our, our list quadrupled in like a week and I was like, oh, you know, I signed up for this because I wanted to work with sick and dying people. And then the the universe was like oh yeah, you want to do that? Okay, hold my beer, here's a global pandemic for you.

Speaker 2:

And so my coping mechanisms up until then had really been denial, shoving all my emotions down, intellectualization, right or other what I call unhealthy habits, which was like shopping, addiction or other things. For some people that could be overeating or whatever it is, and for me I realized it was problematic because my emotions were everywhere. I couldn't go a day without crying like nine. I couldn't go a day without crying like nine, 10 times a day I became suicidal, you know, and luckily again, and I recommend therapy to everyone, whether you are in that place or not.

Speaker 2:

Because she taught me about things like the window of tolerance for our nervous systems, right, what a hyper aroused nervous system looks like, how to get ourselves calm when we're anxious, overstimulated, overwhelmed. She taught me about hypo-aroused nervous systems, right, when we're just, we can't get out of bed and we feel just so numb and doom and gloom, and how to get ourselves out of that into our kind of normal quote unquote window where we're able to handle the ups and downs of life. And through that I got to get myself back to a point where I'm like, okay, I feel kind of like myself, I feel a little bit more normal compared to the deep dark hole that I was in previously. And then after that I got some coaching, I took other courses and learned from other people, and that's what got me to see that, oh, there's more that I can do, there's possibility here. But it's hard to go from deep dark hole to like, oh, I can do things without getting yourselves back to quote unquote, what normal is.

Speaker 1:

I want to understand that a little bit more, because I do think that sometimes, parents or non-parents, it doesn't matter who but we tend to think like if my life changes, then I'll be happy, if my life changes, then things would be easier for me and I'd feel less stress. But what you kind of alluded to right now is your surrounding and environment didn't change. You were still surrounded by this pandemic and the death that was around it. And it wasn't just mindset. It wasn't about looking at the positive and I think you've posted about this because there are these misconceptions around positive mindset and gratitude that we can go into but it wasn't about that. It was truly about learning how to cope with those uncomfortable emotions which many of us have not learned.

Speaker 1:

Our parents, you know, did the best they could with the tools that they had. They were not taught to cope with emotions themselves and then they passed that on to us. And so now, as adults, we think that you know suppressing it, pretending everything is okay or, like you said, the you know like this, talking to yourself in the sense like well, this is hard, okay, but you're still not coping with it, trying to look at the positive in a way. That's not healthy, and just saying like, oh well, this will be fine, it'll pass, but you're still not dealing with it. And so what do those steps look like for you? Because, again, it's not an overnight thing, it's not a one session, and tomorrow everything will be okay. What sort of things did you have to start becoming more aware of, or did you have to start noticing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I basically had to notice when I was starting to feel anxious. What does that look like in my body? For me, I start to get a little tight in the sternum, the chest area. I noticed that my heart rate gets a little fast and I'm not breathing the way that I should be. They're very short, shallow breaths and then I go, okay, what's happening here?

Speaker 2:

And so I think that's the first step for everyone, because everyone's nervous system manifests a little bit differently in different states. And so you know, that's the first thing is to notice like, okay, what's happening here, and it's usually from the neck down, we're so neck up, we're so just like, okay, up here I'm thinking or whatever, and we forget that we have a whole body that is really driving the bus when it comes to our experiences. And so that's the first thing. And then the second thing is to be like okay, what can I do to get myself regulated? I think of it almost like if the brain is going down a pathway, then it's akin to kind of driving down a highway, and the more that we do something, think something, the more that highway becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, because that's how our brains work right. And then what we need to do to kind of divert ourselves off of that if we don't want that to continue, is to put up a roadblock. And a lot of times that could be something like tapping EFT emotional freedom techniques. A lot of times that could be getting like tapping EFT emotional freedom techniques. A lot of times that could be getting up, going for a walk, that could be taking a deep breath, calming yourself down, therapeutic touch, just kind of rubbing your shoulders or whatever feels calming. So those are a couple of things.

Speaker 2:

And then also what I had to realize over time like you said, it doesn't happen overnight was that every time I thought I'm going to be happy when this pandemic is over, I'm going to be happy when blah, blah, blah is over, I'm going to be happy when I get that bag that I've been wanting, was that I was trying to control my external environment, right. I literally was just like once these pieces in my life are the way that I want them, then I will be happy. And it's like I was kind of giving my power away to something that I couldn't quite control, right, and as a type A person I'm a, you know, I'm a bit of a control freak, that sort of thing and I think many people are. I realized that the only thing that I could truly actually control was myself, my own emotions, what I thought, how I felt, how I reacted to things.

Speaker 2:

And I think it's so important for parents to realize that too, because you have this being that you can't control right, no matter how hard you try. You can influence them, you can teach them, you can try to correct them, but we can't control anything. That's not us. And so once I had that realization, I was like, oh okay, well then, if I can't actually control that, then I'm going to redirect what I can control. And that was so freeing and it made me feel so powerful. And I talked to clients, patients, and teach them that they're like oh my God, this is amazing. Like I wish I'd known this earlier.

Speaker 1:

I agree. I really do think that we should all have known this earlier. It should be a course you know in high school at some point, because it would help many of us learn how to cope with very difficult emotions. We wouldn't go towards these unhealthy coping mechanisms which so many parents still have and struggle with. We do it because there's nothing else that we can do. We don't know. We don't know how to sit with the emotion, and we hear it all the time. But what does it mean to sit with the emotion? We don't know. It's hard, many of us don't know what that is, and so I I appreciate that you went through that journey and that you saw the impact of that. You know.

Speaker 1:

One thing that kind of comes to mind is you spoke about understanding our body right, and that it's in our body and it's below our heads. It makes sense to me, and I think that one thing I try to talk to parents about is your nervous system, regulation and dysregulation right. I feel that you've approached this in a way that makes so much sense. You've talked about rest versus recharge, and I think that it's important for us to talk about that, because we're stuck on this sort of autopilot function. Sometimes in society it's like wake up, go to work, come back, get things done at home, with kids or without you. Come, you leave, you finish, you go to bed, wake up. Next day starts. It's sort of this groundhog day and we don't stop and pause. And if we were to actually be more connected to ourselves, we would notice that we need to rest or recharge. So what does that mean to you? Why did you want to distinguish between both? I always wonder where the seed came, the idea.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I have ADHD and I think part of it was just like my brain was going and making metaphors out of. You can give me any metaphor. I can create a life lesson out of it for you. So you know the I think the real that you were referring to was that I was alluding to the fact that I wish I'd known the difference between rest and relaxation, recharging, restoration when I was younger. And the metaphor that I made was like, if you think about the energy that you have to do daily things or to live as the level of water in a bathtub, right, and then you know, if you want to replenish the energy with the level of water in a bathtub, you've either got to do two things. One is you got to stop the water from leaving, which usually means plug the drain, right? So if you plug the drain, that is the equivalent of resting. That is just chilling, netflix, staying on the couch all weekend. You know just kind of being like I'm not expending energy, I'm not going to work, I'm not whatever it is. And then the issue is is that a lot of people think that that is the same as restoring our energy? We think that that rest, plugging the drain is going to add more water to the bathtub when it's really not. It's literally just preventing the water or the energy from leaving. And so then it's like, okay, what do we need to do to add more water to the bathtub, to fill our cup in a sense? And so that could be things. That again.

Speaker 2:

Going back to connection what helps you feel more connected to yourself? For some people it's journaling, right? For some people it's meditation. For some people, people it's journaling, right? For some people it's meditation. For some people it's going for a walk. Whatever it is. For some people it's creating art, connecting with your friends. It doesn't necessarily have to be something that expends a lot of energy, but it always gets down to connection to either self or others. And so then it's like, okay, what can we do to refill our bathtub water, our energy levels?

Speaker 2:

And once I realized that it was so mind-blowing, because in hospice and palliative care we talk about the fact that Self-care is the best way that we treat our patients, because our work is so heavy and if we can't pour from an overflowing cup, if we're not okay ourselves, our patients aren't getting the treatment and the care that they deserve. Their families are not getting the compassion and the empathy that they really need, and so that was something that had never really been taught to me in other disciplines of medicine. But because of the work with the dying, it's so important, and that's why I'm such a big fan of emotional regulation, of tending to our own well-being, because when you're caring for another being, if you don't have it together, how can you expect to really properly care for this being to the highest level, right?

Speaker 1:

What you're talking about kind of makes me think of different careers, that people are nurturing others and again, they don't take the time here. I'm based in Montreal and teachers here are struggling so much. We've never seen this rate of burnout in teachers before. We are missing teachers to the point that we're getting young students that haven't done any training to come teach because of that. And when I give well-being workshops in schools and with teachers, they just talk about not being able to fill that cup, not knowing how, not having been taught how, not knowing to recognize it and not knowing what to do with that. So it's a really big struggle.

Speaker 1:

You know anybody who's a clinician and a parent we are all giving to our kids, and what you just said is just so powerful because, regardless of the career you might have or being a parent, if you don't nurture yourself first, I know again, it's one of those cliches, right, with the mask and the on the plane, and I get that. I get that it sounds like a cliche, but it's true If you don't do that, you in a quality format, right, because I think that the biggest problem and this is why I wanted to bring up that bath analogy that you had. I do think that people just plug and they say like, okay, I'm not doing anything this weekend. They come out of those weekends or even just going out for dinner, but they're not mindfully doing it in a way that's filling up the bathtub, right. They're just kind of like plugging it and saying like I'm not doing anything. And then they say why don't I feel great, why don't I feel recharged? I'm starting Monday feeling the same way I did Friday, but I didn't do anything, and now I have the guilt that I didn't clean my house, and now I have the guilt of other things. And so this is the conversation that I hear from parents. But I think it's because we haven't really understood what the difference is and that we need to come back to that and understand what fills our cup.

Speaker 1:

The problem I think that some parents have is they don't know anymore what fills their cup. Right, they've lost connection, they're out of, we're not attuned anymore to our needs. We have this misconception that once we have a child, our needs don't matter anymore, and if you were to do that in your work, you would struggle. As you said, the wellbeing part is so important. So what has I mean when I experienced palliative care through my grandfather. There was the most beautiful, special people I've ever met in my life that I still remember their faces and this is like 10 years ago. It's just people who attended to his needs so beautifully that I was in awe, and so I am in awe of the work that you do. What does self-care look like for somebody doing your work? It's not just taking a break, right. What does filling that cup look like?

Speaker 2:

And you've mentioned so many good things just now because, in response to that reel, I had a lot of people be like I don't know what restores me anymore. I literally don't know. I believe it and it makes so much sense because, like you said, we're all neck up, we're not attuned to our bodies anymore, and so one of the things that I say to people is like okay, well, start with what did you love as a kid? Go back to that, because when we're young our brainwaves are very different than when we're older. So our brain waves from zero to two are like delta waves, when we're in deep sleep, predominantly two to seven. Theta, light sleep, seven to 12, kind of alpha brain waves, where we're a little bit more, you know, chill. And then 12 and up is the brain waves that we're in now, right, beta, we're thinking, or, you know, or if we're a little bit more chill, and then 12 and up is the brainwaves that we're in now, right, beta, we're thinking. Or if we're really overthinking and anxious, that could be like much higher levels of beta when it comes to what we did as kids.

Speaker 2:

That is all unconscious programming. Our brains are 2% of our body mass but require 20% of our oxygen consumption. So the autopilot that we do, it's just our brains conserving energy, because it's just like it's easier to do this than to really be present. And so if you think about it that way, then you're like, oh, it's just a supercomputer executing a program. We can rewrite programs, we can, you know, code things differently, and that is really what all of these things are. It's just kind of interrupting what program is already running. And so, okay, go back to what you did as a kid. What could be fun, or what would you do if you weren't worried about someone else's judgment or expectations of you? That, I think, is a huge barrier, because I think everyone knows, when I work with clients, I'm like you already have the answers, we just need to dig it out of you a little bit, right? And so I would start with those two questions.

Speaker 2:

And then self-care looks different for everyone. For me, it literally is just like okay, what do I need to do to feel better in this moment? Or how do I need to decompress from this day? Sometimes I need to take a really long cry. Right During COVID, we had different levels of crying to signify to my colleagues and I how stressed we were. So if you're just like a regular cry, okay, it's normal. If it was a shower cry, it's like, all right, that was a bad day. If you can't even stand in the shower, if it was like a kneeling or sitting shower cry, we're like, okay, let's talk about it. I mean, we would talk about it anyway, but still so.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes we all need that emotional release, and I think not enough of us are tuned to our own emotions to be like, oh, maybe this energy, this stuckness has to go somewhere. And when we shove it down and deny it, it doesn't go anywhere. It just gets stuck in our body and it comes out at inopportune times. We yell at a spouse, we freak out on our kids right. We become irritable and we're like oh no, that's not what I wanted to do and that person didn't deserve that. But that's what happens if I don't know what's going on in my own body. And so that's why I always come back to emotional regulation. Emotional regulation because it affects everyone around you, and so that's why it's so, so important for parents, for anyone, whether you have a child or not.

Speaker 1:

I'm really happy that you brought up the sort of the childhood piece, because I do think that's a great question to start with, and we forget even just being outdoors. Maybe you don't take enough time to be outdoors and you think about your childhood and you're like I was outdoors all the time. I loved being outdoors. Sometimes some parents say that they happen to start coloring with their kid and they just do it one day, and when they're doing it, when they're coloring, they're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I forgot how fun coloring was. And then I've seen it with my husband too. We'll print out some stuff for the kids, like these superhero pictures, and then he grabs one and he's like, oh yeah, I'm going to color this. And he's like look at how nice my drawing is. And we have a lot of fun with that.

Speaker 1:

So I think that there are aspects of our childhood and again, our kids are in front of us. We're busy, sometimes yelling at them all day, it feels like, and if we could just step back and learn from them. They are finding ways to bring joy and happiness. But think about your own childhood, right. Use that as a starter, and I think it's a beautiful way to begin to realize or come back to what makes you feel joy and what fills your cup.

Speaker 1:

I'm excited to kind of do this experiment on myself as well, to see what comes out of that. I want to come back to a moment of that gratitude and mindset again, because I think that sometimes we get stuck in these moments of I just need to be grateful. Everything is going wrong around me, but I'm going to say that I'm grateful for something and it'll pass. And whatever it is, these positive aspects, these twists that I don't think are necessarily supporting our wellbeing You've mentioned this as well. What has been your experience, I'm assuming, especially with dealing with death and family members? Is there something that you saw that made you realize like I don't think we're going about this the right way?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I love talking about this topic because I did it myself, right? So when I was in the midst of my trauma and everything that was happening, I would be like, okay, I should be grateful for things. But then I would say things like, okay, I'm grateful I'm alive, which was true, but I was using that almost to gaslight myself into not feeling the discomfort of what was actually happening. And so I want to make the distinction that I love gratitude.

Speaker 2:

Gratitude is amazing. Please continue to use it, and it should be used at certain times. So if you're feeling okay, you're feeling normal, and you want to feel gratitude and you want to think about that and it helps you get to an even better place, wonderful, right. And gratitude can be used when we're feeling really crummy and that sort of thing, and it can help shift our perspective.

Speaker 2:

What I don't want people to rely on is when they're feeling really challenged, they're feeling really emotional, they're feeling really overwhelmed, anxious, freaking out, whatever, and then to say like, okay, well, you know that's happening, but I'm grateful that I have, you know, my health and my life, and that sort of thing. The again metaphor that I use is if someone comes up to you and they chop your arm off right and you're bleeding and your arm is just, you know, on the ground, whatever. Are you going to be like oh, you know, I'm so grateful that I have another arm. It sounds so ridiculous, right? You're bleeding out and you're like oh, you know, I'm like I still have three limbs, it's fine, I'm going to be calling you for metaphors and I have a bad day.

Speaker 2:

I'm ready, I'm ready, but it sounds so ridiculous and it's meant to be. But that's what we're doing to ourselves, when we're not addressing what's actually happening and just saying like, okay, I'm grateful for this. I've had clients who are just telling me all these things, the terrible experiences, and then they just pause and go. But you know, I'm still grateful. I'm like let's address how you're feeling first. We can get to the gratitude. Well, that'll always be there. But let's calm you down first and then do that, because that'll be the extra cherry on top, because then, if you just go straight to gratitude, it's almost like you're just being like oh, I'm disregarding that. It's toxic positivity, in a sense. Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, and that's why I thought it was so important to talk about this part, because I do think it's a way of us not dealing with what's happening, and we have so many great ways to do that as a society. We just don't deal with the emotions and, like you said before, it piles up. This is not just disappearing If we ignore something that is bothering us. If we ignore that uncomfortable emotion. It's not going away. It's waiting for that, like you said, that opportune time to come back out, and we cannot continue to do that. And so we have to, as a society, start addressing those uncomfortable emotions.

Speaker 1:

But many of us are just not ready for it. Many of us are not not ready for it, but don't have the skills and tools yet because we haven't learned that which makes it really hard, which makes it easier to suppress or easier to use unhealthy coping mechanisms. You know there are so many that parents use and talk to me about, even if it's just like scrolling right, like I don't want to deal with my marriage right now and so the kids are screaming and so I'm going to scroll on my phone and ignore. I don't want to have a conversation or an argument with my partner or parents saying, like I need that glass of wine, that is my joy. So how do we get out? We have to get out of those things as a society, but that means we have to deal with the uncomfortable emotions, which is hard yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's hard because, too, so many of these coping mechanisms if we think about the brain as a supercomputer were developed in childhood, when we didn't have the kind of frontal cortex maturity and the growth, and so if those things are happening in childhood I was listening to your episode with Dr Bruce Perry and I love that book. What Happened to you?

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, life-changing.

Speaker 2:

And so if those things are happening to us, I'll give you an example. When I was a kid, I've always been this way. Anytime I had an emotion, whether it was joy, frustration, fear, panic, pain, I'd cry, didn't matter. And my dad, being kind of you know, stern immigrant Chinese dad, be like stop crying. What's wrong with you? You're always crying, stop it. And so, for me, I learned from a young age that expressing my emotions was not desirable to my caretakers, the people who were supposed to care for me, and that sort of thing. And then you can see, as I got older, that of course, my coping mechanism was to own childhood. You'll probably see what comes up and how it's linked to how you're dealing with, or not dealing with, dissociating from, separating yourself from the uncomfortable emotions.

Speaker 1:

Uncomfortable emotions and culture definitely plays a part in that. There are so many people that I've spoken with that say it wasn't part of it. They never saw their father express any emotions, even their moms, who would just be uncomfortable with it. They were very nurturing moms, but when it came to those emotions, those uncomfortable emotions, it was like just stop it, just don't be happy. Be happy with what you have, stop being sad or stop being mad. And so I know that that's something that many of our listeners can relate to, given the cultural aspect of that. So I appreciate that you shared that.

Speaker 1:

I'm struggling so much to stop this because I'm really having a good conversation with you. I truly appreciate you and your work. What would you say to kind of sum everything up? You know, given the experiences you've had, the conversations you've had, what are things we should be doing more or less of? You know, in general that would nurture our well-being and come from the learnings and conversations you've had with the dying, hmm, so, the first thing I would say is really just bringing awareness to what you and your body is doing right.

Speaker 2:

So and sometimes that can be really difficult and basically just being like, okay, what is happening right now? Just to step away. Bring your awareness to your body. Figure out something that in the moment so when we're talking about emotions, if we really actually address the emotion in the moment, it's kind of gone in less than a couple minutes. If we actually do it in the moment there have been studies on this but if we let it fester, that's when it becomes problematic, maladaptive and it spirals. That's just how our brains work.

Speaker 2:

So, noticing that and coming up with what works for you in terms of regulating yourself Is it deep breaths, is it nature, is it connection, whatever it is, find what works for you. And if you don't know, then talk to somebody or hire a therapist, a coach, a counselor, whatever it is that can help you if you're struggling to figure that out for yourself. And then the last thing I would say is connection right. Find your tribe. Find people with similar interests who are going through similar life cycles that you are.

Speaker 2:

We all think that whatever we're dealing with, whatever challenge we have, is. We're the only person that's ever gone through it in the history of the world. Meanwhile, there's 8 billion people in the world and I guarantee you someone knows exactly what you're going through, and so share your own stories. You know, be part of membership communities. Be part of you know, your local chapter, of whatever it is that's important to you. That's what's going to help people feel more connected to themselves, to each other, and also help them be better parents, better caretakers, better spouses, better partners, children that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

Where can we learn more from?

Speaker 2:

you. So I'm pretty active on Instagram. My handle is drdrlouiecathysang. I'll add that in the show notes and then, if anyone is interested, I've got kind of like this free video that I share three top somatic techniques that are really easy to do that you can use in the moment when you're feeling anxious, overwhelmed, to just kind of bring that nervous system down a little bit. Calm yourself down so that you can think clearly and figure out what your next steps are.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for sharing that, and I know somebody who's listening is probably asking how did Sydney not ask questions about hypnosis? Because I just feel that that would be an entire conversation on its own, but just a very peak, a small peek into that. Is this something you do with patients, with clients that you work with?

Speaker 2:

I'm just curious started doing it in the hospital because it works so well and I have so many patients who are in pain and have anxiety and sometimes they have medication side effects. Then they can't tolerate a benzo or anything that'll help them calm down or they get confused on pain meds. So I've done it with them and I do it with clients over Zoom. But hypnosis, very quickly, is just like you know how we talked about the brainwaves when we're younger. Hypnosis helps people, just like deep meditation, get into those lower brainwave states and that just blurs the boundary between our unconscious minds which probably is 95% of our awareness and our conscious minds and it helps us access things that have been repressed, things that started when we were in childhood and we didn't really notice. And it just is the fastest way that I experienced change in my own body for myself, because we had to practice on each other and I was like this is amazing for myself, because we had to practice on each other and I was like this is amazing what?

Speaker 2:

And so I was just like, all right, well then, I'm going to give it to everyone.

Speaker 1:

I've got to share this. So it's funny the idea of that. You mentioned meditation. I had the idea that's in movies where you're like you make somebody do something else, like you control their mind. But it's not that. It's coming to that. I'm saying this to kind of bring it like make it in the funny end, but it's truly about that meditative state, right, that you're bringing them into.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's what we see in the movies select outliers, people who are really really really super suggestible. They're very good at figuring out who those people are, and so when you see them go on stage and be like quack, like a duck, and they're making a fool out of themselves, it scares people into feeling like, oh, I'm going to lose control. You never lose control. It's just that those people are very suggestible and that's all it is. Most people are kind of in the middle of suggestibility and it's really just being super relaxed and that's about it.

Speaker 1:

I could understand why your feeling was like everybody needs this. Thank you again for being here and for sharing everything. I will put the links to all of your ways to reach you and your freebie in the show notes, and I appreciate that you're here today, so thanks again.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for all the work that you're doing for parents and their families. It is so important, so thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. I hope you enjoyed my conversation as much as I did with Dr Kathy Zhang. If you don't have a notebook, I encourage you to listen to this podcast as you are walking or doing something, so that it's relaxing. But take some notes, take some time to reflect on something that marked you, take some time to write down one little thought that crossed your mind while you were listening and then build on that through the Reflective Parenting Podcast and the content that we share here at Curious Neuron, whether it's a blog post or social media post or the newsletter that I send out every single week. Take a moment to do that, because that's how you will see growth and change in behavior and lowering of your stress and feelings of overwhelm and building of your confidence as well, and so I hope that you can see that growth with us. Thank you for listening. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and that you leave a rating and review. I will see you next Monday. Bye.