S2EP93-Richard Tierney-Unlocking Kids' Superpowers: Emotions Are Not Mental Disorders

Herb: 00:00:19

I now have the pleasure of introducing Richard Tierney. Richard is the creator of two separate programs.

The first program is teaching children and their families that our feelings and emotions are not mental disorders. Rather they are God given instincts, our gut feelings to be trusted in the face of any danger, real or imaginary.

The second is a book with a number of exercises that parents, guardians and teachers can conduct whether around the kitchen table, a community center or a classroom. Welcome Richard. It is a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Richard Tierney: 00:00:55

Herb, Kristina, thank you very much for having me.

Kristina: 00:00:58

Yes, thank you. And get us started with kind of the pivotal point or when you realize that you need to start putting this message out there.

What inspired you to create the books, the programs and help hill children and family in this way?

Richard Tierney: 00:01:14

I think firstly I'm, I'm. I'm in recovery myself. I had a. A trauma when as a child and it really destroyed me. It wasn't that I wanted to die, but I didn't want to live.

You know, I felt such shame and self loathing. So that was kind of a part to it.

And then later on in life we got married and I had children and my children were bullied in school and so we had to take them out of school and put them into homeschooling. There really wasn't any option where we live that was going to get better.

We put them into another school and we spoke to teachers and they said it's, it's the same over here.

It's like they have a way of treating children that aren't fully Thai, if they're half caste, if they're half Thai, half western, half Thai, half triple. The treat they get tend to be treated or picked on by, you know, the conventional.

I don't want to use the wrong language here, but it was just, it wasn't a good place. So we had looked at homeschooling and I'm from Ireland, so we looked at homeschooling for, for Ireland.

But again, even at that age the kids said if we go to leave town, I'm going to go to America. Like, yeah, that is idea that they go to America and not like to Europe, you know.

So I had a mentor of mine, he said there's a great, the best public education is America.

Now back then, that was 20 years ago, you said that American education was the best in the world and so much to learn and look up a homeschooling system in America that would do for most of the world, you know. And so that's big Got me started on finding a solution to my children's challenges, but also to. To improve their confidence.

That was the big part for children is to improve their confidence and know that it's okay to have feelings. That was the real big thing we wanted to do.

At one stage it was suggested my daughter had depression because the bullying and she should see a therapist.

And the first thing therapist did was wanted to give her medication, just come completely opposed to it and went to my daughter becoming this zombie on medication and making her life be over. I wanted to have a normal life.

And so I really wanted to set about finding out how we can see, get her to see or maybe her depression, her anxiety as actual healthy coping skills.

Kristina: 00:03:20

Yeah, it's so difficult, right?

Whenever we have our children in these tough situations and trying to figure out what to do, help them not feel down, not feel depressed, all those different things.

And that is one thing that so many people, and even in the classroom, the public classroom, right, it's not taught that your feelings are for a reason. Instead, we're tried, let's manage them, let's control them, let's whatever it's like. But there's a reason that you have them.

And it's so very important that they understand that they're not broken, they're not wrong for having the feelings now, how they act after they have the feelings now, that can be wrong sometimes, but you know, just having them is, is part of life and they need help understanding that.

Richard Tierney: 00:04:07

Definitely. There's a couple of things too.

It I found for myself now I haven't, I haven't had these approved or approved by mental health professionals, but I came across some ideas.

I remember watching TikTok one day and seeing this TikTok of two brothers in the room, you know, and one says the other, what happens after you come out of the room? This is. And when we come out of the womb, we're going to die. Like, you know, it's all over.

Like, you know, when we come out of the womb, the omiplichord is going to be cut and we're going to be all over and that's the end of it. Dear God. But what if there's something special? They're talking about heaven and hell, you know, what if there's something special after we die?

We go to heaven. No, he says, don't be stupid.

When we leave the womb and the biblical court and all our needs are not being met anymore, our life is over, you know, so this got me thinking about our responses to danger. The three Primary of fight, flight and freeze. So like I remember, well, nothing I remember. You can't remember.

But looking back on my own childhood, I believe I was in a state of either fight or flight.

I came out of the womb and I was kicking and screaming and my mom said to me that I came out, I was kidding and screaming, and the nurse wrapped me up in a blanket, put me in the, in the cot. In that moment, I was taught that my primary response, what was fight or flight wasn't safe, it wasn't healthy, it wasn't going to work.

So I ended up coming into life in a state of freeze. So for my, for my response was five, which I think it might have been. I came into a state of freeze or fall, a freeze, a freezer flight.

I was, I was a victim. I couldn't set up for myself because I'd learned that standing up yourself doesn't work.

If you came out of the room and you were kicking, screaming, you were in a state of flight. And then you're wrapped in a blanket by the, by the midwife, your message is flight doesn't work. You have to either fight or freeze.

If you come out of the womb and you're comatose, which happens to a lot of children, they're held up by the ankles and slapped in the bottom by the doctor to get a reaction. They're taught that freeze isn't safe for them. So they go through life in a state of fight or flight. We hear this many, many times.

We can imagine the number of children that must have come out of the womb comatose and slapping the bum to get a reaction. And they learned that freezing, which is their natural response, God given response, isn't safe. So they're stuck in fight or flight.

And that's what I believe is the fundamental truth for all of us. So if your child is very withdrawn or whatever, then chances are its natural response is to fight. But it's been told fight isn't work.

So now it's kind of very flight or freeze and so on. I think we can see this very clearly in children.

And then the children come out of the womb that are happy joys for free and the nurse puts them on the mother's chest because they're happy, whatever, they come out and they're all other responses are intact and they go on to become like the president of America and move stars and football stars and whatever. And they have this tremendous energy and full of confidence. They're the kids that come out of the womb with their, with their responses intact.

The rest of us have had a response taken from us. And so for that we're not completely whole coming into life.

Herb: 00:07:04

So how do we start resolving that? So you know, us being older, it's like we're pretty cemented in. So we need to reach our children at an earlier age.

So how do we, how do we start breaking these cycles to let them know that they are safe?

Richard Tierney: 00:07:19

Well, first off, understand we're not trained to be parents. That's anyone who's new to parenting. No one, no one teaches us to be parents. Every day we're, we're a parent to a new child.

So my children today are now 20, 20, 22 and 18. And so let's say my daughter is now 22 years, whatever it is, 2 months and 21 days old.

I've never had a 22 year old, 2 month and 22 day old daughter before. I had a 22 year old, 2month and 21 day old daughter yesterday.

But I'd never had this, this new creature in my life today who's one day older, going through puberty and going through all that kind of stuff. I'd never had that. And this, we have to understand we're not coming into this as experts like our kids.

We're doing the best we can and some days we make mistakes and someday we make a wrong decision and the kids want to go to therapy because our parents were dysfunctional. We're not experts at this. We're, we're really trying our dominance to do the best we can.

That's the kind of conversation we need to have our children to understand that we're doing our best as much as they're doing their best. They've never had a father who's now 65 years old and it's six months or whatever.

They had a 65 year old six months and 20 days, but not a 65 year old six months and 21 days.

So if we can kind of get them on the same page that they can see that they're in this kind of no man's land and we're in the same no man's land, it can help to make that kind of connection, which I think helps an awful lot. If they can see that they're not the only ones. It's not a case that we have. We have it all together and they're the virgin territory.

We're all in virgin territory. We're just, we have more experience of life on life's terms, bringing to the ship. But I think that helps them to see I'm not broken.

We're all in the same boat together.

Kristina: 00:09:07

That is very interesting because we often talk about, with parents about how, you know, as a child grows, there's big, the bigger stages, like zero to two, you're doing like everything for them pretty much. And then from like 2 to 5, they're getting more and more independence.

And then 5 and on they change and change and we forget to change from those bigger stages right. In their life. And you're actually talking about taking down to every single day, every single day there are new. A new person, a new creation.

And so that's really interesting to get that granular, but it makes sense, right, because you can take the big stages, but then the day to day, because we all wake up with different emotions and different feelings each day. You know, yesterday might have been an amazing day, and then today we wake up and all of a sudden something is off and we don't feel the same.

So, yeah, we pretty much are a different person each day.

Richard Tierney: 00:09:54

Yeah, completely. I think we have to, we have to let them know that it's. It's one day at a time for all of us. It's only, we've only got this one life on this earth.

We don't get to come back and do it a second time better the next time they have this one life. And if we can cut it down to one day and get the most out of each day. And it's very hard to teach this to children because they're not taught that.

They're taught to achieve greatness on the football team or in school and get the best results. And this kind of stuff really push yourself to achieve.

So it's kind of like a bit kind of a hippie thing to say, slow down, relax, chill, take, you know, it's not normal nearly, you know, so. But parents, we have to do that. We have to do some sort of nurturing and caring for our kids because they're our children.

They're the future of the human race. But they're also the future for our, our line, our tribe. And we need to really say, listen, guys, we love you dearly and you can take this slowly.

Not. And no matter what happens, you take a story.

And I said to my daughter the other night, you know, you've got your friends, you know, and we're telling you, don't be late home. And you know, we're going to be in bed by, by midnight, so please, if you're late, get a taxi.

I said, listen, if you're, if you're not feeling safe and it's four in the morning. You phone me and I'll pick you up. I may not be happy about it. It's more important me to get you home safely than to worry about the petri in the car.

And so whatever's going on, our first thought for the day is keeping you safe. And rather than you having to rush through life to get to the end of your high school to go to college, take your time.

Herb: 00:11:30

Yeah, so how, how do we start that? So we're not taught that. We weren't raised that way. You know, society pressure is we have to get to the next thing. So.

So how do we get our parents to start seeing this, to start recognizing this not only for themselves, but then be able to translate it down to their children? Because again, these things sometimes are very easy to say.

Yeah, just, you know, and they're cliche, you know, take it one day at a time, you know, do the next thing. But those cliches are cliches for a reason because they're too simple to be true. So how do we get started?

Richard Tierney: 00:12:14

Yeah, excellent, excellent question. Yeah, they're no good on their own. This thing about one day at a time, like, it sounds fantastic, but it's a bit hippie. Ish.

Unless there's actional, actionable steps that they can take, it's a waste of time. I think we're afraid we benefit greatly from the fact that growing up we had God in our lives.

I mean, it's certainly in Ireland you had catechism classes, Roman Catholic Church. We went to church every day for your communion, confirmation, all that kind of stuff. And there was mass, but the family walked down.

Every Sunday the family would walk down along with the neighbors that walked down to the local church. So there's a lot of spirituality. I mean, we weren't, we're not like, forgive me, I remember meeting Baptists and they're really like really intense.

Like, you know, they really have it down to a T, the whole faith thing. We Catholics are very laid back. We really are very poor Christians, I must say. But it was much more laid back and it's much more not as intense.

And I think that helped me an awful lot. The fact that the religion wasn't as intense, you know, that we had a big Bible in the sitting room in our house was never opened.

My mother would polish it and clean it and look fantastic on the whole table, was never opened for the family to read. And every other Christian faith, you take a Bible out and you read as the Family and you discuss it and whatever kind of stuff.

And Catholics were maybe in our home and nowhere else. But the worst and worse is in case of being real kind of Christian orientation.

But I think children need to know that there is a God, that he cares for them deeply and the fact that he wants them to be happy. But it has to be on his terms, not in our terms. He's not a go get your God.

So I think if you have any training in any faith based at all, if you've been to church as a child and you had catechism to class, maybe half an hour every night read the Bible. I don't kind of say you're going to go to mass every Sunday now or you're going to have to get communion, confirmation or whatever.

And you don't have to do this. Just sit down with your family for half an hour and read something from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

Start with the New Testament and to read something about it and get a discussion about what that means and then leave it at that. Nothing more than just, what does that mean to you? This means for me, what's the power of prayer? The big thing for me is the prayer.

Most people think that our prayers are what we learned at our mother's knee or we learned in church or school. And the mistake we make is our prayers aren't what we learned in church or school or at our mother's knee.

They're somebody else's prayers that we learn. The Lord's Prayer, St Francis, St Francis prayer is a great prayer, but it was his prayer for him. It wasn't for us.

So you have to learn that our prayers are the things we say to ourselves all day long. We think no one's listening. They're our prayers. So if your child is saying, I am depressed, I hate my life, I hate my parents, I hate school.

I've been bullied. No one likes me. If this is what they're saying, that's to themselves all day long, that's their prayers.

So if we can teach them to change what they're saying. So if they can say something like, up until this morning, I believe that I am depressed and my life is over. We're speaking to Mommy and Daddy.

I realized my life's only beginning. Like, I mean, when I leave school, I never see these classmates again who are all bullies.

I go off and get a job somewhere and maybe I'll move countries or move cities. I meet people who will be my tribe and have a great life.

And I'm going To start thinking these wonderful thoughts, I'm going to use dream prayer and manifest where I'm going to meet people and fall in love and have a great life. And this kind of stuff.

Teaching children about manifestation, about dream prayer, how you can see the future now and then it happens and this kind of stuff. I think it's great for our children if we can teach them how to pray. Prompt to think. The Bible says, ask and you should receive.

Seek and you shall find. Knock on the door, be open to you.

So God's saying, I'll give you whatever you want, but if you're asking for depression, I'm going to give you depression tenfold. If you're asking for anxiety, I'll give you anxiety tenfold. So you have to change the record playing in your head.

Kristina: 00:16:00

Yeah. You know, you talked about affirmations a little bit.

And it's really important whenever we do that, you know, that they aren't thinking that it's going to happen immediately. But by having that glass half full outlook. Right. Or that what we call a growth mindset, lots of times is like, things can get better.

I can learn more things. I can keep moving forward with that kind of attitude and look at life. You're right.

That's what helps our children the most, understand where they can go in life and things like that.

So whenever we're doing that with them, we're sitting down and reading at night the Bible or another awesome book that helps uplift the spirits and things like that.

And you know, we don't need to go into a big lecture like you said, but we can just talk about what was just happening and how did the good come out of that situation or that information that we just got. And really part of it, I think, is when parents actually do that processing as well and kind of talk out loud in front of their children.

Oh, I'm disappointed about this that happened today, but I know that I can change this tomorrow and then things will probably be better. When we're doing that inner dialogue that we know and we put it out there for our children that helps them understand some of their inner dialog is.

Right. It is, is also happening is that some of the activities and stuff that you have in the book that you also have that goes with the other.

Richard Tierney: 00:17:26

I want to finish off in the prayer first because I think it's very important. Again, when I did this with my children, I wasn't a Christian. I mean, I'm not saying I wasn't a Christian. I wasn't a practicing Christian.

I Wasn't going to any church. I didn't go back to my, my faith. I remember my wife is Buddhist. And she said to me, I'm raising our children, the Buddhist faith. You're a Catholic.

Would you ever introduce your children to the Christian faith so that at least they're over the threshold and then later on in life they can decide whether they want to go back to God or not. But you as a parent have an obligation to share your tradition with your children.

It's really very intelligent of her, you know, so, so I went out to my local Christian Catholic church. Here's a Jesuit church. I met the Jesuit priest and I said to him, I have two children and I don't go to church. I'm not a practicing Christian.

But my wife suggests I should introduce my children to, to God. Can you help me? He said, yeah, sure, no problem. And he gave me a book, Roman Catholics for Dummies. He said, read that.

You read that from top to bottom, you'll understand the whole Roman Catholic faith.

And then you can, you convene them here to mass every Sunday, whatever, and then in six months we'll have them baptized and then you make a decision whether you want to continue coming to church or not. At least you have introduced them to the concept of the Catholic God.

You'll have had them baptized and at least then later on in life they can make a decision for themselves.

And it was a wonderful sensation that I was being forced into joining a specific dominant denomination or having to speak my loyalty to one denomination. I was being given an option to, as a lapsed Christian to introduce my children to God. And in doing this with them, I found my faith again.

I, I tried to. The Roman Catholic faith wasn't for me. I tried the Baptist, I tried it. The, the, the Protestant, the, the Presbyterian, the African.

None of them worked for me. And I realized I'm not a religious guy. I'm not into churches. But I have my Bible so I will read Bible. I read loads of this great authors.

I love Emmett Fox and Joseph Murphy, Norman Vincent Peale. And you can find these Christian authors that, that are really mind blowing.

American English, not many Irish, but American and English and Western Scottish that really carry one for message. And I found all these books in Christian stores and I'd read these and I'd talk to these with my kids and, and I give.

There's a guy in America that they're talking, he's one of these, one of the ones that, that promotes money. You know, the, the, the, the, the well, pastors is called Vic Warren but he wrote a book called the Purpose Driven Life and it was a God sent to me.

I couldn't get over it.

I was in this Christian church in the Christian shop here in Chiang Mai and your man said to me, just got a lot of books in from America and there's one book from a guy called it Chris Rick Warren. We got about 100 of his books. Do you want to take some for your, for your work? I'm working in the treatment center. I'm running this meditation group.

I'm kind of going, yeah, sure. So I took about 20 of his books. They had like 12 steps in this book you could read one at a time. So read one each night. What?

And they loved it and I loved it. It was wonderful. S message about, you know, give God a chance for one day in your life. Just as I, for today I'm going to be a, a God fearing man.

I'm going to pray and going to meditate and whatever for one day and see what happens. And so I think when we're dead in God, I think we have to give some our children a power that they can call on.

And that's why I'm promoting the God thing first. I think as parents we have an obligation to induce our children to the concept of God because he may be real.

God may be real and if he is, and we haven't told the children, we are doing them in service. So for every parent out there, find some way, even if you, if you're against God now or religion or whatever and you've had problems.

I had problems with my Roman Catholic faith because I had that priest who taught me who were bullies and who used beat up kids, whatever. So I had my own personal grievances, but it wasn't about me, it's about my children.

So as a parent, can I suggest you find some way that you will introduce your children to a concept of God so they'll know the darkest hour.

They can't call on something they feel completely alone, that they can reach out to God, ask God to send 10,000 angels down to protect them, that kind of thing. So we're doing it for our children, not for ourselves.

I'm not imposing upon you to become a Christian, but to give a gift of the idea that there is a God out there that cares for them and he will come to their rescue if they know how to ask. And if you give them that gift, I think it's a wonderful gift to give.

Herb: 00:21:44

So one of the things that becomes kind of obvious when talking with people about this is most people who are against God or against a church is because of a person that did something.

And so how do we, how do we reach more people to say, hey, you know, if you have a problem with the church, is it a problem with you had people in the church or.

Because it's like if you turn to God and look for that instead of, oh, but this person who represents is like that, that person represents not correctly or not for you. So how do we get people to like, okay, well, yeah, people, people aren't the right thing. You have to look past that to God. How do we help people?

Richard Tierney: 00:22:34

Well, but there's two sides. One side is we're doing this for our children. So we'll do anything for our children to make our children's lives better.

So even if we have a grievance towards a priest or the past pope or whoever it is, we're making a commitment now to give God to our children, not for ourselves. We need never go to church in our lifetimes. We're making a decision to give God to our children.

Now maybe we'll find a different church, completely different church, where this person won't be around.

Maybe if his Catholic church you go to Protestant church, if it's a Protestant church you go to at Presbyterian, you're giving a gift to your children and that's the end of it. You're not looking for excuses not to do it.

But if you were an aunt or an uncle and you had a problem, I would say to you, the Bible has a very explicit instructions about wrath and there's two choices.

It really blows me away because if, if you hold your anger towards somebody, okay, for your lifetime, what happens is that when they die, they get to go to heaven because they don't get served by your rat and God's wrath. You have to choose which wrath you want.

So again, you may hold your anger against that person and be a statement and you never, they never get taken to court or they never have to face jail time, but because you wasted all your life on that anger, they get a free pass into heaven. But if you give your anger to God today and say, okay, so and so did this to me, I hate him with his gospel. Now I'm going to pray for him.

I'm going to forgive him completely, I'm going to give him over to you. And you do that for 30 days, 10 times a day, 20 times a day, until such time as they don't no longer have any they no longer press your buttons.

So you have to do this, like, 10 times a day, every day for 30 days. And then one day, I think of Christina and I'm not triggered. I think of her, but I'm not triggered.

You'll know in that moment that that's the moment when you've given it to God. And the guarantee is that when they die, they're going to go to the fires of hell for all eternity.

And seven generations of their descendants, I mean, that's. It's a huge toll. Wrath to give to them. But you know then that you've had your life and you've.

You've cast them from your mind so you can have peace of mind today, so you can enjoy the company of your wife and your husband and. And life around you and all the rest of it. And you didn't let them control you all your life.

And then at the end of their days, excuse my language, they're fainting.

Kristina: 00:24:55

Yeah. Herb often talks about, you know, if you're angry with someone, you're actually. What is. It's a poison.

Herb: 00:25:01

Yeah. If you're. If you're at. Angry at somebody, it's like you drinking a poison and expecting them to die. Because if you have those, you're.

It's cortisol in your body. It's epinephrine and norepinephrine in your body. That creates damage within you. So being angry at somebody else or not or holding that contempt.

Yeah, that. That is something that creates chemicals in your body, not in the person over there.

Richard Tierney: 00:25:27

So the idea is, if we're parents, we can't have this anger because the anger is going to. Going to intrude upon our lives with our love ones. So we have to get rid of the anger. We don't even have a choice.

If you're single, maybe you can decide to hang out the anchor for a while, but if you're going to be a healthy parent and a healthy husband or a healthy wife, you have to let go of the anger. And the best way is give it to God. Okay, God, I'm going to forgive Joe. I'm going to forgive him. Even though I hate him, I'm going to forgive him.

I wish him that he has everything I want in my life, he gets. Because the Bible says that whatever we ask for, we get back tenfold. So if we give to Joe forgiveness and.

And success tenfold, we get that back as well. And again, he. He suffers God's wrath. So that's the prayer part of it. Okay.

And then the dream prayer, which is manifestation, you dream the most beautiful dream. So when you're going to bed tonight, lay in bed, dream a most beautiful dream.

Christina and Herb, that when you, when you present this podcast, you get a response from maybe a million people. Come on, say, that's the best podcast ever.

So you go to bed tonight and you lay in bed and you have this dream where you see yourself uploading this podcast to your platform, and suddenly the response is amazing. And schools come in and churches come in, and they're all coming, knocking your door. They want you to. And you're kind of going.

And that's the dream you have every night for, like, for 30 days. And suddenly in 31 days, this hits home. You kind of go, how did that happen? And you kind of know, well, your dream prayer didn't into reality.

You manifested. And that's really the whole part of the. The dream. The second part is I. I believe that we have six responses.

The mental health professionals tell us we've got fights, flight, freeze, and fall again because they've taken church out of the schools and the homes. I believe they've. They have removed faith and acceptance from our six responses. So I believe our responses are. So flight is basically walk away.

So if by chance this podcast isn't what you wanted, you could just turn off the camera and walk away and never see me again. If you're in a home and the parents are fighting, get up and walk away. If you're in a classroom and they've been bullied, get up and walk away.

And if you keep walking away, your parents and the headmaster will finally find out what's going on. They'll confront it. So don't be afraid to walk away. Run away. Hide. Hide in the closet. Hide in your bedroom. Hide under the bed.

Teach children how to fly. So my suggestion is that parents sit around the kitchen table or in the school.

The teachers sit with the class kids around the desk, and they talk about, let's discuss all the different ways to flight.

So you have this chat with your kids and Christina, you step in her, you come up with some that probably weren't real, but you say, I used to hide on that. Dad says, I used to hide under the bed. The kids kind of go, dad, hiding under the bed. Let's walk up and hide under the bed.

Now you all go up to the bedroom. You hide under the bed for five minutes. The kids can't get over that mommy and daddy are under the bed hiding with them.

But they've learned that it's okay to hide under the bed. Mom says, let's hide in the closet. That's crazy. We don't all fit in the hot closet. Okay, let's take turns climbing.

Let's go into one closet in each room for five minutes, come out and say what it's like. And then if they say that's a good thing, then that's a good. That's a good response they have. It's a bad one. Then they let it go. What else?

We can climb up trees in the garden. Okay, let's work in the garden. I'll come up tree. You can start making an activity of choose all the different ways to flies and you do with them.

And if anyone else in the house or you can invite your aunt or uncles over another family and say to the parents, we're going to do this together. We're going to get our kids to see all these different ways of flies. And then fight is asking for help.

So you get your children to say, mommy, daddy, I feel very anxious right now. I don't want you to fix or save me, but have you ever felt this way? And you say, yeah, I did what you do when you were when you're anxious.

I say when I get anxious, I go and eat an ice cream, I'd go off and go for swim, I go for cycle, I'd go to my bedroom, I do some journaling, I do homework, I do chores. And they copy you and they do whatever you did. And if it works for them, then they'll keep that one. If it doesn't, they chose to wait.

So they learn all these different coping skills that are healthy coping skills that you share with them. Then they lost their siblings, they lost their friends in school, their classmates, their best friends outside their favorite teacher.

And they learn all these different responses of fight, flight, and then freezes. Understand, freeze and fawn are the health responses of young children. They're not healthy when we grow up.

So when you're a young child in a home and if the parents are fighting, the child can't leave the house because they're only a child, they'll get lost. And so they freeze, they disassociate.

They go to a place of fantasy, they go to a fant place of cowboys and Indians or a space invaders or something to go somewhere in the mind where they can be safe, where there's violence whenever going around them. And then when the violence over, they come back into the room.

It's okay for young children to disassociate, to shut down mentally and emotionally to, to. To isolate, to withdraw. And then foreign is people pleasing, playing happy families, keeping your feelings a secret.

That's okay when you're a small child because you don't know how to cope. You're really hoping someone else will. Will protect you. But once we get past adolescence, we're not meant to freeze and fawn anymore.

So the big, the big intention of this is to teach our children that freeze and fawn are not healthy anymore. You can't have a big cry in your bedroom or lock yourself in the bedroom or whatever. Keep yourself. That's freeze or fawn. That isn't healthy.

You must come to mommy or daddy or granny or granddad or teacher or whatever and say I feel anxious, I feel depressed. Have you ever felt this way?

What do you do when we teach our children to healthy and then again the idea of the faith and acceptance if we can induce them a concept of God that works for them and that they can accept that forget whether the chicken or the egg came first. Except there is a God and he loves them and he wants to meet them on his terms. And his terms is his name is I am.

And when we speak, we're meant to speak in the I am, not the I was and not the I will be. We're to attach to his name all this good. So rather than saying I am depressed, you can say, up until this morning I felt I was depressed.

But today after listening to mommy and Daddy, I'm decided to say I am happy, joyous and free in this moment. I am happy, joyous and free. And they learn to use the God's name and attach to his name. All that's good.

So that's the God part of it is that get them with prayer and meditation and journaling and reading the Bible I read in other Christian books. So understand that having faith in God, when you're at your lowest and I mean Daddy aren't around, you feel threatened.

Would you please get me home safely? I'm feeling really scared right now and Mommy and daddy aren't here and I have to get home.

When you get me home safely, send 10,000 angels down, take care of me. Suddenly they get home safely. Kind of go, how'd that happen? I felt calm and I walked home. What happened there?

They couldn't understand that God sent them 10,000 angels. And then the acceptance is understand there isn't a target on your back or on your head. You're not a victim.

People act out for their own nefarious needs. If you're being bullied in school and you, you go, you stay away for a week, that bully will bully somebody else. It was never about you.

It's about the bully needs the bully to feel complete. A narcissist needs to be a narcissist to feel complete. That's what people do. But it's not about you. You're not the target.

So if we can teach children especially that they're not the target, it's not about them, that's probably the greatest gift we can give them. And then we can work back to the faith thing and then through no secrets from their families.

Most kids, they tell their therapist, they tell on social media all their friends about their feelings, but they keep it secret from the parents.

And you have to remember your parents decided to have children, decided to have you, and they gave you a home and a roof over your head and clothes and your back and food at the table. And they want you to be happy, but they use tough love.

They don't want to people please you all the time and listen to your tone tantrums and patch and say they're there, it's okay because that doesn't help you grow. They'll use tough love. You'll think they don't love you or they hate you. They're actually trying to get you to be independent.

But if you can learn to ask for help and to embrace the tough love, it'll transform. I'm so, I've gone an off long on that, on those, those points.

But it's very important that we teach children the tough love is okay, that your parents love you, your grandparents love your aunts and uncle, your siblings love you, they want you to be stronger in yourself.

But if we can learn to teach our children how to use flight, fight faith and acceptance, the gift we're giving them, if you can't describe the want to achieve greatness in their lives.

Herb: 00:33:28

And is this is what you cover in your programs and in your book?

Richard Tierney: 00:33:31

Yes, my book is called how to Live Stress and anxiety free 24 hours a day. It was written for children. I remember.

I have to tell you, Herb, I, I was, I, I saw this thing on, on the computer and it said that 6% in every industry there's a 6% margin for error. So I'm thinking, okay, there's 1 billion people diagnosed with medication with mental disorders. That means there's about 60, 000 are misdiagnosed.

And then I, I, I'm praying, I'm reading my, my prayer book and I'm praying at Night time and in bed, not a word of a lie. This voice says to me, go on to Google and research that numbers.

I go on to Google and I research how many people have been misdiagnosed with mental disorders. And the number comes back that the mental health industry did a study recently. 39% Of all people diagnosed are misdiagnosed.

And of the adults, there's 1 billion people. So that's 390 million adults were misdiagnosed with mental disorders.

And of the children, there's 290 million, which means 120 million children have been misdiagnosed, which is a huge number of children. There's a very good chance that your child, if been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, has been misdiagnosed. They don't have a mental disorder.

What they have is a hole in their soul. They don't understand that the feelings are healthy and they can trust their feelings.

And that's really why I really wrote this book, is to get parents to understand. Teach your children your feelings are not mental disorders that they're perfectly healthy to have.

Kristina: 00:34:59

And that is so very, very important.

One of the, you know, when we start talking with other, you know, like, doctors and things, who want to start putting those labels on little kids is like, wait a second. They shouldn't be depressed. They shouldn't be anxious. They aren't made that way.

The kids are made to be joyful unless something, you know, really horrific has happened to them. But they shouldn't understand those words. And they most likely aren't.

You know, when they get a little bit older and there's other chemicals and stuff happening, then that makes more sense. But teach them the other words instead. I'm afraid. I'm sad. I feel down today.

But don't put those big, heavy labels on the little kids until you explore and help them share their feelings more.

Richard Tierney: 00:35:42

But even to know that anxiety is okay, anxiety. If you're anxious, that's God's telling you something's wrong in your life. So you're still here right now. You're feeling anxious.

That's God maybe telling you Richard isn't a good fit for this podcast. No, if you're. Whatever it is, God is trying to tell you, something's not safe in your life, so you trust the anxiety. You take action.

So your child doesn't feel safe in school. They're meant to come home and say to you, I don't feel safe around that teacher. I don't feel safe around those classmates.

And then you work something out. You like we did. Our kids told us, and we're being bullied in school. And we straight away, we went to. To the headmaster. We spoke to the headmaster.

We spoke to our teachers. We saw the kids in question. I stood there with my fist clenched, making a really kind of angry look behind the teacher.

And they were looking at me like nearly shit in their pants, you know, And I'm there not touching them, but just kind of giving this dirt look. If you go near my kids again, you're dead. And then trees. Two days later, it happens again. And we said, okay, that's it. Took them out.

We went homeschooling. So let our children know if you feel anxious. That's a warning. It's a call to action, a good feeling to tell your mommy and daddy what's wrong.

Yeah, it doesn't matter how. If you're your aunt or your uncle or your grandparents, you tell your mommy or daddy what's wrong.

Maybe the children don't know that your grandparents are alcoholics or that your aunt and uncle are an alcoholic. You know, they're not aware of it, but they're acting strange one day. And you kind of go, I didn't want, like, being around uncle yesterday.

He was kind of really acting out. And you kind of go, don't drink in front of our kids. You're scaring our kids. We don't engineer our kids now. And while you're drinking, end of story.

If you're going to be drinking foamy, we'll make some other arrangement. But don't be drinking around our kids and this kind of stuff.

So when we teach children that anxiety isn't a mental disorder, it's God's call to action that something isn't right in your life. And when they learn that anxiety and depression. So depression is. Depression is born out of the past.

There's something in the past we haven't forgiven or been able to let go of that makes us feel depressed. Anxiety is the fear of the unknown future. So we get our children to stop going backwards.

If something happened in the past, tell you about it, and you'll sort it out with them, and then they can get past it. If the fear in the future, you'll go along with them. If they're going to an exam tomorrow, you'll go with them.

You'll sit outside the classroom if you have to while they're in the exam, and then you walk them home. It's different for our children. We don't care what other kids think about this, whether we're going to the classroom.

If we have to molly cuddle our kids to a stage where they feel safe and comfortable, we'll do that because they're our kids. The other children aren't our kids. We'll certainly watch out for other children.

But we have an obligation to take care of our children, to give them every power we can give them. So we give them God. We give them an understanding that anxiety is a superpower. Depression is a superpower. Being angry is a superpower.

It's okay to be angry. It's just don't take your angry. So don't be angry towards people who can't defend themselves. Don't hurt anybody.

So you can be angry and say, I feel very angry, and I am very angry at you right now. That's okay. And if you have to defend yourself, you defend yourself. But never use your anger on somebody who's weaker than you.

And we can teach our children this. There's nothing wrong in teaching our children that there's good anger and bad anger. There's good anxiety and bad anxiety.

There's good depression and bad depression. We're in the position, we're the first line of defense to teach our children how to deal with life.

Herb: 00:39:00

But there's so many parents right now that don't have this information. So, again, how do we start getting the parents this information so that we can give the children this information?

Because, again, we have a whole generation now that has been raised different, that has had different kinds of information, and they're used to being scared and they're used to not having these. These kinds of support. So, again, how. How do we get people who don't know how to do this to start doing this?

Richard Tierney: 00:39:33

Well, for some, I'm thinking your podcast is a great place to start. I mean, in all honesty, I wish more and more people knew about podcasts and listen to podcasts because this message is what they need to hear.

I think the idea of having family barbecues where you invite your neighbors over if you. If you know who your friends, who your children's friends are, you contact the parents, invite them over, and kind of discuss this.

Would you be okay about. Maybe we do a Bible study together. Or we practice this book by Richie about dream prayer and about practicing anxiety around the table together.

We work together as a team and get other parents involved. Or. Or if you're from a big family, I've got two brothers, two sisters, meet with them and have them come with their kids. And we do it as a family.

We have this kind of venture. There's ways around it. But I understand, like, it can be very hard because two parents are working some. Some homes.

There's no father, there's no mother. It's very, very hard. But the first thing we can do is we can give them God. It doesn't cost us a penny. We don't have to join any religion. But we may.

You may find giving them a God. You may find you enjoy the fellowship of a church. You're meeting families out of that, maybe your work colleagues or your neighbors.

And you kind of go, that's my neighbor. You meet them and you're chatting and you get on. Great for you. Let's go simply for the kids.

But you're meeting old school friends or, you know, neighbors or something, and you're, you're, you're, you're forming a friendship with people who are healthy. That can be a wonderful thing to happen for parents, that little children. Parents need support.

And suddenly you meet a couple who are going to church and they're saying, we'll take the kids off you on Saturday. And you do the following Saturday. You kind of thank God we want to go for a day. We haven't been for a day for two months.

And they're kind of going, yeah, we're going to take the kids all day long. And so everybody. And you're kind of going, thank you, Lord. Like, you know, you're. And it's, you're getting it out.

And then the kids are meeting other kids who are believing in God and whatever. So I'm not saying don't go to church because I don't go to church. I'm saying it might work for you and it's a wonderful fellowship.

And then in your, in your community, find out there's any community gatherings.

Go down to your local church or your police station or community center and find out if there's any days where families are gathered and just go along, whatever.

But it's because then you go on your own, because her working or herb close because you're working and you've been the kids on that day and you just had to head to a barbecue and get involved, whatever the activity is, bring the kids down to meet other kids, whatever, and you'll see them, they'll blossom. They'll be around kids and they'll enjoy themselves. And kids are kids. They'll just have a great time.

But you give them a connection that they didn't have before. And that's the idea behind this. And so because we homeschool, we went in search of Activities for our kids.

We didn't want them not having activities, so we signed her. I drove up to performance and then performance arts nationals, performance arts all over Asia. She goes from Thailand, she goes to.

She went to Burma, she went to Pakistan, she went to India, she went to allow. She went to Vietnam. She did these performances all around. And then my son and herself now do modeling. They do modeling gigs.

So we're open to anything for them to do that gives them a way out, you know what? So again, you just find some community you can attach them to and sports, get them involved in sports.

So our case here, it's kickboxing, that kind of stuff. I'm not looking for them to get into ring and fight. Anybody won't be able to defend themselves. They did tai chi and then did the kickboxing.

They love the kickboxing. Didn't enjoy the Tai chi. But again, you're just trying to give them some solutions for themselves.

And then they learned language and they, they can play ukulele, they play the electric guitar, they can play the Spanish guitar. Again, my daughter stopped playing once she met boys. But again, she has those skills sets within her, you know, and that's the idea.

You're just trying to give your kids as much as possible. So this can be a challenge, but it's not giving your. Your kids skills, whatever they are. And that'll help get it started.

But definitely the, the God thing is a big part. Understanding that their feelings and emotions are not mental disorder.

So you sit around the kitchen tape saying, right, we want to talk about all the ways to deal with anxiety. And here are our lists. Mommy and daddy's list. What do you think of those? And they go, that's a fantastic one. I don't like that one.

I don't want to hide in the closet, but that's a fantastic one. Onto the bed or in the spare room, I could do those two.

And then say, right, let's practice those whoops and hide in the spare room and come down in five minutes. Tell me how you feel. And they hooked to the spare room. They hide. They'd come down, they say, that was really cool. And hide on. Hide behind the couch.

You just under the table in the kitchen. Like, you just give them different coping skills. And that's all we're trying to do.

So for parents, the really cool one is to sit around the kitchen table and give them coping skills, new coping skills that they can use in any situation. If a bully's coming towards them, scream out loud. Just scream out Loud.

Some other will come along to what's going on and just point, say Rich is bullying me. End of story. Name, name and shame. Richard's bullying, you know, and then they go, Richard, stop putting whatever.

And they know about it and they tell the parents and tell the headmaster and Richard confronts about it. His parents talk to it. Either they did school or whatever, but something happens.

But if we teach our children to take action, to, to trust their anxiety as a superpower, that's the big one, the anxiety. If we can get over the anxiety one, I think that's the greatest gift we can give to our, to our children.

Kristina: 00:44:38

It sure is. And I love how you were talking about as you were homeschooling, you intentionally went and searched out activities and things.

And that's what, you know.

One of the biggest myths about homeschooling is that the kids are going to be weird because they can't, aren't socialized and they don't do this or they don't do that.

And it's like no homeschool parents know that they need to search out the activities and do the things whether it's church related or school related or dance related or whatever.

Herb: 00:45:03

And one of the things I really appreciated about what I heard is that when your kids were bullied, you took them out of school. You didn't push it back at the school. You made your kids your priority, like, oh, this isn't working, let's do this.

So many parents now don't have that audacity to be able to step out and to do things for themselves. So they push it off. Oh, we'll do this.

Oh, we'll send them to the school, we'll work with counselors, but they don't step up and do what's best for their kids. And you did that. So you like stepped in like this.

And even, even you said you were, you weren't necessarily Christian, but you knew that your kids needed God so you brought that in. So even though it wasn't necessarily for you, your kids needed it. So you stepped up in that way.

And so many people aren't able to do that right now or they don't.

Kristina: 00:45:54

Think they have permission to do that.

Herb: 00:45:55

They don't have permission of our message.

Kristina: 00:45:57

You do have permission to take care of you and your kids.

Herb: 00:46:00

And it's, and it's your obligation, it's what you signed up for when you chose to have kids. It's like you're not like sending them off to let other people raise them. They're your responsibility.

You need to step up and do what's right for your kids, whether it is taking them out of school because they're bullied or they don't feel safe, whether it is protecting them from the different environments. It's like that. That's your job. That's so. So.

Richard Tierney: 00:46:23

Yeah.

Kristina: 00:46:23

Thank you very much.

Richard Tierney: 00:46:25

One thing I'll say, Herb, is sorry. Sorry, Christina, Just want to say we would have liked to have kept them in the school. We tried the school.

We spoke to the headmaster, spoke to the teachers. All their friends were in the school. You know, it was a. It was a big school near our home. It was a great location.

And we hadn't looked at homeschooling at that stage. We didn't want to go to any other schools that were very far away. So our first intention was to keep them in school and find some way to work around.

So we did try the teachers, we did try the counselors and whatever. But the thing was just that the bullies weren't going to stop. We found that out. So that, that, that, that meant we didn't have a choice.

Let our lead them be bullied or take them out. And that point, we took them out. But our first, I have to say our first intention was hopefully we'd find a solution that would work.

Change classroom, whatever that would work. But they changed classes. But then at the school break, the bullies would still come over on the school break.

So even though they had a classroom in different classroom, the bullying still happened. And so we realized it wasn't going to stop. But our first, our first intention, like anyone, is to, not to. To mess up their environment too much.

You know, all their friends or other schoolmates go to that school. The fact they've been bullied by one or two, they wouldn't be bullied by the whole school. It was one or two bullies.

So you don't want to take them from the whole, where all the friends are, because two bullies in a class of 40 cases, two bodies. At the end of the day, the bullying wasn't going to stop and it was destroying our case. And so that was it. That was. We didn't have a choice anymore.

Now it's a case of finding another school maybe 30 miles away or look at homeschooling. That was this, you know, so again, we all, if we're all parents, even, even we talk about parents who are parents by accident.

Once you hold the child and you give life to that child, everything changes. Because now your whole future is that child.

And we need Our children to understand that whether they are three years of age or 30 years of age, they're still our child. And we will give our lives for our child. And that's the message I think parents have to get over their kids.

And we may be very busy trying to make ends meet. We may both be holding down jobs and working our horses off and working a 40, 50 hour week, whatever, and really don't have much time to play games.

But the bottom line is we care about them deeply and we'll do whatever it takes. And so this book I wrote, how to Live Stress and anxiety free 24 hours a day is simple.

10 Or 12 practices that parents can do with children to basically teach them that their feelings and emotions are mental disorders, that they can practice dream prayer, they can, they can do other little, little activities that are very simple to do.

And everything you do about the kitchen table at the end of that day, suddenly the kids are just their anxiety and their depression even and saying, yeah, I felt depressed today, but it's okay because it's not all day. It's not every day. I can be depressed and have disparities a day. But tomorrow it'll be a new, new thing.

Tomorrow I'm only depressed because Uncle Michael's over for a week. When he's gone, I'll be okay again.

Like, you know, they get, you understand why they're depressed, why they're anxious, and then they know it'll pass. Or they can ask for advice. And that's what we need to teach our children. There will be moments even for us at all, Scott.

We see what's happening in the world around us. We get anxious all the time. We may hide it from our kids, maybe we shouldn't hide it from our kids. May say, no, I'm really anxious.

I've just seen what's going on in America or in Ukraine or in England or in Ireland. And it makes me very anxious, just very depressed that society's fallen away so badly that they're all like saying, you can't.

A boy is a girl and a girl's a boy. Really makes me very, very depressed hearing this terrible stuff, you know, so let the kids know you get depressed too.

You get anxious too, that it's not just them. I think we put, I think we put on a brave face, a brave mask for our children.

And that's the biggest mistake we can make when they think we have it all together, when in fact we don't. Like I said, we're new parents today. To a child who's a day older today. We've never had that child before.

I mean, tomorrow our children will be a day older. We've never had that child before. Looking over. So, yeah.

Kristina: 00:50:17

Thank you, Richard, so very, very much.

So as we're starting to wrap up here, can you let parents and audience know how to get a hold of you in case something that you said today really resonates with them? I know the book is on Amazon, but how can they get a hold of you if they want a little bit more information?

Richard Tierney: 00:50:32

I have an email. It's information at trauma recovery anonymous.com a podcast. Also trauma recovery anonymous. I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook. Tierney Therapy.

My name is Richard Tierney. If you can give me, you want to give me a call or send me an email, I'll respond to you happily. And the book is very simple.

It's written like, for a child, and it's 10 to 12 very simple practices that you can introduce to your children in any moment and it'll transform their lives. So make, make as many podcasts as you can. It's. It's normal people carrying a message of hope. That's the way we love about podcasts.

We're not paid by big, big companies to, yeah, promote something where husbands and wives and parents and godparents and grandparents and just trying to make ends meet in a way of emotionally help our children. So don't be afraid to come on, look for podcasts and take these messages and you can do this. It's very simple.

Your children have anxiety, but they don't understand anxiety. Superpower. And if you can learn as a super parent and share that with them, you'll transform their lives. Christina, thank you for having me on.

Kristina: 00:51:42

You are very, very welcome. We are so glad you were here today.

Herb: 00:51:44

Yep. I'd like to also thank you for being here today.

So many people like, just talk about the problems, but you also stepped up and you made your children the most important. You pulled them out of school when that became the thing that that needed to happen. And so parents stepp up. Like, that is so important.

And so you being here sharing your story and helping other parents be able to step up, that, that is super important. So thank you for being here. Thank you for actually doing what you do because you are making the world a better place. So again, thank you.

Richard Tierney: 00:52:15

Very kind. Thank you very much.

Kristina: 00:52:16

Awesome. All right, parents and audience, you know what time it is. It is time to like and review and share the podcast.

Because bringing education home can't reach anybody, can't help anybody if you don't share it and help them know that this beautiful resource is here with awesome people, Richard, and all of our other guests who are only here to serve families and help our children grow up to be happy, healthy and successful.

Herb: 00:52:38

And if you do want to share it, make sure you share it in the comments. So comment their name. That way you're hitting, you're sharing it and you're commenting. And it helps increase usability so more people will find it.

So make sure you you, if you are going to send it to somebody that you comment in the comments so that they find it that way, that would be super helpful.

Kristina: 00:52:59

All right, everybody, thank you so much for everything. And we will talk to you later. Bye for now.

Herb: 00:53:04

For now.

Richard Tierney: 00:53:05

Bye. Bye. Thank you.