Dr. Lisa (00:00):

Failure is necessary and failure is important, and failure is not definitive of what the future experience had, even if other people tell you it is, and I think it’s such an important thing for a kid to experience on their own, like talking about it and experiencing it are two very different things.

Dr. Sarah (00:21):

What if small shifts in the way that you parent could help prevent imposter syndrome in your kids before it even begins? Joining me today is Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin, a licensed clinical psychologist and executive coach, and Lisa earned her doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University and is the co-author of three books, including Her Latest, release Your Child’s Greatness: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Children Without Impostor Syndrome. In this episode, we explore how attachment styles, mindset, and even neurodiversity can impact confidence and self-perception. We also dive into parenting strategies like how can you help your child develop a strong self narrative and build resilience, why protecting them from failure can actually do more harm than good? And what kinds of conversations, both the ones you have with your kid and the ones you have in front of your kid, can set them up for a lifetime of confidence. Plus, we’re going to share the important differences between emotional regulation and emotional hyper regulation and ways our environment may unintentionally reinforce some of these less healthy patterns. So if you’ve ever wondered what you as parents can do to help your kids build a strong resilient sense of self, this episode is for you.

(01:45):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:14):

Hello, welcome back to the securely attached podcast. We have Dr. Lisa Orbé-Austin with us today. So thank you for being here.

Dr. Lisa (02:26):

Oh, thank you for having me, Sarah. I’m happy to be here.

Dr. Sarah (02:28):

Yeah, I’m really happy. I’m excited about this conversation. You have a book coming out all about imposter syndrome and I know you do a lot of work in the professional space, but you’re also a mom and this is very relevant to parenthood, I think. And can you talk a little bit about how you ended up deciding to write this book?

Dr. Lisa (02:52):

Yeah, so my first two books, the first book was about how to overcome imposter syndrome in yourself. So it was much more facing like an adult audience, really trying to help build the skills that helped overcome imposter syndrome. And then the second one is about organizational cultures and leadership, but as I was giving talks about imposter syndrome, I would always get the question, what about our kids? And people would say, I have imposter syndrome. I’m afraid to pass it down to my kids. How can I get into a prevention place? And I would find myself talking a lot about the prevention opportunities for childhood and people were so enthralled by it, but it was never what I came to talk about. I usually came to talk to managers or leaders or employees, and so it really made me think there probably needs to be just a book about how you think about orienting yourself toward raising kids so that they don’t develop these issues around imposter syndrome. And that’s probably how the book came to be. It wasn’t a planned book, it was sort of this idea that came from people who I had been talking to about imposter syndrome.

Dr. Sarah (03:51):

That’s so interesting. I feel like there’s parallels in my own work too because I started out, I mean I specialize in parenting support and child development, but I started out when I was doing my original doctoral training, my focus was on working with adults with chronic childhood trauma and I was working only with adults for the most part, and in working backwards on helping them heal parts of their childhood, I gained so much insight into early development.

(04:25):

And then when I had my own kids and I was just immersing myself in just the psychology of parenting just because I was a parent, I was interested in it and it clicked for me. I was like, gosh, if there was a way to teach parents about attachment science and the parent-child relationship and child development and all these things, I would be potentially offering them prevention so that they raised kids who maybe weren’t end up ending up in my office at 40 years old. Not that parents are completely responsible for a 40-year-old going to therapy, but it’s this idea of, I don’t know, sometimes it’s like reverse engineering something helps you realize let’s start with kids and families that really is preventative.

Dr. Lisa (05:10):

And it’s a place where much of it begins. And so I do think that’s how I also largely work with adults and I largely work with people who deal with imposter syndrome and I just felt for their inner child and I was like, maybe if their parents had had different resources, this would’ve gone a little differently because a lot of times the parents were well-intentioned, but something sort of happened along the way that sent a particular message to them around their worth or their value or their accomplishments. And it’s sometimes completely not well-intentioned. It’s just accidentally happening because it’s repeating a cycle in the family or doing all kinds of things. So that’s really sort of also what happened for me too.

Dr. Sarah (05:47):

Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about what imposter syndrome is? I mean, I know it’s a buzzword, everybody’s heard of it, but I imagine that there’s some misunderstandings about it or some nuance to it. So as a scientist who studies this, how would you define imposter syndrome? How does it show up?

Dr. Lisa (06:04):

Yeah, so imposter syndrome is the experience when you are accomplished, capable, smart, have all these kinds of things that are going for you, but you don’t believe that they’re truly going for you, that you believe that they’re happening for external reasons. Usually luck mistake overworker as the result of a relationship. And so it has very hard for you to internalize the successes, the wins, the accomplishments, and so they feel very fragile. They feel like as if they happened, but you didn’t have anything to do with it, and they’ll quickly disappear as quickly as they happened. And so oftentimes people feel like a fraud. I’m going into the circumstance, I don’t really belong here. They don’t really know that I’m not capable, and eventually I’m going to show them that. And usually that happens as a result of a mistake or a failure, which is completely normal in development.

(06:48):

But for people with imposter, it feels like revelation that they truly are a fraud because the way they think about intelligence or capabilities through a perfection notion, this idea of something has to be perfect in order to be taken in as my own or seen as accomplished, and it gets into two cycles. One of them is around overwork, so overwork to cover up the fear of fraudulence or self-sabotage and the self-sabotage ones are often harder to distinguish. The overworked ones are easier because the self-sabotage ones haven’t succeeded in the same ways people think of them as having potential but never gotten there, and oftentimes their performance anxiety is crippling them to potentially affect their ability to actually move forward.

Dr. Sarah (07:30):

Interesting. What I’m hearing there too is some rigidity of thinking black and white thinking perfectionist thinking, unless it’s a hundred percent perfect, it’s completely not okay, but also a really core sense of self problem. If everything that I like a bias, if I’m taking in all the things that I do as wrong, I’m letting those come in and inform my narrative and my sense of self, but I’m filtering out the positive or signing that to the external reason, not an internal reason. What have you found to be the cause and where does the sense of self and self-awareness play into Imposter Syndrome?

Dr. Lisa (08:17):

Yeah, it’s a great point because I’ll jump to what happens at the end and then I’ll jump back to the beginning, but which is oftentimes when I help people work through their imposter syndrome, oftentimes it’s like rediscovering the self. They’re kind of like, who am I and what do I need and what do I want? Sometimes it sort of shakes up their life in a bit because in essence, they have been living a life for someone else or something else or some external drive. And so it’s almost like a rediscovery process of the self. And so it begins oftentimes in early childhood. And I want to also say this is not a concept that just came out in Instagram or buzzword. It’s been studied in the social psychological literature for over 40 years, since 1978, and American Psychological Association just put a book at it.

(09:00):

It’s a real scientific experience. It’s not some buzzword on social, which a lot of people think it is, but it often begins in childhood. It often begins in this experience in childhood where you’re experiencing yourself in a rigid way. Either you’re the good kid, the intelligent kid, the one who it comes easy to and everyone’s like, everything comes easy. And when things come hard to you, you’re like, well, clearly I’m not as smart as everyone thinks I am. And so it feels like you’re hiding parts of yourself, but meanwhile, these are completely normal developmental things to have to work hard on things. Not everyone is capable of being magical on every single domain. Then there’s the hardworking type. So this one, we often see a correlation in the hardworking type around neurodivergence and the hardworking. It’s not that every hardworking one has neurodivergence, but oftentimes because they haven’t been diagnosed properly for ADHD or for some kind of other issue like a vision issue or all kinds of things like learning disability, they actually have to work harder in order to keep up with their peers. So even if they get an intervention that supports them, this is always the way they think about themselves is I have to work so much harder to keep up with my peers.

(10:11):

And then last one we see is the survivor type. So the survivor type grew up largely in a home that there was either abuse or neglect, and as a result of that, they never got any feedback about who they were, but the achievements were ways of escaping their experience. So for them as adults, they often feel like one wrong move and everything will go away, even if it’s not true, that’s what they feel about it. So they’re often on a tight rope feeling like I can’t make any mistakes.

(10:35):

And so those kinds of things happen. A lot of people pleasing. So growing up thinking, you have to be making sure everyone around you is happy and you’re oftentimes the good kid. Also, this idea too of not being able to manage conflict in the home. So conflict is either out of control or not happening, so you don’t often know how to deal with conflict because when we have imposter, we’re very conflict avoidant. So all these kinds of experiences in childhood really set the foundation for not internalizing the positive skills, abilities, attributes, and also not being able to tolerate mistake making or flaws or issues as well.

Dr. Sarah (11:15):

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean it makes me, I’m obviously biased towards thinking of everything through a lens of attachment, but I imagine there’s research on imposter syndrome and attachment styles because…

Dr. Lisa (11:25):

To be very honest, there isn’t, but there should be.

Dr. Sarah (11:28):

Really? Because as you’re describing this, I’m like, Hmm, that sounds like avoidant attachment. That sounds like an ambivalent or anxious attachment style.

Dr. Lisa (11:35):

Totally.

Dr. Sarah (11:35):

That would be interesting to see that get fleshed out a bit.

Dr. Lisa (11:41):

Yes, get started as a line of research. I absolutely agree. So if there are researchers out there, they should be doing that work because I do think there’s a lot of really interesting work to be done related to attachment style because I think it shows up in their attachment style in their adult life with partnership and other things, but also in the work world and the kind of bosses and authority figures that they choose are familiar ones oftentimes that are exhibiting the same type of attachment behavior toward them. It’s a hard thing for people to understand theoretically, but when you see it in practice, when you see it for real and someone’s like, I remember having a conversation with, I was giving a talk and someone asked me about imposter syndrome and they were like, I hate women bosses. Women bosses are terrible. I’ve never had a good woman boss.

(12:31):

And I was like, oh, good lord. And then I said, I don’t want to get personal. You’ll have to answer this question if you don’t want to, but since we’re talking, we’re in a small group, what was your relationship like with your mother? And she was like, it was terrible. And she never let me have a say in my own life, and she was very domineering, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, is that what you experienced in your bosses? And it was like as if all the light bulbs went on and she was like, oh my God. She’s like, well, what can I do? I was like, you’ve got to work through those issues with your mom because what you’re doing is you’re replicating them in attempt to fix ’em at work and you’re not going to fix ’em at work. And it was mind blowing for her, but it’s not even that complicated of an issue. It’s attachment, right? It’s like people are going to attach the way that’s familiar to them, but often unconscious. They’re not aware that this is happening intentionally.

Dr. Sarah (13:22):

And I mean, it makes me think that, and I want to get into this too, so how do we support it in adulthood? How do we prevent it in raising our kids? But I would imagine some piece is like, well, secure attachment inherently allows a child to be whole and messy and succeed and fail, have a narrative about themselves that’s internally located because they’re seen as this whole being that’s attached to but not merged with or not dependent on the approval of their parents. So I’m assuming that some of the same strategies to help foster secure attachment relationships between us and our kids are going to be pretty helpful in fostering protection against imposter syndrome.

Dr. Lisa (14:11):

Yes. Bingo, yes. But in the book we have to break it down to the littlest pieces. So we talk about the development of self and identity and how important that is for a child and that we want them to fully get to explore who they are and even if it doesn’t look like who we are or what we want from them, which it can be the hardest part of it because the only reason we want them to be like us is because we don’t know anything else and we’re afraid of what could be, and we don’t want them to make mistakes and we’re trying sometimes to protect them in that way. But there are different people, there are different humans, they have different experiences. And so really tolerating the difference in your child from you is I think such an important piece of this and not trying to make them into something you want.

(14:57):

And I think it’s really hard in our society to do that because a lot of us, especially in younger age, we’re trying to get our kid into school, we’re trying to get them off to college even when they’re six, we’re thinking about where they’re going to go to college. And so there’s this idea that they have to be something kind of prescribed and it’s scary for them not to be because then what happens to them. But I do think it’s really important to really let your kid find that clearly it’s going to be through your guidance and help and giving them opportunities to explore different parts of themselves, but trying not to make a mini me of yourself if that’s not who they are, but allowing them to kind of really, so that’s a piece of it really fostering kinds of ideas of belonging because oftentimes we often hear narratives of people on the periphery or they’re outside of the inner circle and people with imposter syndrome, they’ve never felt part of something.

(15:51):

And so really teaching belonging and helping kids deal not only with the joys of belonging, but the hardships of belonging and how hard it can be to be rejected and how to deal with conflict. And so really helping them to understand what it means to belong to certain places. I think also clearly teaching about failure. I think a lot of us as parents want to protect our children from failure and we get involved in ways that we probably shouldn’t and letting them fail. And I think it’s a hard thing. I mean, I’m a parent of teenagers and I can remember very specifically with my oldest.

(16:26):

She loves and loved fencing when she was young and she was terrible at it, and it was so excruciating as a parent, it was excruciating because we went through a season where she didn’t win a single bout a single one. She went through 41 losses before she won her first bout, and we just kept encouraging her what she wanted and she was so good spirited about losing what everyone else was telling her. Even somebody, she was an Olympian and she really respected, told her she should choose another weapon which hurt her feelings. She just kept doing it. How old was she? She was like 13 at the time.

Dr. Sarah (17:05):

So sense of self is really starting to get crystallized and come online in that point too. So to be that flexible and that persistent and that comfortable with failure and still feel like I do it, I like it. I mean that didn’t start at 13, you had to have built some foundations there. What were you talking about with her when she was 6?

Dr. Lisa (17:36):

Yeah, I mean I think we’ve always been very open to her about what she’s going through. That wasn’t our first hardship that she’d ever experienced or first feeling of not belonging. So we always were talking about it very openly with her. She had a very terrible experience in a ballet class where she was being pushed off to the side and put in the back of the room when she wanted to be in the front when she was little and having to talk to her about what was happening was super hard. She was little and all she wanted to do is be in the front.

Dr. Sarah (18:08):

And I’m sure your mama bear wanted to call up that ballet teacher and be like, put her in the front.

Dr. Lisa (18:13):

I actually did confront her, but I did confront her with my daughter present because I wanted her to recognize that this is a six yearold ballet class. This is not, we’re not here going to Julliard. Every kid deserves to be in the front, every kid. And she was not doing that and purposely she didn’t think she was a good dancer and she was trying to shun her to the back and I just didn’t feel like it was fair for a 6-year-old to be in that situation and then eventually removed her from that ballet school.

Dr. Sarah (18:42):

But, that’s really good to hear. I think that a lot of parents, and I’m curious if you see this too in your work when you’re talking to people about imposter syndrome is like, yes, there are things that we know support, prevention of imposter syndrome, and there are things we know helicopter parenting and rescuing them from all distress and not allowing them to sit in the feelings of failure and disappointment. We know that’s helpful. And then I think parents could then take that information and say, okay, I can never do those things. And I think it’s helpful too, to hear from a professional in teaching about imposter syndrome who still is like, no, no, I’m going to step in and advocate for my kid when I don’t think something feels right. I’m not going to be like, oh, well she’s got to develop that grit and I’m not going to say anything. So there’s a middle space where we can still support our kids. It’s like there’s a space between helicopter parenting and you’re on your own kid and we could still prevent imposter syndrome.

Dr. Lisa (19:44):

Yeah, because I think for me at that time, I thought about whether or not to intervene for her and I had encouraged her to talk to the teacher about wanting to be in the front and she just was little and I was like, she doesn’t have the skills yet to do this, and so I’m going to teach her how to have the skills by modeling it for her that she doesn’t have to be afraid of talking to authority figures because I had to talk to the head of the ballet school because to deal with this, and she sat in the room with me and watched me do it, and I thought it’s really important for her to do it. And now at 15, I don’t have to get involved in it. She has teammates, she gets in arguments with them, they disagree, they have all kinds of things.

(20:20):

I’m not involved. She’s handling that and she feels very comfortable handling it, even really complex situations. She handles really well because she’s watched me do it. She’s watched me then let her do it and gets somewhat involved, then watched me advise her on how to do it. Then now she just does it on her own. And so yes, it’s been sort of a gradual process to this. I never wanted her to be without the skills to conflict manage, but she’s quite good at it now in ways I definitely wasn’t at 15. And so I think it’s been a lovely thing to watch her. She had a very different experience with childhood that I had and my daughter who, I’ll tell you the story about when she won her first bout, she had drawn such the attention from all these coaches because they never had seen such resilience in a kid to kind of keep losing and just show up to practice and keep wanting to at one of a local tournament. She was fencing in this local tournament and she got not only her coach to show up, but she got the Olympian who told her to change weapons to show up and also another NCA fencer from Columbia to show up who just wanted to cheer her on and they cheered her to that win. They cheered her so loudly. I say that they brought about the win because they just were screaming for her and she ended up winning that bout.

(21:48):

She is now a nationally ranked cadet fencer. She just earned her B, which it goes from E to A, just earned her B, and she was top 16 in a national tournament. So it just does show you that failure is necessary and failure is important, and failure is not definitive of what the future experience had, even if other people tell you it is. And I think it’s such an important thing for a kid to experience on their own. Talking about it and experiencing it are two very different things.

Dr. Sarah (22:18):

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love how you, two things. One, I think you painted a very important picture of having developmentally appropriate levels of scaffolding in teaching our kids these skills because it is not what you help a 15-year-old, 13-year-old, 16-year-old is really different than what you help a 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 2-year-old do. And we are allowed to step in and model, and then we scaffold, which means we slowly step away and we get them where they are able to cross the finish line themselves, and then we step away a little more and a little more and a little more. But I think the black and white thinking, the all or nothing thinking of, I can never rescue or my kid will develop imposter syndrome or I’m terrified of them having any sense of failure. So I really like the gradient there that I think is super important and permission giving for parents to be active in this process. But I also think holding that big wide open space for her to fail and for her to find support and find that belonging and focus. I’m curious too, I am assuming based on her resilience that you and what you’re saying is you guys weren’t really or orienting her to the point of fencing being about winning the tournaments.

(23:51):

What were you helping her focus on? What was she focused on that you were reinforcing and then yeah, that just seems to be she found that light and you didn’t extinguish it.

Dr. Lisa (24:06):

Yeah, I will say as a parent, my husband and I would talk about it afterwards and we were heartbroken. For her, it was really hard for her to always be losing and she was working so hard, and I think we were always looking at the one little thing that got a little bit better. So say that she only got five touches in an entire tournament. Then if she got six, we were like, you got six. That’s one hole, one more. And we were looking at any incremental growth and supporting the incremental growth, which I think was kind of helpful for her. Then she was looking for the incremental growth. She goes, guess what? I did this. And even if she didn’t win it, there was some winning in it that she could internalize as something that was happening as a result of her putting in the effort. I think that was really important. I think also too, in the process of all of this, I think we started to realize she was neurodivergent, which was really eyeopening. I didn’t think a sport could help me figure that out. I always thought academics would figure it out, but she had a clumsiness to her and I started to just research what this could be. Is it just that she’s clumsy? And I started to realize there is a correlation between clumsiness and visual issues.

Dr. Sarah (25:27):

So visual spatial issues. Because the cerebellum and the prefrontal cortex in a DHD and probably other neurodivergent presentations, it’s not communicating the same way as a typical neurotypical brain, which makes sense because cerebellum is where our coordination and our spatial processing, or I dunno if spatial processing, but our spatial awareness is happening, so brain, we need those wires to be running really smoothly and they don’t so much in ADHD, and it’s actually clumsiness is a common indicator that people don’t always know to look for.

Dr. Lisa (26:01):

And I just wondered because this is the same thing that happened in her ballet class. She was considered kind of clumsy and not very coordinated. And I just started to wonder, so I had her tested and she did have a visual processing issue, and even as a psychologist, I knew the word, I kind of knew generally what it meant, but I didn’t specialize in this, so I didn’t really know it deeply. So I just became a specialist in it and I found that there’s vision therapy for it. So I got her vision therapy and we went weekly and she had a practice every day, and apparently at the time of 13, she had a seven year old’s visual processing skill which was affecting her, and we were able to get her to a 20-year-old processing speed. And I think it helped her fencing because it was about spatial distancing.

(26:48):

It was about how her body operated in space. It was all of these things. And it was also a really lovely moment because for me, it was hard as a psychologist to be like, oh, I have to take my kid to a neuropsychologist to figure out what’s wrong because I don’t understand. And then she was really good about it. She really kind of was like, oh, I’ve got this thing and it’s making sense of why I’m struggling. And it really helped put the pieces together for her. And she took her homework so seriously because she wanted to be better at fencing. She loves fencing more than anything, and she just was really dedicated. She’s like, if this is going to help me fence better, I’m going to do whatever it takes.

Dr. Sarah (27:26):

That’s so amazing. And it’s so interesting that you bring up, because I’ve not thought about imposter syndrome and neurodiversity as being so connected and that hard worker type of imposter syndrome. That makes so much sense when you say that. And it’s really interesting because I talk to a lot of, we do a lot of neuropsych evaluations in my group practice. We work with a lot of neurodiverse kids. I have ADHD, I have a hunch. I got a kid who’s going to maybe have a two. And I have noticed that when parents get, and kids, but when parents get the diagnosis, I think there’s a lot of anxiety or worry as clinicians be like, oh, and maybe even some parents of getting the diagnosis. I’m worried that if I give them this diagnosis, they’re going to be crushed or it’s going to be such a hardship and in reality…

Dr. Lisa (28:21):

Or definitive of who they are.

Dr. Sarah (28:22):

And a lot of parents are scared to tell their kids they have it. The reality is most times I would say my experience has been when people find out what their diagnosis is, there is relief.

Dr. Lisa (28:35):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (28:35):

Like, oh, there’s a reason why these things are hard. And it goes back to the thing you were saying about when you have imposter syndrome, oftentimes it develops because there’s this sense of achievement being located outside of you, but it also might mean that failure is located inside of you.

Dr. Lisa (28:55):

Yes, it does mean that.

Dr. Sarah (28:56):

And so kids who don’t have an explanation for why some of these skills don’t come easy to them can be very vulnerable to finding that blame internally, oh, I’m bad at this. I’m no good at this. I stink at this. I suck at this and I’m never going to be good at this. There’s something wrong with me. And when we can say, no, no, no, your brain is wired differently and there’s nothing wrong with you. This all makes total sense. And now the fail quote failure, the struggle is located outside of them and the strength and the work and the reward can be located within them. Bam. You are really giving it a kid a gift. And I think so I just feel like it’s a public service announcement. Don’t be afraid of the die counts. It can be so empowering.

Dr. Lisa (29:50):

So beneficial, so beneficial because it not only gives them the answer of like, aha, this is what’s going on. I’m not just terrible or not working hard enough or whatever it is. And there’s help for it. Usually there’s help and there’s things that we can do about it. And I think that’s also super empowering that you’re not just stuck here. And so I do think that I’m always, I am such a big fan of and always doing public service announcements about testing.

(30:18):

People are like, what’s going on with my kid? Just get ’em tested. I know a lot of resources in the city where I live, and I’m always encouraging people, if you don’t know what’s happening and you feel like something’s going on, go get them tested. Because I do think as working with adults, I’m often then diagnosing these conditions later in life, and it’s often harder to get this diagnosis later in life because not only are they resistant sometimes to the medication, but they’re also feeling a lot of resentment and anger. This didn’t get diagnosed. I’ve got a lot to process now.

Dr. Sarah (30:49):

Yeah, there’s grief, a lot of grief in adult diagnosis because you grief what could have been, it’s hard. I mean, I still think it can be really valuable to find out in adulthood too. I do think there is a similar experience of relief and almost self-compassion that happens, but there’s often a lot of grief too. And I think the brain is less plastic. It’s still a plastic. You can change it. You can do lots of things to help build skills, executive functioning skills or coordination skills or visual spatial skills in adulthood. But it’s a lot easier.

Dr. Lisa (31:28):

Yeah, when you’re younger. And I think you hit on the nail right on the head around this, what could have been. I think you don’t want that for your child. You don’t want them to be like, what could have been if I had gotten the proper diagnosis? And it’s not for every kid, but if you notice something’s not right, they’re struggling in school, they don’t like reading something’s off, get it evaluated because it opened up her world and it really made what she wanted possible. And I do think it is true of a lot of people that I’m working with as adults, they wonder what was possible if I had gotten this diagnosis earlier. And I think there’s a lot of loss in that. And I do think though it does affect and help them deal with the imposter syndrome, they can also understand really concretely how it all got started.

(32:17):

And so I think that that’s such an important piece of don’t be afraid that your kid’s not perfect. None of our kids are, and frankly, getting to know them in this way is a deeper way of understanding them in the way they see the world and the way the world functions around them. It’s been very tremendously helpful for us. We don’t hesitate if our kid needs something in terms of intervention, we go for the intervention because the stigmas we’re psychologists, but the stigmas, I still hear our psychologists say that they don’t want their kid doing X or Y or Z stigmatizing.

Dr. Sarah (32:50):

Yeah. We did a whole episode about, we do q and a episodes every Thursday and parents send in their questions and we’ll answer them on the show. And we did one about, I’ll link it in the show notes, but it was about one parent had written in that their child has a DHD and they get accommodations at school, but they won’t take them because they’re embarrassed and how to help them work through that. Because there can be stigma, there can be shame. Yeah, totally. And bullying. Yeah, absolutely. Peer pressure and stress around that. And I think when we can empower kids again to find the superpower in their neurodiversity and think of it as a strength, because I think personally, I think that it quite often is a strength. There are things that make it challenging, but ultimately there’s a lot of superpowers that come with a neurodiverse brain. And that’s I think going back to the idea of imposter syndrome, how do we log things? What meaning do we assign things? I think self narrative is probably a very important thing when it comes to imposter syndrome in one direction or the other. Could you talk a little bit about that self narrative piece?

Dr. Lisa (34:09):

Yeah, so I do think it’s really important, we talk about this for the adults and I think it’s really important in children is the way that they talk about themselves to others, the way they talk about themselves to themselves or to the people closest to them and helping them to reframe or renar some of the things that may be allowing it to be all external all or the failure being all internal. We have to get them to that middle locus of control, which is a little bit external, little bit internal. So I think it’s really, I’m often doing this with my kids and thinking about what language are they using about what went down and how do we help them see multiple perspectives have a very thickened narrative that has context in it in a lot of richness that it doesn’t have to be, like you were saying earlier, black or white.

(34:59):

It doesn’t have to be a simple explanation. Oftentimes things are really complex and it’s okay to have a complex view of things. And so I do think I’m often promoting that. This weekend is when my daughter got her B and she got top 16, but my youngest didn’t do so well. It was very heartbreaking for her. She cried a lot. It was really hard for her to watch her sister succeed in a way that she’s been training in a very similar way and didn’t have that success. But we were talking to her about what she could learn from the moment and how she could take it in and where, and we had to emotionally help her regulate. We could get to that point. But our job was to help her emotionally regulate, co-regulate with us in the beginning. And then when she got there and she was like, what happened? We sort of walked through it. We looked at data, we looked at sort of what happened with her. We looked at what she did, and that way she felt some kind of ability to do something different. It didn’t feel like the failure happened. Then she doesn’t understand why. And hers was complicated because she did really well. We have pool. She did really well. She came out ninth out of 200, and then she ended up losing in the table of 64.

(36:10):

And she just felt like she went out early and what was wrong with her and her coach said something that really troubled her, which is like, I couldn’t have asked for anything else. You did perfectly. You did perfectly. But she was just better and she was a little faster. She was little this, and it was hard for her. It’s like, how could I have done this perfectly and then still lose? And I think having her understand that and having her kind of sit with that I think was such an important thing. You can still do everything you have and still lose, and that’s okay. And it sucks and it hurts, but it’s okay.

Dr. Sarah (36:44):

But what a valuable thing to one day when you’re ready to take that in and internalize it as part of your schema and how the world works and how you work within the world is like, I can show up my best and I can fail.

Dr. Lisa (36:58):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (36:58):

Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. I don’t have control over everything. There are going to be people who are just better at this than me in this moment, and that’s still okay. I can keep going because I’m not doing this only because I want to win. I’m doing this because I love it. It feels good. It’s packed.

Dr. Lisa (37:16):

It striking me in other ways.

Dr. Sarah (37:19):

Winning isn’t the only thing that we do things for.

Dr. Lisa (37:23):

And it’s not the only valuable thing because the losing is very valuable. If you can learn from it, get something from it, feel like loss isn’t the end of the world. There’s so many valuable skills in losing failure, mistake making that I think is such an important thing to promote in our kids. I think one of the things that I’m very good about, I think, and it’s come from my own, you probably don’t know this, but I, I’ve also struggled with imposter syndrome pretty much my whole life. And so it has been very important to me as someone who struggled with imposter syndrome to show my kids my mistakes and to be able to talk through them with them in a way that isn’t scary to them, but actually shows them I’m human. I make mistakes all the time and take ownership of my mistakes even with them and be able to be like, I screwed up there. I shouldn’t have done that, and this is what I would’ve done differently next time and hold me accountable. But I think it’s really important that they see me as fallible too.

Dr. Sarah (38:18):

I think that’s so important because they’re looking at us for everything and what we focus on, they focus on, and what we can hold space for and model and shine a light on in ourselves. It gives them permission to do the same with themselves when they’re ready. And I think that cannot be understated.

Dr. Lisa (38:36):

Yes, totally.

Dr. Sarah (38:39):

Or cannot be overstated. I don’t really know how you say that part, but you know what I meant. Yes. You said something else though that I think is really important to go back to, which is at first you just co-regulate. You held space for the feelings. And I think sometimes we can get, our mama bear wants to go in and soothe, but we often soothe from a cognitive place. We want to talk it out. We want to help them cross the finish line faster.

Dr. Lisa (39:12):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (39:12):

Know where we want their thoughts to go, and we want to have that conversation and go there first. But there’s something really important about just holding off a bit, pausing and staying in the feelings. Can you talk a little bit about the emotion regulation piece?

Dr. Lisa (39:31):

That’s like a whole chapter in the book around emotional regulation. I think it is something also too, what we find with people imposter syndrome is that they are overregulated, so they tend to push down emotion because it gets in the way of performing. And I think they’re afraid of the emotion. Oftentimes it does feel like it’s sabotaging things, but for us, we’re often thinking about the fact that my kids can’t think cognitively until they have had the emotional experience because they’re not in that space. They just need to feel what they’re feeling. And it’s hard. When she lost in 64, she was so heartbroken that she couldn’t get off the strip, so we had to go and take her off the strip. There are all these parents watching, it’s really exposing, and she’s hysterically crying with her mask on, and we’re sitting there and we’re just trying to help her.

(40:23):

And I think one of the things that why parents go to the cognitive, I know that pull for me to go to the cognitive is there too, is that I just want to get over this part because it’s so stressful for her. It’s stressful for me. I’m getting feelings about it. There are people watching, and so it’s a very difficult moment. But what I try to do is I try to look for her and try to find what she needs in this moment. And every kid’s different. It’s about the type of co-regulation or emotional support that they need. And she needs you to just be present and to put your hand on her leg as kind of a grounding thing. And we keep telling her, you did well and it’s okay to hurt and we’re soothing, but we’re sort of validating the feelings and letting her cry as long as she wants. And it was probably 30 good minutes of crying hysterically and letting her do that and being like, it’s nobody’s business but hers and ours, if they’re judging or whatever, I need to be present for my kid and here and this is what matters. But it’s not easy. It’s totally not easy. There are people judging. There are people looking.

Dr. Sarah (41:34):

Yeah, you have to probably be self-regulating a ton in that moment because you’re probably crawling out of your skin wanting to be like, I want to not have this happen right now.

Dr. Lisa (41:42):

Yes, I want to go outside and take this outside, but it’s not where she wanted to go. She wanted to sit there and she wanted to just feel it. And so you really have to really regulate yourself first and don’t give to hoots about anyone else and just your kid in that moment. And look, there’s different times I see kids get violent on the strip, and that’s when you’ve got to intervene and you can’t let them be violent to other people, to themselves, whatever. So I think there are different for different kinds of kids and different kinds of emotions. There are different kinds of co-regulation that needs to go on or regulation. And so it is really sort of contextually driven, but getting to know that space is really important. And look, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes in the process of it, but processing with your kid, what do they need in that moment? How can you help them? And sometimes they don’t have words for it, but eventually they get there and they kind of confined and you are going to make a mistake. They’re like, don’t touch me. And you’re going to have to deal with that. And you’re going to be like, okay. And you’re going to learn from it as well because you’re learning together how they want their emotions handled. And it’s not easy. It’s not an easy game.

Dr. Sarah (42:50):

But it is worth figuring it out because it’s a step you don’t want to skip.

Dr. Lisa (42:55):

No.

Dr. Sarah (42:55):

Despite your wanting to skip it, but your higher level self doesn’t want to skip it.

Dr. Lisa (43:00):

Yeah, no, yeah. Your higher level self doesn’t want to skip it because it’s going to train them in the future to self-regulate and to really handle things when they’re feeling completely dysregulated in a way that’s better for them. And to also recognize that they’re going to have to learn and make mistakes along the way too as you learn and make mistakes. And so I think it’s a really important thing to kind of do with your kid, but it’s not the easiest.

Dr. Sarah (43:23):

No, but you also said that kids who are more likely to have imposter syndrome are also more likely to hyper regulate or we talk a lot on this show about kids who really struggle with regulation and they get dysregulated really easily the kids, which requires a different strategy. Still a lot of co-regulation, but like you were saying, more safety management first and then the co-regulation. And that might look a little different for an easily overstimulated kid.

(43:57):

But for those over regulators, first of all, can you talk about that means, and I am going to throw five questions at you. I always do that. I got to stop. But is it more common in girls than boys? Does it have a lot? How does this, my thought is if you are a over regulator, you may get a lot of positive reinforcement from your environment for being an over regulator, not for overregulating, but for what it looks like, oh, you’re so easygoing. You’ve got your stuff together. But what we’re really praising is you’re really good at holding it all in, which we don’t want to praise or reinforce. There’s a whole layer of stuff there that we might want to talk about.

Dr. Lisa (44:40):

Yeah, and I think it is sort of really, so the kids who have gone through this, they often have been told either stop crying or calm down, or they’ve been forced into a situation where they’re having feelings to put them away and been taught they’re not appropriate for this circumstance or they’re not valuable here. And so when I’m working with adults who deal with this, their emotions are often very hidden or misunderstood or I do a lot of work around them, especially around helping them reveal what these emotions are, name them, be able to sit in them in a way that they’ve never been allowed to do. They often feel very punishing of themselves when they’re dealing with emotion. Like, I’ve got to stop crying. Why am I crying? Even in our work together, they’ll punish themselves for crying, but we’re kind of trying to let them actually be able to feel the feelings, name the feelings, sit in the feelings, which they were never allowed to do before.

(45:34):

And so that’s why co-regulation regulation is so important for kids in the development. And so they don’t have imposter syndrome. What we find in terms of gender differences is that in the beginning, there was the belief that it only happened in women about 10 years after the research started in the eighties, they started examining it men. Then for 30 years after that research, the research finds that it’s pretty much similar. It’s inconclusive for men and women that it’s pretty much similar. In July, a meta analytic study finally came out that showed that it significantly occurs significantly, but slightly more in women.

Dr. Sarah (46:10):

Statistically significant.

Dr. Lisa (46:12):

But it’s not like women experience in such greater, I think women often can express it, get help for it, do things. It feels more socially acceptable. But I do think I see it in men as well all the time. But I think they haven’t yet found the way to get the help that they often need and the kinds of sizes that they need to do that, and the kind of proportion that they need to do that, which is I think why sort of intervention around work issues becomes a nice place of entry for them. They feel like that’s acceptable and then we can work on it together. But I think those pieces become really important to not be afraid of your child’s emotions and to really have the skills and tools to be able to work with them, which I think is incredibly important and not taught, I think often enough. So I’m glad you’re talking about it on your podcast.

Dr. Sarah (46:58):

And I imagine too, I could definitely see a situation in which if you are really overwhelmed by your child’s affect or dysregulation and you’re shutting it down hard probably because you’re freaking out on the inside, not because you want to hurt kid or damage them in any way, but usually because we don’t have kids listening to this podcast, we got the parents listening to this podcast. And so it all comes back to looking at this generational thing. If you are noticing that you might be shutting down your kids’ emotions, and I would say, I would imagine it’s not just like I have an angry response, like Don’t cry, stop it. But I might have a really anxious response that could also shut down a kid’s emotions. If I panic when my kid has big feelings, I may also inadvertently be teaching them, keep it quiet, regulate me.

Dr. Lisa (47:57):

It’s scary, yup.

Dr. Sarah (47:58):

Hold it all together because everything feels better when we’re all calm. And so if their feelings seem to agitate the system, whether it’s enrage the system or panic the system or family system, they’re still going to learn to shut that off.

Dr. Lisa (48:19):

And the other thing I’ve seen too is the walking away from it, which makes a kid feel really abandoned in their own feelings. So they’re like, they can’t regulate, so I’m going to walk away. But it’s like you just left your kid in a situation they can’t manage or handle for themselves and now fully abandoned in that situation.

Dr. Sarah (48:36):

Yeah, I mean, I do a ton of work on this because I think it’s a very core issue because parents who get dysregulated easily, it’s really hard in these moments when you are triggered by your kid, whether because you can’t tolerate a little bit, which we got to work on, or maybe you got a kid who just is very, very explosive and you’ve hit your max and you get triggered and you get reactive or you shut down, or you walk away or you numb out and kind of disappear or you panic, whatever. We’ve got to figure out how to work on that piece, that parental self-regulation. And that I think is the core for a lot of this, right? And it’s never simple, right? It’s not like, oh, don’t do that. Do this. What is activating us? But if you turned on this episode because you’re interested in preventing and giving your kid protective measures against developing imposter syndrome, and you notice that feelings aren’t that safe in our house, I don’t feel safe with my kids’ feelings.

Dr. Lisa (49:54):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (49:55):

Chances are we got to look at that and come up with strategies to make you feel safer with your kids’ feelings. And there are also just some kids that are, regardless of the parents, I think they’re just wired towards that perfectionism. Maybe they’re a little anxious, maybe they’re a little rigid in their thinking, maybe they’re a little combination of these things, and they just self hyper regulate because they don’t like the feeling, they don’t like the feeling of being emotionally messy and they shut it down themselves. And that’s where I think it’s like a sleeper, like a sleeper problem. And we can inadvertently really reinforce that. We can praise that. We can explicitly praise it. We can kind inadvertently or implicitly reinforce that. And so if you have a kid who you notice has perfectionistic tendencies, who has a little bit of that rigidity who could be a little anxious and a little rigid around making mistakes, and you notice that they seem to be chill all the time, helping pull out their emotions, helping stretch them to feel something uncomfortable, to get messy, to melt down, holding space for that messiness and giving them, it sounds so counterintuitive to teach a parent to encourage emotional dysregulation in their kids. But yeah, if they’re super hyper regulated, we don’t want that either. That’s not optimal at all.

Dr. Lisa (51:24):

And these kids often present in a way that they’re straight A students and they’re this and that, and they’re doing so well. And so you just think that they can be left alone, but they actually need you. And one of the types we see a lot with imposter syndrome is this kind of perfectionistic kid that developed who had a sibling who was unmanageable. So a situation where there was a mental health issue or there was a physical issue, a medical issue, and that kid was focused on, and this kid had to be perfect. The parents didn’t have time for both. And so I do think it’s really important, even if you’re feeling distressed by one of your kids and the other one’s behaving, you’re so happy about it. I think they both need attention usually, even if the one doesn’t look like they do, they often need it to.

Dr. Sarah (52:06):

Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, there’s so much value in this conversation. I feel like it touches on so many important things for us, for our kids, for the whole family system.

Dr. Lisa (52:20):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (52:21):

Thank you so much for sharing all of this. You’re so welcome. If people want to find out more about your work, they want to get your book, how can we put them in touch with you?

Dr. Lisa (52:30):

Yeah, so I am on Instagram @drorbeaustin. I’m also pretty regularly on LinkedIn and the books are on all the big booksellers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the newest one’s called Your Child’s Greatness, and my website’s dynamictransitionsllp.com, where I have all kinds of information about what we do.

Dr. Sarah (52:52):

That’s amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dr. Lisa (52:55):

It’s my been my pleasure. This has been a joy.

Dr. Sarah (52:57):

Such a joy. Thanks for listening. In our conversation, you’ve just heard Dr. Lisa and I talk about the importance of neuropsychological testing as a valuable tool for parents.

(53:13):

At my group practice Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we offer comprehensive testing, consultation, and advocacy services that help parents gain a deeper insight into their child’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns. Our evaluations go beyond simply providing diagnostic labels, and we provide a full picture of strengths and challenges and offer tailored strategies that empower kids, teens, and adults to build confidence, resilience, and self-awareness. Whether you’re navigating concerns about learning differences, ADHD, or anxiety, our expert team can guide you toward clarity and actionable next steps. So go to our website, upshurbren.com, that’s U-P-S-H-U-R-B-R-E-N.com. To learn more about our services and to schedule a free 30 minute consultation call to get our recommendation of supportive resources that best align with your or your child’s unique needs, or you can just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast, and get a link to schedule your free call. I’ll see you back here on Thursday for another Beyond the Sessions segment of our securely attached podcast. And until then, don’t be a stranger.