Male: This is A Psychology of the Future: The Online Summit, presented by Erik Lenderman. Learn about the principles of practical psychology from leaders in the fields of self-development, spirituality, neuroscience, medicine, and more. Thank you for joining us.
Erik: Hello to everybody listening, and thank you for joining us today at A Psychology of the Future: The Online Summit. I'm your host, Erik Lenderman, and I'm here speaking with Michelle Gale. She is presenting to us today on the subject of conscious parenting, how is it that we can become more mindful and more conscious of how we interact with children, our own children, and how to become more conscious and civilized parents. And so, Michelle, welcome, and thank you for joining us.
Michelle: Thank you, thank you. I'm excited. Thanks for having me.
Erik: Yeah, so it's a pleasure to have you here today. And we have just one or two other folks speaking on conscious parenting and we wanted to hear a little bit about this perspective because a lot of the other topics don't really address what are sometimes for people, what are the most challenging aspects of having a family and being a householder. And so I'd just like to know a little bit more, I suppose initially, about your own background in conscious parenting and how it was you found yourself interested in conscious parenting, what that is.
Michelle: Yeah. Well, I'm glad you mentioned there's difficulties and that you want to bring this to parents so they can better know how to be as a parent, because parenting is really, really hard. And I'm a practitioner, but I don't call myself an expert because I am practicing right along with the parents that I work with. And I got interested in this, really after my first son was born. And I realized, "Gosh, I'm very different at home than I am out in the world." And I think we all are. I think we have to be gentle with ourselves. We all have that [inaudible 00:02:34] and we're one person at work, one person at home, one person at the coffee shop with our friends. But really I noticed, especially as my children got older and even when they were younger, the ugliest parts of me could show up when I was at home with the people I loved the most.
And so I got really curious about what that was about. While it didn't feel good, it wasn't a way that I wanted it to be. And that was really what began this journey for me of inquiring more about myself and what was going on when I was at home and losing it a lot more than when I was out in the world. Yeah. So, eventually, I worked with parents. I started just working with myself and eventually started working with parents and doing coaching in groups and that kind of thing.
Erik: Hello to everybody listening, and thank you for joining us today at A Psychology of the Future: The Online Summit. I'm your host, Erik Lenderman, and I'm here speaking with Michelle Gale. She is presenting to us today on the subject of conscious parenting, how is it that we can become more mindful and more conscious of how we interact with children, our own children, and how to become more conscious and civilized parents. And so, Michelle, welcome, and thank you for joining us.
Michelle: Thank you, thank you. I'm excited. Thanks for having me.
Erik: Yeah, so it's a pleasure to have you here today. And we have just one or two other folks speaking on conscious parenting and we wanted to hear a little bit about this perspective because a lot of the other topics don't really address what are sometimes for people, what are the most challenging aspects of having a family and being a householder. And so I'd just like to know a little bit more, I suppose initially, about your own background in conscious parenting and how it was you found yourself interested in conscious parenting, what that is.
Michelle: Yeah. Well, I'm glad you mentioned there's difficulties and that you want to bring this to parents so they can better know how to be as a parent, because parenting is really, really hard. And I'm a practitioner, but I don't call myself an expert because I am practicing right along with the parents that I work with. And I got interested in this, really after my first son was born. And I realized, "Gosh, I'm very different at home than I am out in the world." And I think we all are. I think we have to be gentle with ourselves. We all have that [inaudible 00:02:34] and we're one person at work, one person at home, one person at the coffee shop with our friends. But really I noticed, especially as my children got older and even when they were younger, the ugliest parts of me could show up when I was at home with the people I loved the most.
And so I got really curious about what that was about. While it didn't feel good, it wasn't a way that I wanted it to be. And that was really what began this journey for me of inquiring more about myself and what was going on when I was at home and losing it a lot more than when I was out in the world. Yeah. So, eventually, I worked with parents. I started just working with myself and eventually started working with parents and doing coaching in groups and that kind of thing.