Speaker 175% of women who seek menopause care don't receive it. The lying awake at 3 a.m., wondering what's happening to your body ends now. Midi is virtual care built for women in perimenopause and menopause with clinicians who specialize in women's health. Plus, it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. Midlife needs Midi. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit today. That's joinmidi.com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.
Speaker 2Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the entire day. You can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the entire day.
Speaker 3particularly where their siblings involved. where we talk to them about, well, your brother or your sister or this happened, and can you see why that might upset them or how it upset me? So we do that. I think it's really useful to go beyond the behaviour piece and the challenging bits that we get at home and move this understanding, seeing things from our own lens, beyond that in terms of what we get told. So your friend has told you X, I wonder why they might have said that, and really encouraging why might they be feeling that way and why might that come out. So that's number one, understanding we all see things through our own lens. Number two is to question the motives of the information provider. Now, this is not about being cynical, but simply encouraging them to get into the habit of, I wonder why they might have said that. I wonder why they might have that particular view or that they've taken that particular stance. It's about trying to be objective. And I'll talk about this in number five, about sort of encouraging a scientific approach, but it's being able to take that step back and really question that. Now, for those of you who've got older children who might be doing some of their examinations, like if they might be taking GCSEs or A-levels or international baccalaureates, whatever the academic qualification may well be, and are studying some of the critical subjects, this comes up repeatedly. Particularly in subjects like history, for example, and in the sciences, it's this questioning about how valid is the source? How reliable are they? Where's the evidence to suggest that they are unbiased? And that's really what we're trying to do. Now, the questioning the motives is one that we need to sort of handle delicately because the danger is it looks like we're interrogating rather than, hmm, that's interesting. I wonder why they might have that particular point of view. And, you know, how reliable are they? I wonder why they might have been in the past. So, it's just helping them question those day-to-day things that we just take for granted, the information that we're given that we take and our children take as fact, and instead just having a moment to ponder. And of course, in all of these five strategies that I'm going to be, that I'm talking about, it's also doing the same. You know, children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So, how do we make sure that we're doing the same? We demonstrate, how do we model that we're trying to see things from, you know, an understanding that people see things from their own lens? And that's a really important and potent piece when we talk a lot about emotions and validating children's, and I can see that you're frustrated, acknowledging their lens, acknowledging where they're seeing things from, and then saying, but in this moment, the choice that you made with that feeling was not appropriate. So, it's how we model that. And then also, how do we model this questioning the motives of information? Quite often, when we sort of end up telling our children that this is really good for you, and you should be doing this, and you should be doing that, I think it's also helpful that we question whether that is right for our child, and what are the motives of the information provider? What are our motives in terms of communicating that? Because we're being biased. Of course, we're like that all the time, because we're human beings. We're never unbiased. We don't filter information in the objective way. And even when we think we are, we're writing a list of the reasons why I should do this, and the reasons why I shouldn't, or should I take this job, or should I move geographically? All of these pros and cons, we never do objectively. As human beings, what we do is we make a decision emotionally, and then we retrospectively try to justify it. And why I did that was because of this, and that was really crucial, and that was the perfect timing, and that was the right place, and the right person, whatever it might be. So remember what underpins all of these five strategies is to question ourselves, how am I modeling this? Am I modeling this? And in some instances, when you go through these five strategies, it may be that you don't even begin to promote that with your child or encourage that, because you realize that something that you're not modeling. And if you're not modeling it, it's really difficult to encourage your children to do it. So always start with the, it starts with you first, sort of more broader, high-level strategy for everything that I talk about is, am I demonstrating this to my child? If I'm doing it sometimes, great, crack on. If you're not demonstrating it a lot, or you're doing the exact opposite, you'll make more progress more quickly, without appearing as teachy-preachy, lectury parent or shouty parent. If you say, do you know what? I'm going to do the work first on me. I'm going to model this. I'm going to do what I need to do from the strategies to model that. And by doing that, I've already set those kind of important foundations that we can build that building.
Speaker 1So most women have been there. Something feels off. You don't feel like yourself, yet your doctor says everything looks fine. Spoiler, it's your hormones. Midi is a virtual care platform built for women by women and offers specialized hormone care from trained clinicians. It's not you. It's your hormones. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit.
Speaker 2That's joinmidi.com. You bite your tongue. Instead of escalating, you put your phone down. Instead of firing off that text, you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Grow is therapy that works covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAP. ACAP. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAP. Growtherapy.com slash ACAP. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
Speaker 3Number one is understanding we all see things from our own lens. Number two is about encouraging our children to question the motives of the information provider. And I'll talk through in the rest of the strategies how we might do that on a basis. Number three is about understanding what psychologists will call a cognitive confirmation bias. So this is, in essence, is that we're more ready to accept information which aligns with our already held belief system than to accept new ones. So it's almost like, again, we're going back to this lens. We tend to notice more of the things that don't support our view and we tend to filter out the things that don't support our view. And that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's absolutely there. But what happens is we tend to tune in. It's almost like we've got blinkers on for all of the aspects that don't conform to our views, but we're like in zoom mode, you know, a hundred percent, 200 times magnified for all of the things that confirm what we believe. And one of the classic ones I often talk about is this idea that, you know, you decide you're going to change the family car, or maybe you've got older children who are ready to sort of have their first car and whatever the model of the car is that you have started thinking about, or you've started looking at. And then suddenly on the road, that's all you tune into. You just see them everywhere. That isn't because they magically appear. It's just simply that that's a confirmation bias. You've become so primed with that particular thing because your has been around it and you've been looking and researching and doing your kind of your work, background work with that, that suddenly you tune into that much more. So it's helping our children understand that we as humans are not logical, rational beings. We're emotional beings. And so what happens is we're much more likely to tune into anything in our environment, which confirms our belief system. And we see that in our children. And we see that a lot in terms of friendship challenges or challenges or conflict with our siblings, because we will then tune into the, oh, they gave me a bit of an eye roll. And that overall means that they don't like me. So that's a confirmation bias. We already think that that person doesn't like us or the sibling has got an issue with us. And instead of interpreting back to the number one about understanding the lens and number two about, you know, the lens on this idea of the sports One interpretation could be that they're annoyed or they're irritated or they're they don't like you. But actually, if you were standing in a different seat in that sports venue, what could be an alternative? So it's really being aware and helping our children understand that we have this confirmation bias. We all do. There's nothing wrong with it. But realising that that's important because sometimes we can take on information as truth or a belief system or a way of doing things because it confirms, because we're more receptive to it, because it confirms our current belief system rather than exploring something different. And obviously, that can be where there's challenges when we're trying to encourage our children to try something new, to do something different, because they're sort of stuck in that confirmation bias. And no, I've got evidence here. I tried this. I did that. It didn't work. So trying to help them with that. So understanding. Understanding that we all see things through a different lens. Questioning the motives of the information provider. Understanding what cognitive confirmation bias is. Number four is a super practical strategy and one that I'm going to be sharing some specific resources with you, which is the conversation starters. And this is around having discussions. And I've sort of, in my notes, I've put it about having discussions at the dinner table, kitchen table, whatever it might be. But there's a. There'll be a. There'll be a podcast episode on this, I promise you. But there's certainly going to be an article that I'll be sharing in the newsletter or have already shared in the newsletter about this. We've lost this regular practice of sitting together as families to consume our meals around a table. It's such an important piece. It's not just about mealtimes. It's not just about that sort of being in the same space. It's the communication that comes from that and the opportunities that come from that. And I think that's a really important piece. And I think that's that we end up missing. Having discussions around mealtimes, around a table is a really crucial part of helping our children understand how and not what to think. Because we can have discussions. We can have these conversation starters. We can pose questions and ask them what they might believe about something, what their view might be. If they were in charge of the family for a day, what would they do? And we can kind of have those conversations around sorry, you're going to have to excuse my chocolate Labrador has decided to join me and is desperate to be part of this podcast episode. So excuse panting and scratching and little snips of barking. She's just needs to be with me. But so this idea about having discussions, being around a table is really crucial because what we can do is we can ask them, have you considered it through this? Different lens. We can question the motives of the information. We can talk about confirmation bias. It's such an easy win. Even if you've got dogmatic teens who want to spend their entire life in their bedroom, agreeing a non-negotiable meal together, maybe two, three times a week. Maybe it's a week only at weekends, whatever it might be. But having those is such an important time in terms of connection. But also an important time in terms of communication and working through these particular strategies. So we can encourage them to, you know, the how to think, not what to think. So understanding, we see things from a different lens, questioning the motives of the information provider, cognitive confirmation bias, having discussions at the table together. And then the last one is about encouraging a scientific approach to all new knowledge, beliefs, decisions. So this is about testing. And when we talk about this idea of a scientific approach, it's not about experimenting or manipulating things, but it is about being able to take some of the aspects that science does when it approaches a particular problem or it's trying to investigate something. And it's about looking at the, you know, looking at the trustworthiness of the evidence, questioning our own biases and, before we then take a stance against somebody in terms of what we don't like, or being prepared to admit a mistake. So the scientific approach is just broadly, I'm here to learn, I'm here to test and experiment. I wonder why that might be the view. Could it be something else? And when we've taken a stance based on a belief system and we get new evidence, being prepared to say that that the belief we might've had previously, and then updated on our belief system based on this new evidence. And that hinges crucially on being prepared to admit our mistakes and change our minds in light of this new evidence. And that big piece around admitting our mistake or changing our minds in light of new evidence is something that our children only learn. Genuinely only learn if we cultivate a culture within our family of being able to do this and us modeling that. Because for some children, and you'll be listening to this, I know some of you will be thinking, oh my goodness me, that is my child. Some children really struggle with this notion of admitting, not necessarily that they're wrong, because I think that sounds quite a harsh thing, but that their belief system or the way that they're approaching things isn't necessarily the best because there's evidence that they're wrong. And I think that's a really important to suggest that there's a better way. And this is something that if you've got a child that does that, I think I would just ask you for a moment to pause and reflect and think, how often do I model my own ability to admit where I've made an error? How often do I model and actually vocalize that new evidence has come to light and I need to adapt and I need to modify a belief system or a that I've previously long held. And it may well be that you're listening and saying, yep, done all that, do it all of the time with real honesty. And my child is still very insistent that they're always right. And that they're very, you know, that things are black and white and they struggle to operate in that little gray area in the middle. I would just say that generally speaking, I think I'd be supremely honest. I, this is one area that I often struggle with is this admission. Some things I find quite easy to admit that I'm wrong, but other things I'm not very good at. And so I think that's a really crucial part of adopting a scientific approach, because if you view it on the basis of just how crucial it is for our children to be able to do that, otherwise they can very easily get sucked into an extreme belief, an extreme view that isn't necessarily just about, I don't know, that they think that they should be able to go to bed with their phone in their bedroom. That's, that's one thing, which is, you know, you head butt all the time around and it's a challenge and absolutely isn't something that they should be doing. But actually that dogmaticness, that inability to take on the new evidence, to understand, to question can actually be lead to other aspects of belief systems and patterns of behavior that may be more damaging. Of course, it's damaging to have a phone in the bedroom. And I'm, as you know, I do not think that is good for anyone, including adults, but there can be greater impact, greater negative impact from being inflexible in updating belief systems in light of new evidence. So my give this week is not going to be my top five tips. So just keep replaying the episode. If you just need to go back and review my give this week is going to be my set of conversation starters so that you can use that as a family, whether that's a mealtime, in the car, on a walk, wherever it's about creating that environment where you can have the communication with these starting points. That's all they are. And you can go wherever you want to go with it, but it's just a helpful starting point as well as what you'll also get is a link to these videos that I've mentioned in point one, so that you can have a look at those because I just think it's quite an interesting, but see what you think. And let me know how you get on with those, but I think it just reinforces what I've talked about. So to grab your free copy, head over to my free resource library, drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find the link to download the resource. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access, not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow, rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.
PodcastTranscript AI