Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist and one of the world's foremost experts in parent-child relationships. Now, you may or may not have children. If you do, today's episode is absolutely for you. If you don't, well, you were once a child. Perhaps you're even still a child. Today's episode also will have valuable knowledge and tools that you can apply to your life. Today, Dr. Becky Kennedy teaches us an immense number of extremely valuable tools for the workplace, for romantic relationships, for family relationships of all types, not just parent-child relationships. And of course also for parent-child relationships. We discuss themes that have not been discussed previously on the Huberman Lab podcast. Topics such as guilt, which Dr. Becky Kennedy offers a completely unique perspective on, one that I've never heard before and that frankly, I don't think anyone has heard before. In fact, she distinguishes between what most people think is guilt and an entirely different set of emotions and offers you very useful practical tools for when you experience guilt and how to work with guilt. We also extensively discuss frustration or what she calls frustration tolerance. Frustration tolerance is an extremely important theme for everybody to understand and apply in their lives because frustration tolerance, as Dr. Becky Kennedy so aptly points out, is central to the learning process of anything at every age. If you can understand this concept and you apply some of the very simple rules and tools that Dr. Kennedy explains during the podcast, I assure you, you can learn many more things much more quickly and with much greater satisfaction, if not during the process, certainly at the end when you master that learning. And those are just a few of the themes that we discussed during today's episode. Again, whether or not you have children, I assure you that today's episode is going to be immensely beneficial for all of your relationships. You will notice during today's episode that our studio backdrop is different. You will notice that for once, I was not wearing this particular style of shirt. The reason for that is that this episode was recorded during the LA fires, what was initially called the Palisades fire and then spread to multiple fires throughout LA County. So, we were not able to access our normal studio. So, I want to express extreme gratitude to Rich Roll, our good friend in the podcasting space, who allowed us to use his podcast studio, which is where I'm seated now and where I held the discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. First off, our entire team, our homes and our studio are fine. I can assure you of that. But most importantly, our thoughts and our prayers go out to the people who have lost their homes, lost pets, and sadly there have been fatalities during the LA fires. So our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and we hope everyone remains safe. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy, welcome back.

**Becky Kennedy** (3:16)
I'm so happy to be here.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:18)
I'm grateful to Rich Roll for lending us his studio under the duress of fires in Los Angeles. I'm praying that his home is okay. It's unclear at this moment. But in any event, let's talk about emotions, both theory and practice. And if we can place it in the context of parenting, that would be great. But I'm certain that this has a broader theme that pertains to everybody. So, I love the theory of emotions, or how we would theoretically respond to something, but then there's the reality. So, as a parent, let's say you have a stance in your home and in your family that it's okay to be sad. Like, sadness is normal, it happens, it passes, etc. But let's say you're feeling particularly sad about something.
Do you express that and show that in front of your kids? Because I've also heard that young kids, in particular younger than eight or nine, perhaps shouldn't be aware that their parents are experiencing, say, extreme sadness because it can be scary to them, where they might feel like their world is destabilizing. And then we also hear a lot about kids feeling like they had to parent the parents, and then this whole thing becomes pretty complicated. So while there's no perfect world where one knows what to do every single time, how do you look at this business of modeling emotions and also encouraging kids to be able to experience and express their emotions?