Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 87. I am your host Noah Rosheta.

And today I'm sharing the audio of an interview I did with Shireen Peikar on the topic of mindful parenting.

Before I jump into the audio, a reminder, keep in mind the Dalai Lama's advice. Do not use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. Use it to be a better whatever you already are.

I think that's especially relevant in this topic when it comes to parenting.

I connected with Shireen a couple months ago and we've been planning on having a discussion around the topic of mindful parenting.

And this is a topic that hits home for me because I have three kids, ages 9, 6, and 3. And I'm always striving to become more aware of my parenting style and trying to be a more skillful parent in the role that I play as their dad.

Shireen is a graduate of the University of Southern California. She's a licensed psychotherapist in California and she's been practicing psychotherapy since 2019.

In her work, Shireen incorporates elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and mindfulness.

And Shireen has specialized training in Rai, which is an organization that's all about helping parents to raise authentic and self-confident children.

So without further ado, this is the audio recording of the interview I had with Shireen.

All right, I'm excited to have Shireen Peikar on the phone with me. We're doing this interview using the wonderful technology that is Skype.

So Shireen, thank you for taking the time to be on this call with me and I'm looking forward to this interview. How are you?

Hi Noah, it's great to be here with you. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, thank you. So this is a topic I'm looking forward to discussing with you.

One, because I'm a parent and two, because I'm striving to be more mindful with my parenting.

So before we jump into it, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you got into this, this topic of mindful parenting, a little bit about you and your background.

Would you mind sharing a little with us?

Sure. So I'm a licensed version family therapist as you mentioned, based on Los Angeles. And since I became working with clients in 2009, I found that there are a lot of common threads that seems in the work.

And in my work with them, one being that clients struggled with their difficult feelings, their unpleasant feelings of anxiety, depression, shame, guilt, loneliness.

So those kinds of tough emotions that we tend to call the negative feelings, they had a really hard time feeling them.

And they had a hard time communicating them expressing them. It seemed almost like they had sort of cut off from themselves with regards to their feelings.

And ultimately they had a hard time even accepting that those feelings existed in their lives. And they were afraid in a sense that a, the feelings would swallow them up whole that it would be too much for them to handle and.

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