Hi, I'm Dr. Nicola Perra. At some point in life, many of us notice that our reactions don't always match who we want to be.

We shut down, give too much, or pull away even when it cost us. These habits don't come from nowhere. They began early as your nervous system learned how to keep you safe. And over time, they can leave you feeling unsure of who you are or living a life that doesn't feel fully like yours. In my new book, Reparenting the inner child, I share practical tools to help you understand these patterns and give you the

roadmap on how to create lasting change. Reparenting the inner child is available wherever

you get your books. Hello and welcome to more happier, a podcast where we get happier.

I'm Gretchen Riven, a writer who studies happiness and human nature, and one thing I'm often asked about is how to deal with conflict in close relationships.

Research shows that relationships are a key to a happy life, but for many people, they're also

a big source of frustration. Why do my sweetheart and I keep having the same fight? Why does

parenting this child feel so hard, even when I'm trying my best?

In this episode, we're bringing together some of our most useful conversations about how to ease conflict with the people closest to us using one of the tools that is most helpful, the four

tendencies.

The four tendencies is my personality framework that divides people into four categories based on how they respond to internal and external expectations.

If you want to find out about your tendency, take the quiz at happiercast.com slash four tendencies or just go to Gretchenruven.com slash quiz.

We'll hear questions and tips from listeners on using

the four tendencies to navigate conflict with their sweetheart, but first, we'll start with the

conversation I had with parenting expert Dr. Becky Kennedy on her podcast, Good Inside. It turns out

that how we frame expectations can make a big difference in how children

respond, and that can really change the dynamic between parent and child. Here's Dr. Becky.

There's so many things I want to jump into. One of the things I love, and I love about your site, and I love the way you profile also other people and you do this in the book, is you don't have judgment. You're not like, everyone should be this. Absolutely. Like we have our tendencies. There are pros and cons. And to me, actually, I often say this to friends. Like my favorite adult friends are just who, like, know themselves. And they can kind of have levity with themselves. They can talk about that. Like, obviously, I believe we can change. But to some degree, it's like, hey, this is me. And I'm also curious about myself and non-defensive. But I love that your book takes that approach, which for everyone listening, you should know there's like no shame. You will actually just be like, wow, this is really useful as a framework. And then set of strategies, no one's trying to change me. I'm just going to become like a more effective me, you know? Well, absolutely. And that's one thing I tell people over, because people are like, well, what's the best tendency or the most successful tendency? I'm like, it's not that one tendency is better than the others because they all have strengths and weaknesses. And the strengths are the weaknesses, right? They go together. Always. Always. But it's the people who know themselves and they're like, well, I know what I need to succeed or I know what is likely to trip me up. And therefore, I'm going to set up my circumstances and my schedule and my surrounding in a way that's going to help me achieve my aim. And one of the things that's nice about the tendencies is I think a lot of times people feel very, they feel very discouraged or they feel like, why is it that other people can be adult? And like, I just can't, like, everybody else can just get up and go for a run every morning.

Why can't I do that? Like what's wrong with me? And it's like, oh, a lot of people are in the same boat. There's so many solutions that people have come up with. You do not need to change. This is just a thing. There's good aspects to it. There's bad aspect. And now you can focus on like how to move forward to get what you want instead of feeling like there's something wrong with you love that how to

harness so let's jump into one of these tendencies, the obligers. I hear about this group a lot. I hear about a lot of from moms. I have the PTA meeting. I have my kids soccer practice. I have carpools planned out in my calendar to the wazoo. And forever, I've told myself one day a week I want to take a walk around my

neighborhood without my kid or I want to meet a friend like there's something for me and why

can't I do it and I feel like this might be obligor ask yes from your framework yes yeah like can you walk through this a little bit or how have kind of some of the things you figured out could help this person harness their strengths to get what they want? Yes. So what you described is like exactly what obligeers will express. They are often say, I can't draw boundaries. I'm really bad

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