Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You by Ethan Kross - Virtual Couch Book Club w/Marla Christiansen, APCC

The Virtual Couch

Tony Overbay LMFT

Education, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

5 • 643 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marla Christensen, AMFT, APCC, and Tony Overbay, LMFT, delve into Ethan Kross's "Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You" for another installment of the "Virtual Couch Book Club." They explore emotional awareness, sensory shifts, and cultural influences on emotional well-being. Practical techniques, such as distant self-talk and the Whoop framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan), are covered, offering listeners actionable strategies for emotional management. Tony opens the episode by explaining how common parental phrases, such as "it's not a big deal" or "just don't worry about it," can unintentionally hinder emotional expression in adulthood, setting the stage for struggles with managing emotions later in life. This discussion offers valuable insights for individuals seeking to understand better and manage their emotions.00:00 A Touching Parenting Moment02:22 Introduction to the Virtual Couch02:31 Book Club: Managing Emotions03:16 The Importance of Emotional Awareness03:37 Understanding Emotional Language04:44 The Disconnect from Emotions06:01 Introducing Dr. Ethan Cross's 'Shift'06:23 Meet Marla Christiansen07:33 Exploring Emotional Concepts from 'Shift'07:46 The Complexity of Emotions08:05 Practical Tools for Emotional Management08:20 The Power of Distanced Self-Talk08:37 External Influences on Emotions09:02 Body Awareness and Emotions09:12 Navigating Difficult Emotions09:24 Impact of Social Media and Cultural Factors09:37 Appreciating Emotions as Information10:18 Book Club Discussion: 'Shift' by Dr. Ethan Cross10:30 Starting the Interview with Marla Christensen11:24 Diving into Emotional Regulation11:43 Book Club Insights and Personal Reflections22:58 The Law of Least Work25:01 Exploring Low-Cost Emotional Shifts25:40 Understanding Attention and Perspective26:10 Navigating Emotional Avoidance and Approach27:27 The Power of Reframing

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the virtual couch.
0:04.0	Please take a seat for pillars, emotional maturity,
0:08.0	and your self-worth ran so deep.
0:11.0	You are not broken, you're a human,
0:15.0	so check that out.
0:17.0	You don't know what you don't know is what it's all about. I want to share something that I witnessed recently that it absolutely gave me hope in humanity.
0:27.6	I was walking out of a store and I saw a parent coming out with a toddler in full meltdown mode.
0:33.6	And I am talking red-faced tears and snot streaming, throwing themselves on the ground
0:39.3	kind of tantrum that made every parent within a 50-foot radius either feel just tremendous
0:44.1	empathy or start mentally scrolling through their own greatest parenting hits and misses. And my
0:49.5	immediate thought was, oh man, this kid is about to hear about it. They're about to get in trouble.
0:55.0	And I couldn't help it. Maybe it's like driving by an accident. But I found myself bracing for
1:01.2	the inevitable. I'm ready to hear a stop that right now or you're embarrassing me or I can't
1:05.7	take you anywhere or you're grounded when we get home or maybe counting to two out of three
1:09.9	and staying at two for a long time.
1:12.1	Some sort of version of emotional shutdown that so many of us have experienced his parents.
1:16.0	But what happened next caught me off guard.
1:17.9	This parent gets down to their child's eye level and wrap them in the biggest, most genuine hug and said something like,
1:27.4	Hey, buddy, I can see you're having some
1:29.1	really big feelings right now and that's okay. How about we take some deep breaths together?
1:33.7	And the kid did. And I stopped in my tracks. Here was a parent who was actually welcoming their
1:39.9	child's emotions instead of trying to shut them down or fix them immediately. And I was so moved by this
	...

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