Most parents believe they are emotionally intelligent. They think they understand their feelings and handle them well.
Then their teen rolls their eyes. Or shuts down. Or pushes every button.
Suddenly, emotions take over.
This episode of IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective explores the emotional skill every parent thinks they have — but usually doesn’t. It’s not about being calm all the time. It’s about learning how emotions actually work.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why feeling angry or sad doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent
The difference between emotional health, intelligence, and intention
How your thoughts create your emotions
How to act like the parent you want to be, even on hard days
Why changing yourself creates change in your teen
Emotional Health: Feeling All Feelings Is Normal
Many people think emotional health means being happy.
That’s not true.
Emotional health means you can feel all emotions. That includes anger, sadness, fear, and frustration.
None of these feelings are bad. They are part of being human.
When parents try to avoid emotions, problems grow. When parents allow emotions, growth starts.
Emotional Intelligence: Knowing What You Feel and Why
Emotional intelligence is about awareness.
It means you can say:
“I feel sad.”
“I feel angry.”
“I feel anxious.”
It also means you understand why you feel that way.
Your teen doesn’t create your emotions. Your thoughts do.
When you change the story in your mind, emotions change too.
Emotional Intention: Choosing How You Show Up
Sometimes you can’t change how you feel.
That’s okay.
Emotional intention means you still choose how you behave.
You might feel angry. But you don’t have to yell.
You might feel sad. But you don’t have to shut down.
This skill gives parents real control, even during hard moments.
Why This Matters for Parenting Teens
Teens learn by watching, not listening.
When you model emotional skills:
Your teen feels safer
Your home feels calmer
Conversations feel easier
This is called co-regulation. It means your calm helps your teen calm down too.
Change doesn’t always happen fast. Sometimes it shows up years later.
That’s okay.
Parenting From the Inside Out
Many parents try to change their teen first.
This rarely works.
Real change starts with you.
When you manage your thoughts and emotions, your teen feels it. That’s how lasting change happens.
Not through control. Through example.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need to be perfect to be a great parent.
You just need awareness, intention, and practice.
This episode gives you simple tools to build emotional strength. Start with yourself. Trust the ripple effect.
Want Help?
You don’t have to figure this out on your own.
Whether you’re a parent or a teen, I offer free coaching calls to help you get started.
Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen. Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.
✔️ Takes just 2 minutes ✔️ Tailored feedback ✔️ Free bonus tips delivered to your inbox
Want to Improve You or Your Teen’s Mental, Emotional, and Physical Health?
Whether you want to improve you or your teen’s mental, emotional, or physical health, here are some simple tricks to help you do that.
Remember, it’s not your job to manage your teen’s mental, emotional, and physical health. Yes, you can support them, you can offer suggestions, and encourage, but you can’t control your teen’s mental, emotional, or physical health.
As always, my recommendation is that you lead by example. BE the Change you want to see!
Take Care of Physical Needs
Move
This could be as simple as going on a walk. It could be playing a game or sport.
It could be going to the gym.
This also helps with feeling restless, tired, and bored.
Rest
This might mean going to bed early.
Parents hate this one, but it could mean sleeping in.
It could mean just taking a break, sitting on the couch, and getting a moment of rest
Nourish
Eat something healthy.
I know it goes against what we were taught, but protein and fat are good sources of nourishment.
Drink water.
Take time to breath.
Touch
I need physical touch.
When I was a principle, I used to give my students high-fives, knuckles, soft slugs on the shoulder, we even had pillow fights in the commons using couch cushions.
Bathe
Shower, take a bubble bath, even simply washing your face or applying lotion can help.
Increase Emotional Intelligence
Understand that emotional health is your ability to experience any and ALL emotions! If you’re going through some sucky emotions, I’m sorry, and that’s part of being emotionally healthy.
Now, most everyone is by default emotionally healthy, meaning they can experience the whole range of emotions, any and ALL of them.
Where parents and teens struggle is in their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence means that you can identify exactly what you’re feeling and why.
If you’re like most parents, and if your teen is like most teens, you guys might be struggling with your emotional intelligence, meaning you’re struggling to identify exactly what your feeling and/or understanding why you’re feeling it.
If you want to increase your emotional intelligence, you need to practice emotional intelligence. I recommend intentionally practicing identifying what your feeling in any given moment multiple times per day. Then, exploring what is making you feel that way. Spoiler alert, it will always be some form of a thought, whether conscious or subconscious.
Manage Your Mind
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your thoughts or your “To Do” list in your head, write them down. Put them on paper. Make them more tangible.
If you’re worried about the past, plan for the future with hope.
If you’re worried about the future, shift your focus to something that you can control in the present moment.
Want to Master the Inner Game of Parenting?
Step 1 – Go take the parent trap quiz!
It’s free, easy, and will take you less than 3 minutes.
Step 2 – Use your quiz results to focus your energy on growing in the area indicated by your quiz results.
Step 3- Come work with me to help you up level your parenting!
00:00:00 I’m Ben Pugh and you’re listening to Impact Parenting with Perspective episode #125. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with Parenting teens so they can focus on what’s most important, building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen’s life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into Strengths.
00:00:36 Hello guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m just so grateful that you are here on this journey with me. Thank you for really doing the work to be the parent of your dreams and to really tap into who you want to be and start being that it changes everything. Just the other day I was listening to someone kind of talk poorly about themselves as a parent and they’re like,
00:01:07 Man, I’m the worst parent. I’m ruining my kids. And I remember in that moment thinking, Man, that’s gotta feel scary and hopeless. And I, I think partially they’re doing that to get attention and to get laughs. But in the moment I realized, man, I know I’m not perfect. I make mistakes, but dang, I’m a really good dad and I’m the best dad for my kids.
00:01:34 Like no one loves ’em like I do. No one understands ’em. No one wants to put up with ’em like me. Like I truly am the best dad for my kids. And it just felt so empowering to realize that I am doing my best to be the parent that I want to be, to be the parent that I think I should be.
00:01:55 And I feel like I’m doing a really good job of that. And it doesn’t mean I’m perfect, and it doesn’t mean that my kids listen me all the time. And if you asked them half the time if they thought I was a good dad or not, they’d probably tell you no half the time. But it was just so comforting to realize, No,
00:02:11 I think I’m a good parent. I love the way I’m doing this, and I’m just, I don’t know. I’m doing a different version of a podcast today. I typically script out my podcast and write show notes, but today I’m kind of short for time and I want to get ahead on my podcast. And I just had a really good coaching call with one of my teen clients,
00:02:34 and I just wanted to do a quick podcast to talk about what we talked about on that coaching call. The sometimes in my coaching calls, like I have some specific steps and some things that I teach, but I like to leave the option in coaching calls to just kind of go whatever direction that it feels like it, it needs to go. And so one of the things I’m working on as a coach,
00:03:03 like I come to coaching calls, always prepared with something, and I’m getting to the point I, I’ve coached a lot of people. I’m real confident in what I teach. I don’t go over the top to prepare something because when I used to do that, I would lean on that too much. But in the past week I have taught, let’s see,
00:03:26 a handful of Teens and adults and I have shared the same video multiple times, and I wasn’t planning that the first session, I’m looking at my calendar, I think it was on Monday, the first session. It kind of went that direction. I was like, Hey, here’s a YouTube video, let’s talk about inspiration. Like what creates that in your life?
00:03:47 And it was really good. And I was like, Dang, that was awesome. I wanna talk about that again. And then in another call it came up again. So I shared the video this time with an adult and it resonated really well. And I’m like, Man, I’m on a roll. And then it came up again. And so I’m telling you this because in a coaching call,
00:04:04 like I have, like the three pillars that I try and work within are identity growth. Oh, sorry, I’m messing this up. This is why I do show notes. Anyways, I talk about identity, connection, and growth and identity is kind of seeing who you want to be and really trying to be who you want to be. And it’s understanding who you want to be,
00:04:32 who you believe you are, and trying to be the best version of you. And then that’s the identity component and the connection component is relationship based. It’s starting with your own connection to your feelings, having a great connection and relationship with yourself, and then building on that loving, powerful relationship with yourself and then connecting with others and having a good loving relationship with them.
00:05:00 And then the last of the three pillars is growth. I believe one of the most important things that we can do as human beings is grow and transform ourselves. And I know a lot of people, especially in the coaching industry, they’re looking for like little improvements here. Oh, let me help you improve this, let me help you improve that. But I find people aren’t typically looking for improvements.
00:05:28 Yeah, improvements are nice, but they want a transformation. They want this six pack body, or they want to be a millionaire, or they want this destination, this vacation in Hawaii or something that’s this complete transformation from where they are. And so as I coach, I kind of let things kind of fall in place. I don’t have a lot of structure to how I take people through like,
00:05:54 Oh, here’s step one, here’s step two. No, like there’s some beginning stuff and some intermediate stuff and some more advanced stuff, but sometimes I teach the advanced stuff and like it just flows. Anyways, today I was coaching a young man and he was telling me about his emotional state. And I asked him, Hey, typically what is an emotion that you feel all the time?
00:06:22 And I teach this concept that I call Sesame Street emotions. When we were kids, we would watch Sesame Street and I remember the episodes like, Hey, this episodes brought to you by the letter B, and look at that boy riding a blue bike. His name is Bob and his best friend Billy, and blah, blah. And it all starts with B.
00:06:43 And so I asked this kid, Hey, what is your Sesame Street emotion? What’s the emotion that you have all the time? And he’s like, Apathy, I just don’t care. I, there’s no joy to my life. No excitement. It’s just apathy, hardly any emotion at all. And I gave him a homework assignment. I was like,
00:07:04 Dude, I want you to do an emotions journal. And over the next week from today’s coaching call to next coaching call, I want you to just explore what are all the emotions that I’m feeling in addition to apathy. And as I kind of talked about that, like I asked him like, What do you think? He was like, Oh, I guess I can try,
00:07:28 but I just, I don’t know. And I was like, Well, what don’t you know? And he said something to the effect of, I don’t know that I feel any emotions other than apathy. And I’ve heard that before, and I’ve coached on it before, but I’ve never coached it this way. And I loved this way that I coached it this time.
00:07:48 That’s why I’m doing a podcast about, But I talked to him about my definition of emotional health, and he’s like, Yeah, your definition is that emotional health means that you can experience any and all emotions and that you can identify and process those emotions I was like, bingo, you nailed it. Now the problem is this young man, he’s like, I can identify the one emotion that I feel in his apathy and it feels like this.
00:08:16 And here’s where it is in my body. The problem was that he was believing that that was the only emotion that he felt. And so like I’m telling you, sometimes I have no idea where coaching sessions are going. And something came to my mind and there was a commercial once upon a time about improving your German, and there’s this German coast guard who’s like kind of doing his thing.
00:08:43 And then these people with an speaking English come over the radio and they’re like, Hey, we’re sinking. We’re sinking in this German coast guard in the best English that he could muster. Said, What are you sinking about? And he completely misunderstood ’em because in his mind, he didn’t hear the th sound for thinking. And he is like, Oh,
00:09:10 they’re saying we’re sinking. What are you thinking about? And I started explaining that in some languages, there are sounds that don’t exist in other languages, like the th sound in the, in English, the the sound, like the like this, that these, that th sound doesn’t exist in German. And so when you hear German people say that, or this,
00:09:40 it’s Zah or zis like, Like when he interpreted, Hey, we’re syncing, his brain was, Oh yeah, what are you thinking about? And the kid’s like, Yeah, I guess I kind of understand that. And I was like, Man, I wish I had a better example. And then it came to my mind like, Hey, there is a TRIBE in Africa.
00:10:04 There are the Kimba TRIBE in Nabi or Namibia, Na, I should have practiced that before I went live. But there’s this author named Gavin Evans, and he wrote the book, The Story of Color. And I stumbled on this, I dunno, several years ago. And basically this guy teaches that our language has an impact in the colors that we see.
00:10:36 And in America we have, or in English, like this guy is from England, but in English we have the color green and we have the color blue, and we have all these other colors with names. But this Kimba TRIBE in Namibia, they don’t have a name for the color blue. It actually falls into the spectrum of green colors. And so this author,
00:11:03 I think he’s a doctor, I don’t know, he is doing studies and experiments, but he would have people in this TRIBE look at this color wheel and there would all be green except for one would be blue. And I’ll put the link to the video. You can seriously just Google. I don’t know, I’ll put the link in the video. But basically this man would show these people in this TRIBE,
00:11:31 this color wheel with all these greens in one blue. And they struggled to pick out the blue because in their perception, they were all green and just a different shade of green. But then he showed a different color wheel, and this one was all green. And when I looked at it, I’m like, Yeah, they’re all green. But there was one that was a slightly different shade,
00:11:54 and people from this TRIBE, they could identify it super quick because they had a name for that. And so in English, we have a name for red, and we have a name for light red, which is pink in Russia. I don’t speak Russian, but apparently they have a name for blue and a name for light blue. Like here in English,
00:12:16 we just say blue. And if it’s not baby blue, but still we just call it blue. And the reason I shared this with this young man is that this TRIBE struggled identifying certain shades of color, specifically blue because they didn’t have a name for it. And I struggled and he struggled to identify the green. That was a different shade because we don’t have a name for that.
00:12:42 And I think what happens emotionally when we don’t practice identifying our emotions and naming them, we lose some awareness when it comes to that emotion. And so this TRIBE, they don’t have the same awareness when it comes to the color blue because they don’t have a word for it in their language. It’s not something that they talk about regularly. It’s not something that’s in their vocabulary,
00:13:09 that’s in their subconscious mind. And same with us in that shade of green. And like in Spanish, like they have accents on words. If you haven’t been trained to listen to the intonations and the accents, those are things that you don’t naturally pick up. You have to train yourself to pick those up. And this young man’s homework was to keep an emotional journal and to just track throughout the day what emotions are you feeling?
00:13:42 And we’re not trying to manipulate what he’s feeling and make him feel happy or excited or hopeful. No, we just wanted to track what is the range of emotions that you experience? And the goal is to help him develop some awareness and realize, oh, I do feel more than apathy. I also feel hope. I also feel boredom. I also feel anger.
00:14:11 I also feel peaceful. And as he can identify those emotions and as he can name them and realize, Oh, this is what that feels like, that will build his emotional awareness so that when the emotions come, he’ll be quicker to identify them and understand what’s going on. And then he can be quicker to explore, Dang, why did I feel that way?
00:14:37 And understand how his thoughts and his beliefs tie into his emotions. So basically what I would like to teach you guys, and I have not read the book, the Story of Color. I’ve just seen a couple YouTube videos by this Gavin Evans. But the thing that I wanna help you understand is that awareness is a powerful, powerful thing to search for or to try to reach.
00:15:10 And oftentimes we, like you’ve heard the saying, you don’t know what you don’t know. And recently I’ve been rereading the book Leadership and Self-Deception, and they talk about being in the box. And unless you are aware that you’re in the box, you have no idea that you’re in the box. And if someone tries to help you get outta the box without you being aware that you’re in the box,
00:15:37 you’re resistant. You don’t want that help. And when we have emotions that we’re not aware of those emotions, we are resistant. We don’t, we haven’t practiced processing them. It isn’t in our wheelhouse. And so what I would like to invite you to do is to keep an emotional journal this week, really develop some awareness over the emotions that you are experiencing.
00:16:06 One thing I was going to mention that I almost forgot this TRIBE in Africa, there’s nothing wrong with them. Like they haven’t gone down a separate path evolutionarily and like, Oh, well, they can’t see certain colors. The thing is even, oh, I was studying this a while ago, I might be wrong on this, but there are certain cones that help us perceive blue.
00:16:29 And a lot of scientists thought, Oh, that determines whether or not you can see blue. But what they found out is whether you have the cones or not, you can still see blue. It’s more important that you are aware of that color distinction. And anyways, the thing I was getting at like the German Coast Guard guy on that commercial and this TRIBE from Namibia,
00:16:53 and I’m probably butchering that, I apologize if I am, but there’s nothing wrong with them. Like they just haven’t developed that specific awareness. And so this young man, when he tells me, man, all I ever feel is apathy. Like, Dude, there’s nothing wrong with you. Like you aren’t developmentally broken, and that’s what’s keeping you from feeling different things.
00:17:16 No, it’s just the awareness component. And when I was able to help him understand that he was just, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say excited, but he was like, Oh yeah, I can totally see how I just focus on feeling apathetic or bored or I just that one emotion. And so I want to invite you do the same homework,
00:17:40 do an emotional journal, really explore what are you feeling throughout the week and gain some awareness. Awareness is a powerful, powerful tool that will give you the power to make specific changes in your life, and it will give you the power to grow and progress. And so that is my invitation, guys. I usually have show notes, but I’m trying to get ahead and I just winged this one,
00:18:09 so hopefully it was okay. And hopefully you want to go achieve some new emotional awareness and hopefully that all made sense to you. And if not, I apologize, We’ll be back to our regular way of podcasting next week. All right, guys, Thank you for tuning in. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode.
00:18:35 One of my highest values is helping others. And if you’re like me, the type of person who likes to help others, please share this podcast with your friends and family. If you’ve found this helpful, they will too. Also, I want to help you. If you have any questions, you can email me at ben@benpughcoaching.com. I might even address your question on a future podcast episode.
00:19:03 And if you would like to work with me one on one, which space is very limited, or if you’d like to learn more about one of my memberships or courses, please email me, ben@benpughcoaching.com. Lastly, can I ask a favor? I believe that we are here for two reasons. First, to grow personally and second to help others grow.
00:19:30 If you would be so kind, please leave a positive review on iTunes, sharing your own personal growth. This will help inspire other parents to achieve their own growth. I’d be grateful for your assistance as we work together to transform more families.
Join My BE The Change Challenge!
Let’s go back to the basics!
Join my BE The Change Challenge on Facebook.
Listen to my first 5 episodes and share your progress on Facebook.
May is mental health month, so I keep seeing lots of posts about mental health.
I wanted to take a minute and share my thoughts on this.
I believe that mental and emotional health go hand in hand. Without one, you cannot have the other.
If you want to strengthen one, you’ll have to strengthen the other.
If you strengthen one, you’ll strengthen the other.
Mental and Emotional Health go together like the chicken and the egg.
You can’t really separate them.
What is Mental Health
I believe mental health is something that EVERYONE has! It’s kind of like physical health, if you’re alive, you’ve got it to some extent.
Just like physical health, there are things you can do to improve your mental health.
First, here’s how I define mental health.
Mental health is your ability to be aware of your thinking and to be intentional with how you think.
That’s it!
You are not your thoughts, you are the thinker of your thoughts!
As the thinker, you have the power to
What Is Emotional Health
I define emotional health as the ability to experience any and ALL emotions and to be able to identify and process them.
One of the problems that I see is when people label emotions as “good” of “bad”, often it’s positive or negative.
The problem with this is that it sends the wrong message, that negative or “bad” emotions should be avoided, and that positive emotions or the only good ones.
The truth is, that humans are designed to feel a wide range of emotions.
It’s empowering to know that feeling anxiety or anger doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with you, in fact, it means you have some emotional health because you are experiencing an emotion.
How to Strengthen Your Mental and Emotional Health
I know I sound like a broken record, but the most powerful thing you can do to help your teen strengthen their mental or emotional health is to strengthen your own.
You can show them the example of being someone who’s aware of their thoughts and intentional when it comes to their thoughts.
You can be the example of allowing any and all emotions and identifying and processing the emotion.
Share The Love!
One of the most powerful things you can do to change from the inside out is to share your growth and experience with others.
By BEing the change you want to see, you will start to inspire others.
Share your wins.
Share your growth.
Share your successes.
Share your resources and tools.
BE the example of what is possible when it comes to parenting.
CALL TO ACTION
Join my free Be the Change training starting next week. It will all be happening on my Be the Change Challenge Facebook Group to see when I go live.
Your feeling can’t hurt you, no matter how scary they are.
Are You and/or Your Teen Emotionally Healthy?
It’s unfortunate that when most people refer to “Emotional Health”, they are actually referring to the lack of emotional health.
I hear people saying things like, “They have some emotional health issues,” or, “They are struggling with emotional health.”
But, who actually knows what emotional health is?
When I ask teens, “What do you think Emotional Health is?” they usually tell me one of two things. Either, #1 “It means you’re happy all of the time,” or #2 “You struggle with depression and anxiety.”
The truth is, neither of these is an example of emotional health.
I teach that Emotional health is the ability to experience ANY and ALL emotions and identify and process them.
Notice how emotional health has nothing to do with being happy all of the time? Notice also, that emotional health doesn’t rule out uncomfortable emotions like depression and anxiety?
Emotional health means that you are capable of experiencing the whole range of emotions, from happy to sad, from excited to bored out of your mind.
Being able to experience any and all emotions is the first step in being emotionally healthy.
The second part is being able to identify and process the emotion.
This is as simple as being able to identify the emotion, understanding how it feels in your body, and exploring why you are feeling it or what thoughts are creating that emotion.
So, how emotionally healthy are YOU?
Are you able to experience any and all emotions?
Are you able to identify and process your emotions?
If so, no matter how many uncomfortable emotions you experience, you have emotional health.
What Are Feelings and Emotions?
Feelings and emotions are energy and vibrations within your body. They can be uncomfortable, but they cannot physically hurt you.
Here are some examples of how we identify emotions in our bodies; “I’ve got butterflies in my stomach,” or “I’m having cold feet,” or “It took my breath away,” and, “I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders.”
Emotions are simply energy in your body.
Your emotions are created by your thoughts.
Scary Feelings
Sometimes it can be scary to experience feelings.
Much of what we do as human beings is in an effort to avoid feelings that we don’t want to feel, like embarrassment, shame, guilt, boredom, and sadness.
The thing is, none of these feelings can actually physically hurt us.
They’re simply uncomfortable.
Sometimes we avoid scary feelings like we might avoid an unknown animal in the woods.
Imagine that you’re walking through the woods at dusk. Imagine that there is just enough light that when you turn to look behind you, you see two eyes glowing in the darkness of the woods behind you.
Instantly, you are filled with fear.
“What if it’s a tiger, or a bear, or worse, a dragon.”
So, you take off running. Avoiding whatever is behind the eyes.
If you’re like most human beings, you have done this with scary emotions sometimes.
You feel this scary feeling coming on.
So what do you do?
You run!
You avoid it, resist it, or react to it.
Emotions Aren’t As Scary As We Fear
Let’s look back at our imagined scenario of creepy eyes in the woods.
I live in Utah, so the chances of those eyes belonging to a tiger are pretty slim. I’ve never seen a bear up close in the wild, so this is pretty slim too. And, I’ve been told that dragons don’t exist, so it’s not going to be a dragon.
It’s way more likely to be a rabbit, a deer, or some other harmless animal.
The same is true about scary feelings.
It’s never as bad as we fear.
In fact, sometimes the very emotion that you are trying to avoid isn’t even the emotion that you end up experiencing.
Embarrassment and shame are two emotions that I try to avoid at all costs.
The thing is, when I allow them and experience and process them, they’re never as bad as I feared.
In fact, sometimes while I process the emotion, I begin to realize that the emotion is actually fear itself rather than embarrassment.
Developing Emotional Health for YOU and Your Teen!
Today, it seems like everyone wants to improve their emotional health or their teen’s emotional health.
It’s become kind of a buzzword.
I want to share with you some simple things that YOU can do to improve your own emotional health and how this will impact your teen’s emotional health.
First of all, you have no control over your teen’s emotional health, but you do influence their emotional health.
So, if you want your teen to improve their emotional health, improve your own and trust that that will have a positive impact on their emotional health!
I want to invite you to practice experiencing ANY and ALL emotions that come your way!
Practice identifying them.
Process them. Understand where you feel them, and what they feel like, and what thoughts create these feelings.
By transforming your own emotional health, you will be helping your teen be prepared to experience scary feelings with the same hope and confidence that they see from you!
Call to ACTION!
Come join me in the Firmly Founded Parent Membership! The price is getting ready to go up, and we’re making it better than ever!
