Kelly Laporta | Wired for Wellbeing Q&A
Who is she? Kelly LaPorta of Scottsdale Arizona is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Executive Coach, and Trained Nervous System Professional. What does that mean to me? That she’s done tremendous studying of the neurological development in children and how that matters to the way that they grow in to more well rounded, adjusted, regulated adults— with the ability to have healthier relationships with their parents. Why do I love this and want to dedicate space to her on this platform and all others that I have access to? Because I have two littles and want to be woven into the fabric of their lives in healthy, rewarding ways. So! Without further adieu—-
Q: How did you get into this specific space of psychotherapy?
She explains how it was a culmination of so many leading events. She started her career while living in Van Nuys, CA and worked amongst inner city kids. There were so many similar behaviors between children, it created a stirring around what was making so many of the kids lash out in the same ways. The strategies taught to her to help solve problems and help structure behavior as well as the tools she was taught to offer to help situations weren’t working. She explains how it felt discouraging; further causing her to see that there was something wrong with how the mental health of children was being handled, nurtured. Once she had her own kids she was trying to find a way to parent her kids that felt suitable. There is something about parenting that brings up memories of the way that we are parented and having had her own history with her parents; she felt her parents raised her in a way and she didn’t want to repeat. Kelly went heavy into gentle parenting but felt it lacked nuance. With all the questions of her time in the thick of what we now have language to call dysregulated children in addition to having her own and digging into her own history with her parents, she and her husband had a big conversation around what they were doing which landed her in research.
Through digging in she found a space to dig further into, the automatic nervous system which prompted learning how to parent and teach them in another way… after a deep dig she realized this was information parents needed to know.
Q: Why do you think that people are unaware the automatic nervous system and how it plays into parenting/how we were or were not parented.
Fight. flight or freeze is how we often refer to the “automatic nervous system.” We’re thinking about the autonomic nervous system when we’re in high school but it’s never been a natural sequence to consider how that ties into child brain development. “It kind of blows my mind.. why aren’t we thinking of this… our conditioning and how it impacts relationship in our lives.”
Q: Can I hear that about how this discovery process/way of needed change is a direct response to your childhood?
“What we saw is what we know is true. We repeat or we repair. ”
K: “If we don’t lean in to new ways of learning, we repeat what we’ve learned. We repeat or we repair. IF we’ve grown up in a family where we always had to be on the defense (in survival) we will carry that into our own families with our children. If we live in fight or flight we can see them as enemies or though that they’re trying to hurt us.”
So what I’m hearing is that in order to change the way that we are naturally inclined to parent when emotions are eye and things and/or children feel out of control, we have to decide to become aware of what went sideways in the environments we were raised in and what prompted us to feel the fight/flight/freeze feeling. And allow that education to create an in the moment awareness of our response during a heightened emotional experience….. This is work, friends. In the thick of the course there is some eye opening and some sitting with things and also a call to kind of work through it so that can correlate it the way we interact with our own children.
What makes you feel most hopeful about the messaging you’re focusing your career around teaching?
K: I think that there is a bit of a global movement toward understanding the nervous system more. As we integrate that more in our society with our family and friends we will become a more compassionate society.
How do you think the world of our children will be different in an emotional sense than the one we live in?
We're always going to have an autonomic nervous system. We'll always go into fight or flight or have moments of a shutdown response, but as we are more aware of what is happening in our body, we can teach that to our children; then, they have an opportunity for power/control over what they do with it. Instead of being a victim, they can identify and move forward in a more healthy response. They don't have to step into what their body is doing.
Friends!
This is for all sorts of parenting types. This is for parents who feel disconnected from their children or even from themselves inside of parenting, it’s for parents who are caught somewhere between I don’t want to respond to my children’s actions in this way or their attitudes with an attitude but I don’t know what else to do, for the parent who feels their child is apathetic or unresponsive to the threats, the consequence or casual conversation. The WHOLE POINT of the course is to create healthy connection between parent and child. I’m telling you, I wish I had taken the course when our babies were actual babies.
And the best part is that Kelly and her team are constantly pouring grace, kindness and encouragement over us. They understand that this journey is difficult and there is stuff inside of us and our children and their goal is to help us weave together in better ways.
Q: How can you learn more? Or enroll in educational material/an virtual class?
CLICK HERE, subscribe, follow @wired.for.wellbeing on IG, start putting some cash away now so you can be apart of their Fall course.
**GIVEAWAY DETAILS
The giveaway is paid for in full by me; it is not sponsored by, endorsed, administered by, or associated with Instagram.
All entries from any IG post associated with the giveaway will be considered.
A winner will be announced by noon on the 12th of May.
The winner will receive a spot in the November Cohort (course) that Wired for Wellbeing hosts. A $450 value / A two-week course that involves a connection with therapists/coaches and other parents through virtual formatting. A slight time requirement each day with help homework.
Please only enter if you are serious about taking the course!
To Enter, make sure you’re following @fortitudeandfinn as well as @wired.for.wellbeing on IG, go to the related post on Fortitude and Finn’s IG, and leave an emoji with as much as you want to share about why this course feels helpful for you.
