1KHO 796: How to Solve the Problem of Human Disconnection | Dr. Kelly Flanagan, The Road Less Triggered

Summary

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast — Episode Summary
Episode: 1KHO 796: How to Solve the Problem of Human Disconnection
Guest: Dr. Kelly Flanagan, Author of The Road Less Triggered
Date: May 13, 2026
Host: Ginny Yurich (1000 Hours Outside)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the pervasive issue of human disconnection in today’s world and offers a novel framework for turning conflict into connection, as discussed in Dr. Kelly Flanagan’s new book, The Road Less Triggered: Turning Conflict Into Connection With a Single Choice. Dr. Flanagan, a seasoned clinical psychologist and relationships researcher, joins Ginny Yurich for a rich, relatable, and practical conversation on why our longstanding strategies for handling triggers often fail—and how a single shift in perspective can transform our interactions with those we love.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins of Conflict: Protection vs. Connection

• Dr. Flanagan’s Backstory (04:13–06:32):

  • Kelly shares his journey studying relationship conflict since college, culminating in thousands of hours analyzing couples’ interactions for his PhD.
  • Key realization: Most people are already good communicators, but when triggered, they "close their heart," entering protection mode and losing access to their skills.

• The Concept of ‘Closing the Heart’ (06:50–09:00):

  • "We flip from connection mode into protection mode. Even though we’re ostensibly still in the conversation to connect, we’re actually actively just…trying to protect ourselves.” — Dr. Flanagan [09:00]

2. Everyday Examples: Recognizing When We Close Our Hearts

• Relatable Anecdotes:

  • Dr. Flanagan discusses small relationship moments—like being upset over the wrong bagel or a forgotten veggie burger—and how disproportionate feelings stem from old pain points, not the present situation ([07:27], [08:12]).
  • Ginny shares a podcast mishap where lost interviews triggered not just frustration but deeper feelings of being unsupported ([12:41–15:07]).

• Ripple Effect and the Role of Loneliness (15:07–17:45):

  • Dr. Flanagan identifies three pillars of loneliness: being unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported.
  • "We have a wide range of initial pain points—feeling unsupported, unseen, misunderstood—but these all converge on loneliness." — Dr. Flanagan [16:30]

3. The Ripple Method: Tracing Triggers to Their Source

• Following ‘Ripples’ to Childhood & Past Experiences (22:20–28:20):

  • Pain from the past resurfaces through present triggers—often from innocuous childhood memories (e.g., being left out by friends).
  • Notable quote: "We think we’re reacting to people, but really, we’re reacting to pain.” — Dr. Flanagan [22:19]
  • Ginny: "You don’t have to go digging; your past comes and finds you in your triggered moments." ([24:07])

• The Tree Rings Analogy (33:52–36:26):

  • Each year of life adds a ‘ring’ to our nervous system—the past is always within us. These rings can’t (and shouldn’t) be erased, but can be embraced.
  • "A tree endures stress because of all its rings. You can’t erase your nervous system’s rings—peace comes from embracing all of it.” — Dr. Flanagan [35:55]

4. Practical Strategies: Moving from Closed to Open Hearted

• From Self-Improvement to Wholeness (39:33–41:15):

  • Trying to “fix” or “eliminate” parts of ourselves is fruitless; true peace and effectiveness come from accepting and loving every part—every ring—of our history.
  • "This isn't as much about healthiness as wholeness." — Dr. Flanagan [40:12]

• Openhearted Boundaries & Parenting Insights (42:31–47:47):

  • Open-heartedness does NOT mean weak boundaries.
  • Example of "poo-thies": Setting a clear, loving boundary with a child who wants to play, while acknowledging their feelings ([42:31–46:23]).
  • "Openheartedness doesn’t make your boundaries weaker; it makes them wiser." — Dr. Flanagan [42:31]

5. The Power of Tears: Releasing Blocked Emotions

• Tears, Sadness, and Healing (47:47–54:42):
  • Children start open-hearted and cry freely, but adults often suppress sadness, leading to exhaustion or depression ([48:52], [53:22]).
  • The “90-Second Rule”: If you let a feeling move through you, it will pass in about 90 seconds; the backlog is what weighs us down.
  • "We are walking around weighed down by unfelt feelings—and in 90 seconds, we could move those through us and get back to the joy and vibrancy of childhood." — Dr. Flanagan [50:49]
  • The ability to move sadness allows more joy and creativity.

6. Embracing the Inevitability of Triggers

• You’ll Never Eliminate Closing Your Heart (56:00–61:16):
  • Our hearts close when overwhelmed—it’s a protective feature, not a flaw.
  • The goal isn’t to become “defenseless,” but to recognize, soften toward, and expand our capacity for tension.
  • Salt in the Lake Parable ([57:11–61:16]):
    • “Quit trying to eliminate your salt and become a larger lake.” — Don’t attempt to eradicate triggers or stress, but increase your capacity to “hold” challenging feelings.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Closing Our Hearts:
  • "Children are open-hearted, it’s how we start. Then as adults we get into the habit of closing our hearts, usually in subtle ways." — Dr. Flanagan [09:00]
• On Triggers:
  • "When you really settle into pain points, they all start to converge on loneliness—feeling unseen, unsupported, or misunderstood." — Dr. Flanagan [16:30]
• On The Tree Rings:
  • "Every ring of yourself is worth loving—there’s no way to erase a ring of a tree.” — Dr. Flanagan [36:09]
• On Boundaries:
  • "Openhearted boundaries are far more effective than those you set with a closed heart." — Dr. Flanagan [46:00]
• On Sadness & Healing:
  • "It takes so much energy to keep sadness bottled up... If you allow yourself to fully experience an emotion, it comes and goes in about 90 seconds.” — Dr. Flanagan [48:52]
• On Triggers Being Inevitable:
  • "Your heart will forever be triggered to close...You don’t pivot by becoming defenseless. You pivot by surrendering to the presence of your defenses and softening to their purpose." — Dr. Flanagan [61:16]
• Salt in the Lake:
  • “Quit trying to eliminate your salt and become a larger lake.” — Dr. Flanagan [61:13]

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Noteworthy Moments

• Ginny’s enthusiasm and personal transformation upon reading the book:
  • "I would never have considered using this word [close-hearted] to describe myself, but I do do this. And I can see the effects, even if no one else in my family has read the book—it’s changed my life." [18:06]
• Dr. Flanagan’s vulnerability about still being triggered despite deep expertise:
  • "Here I am getting bent out of shape about a veggie patty, knowing it’s absurd, but unable to stop the ripple.” [09:00]
• The story of boundaries and “poo-thies” as a loving, open-hearted response to a child’s disappointment [42:31–46:23].
• Parable of salt in the lake — expanding our emotional container rather than eliminating discomfort [57:11–61:16].

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Key Takeaways

• Connection must be chosen over protection, again and again.
• We don't react to people—we react to our own pain, especially old pain.
• The past is always present, shaping reactions in ways our logical mind can’t outthink.
• Openheartedness brings flexibility, creativity, and deeper connection, even in conflict.
• Tears and sadness, far from weakening us, can release us to greater wholeness and joy.
• Boundaries made from openheartedness are both firmer and more compassionate.
• You cannot (and should not) eliminate your triggers; the path is learning to expand your capacity, embrace all your ‘rings,’ and transform the old patterns into new presence.

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“You’re not supposed to eliminate your salt. You’re supposed to become a bigger lake.” — Dr. Kelly Flanagan

Transcript

[Jenny Ert]

Summer gets busy fast. One minute you're easing into warmer weather, and the next you're juggling sports schedules, swim days, camping trips, road trips, late nights around the fire, and trying to keep the house from completely falling apart in the middle of all of it. And if you're a cat family too, there's still the everyday stuff waiting for you at home, including the litter box. That's why Whiskers Litter Robot is such a game changer. During busy seasons, it automatically cycles after every use, so you're not constantly scooping or dealing with litter cleanup every single day. It just handles the dirty work for you. And the Whisker app notifies you about your unit, like when a clean cycle is complete, when drawer levels are getting full, or if the unit needs attention. You can always track things like your cat's weight and bathroom usage over time, which makes it easy to stay aware of changes without having to constantly check in. Honestly, during a packed summer, having one last daily chore to think about makes a huge difference. Maintain your cat's litter while focusing on your growing family. Learn more about Whisker Litter robot models and starter kits today to get set up before the summer craziness arrives. Take an additional $50 off bundles with code 1000 when you shop whisker.com 1000hours that's an additional $50 off bundles with Code [e-mail] 1000hours welcome welcome to the 1000hours outside podcast. My name is Jenny Ert. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have read a book. It is possibly the most life changing book for me. You know, you never, you were like, oh, how many books have I read? I don't. I. This book has already totally changed my life. I wasn't expecting it to at all. I wasn't expecting it to change my life. And it is entertaining. It's so practical and I felt like almost when you read fiction and you're like you don't want it to end because you love the character so much. I read this like a fiction book. I was like, I really don't want this to end. I like it so much. But I need it to end because I got to prepare for this podcast. It is called the Road Less Triggered Turning Conflict Into Connection with a single choice by Dr. Kelly Flanagan. I've already ordered three copies. For more people. It is wow. Welcome Kelly.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

This is officially the best start I've had to a day in a very long time. Just after that introduction. Thank you.

[Jenny Ert]

Well, I'm Having way better starts to my day because of this book. Okay. You are Kelly, married to Kelly. So we have to throw that out

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

there because that's really interesting.

[Jenny Ert]

I love that. I'm very curious. I, you know, I've got a more unique name and I've only had one podcast interview with another Ginny. And I was like, this is really weird to say my name over and over again, but you live with someone with your same name. But that's. We're not even talking about that because there's so much to talk about.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Okay.

[Jenny Ert]

I would not have considered myself. I've never heard any of this before. First of all, being close hearted, I never heard it.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

And I would. I mean, I'm a pretty. Well, I'm kind of an enthusiastic, fairly optimistic person.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

So I wouldn't have never even considered myself to possibly be close hearted. But then when I read the book, I was like, I'm close hearted a lot. Like, I'm close hearted. If I'm trying to finish something and my kids come in, I'm close hearted to my husband. You know, like, you know, something happens. And then I'm like, oh, and now I'm doing the ripple jump thing. And I was wondering as I was reading the book, like, because I bought it for other people. Like, I bought it for a couple family members, I bought it for a friend. I'm talking way too much. But I want you to know it doesn't even come in a couple days because I think it already is selling out.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

Like, normally if you order a book, it will come like tomorrow or in two days. This is like, oh, you'll get it in three weeks. I was like, I think it's because everybody who read it was like, I know six people who would like this book and I'm going to order six more.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

The first print run did sell out. I'm happy to report we hit the USA Today bestseller list. And yeah, I have a lot of people who are waiting for their next round of books to give to friends and family, which just makes me so happy because the idea that loved ones are reading this book together and getting to start to share that common language, I think it's just going to be a really powerful thing.

[Jenny Ert]

It is a life changing book. I had a whole conversation with my friend Nicole and she was like. And I was like, this book changed my life. I got her a copy, but it won't come for a couple weeks.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

And I was like.

[Jenny Ert]

She was like, explain to me, how do you be more open hearted? And what are these different situations? And I was wondering as I read the book, Kelly, like, what happens if I read it but nobody else does? Like, can it still work? And it does. It is.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

That's changed my life.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

Completely changed my life forever. Everybody to read it. The Road Less Triggered is what it's called. You have got. Okay, let's give a little bit of your backstory. So you are a relationship expert. Pretty much. You say, I've been studying relationships since I was on my dirt bike, you know, like as a kid. But beyond that, you spent for, you know, getting your PhD from Penn State. You watched thousands of hours of videotaped conflict when you're writing your dissertation. I'm like, no one else has done that. So can you talk about your interest in relationship and how that started and has.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah.

[Jenny Ert]

Even so, you're like, I'm still struggling in my own personal life.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes. I just. I was out to dinner with my 18 year old who's about to go off to college last night, and he was just sort of ra. Rambling in that blessed way they occasionally do at that age, you know, where you're like, just soaking it all up. And he just said, he blurted out, he goes, I'm gonna have to do something in sports. I can't picture myself being happy without sports in my life. And I was like, that's it, dude. And I think a lot of times we just accidentally blurt out what we want to do with our lives. And I was in a sophomore psychology class at the University of Illinois, and the professor was trying to sort of pushing me on what I wanted to do my honors paper on for the. And she said, well, what's the one problem you want to solve in the world? And I said, I just blurted out conflict. You know, I want to work on communication and conflict resolution. Now, years later, I would say, what I really want to help people solve is the problem of human disconnection. Because we're here to be connected, we're here to belong, we're here to be in relationship. And miscommunication and conflict gets in the way of that. So, yeah, I just blurted it out when I was a sophomore in college and went on to work in a communication laboratory at the U of I. Then I went on to Penn State for grad school. That's where I watched all. Like, that's a standard way of actually doing communication research is you invite these couples into the laboratory, you promise them a little bit of feedback about their communication. That's the carrot, you know, but you just say. You sit them down and you say, talk about the biggest problem in your relationship. And then you videotape them for 15 minutes doing it, and you watch what kinds of communication behaviors they show up with. So that's what I did for my dissertation. It was like 200 newlywed couples. They each had a couple of interactions that were videotaped, and I just sat and watched them and coded their behaviors for the whole interaction.

[Jenny Ert]

Wow, what a backstory. Okay, but here is the point. You say that even though we can have this toolbox, and this is why this book is so different, I think other books are filled with tools. Like, I'm gonna box, Breathe, you know, and they're fine tools, but you're like, in the moment. They don't work.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

They don't work.

[Jenny Ert]

Why? Because we have closed our heart. And I was like, I have never in my life heard anybody say that. I've never heard that phraseology. And it makes 1000% sense. And you talk about. You get. You're giving your own example. So the examples are the best. They're so good because they're so relatable. And so I want to start off with, like, this to give people an example of what might happen. And I'm going to get. I can give an example for my own life, too. That just happened in this past week. But the example is that you really like a certain type of bagel. You like the plain bagel with chocolate chip cream cheese.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes, ma'. Am.

[Jenny Ert]

And one time, your wife got you the chocolate chip bagel with plain cream cheese, so she flipped it, and you said, I was not interested in that at all. I handled the minor mix up poorly. And then you start to talk about, you know, and then you're like, okay, we had this big party, and, you know, I'm a vegetarian, so. Or a vegan. I'm. I don't know. Let me get it clear.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

I have a strange disease called Alpha gal disease that comes from ticks where I can't eat mammals, basically. Or I have a terrible allergic reaction, so I stick to the veggies and vegan side of things. For burgers? Yeah.

[Jenny Ert]

Okay. Well, that could be a whole different podcast, right?

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah. I highly recommend you looking into it if you have terrible reactions to.

[Jenny Ert]

Yeah, okay. All right. So you're like, I need to have this veggie patty, and we have this big party, and my wife didn't make me mine, and so you. So, okay, everybody can write. This is like a. A pretty minor thing, but you're like, I'm getting mad, and I'm starting to think my wife is so inconsiderate and, like, I want to attack her shortcomings, and she's thoughtless and she's careless and she's ungrateful and unkind and she's delinquent. And you say it's absurd. I know. And everybody reading it is like, yes, it is absurd. But also, I've been there. Yes, I have felt it over these minor things. And so what you say is, you look, of course you have all the tools. You've been studying, you know, millions of minutes of conversation, but we're closing the toolbox. We're closing our hearts. So can you talk about that story?

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yep.

[Jenny Ert]

It's so entertaining treat. I'm staring down at my plate, pushing the potato salad around with my fork, my head spinning with the effort to keep my mouth shut. Everyone has been there. Almost two decades after the mistaken bagel, it is still so tempting to bring it up, you know, bring up the forgotten burger, you know, in. So you're saying you have to pivot.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

What is going on here?

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah, so great question. So one of the things. So I get out of that, you know, that graduate program at Penn State, I get into the real world, I start doing work with couples, and I have been trained, I've been given all the communication tools in the world, and I start to work with these couples and I start to teach them the communication tools. And it helps a little bit. But what I start to realize, like, really quickly is the couples, first and foremost, they have most of the tools I've already given them. They're in most spaces in their lives. They communicate well. They're successful doctors and teachers and attorneys and stay at home parents of busy households and that sort of thing. It's just that this moment happens where they close their communication toolbox, and they can't use anything that they have, anything I've given them. And I actually quit doing couples therapy for a while. As a trained couples therapist, I was like, until I know what to do with that moment, I can't really, really help anybody. And it was only a little later that I realized that what's happening in that the toolbox, our communication toolbox, is our heart. And when we close our heart, we are flipping from connection mode into protection mode. So even though we're ostensibly still in the conversation in order to connect, we're actually actively just mostly trying to protect ourselves. And so, yeah, see, when. When you start to realize that there's that switch, that flips in us where our heart goes from open to closed. You start to see it everywhere, which is what you're describing. You're now starting to see that everywh. And by the way, I would say like, yeah, you hear close hearted and you think of good people versus bad people. But probably a more accurate distinction is children versus adults. Children are open hearted. It's how we start. And then we get into a habit of closing our hearts. A lot of us in subtle ways, we don't even know we're doing it. So I'd say if you're close hearted, you're not a bad person, you're just an adult. That's all of us. And now you're starting to see these moments where that happens. So yeah, I'm sitting there and I knew it was absurd because she had just put on an incredible spread for my entire family. It was all my family. I mean, treating them like they were her own, like her own blood, right? And here I am getting bent out of shape about the fact that she forgot to throw a veggie patty on the grill. And oh yeah, and it's like that moment where she brought home the wrong kind of bagel on Father's Day. And oh yeah, it's like how this is how I felt the whole time she was training for that half Iron man and I was home alone with the kids and oh my gosh. And this is what you start to realize eventually. Once you can really, you have to regulate your nervous system first to be calm enough to actually do this kind of self reflection. But once you get calm enough, you go, this is less about the person in front of me and more about the pain point that's getting stirred up inside of me. This feeling of no one's thinking of me, no one's caring for me. I'm all alone, right? I'm in this by myself. And once you can start to see that really it's the pain point, not the person, you have now an entirely new perspective to work with through that moment. Now the pivot is from talking to the person in front of you to becoming more familiar with that pain point inside of you.

[Jenny Ert]

It's so good and it works. So I'm going to give you my example. So I've got this podcast. It is the main source of income for our family. We've got five kids, yeah, four teens and one's nine. So this is like expensive years. Although my mom's like, it's going to get more expensive. Just wait till they get married. So you Know, these are. These are pretty intense years with a lot of moving parts. And so we don't really have a team. I've got. I just. We hired in the past six months of childhood friend of mine named Megan. She's helping to bring in guests and schedule and she's doing a phenomenal job. But it's just really the three of us. So it's like my husband, me and Megan who's like part time. So, you know, and I'm like, we're kind of at our width end here. We don't have a lot of margin. And. And my husband will. He messes things up occasionally, you know, as happens in life. And it's happened some with the podcast, like the sound isn't coming through or whatever. So a couple months ago we realized that I've got almost 800 podcast episode. You know, it's a lot. So the computer's running out of space. And then it was like, oh, well, it's not gonna, you know, record the episode if it runs out of space. So my husband said, I'll make sure that it's good. So I recorded with this girl named Taryn who was 25 years old and rode on a rowboat across the ocean.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Wow.

[Jenny Ert]

And I lost the interview because there wasn't enough space on the computer. So that happened. And it was a thing. Well, then two weeks later I interviewed. So then my husband was like, well, I'm going to change it around so that it uploads to the cloud. Okay. I interview this man, Michael Hyatt. He's like a pretty well known business

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

guy, quite familiar with Michael Hyatt. Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

Yeah. Don't have the interview. Oh. So, okay. So this is a situation where. Okay, I immediately was like, I'm close hearted, like in this moment. And actually I was like, kind of fine. I was like, I'm close hearted at the moment. Like, you know, but then I jumped the ripples. So I was like, okay. Because at the end of the day, it's not life or death. It doesn't really matter. We can email Michael. Maybe he'll come back on. Maybe Taryn will come back on. Even if they don't. It's two interviews. I got 800 other ones. Right. It's not, you know, dire situation, but I jumped the ripples. And I was like, the. Well, Michael Hyatt reminds me of two weeks ago when I lost that interview, which reminds me of that time when I didn't. The sound didn't work.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yep.

[Jenny Ert]

And it really is about, can I depend on You.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Oh, yes, that's it. That's it. You. I'll put a couple things together there that you said just that are so important and. And what a blessing it is that you've. You've dived so deeply into the book and kind of can pull all these pieces out. You said it's not life or death, Right? One of the most. If you can ask two important questions back to back. Number one, is my nervous system activated? And the answer is yes. And then, is this a life or death death situation? And the answer is no, then you know there's something more going on in the moment than just this situation. Right. Because your nervous system is designed to protect you from life and death situations. That's the only time it's supposed to activate like that. It's the only time you're supposed to be triggered. So if you're triggered, it means there's something in you that is relating to this as if it's a life and death situation. I encourage people not to think of it as like, well, my nervous system is misfiring and I need to get it fixed. No, there's something in you that interprets this as life and death. So let's try to get connected with what that is. And what I'm learning and what I've learned over time is that we have a wide range of sort of initial pain points we recognize in that moment, but when you really just sort of like, settle into them, they all start to converge on the same experience, which I call loneliness. And I say that loneliness has basically three pillars to it. Feeling unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported. And, Ginny, you just named the unsupported one, right? Can I depend upon you? Will you support me? And what you're pointing out is that as an adult, like, this isn't life or death. It's not catastrophic. We can rerecord. Of course, I can depend upon him for a lot of things, but this is tapping into a very primal, probably early experience in which when we're unsupported as kids, it is life and death. If we're not seen as children, it is life and death. If we are not understood and feel like we belong through that understanding to the tribe, it is life and death. As a kid. And then you mentioned the ripples, this idea that when you sort of trace the ripple effects of this moment backward in time, you start to see, oh, and that's where I felt unsupported, and that's where I felt unsupported. And eventually you get back to a moment in your life where feeling unsupported might have been a little bit more of an existential crisis. And you start to realize you're experiencing it now the way you did then, and suddenly you have a lot more emotional flexibility about how to deal with this moment.

[Jenny Ert]

And something that would have lasted a lot longer. Lasted so short.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Exactly.

[Jenny Ert]

And Michael did reschedule. And even if he wouldn't have, it didn't matter. So, I mean, it really has completely changed my life, especially considering the fact that I would view myself as an optimistic, positive, you know, forced. Really?

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

And I would never have considered using this word to describe myself, but I was like, I do do this. And. And I can see the effects of when I do it. And I can see the effects of. No one else in my family has read this book except for me. And I was like, this has already completely changed my life. Everybody should read it. It's called the Road Less triggered. Can I just say, there was a time when I felt like the family calendar was living in six different places. Some things were in my phone, some things were in Josh's head, some things were written down somewhere, and a lot of it was just missed. And that constant feeling of, what am I forgetting? Is exhausting. That is why I love the Skylight Calendar. It brings everything together in one place. Appointments, activities, even grocery lists. And it syncs seamlessly with Google, Apple, Outlook, all of it. So wherever something gets added, it shows up. But the feature that really surprised me is a tasks section for kids. 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Head to quince.com outside for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q u I n c.com outside for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com outside. This episode is sponsored by Better Help May is Mental Health Awareness month and it's a good reminder that life is a journey with highs and lows. Some days feel light and steady and other days feel overwhelming, like there are too many things to carry and not enough space to sort through them. I think one of the little lies we believe is that we're supposed to figure it all out on our own. But the truth is no one has all the answers and no journey is meant to be walked alone. Therapy can be a place where you don't have to have it all together, a place to talk through what's keeping you up at night, to gain an outside perspective and to feel supported instead of stuck. If you've been feeling overwhelmed or unsure, that's more common than we think and it's okay to get help sorting through it. That's why I appreciate better help. Their therapists are fully licensed in the US and follow a strict code of conduct. They match you with a therapist through a short questionnaire so you can focus on your goals and if it's not the right fit, you can switch anytime. With over 30,000 therapists and more than 6 million people served globally and an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 across 1.7 million reviews, it's a platform people trust. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy sign up and get 10% [e-mail] 1000 hours. That's B E T T E R h e l p.com 1000hours. Can we stick with this ripple part for a little bit? So one of the things that you talked about was that there were these people. Like, I. I'm thinking of them in my mind as, like, monks, but they probably weren't monks. They were just like these people that are like, everyone's bugging me. Everyone bothers me. So I'm just gonna go live in the woods by myself, and I'm not ever going to be bothered. I'm just going to be like, this emotional, cool. As a cucumber person. And then you're like, they're there, but they stub their toe and they're mad.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

And so there you say this. We think we are reacting to people, but really we're reacting to pain. So this ripple method. That's why I'm saying, like, in this book. I'm. I've read a lot of books, and I'm like, I've never heard of these concepts. So we're reacting to pain. But then a lot of people, there's a couple problems. They don't want to deal with their. They don't want to deal with their painful past. Right. I think that's kind of normal. Like, I'm like, I don't want to think about that or I don't want to dredge up.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Absolutely.

[Jenny Ert]

And also, sometimes you don't remember, so you might feel like you're kind of stuck. So this ripple part is that you just are trying to follow the ripples. And you. You had a couple in here. You know, you're kind of like, following through their story. I'm sure they're kind of like a fake amalgamation. Is that even a word?

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Like, yes, it is.

[Jenny Ert]

Of a bunch of people that you've talked to. But this is. This. Henry, Sarah, and Henry's like, I don't do my past. And I think a lot of people are like that. I do not want to. I. I don't want to go there. And you're like, that's fine. Nobody ever says, that's fine, Kelly. You're like, that's fine. You know, we don't have to go try and dig it up. Just hop the ripples. What does this remind you of? You know, you trace your triggers back through time to find out where the original stone got thrown. So can you talk about that as a. That's a very different approach as to, you know, let's start when you were four years old.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes, exactly. Well, I know everyone. Like you read a book by a therapist. You're like, I was just going to rub my nose in the past. You know, we're going to have to dredge all that up. And I don't actually find that very helpful in the sense of like going on a sort of a search and destroy expedition into our past. I don't. Like, as just an exercise, it doesn't make much sense to me. But what I have come to realize is that our past is always pushing its way into the present. Right?

[Jenny Ert]

Yes.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

And that we don't have to go looking for our past because it comes looking for us in our triggered moments. And what we just need to do is to begin to recognize that that's what's happening. Like when my reaction doesn't quite fit the situation.

[Jenny Ert]

Like the bagel.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah, like the bagel. I had one last night. I'd be happy to share with you, like, oh, this isn't about just this moment. It's my past pushing its way into the present. I start this. The sentence I started off my. My today only novel with is that the past is always behind us, but it is also always within us. Right. It's always stored within our nervous system and in a nervous system that is designed to protect us from that thing happening again and again. To the point that we were discussing earlier, I always caution people, this isn't like, we're not looking for like, big T trauma, the big thing, you know, because a lot of us, myself included, will say, I had a really good childhood. You know, I don't really have anything to, to pin, you know, when I, when I trace my ripples and it's like, yeah, but being human is hard. Being human is really hard. Especially when you are a vulnerable child with no way of really protecting themselves, completely dependent upon other people. Being humans hard. It's a shock to a child to experience that we're all separate. You know, I think a kid is like, we're all here to be together, right? We're all one. We're all in this together. And then you just sort of run into this moment over and over again as a child where it's like, oh, we're not here to be together. Everyone's playing this game, like, of separation and protection. That doesn't feel very good. And. And so just in an ordinary, even sort of fairy tale life, you end up with a lot of Reason to start. To start closing your heart.

[Jenny Ert]

I'm interrupting you because I want to go for it. I want to share the story that you shared, because I think this is a really good one to illustrate. Illustrate that point before we move on. The story that you shared was that you went to your friend's house. So talking about, like, your childhood might be just, like, fairly, you know, as people would say, normal. You know, there weren't any of these adverse childhood experiences. Nobody died, nobody divorced, you know, Exactly. You know, it was just fairly smooth in. In that sense. But you're like, I went over my friend's house. This is my, you know, my favorite friend to play it with. I knock on the door, and he opens the door, and he's like, I can't play. You're like, well, what the heck? You know, why can't you play? You could play every other day and. And appear, you know, peering is like how I'm envisioning it in my mind, like, appearing around his shoulder is another kid from school and you. And you're like, oh, my gosh, I was just replaced. I was traded out for someone else. And you can say as an adult, it's easy to forget how painful that was for a little boy. Nowadays, I just delete that person. You know, they're out of my Facebook. They're off my social media. I would text any of my other friends. I would, you know, I would find some analog connection. I go do something with my wife or my kids. But at that point is the belief that you're not good enough. You're not worthy of love or belonging. And then you say, from that point on, I tried to become the kind of person no one would trade out for anyone else.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes. The lifelong project which my wife was not cooperating with when she didn't make me that veggie burger, Right? Like, hey, I'm doing such a good job being a husband and a father and everything. And you're supposed to be sort of put me first and not. Not prioritize other people above me. And so you sort of see how much of our lives become sort of a project.

[Jenny Ert]

Your family replaced you. You know, she's serving your family, but she forgot you.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

But she forgot me. So the feeling of being replaced takes over in that moment. Exactly.

[Jenny Ert]

Yeah. Okay. Thanks for letting me bring it up, because I think the book has such great examples. Your own examples are so phenomenal because everyone can relate to them in different ways. And you see that, like, this didn't have to be, you know, I obviously Some people listening will be in this case where they were abused or something more horrific happened.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Sure.

[Jenny Ert]

But this is a very, in a lot of ways, like what people would consider an innocuous childhood experience. Oh, you got left out.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yep, that's right.

[Jenny Ert]

But it was very formative.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah. Because for a child, getting left out is an existential threat, whereas for us adults it's not. Yeah.

[Jenny Ert]

It can feel like it though, right? I mean, isn't that what people talk about? Like you see on online that everyone went to a party and you weren't invited, you know.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Well, I just had it happen. I, I mean, this is interesting you bring up that story from the book because, you know, I found out recently that two good buddies went and hiked the Grand Canyon. I didn't know anything about it and. Right. And it's like what's tempting to do then is to start to feel like that kid who showed up at his friend's door, you know, in like third grade and was rejected, and to act like that kid too. To close my heart, to go home, to be quiet and to sort of just go, well, I'm never hanging out with that person again. And instead to sort of feel you have an opportunity in that moment, not just to feel this moment, but to feel that one too, from the past. And then to open your heart and decide how you want to show up open heartedly to this moment. And, and that's the sort of emotional and relational flexibility that gets restored. Because when your heart closes to protect you from this moment and the one like it in the past, you lose all that flexibility. You're sort of in an autopilot, defensive protective mode to get that heart back open. And people always ask me, well, okay, so when I open my heart, what should I do? I'm like, actually, I can't tell you that the, the creative possibilities that will present themselves once your heart is open are going to blow you away. I had this happen on, on Thursday. Friday morning. Good Friday. It was on Friday morning I woke up with my head all in a tizzy about my son going off to college and he's sort of low in the residence hall lottery and he's going to get a bad dorm room and he's going to not connect socially. And I was just spun up about it. My heart was closed. I was in protection mode. And fortunately I had this Friday morning meditation I was doing with a group of people. And it was a space where I could open up my heart. And I realized what I was really trying to do is I Was trying to protect my son from the pain of my departure from home, which was where I wound up in a terrible residence hall situation. And I was alone and I just gave myself the space to feel that, open my heart again, feel like how hard that was for me. And all of a sudden all sorts of ideas came to mind about how I could actually support him from an open hearted place rather than sort of anxiously trying to protect both of us from a closed hearted place. And they've really paid some dividends. So once that heart gets open, you. It's not a. I think people assume open heartedness is this sort of passive state. Well, I'm open hearted, so I just have to let things happen now, I guess. And it's actually open heartedness is a very creative, actively engaged state with the reality that you're facing in the present moment.

[Jenny Ert]

Wow. You have to read the book so. Because the questions that you're saying, people ask you. I was telling my friend Nicole about it. I was like, this best book. And she was like, well, how, how do you become open hearted? And like, what does, you know, what does it look like? But you get it. Read the book. And you're like, no, I can do this. I understand. And so, you know, we were talking about this part that instead of, you know, sitting in some room and being like, let me drudge up my past, you just, in the, in the triggering moments that happen, you have opportunities all the time to just pop these ripples to figure out what exactly is going on. These pain points are rippling out across time. And you wrote in the book, the book is called the Road Last Triggered, that our nervous system cannot, this is the key. Our nervous system cannot differentiate between a system, a situation happening 30 years ago, and a situation happening right now. And I just talked to this man, Dr. Kurt Thompson, he was talking about in his book, like, in the right hemisphere of the brain, there's no time. Which is why, like, if I hear Goo Goo Doll song, I'm like, that's right. Because it takes me back to being 17 years old and like listening to it on the school bus and like loving it, you know, I mean, change my whole stance. No, nobody else cares that much. Or they grew up in the 90s. They do. But you're like, what is this? And I'm like, I don't like my kids music. It doesn't make me feel the same way, like the things my kids like to listen to. But I'm like, this is immediate nostalgia. Like I'll feel like a different person it's because there's no time there. So there. So your whole point is, the past is never dead. It's a quote by William Faulkner. It's not even in the past. Your present. So you're closing. So here's what happens. You're closing. It's a little bit about your presence, your present moment. Right.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Jenny Ert]

I. I really wanted to. What is it that you wanted? You really wanted the plain bagel.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes.

[Jenny Ert]

With the chocolate chip.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

With the chocolate. Thank you for remembering that, Jenny. I feel very seen.

[Jenny Ert]

I had to have it written down, though. That's what he really wanted. So there it is. A little bit about the present. It's like someone's throwing a temper tantrum. Your. Your husband is ruining your business. You know, that's how you're feeling in the moment. Right. You're like, oh, but it's this past. It's coming through. So even if you decide, like Henry in the book, I don't do the past, you're like, too bad. You have this trail of triggers. You have to REM your ripples. And so it gives you this opportunity on probably a daily basis to be like, what the heck is going on with me? So can you talk about. I love this. I think this is a great example, especially for this podcast. You talk about the rings of a tree, and there is no going back in erasing a ring.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah. So I have really come to. And by the way, Kurt's amazing, and I appreciate what. What he shared with you there. The. I've come to think of our nervous system as growing like a tree does, where each year of the tree's life, there's a ring that's left behind for it for that year. And the tendency that we have as people is like, if the 17th year was a tough year, if that ring shows some burn marks on it because there was a forest fire and everything else, we'd like to remove that ring from our nervous system. Right. We like to go, I don't want that in there. But a tree is able to actually endure the weather and stress because of all of its rings. It doesn't. You don't remove that ring of the nervous system. I had a situation that happened right after I wrote that chapter about how our nervous system is sort of made up of a ring for every year of our lives. We were walking out of a restaurant locally, and I hear, hey, flan over my shoulder. And it's two high school friends who I haven't seen in ages. They live way up north now, and they're in town. And they're like, hey, how are you doing? I'm like, oh, great. What are you guys doing in town? Oh, we were here for so and so Dad's funeral. Another peer of ours. And it hit me that I had somehow missed the news and I'd missed the funeral, and. And these friends had gathered without me. And my wife and I were going to the grocery store right after dinner, and she just sent me. She said, go get some bananas. And I came back, like, 10 minutes later, no bananas. She's like, where are the bananas? I'm like, oh, I forgot. And she looked at me and she said, how old does it feel right now, having run into them? And I was like, I'm in my 17th ring, 16th, 17th ring. Feeling a little left out socially feeling. And then I start to do all the things my nervous system starts to do, all the things I used to do when I was 17. What did I do wrong? Wrong? Will they ever want to talk to me again? What do I need to do to repair it? And she. She just looked at me. She goes, you're 47 now. You're here with me. I love you, you know? And it was like, it helped to sort of like, soothe. Soothe that. That ring of my nervous system. But that's. That's one of the. The real rewards, I think, of. Of. Of what you encounter in the book is this opportunity to love every ring of yourself, right? To welcome them all into your experience and make sure that no part of you is left out of your love.

[Jenny Ert]

Gosh, it's so good. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. It's such a good book. So you. You kind of hop these ripples or these rings, and you say, this wouldn't be so hard if it didn't remind me of. So in my case, if it didn't remind me of the last podcast that I lost, you know, if it didn't remind me of the other time that you let me down, you know, and. And you kind of go through these rings, but this is what you say. It's so cool. And you talk about your, you know, when you were 16 and the golf team. It's a fun, fabulous ring read. You say the rings are with us forever, and you are. You are the sum total of your rings. And I love. That's like, God has given us so many cool truths through creation that you can learn these lessons of and really understand. Like, that will really stick with me. There's no way to erase a ring of a tree. Everyone has seen a cross section of a tree, you know, you can't go in and, you know, erase that somehow. It's there. It's all through the entire trunk. And you say to love every version of you and to love every ring. It's so good. So when Henry says, I don't do the past, you can't not do the past. The past is always there. As we move towards summer, everything starts to look a little different. The schedule loosens up. There's more time outside, more travel, more life happening. And that's a really good thing. But it can make consistency a little harder to maintain. Having something flexible that supports learning through those changing rhythms can make a big difference. And that's where IXL fits in so well. IXL is an award winning online learning platform offering interactive practice in math, language arts, science and social studies from Pre K through 12th grade. It adapts to each child's level, keeps them engaged, and gives parents clear visibility into progress. What I really appreciate is how simple and organized it is. Everything is laid out by grade and subject so you can quickly find what your child needs, whether that's staying sharp over the summer or getting a head start for the next year. And because it's personalized, kids can move at their own pace pace which helps keep momentum going in a natural way. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now and 1000 Hours Outside listeners can get an exclusive 20 off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com 1000hours. Visit ixl.com 1000hours to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. I think for a long time I underestimated how much your outdoor space impacts your day to day life because ours just wasn't working. It felt unfinished. We had a couple mismatched chairs, no real place to sit comfortably. And I've always had this idea that I'd add lighting or make it feel cozy, but never actually got around to it. Then we started looking on Wayfair and it made the whole process feel doable. We found pieces that actually fit our style. Simple, functional, a little bit modern, but still warm. And suddenly the space came together. We added seating, a few subtle decor touches, and now it's a place we naturally end up at the end of the day. The best part is how easy Wayfair makes it to get there. You can narrow everything down so quickly, compare options, read thousands of reviews and feel confident in what you're choosing and and delivery was seamless. Which matters when you're trying to upgrade a space without Adding more stress. It finally feels like a space we use instead of a void. Get prepped for patio season for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

And that's what to me, like, personally, when. When you. When you read a really good book or when you hire a really good helper or guide, you're paying to be saved. All of the wasted time and energy that they spent trying to do things that will never work.

[Jenny Ert]

And it's only like $15.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

People don't buy a book.

[Jenny Ert]

I'm like, it's 25 bucks. Like, I mean, you're getting someone's life, their life, you know, unless they're young because they blew up on social media or something. But for the most part, it's like someone who has lived for decades and study this stuff and like, for 24.99, you can learn it all.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah, that's. And that, like, what I want to save. One, one of the things I want to save people from wasting time on with this book is this idea that they can, you know, fix, eliminate, I would say, even heal parts of themselves. Because a lot of times healing is a spiritual bypass, basically. Like, I want to heal that part of me so I never hear from it again, you know, versus. This isn't as much about healthiness as wholeness. Right. And recognizing that the whole. Or we are. We actually, that's the healthier we are. And so one, one of the things I want to save people with this book is just all that time we spend sort of disguising self improvement or disguising self rejection as self improvement. You know, it's like, I. I don't like this about me, so I need to improve it so I can be better so that I can. And you know, and it's like, actually, slow down. You can't eliminate any part of you. You can't eliminate any part of your story. And peace will come from embracing all of it, not from eliminating any of it.

[Jenny Ert]

Wow. Love every ring. It's so powerful. Okay, I gotta move on because there's so many things. Obviously we're gonna miss some stuff. You are gonna get so much out of this book. So you talk about Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. And Oprah Winfrey. And I actually got to interview Dr. Bruce Perry, but there's a book I did called what Happened to you? Actually, you know what he talked about on the podcast? He went a different direction. But he talked about this dosing and spacing and how there's no space. You know, we're just constantly like throwing information. And especially for kids, it's like so much schooling and he's like, there's never the space to digest it. And this is sort of very similar, right? Like you have to be able to like have a little space about like what? You have to be able to hop the rings and, and figure out what's going on here. What's going on with these ripples. I do not want to miss though, talking about. Because this was such a great example for parents about pooties. Okay. This is so good. I was like this really. I mean, I'm already changing because you think that if you're gonna be open hearted that you're gonna get all walked all over, there's gonna be no boundaries and you can't ever say no to anybody. And so can you give the example of poo these? And I think this is a really helpful example for any parent. Like for my own self I was like, I do do this. Like if I have to get something done, I am close hearted to the people around me, but I don't need to be.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

That's right. Yeah. One of the first things I realized in starting to share the concept of open heartedness with people is that people assume that if you were open hearted, your boundaries would get weaker. And and so one of the points we really emphasize in the book is that open heartedness doesn't make your boundaries weaker, it makes your boundaries wiser actually. And so you're able to set your boundaries with greater care and tenderness, but you don't set them less. And so yeah, the example I gave in the book was I had a seven year old nephew staying with us with my wife's brother and sister in law. And I was sort of extroverted out like, okay, I'm an introvert and I just need to have some time and space. So I woke up super early one morning. Morning just to get in a quiet workout before anybody could possibly be awake. But sure enough, here he comes walking into the exercise room, right? And hey, Uncle Kelly, you want to make poo these? Because we've been making poo these the night before. The idea was like basically take like plastic, you know, fruit and pretend that we're blend that they were dinosaur poop was what we were pretending because he's a seven year old boy, right? And we were putting them in and we were making poohis out of them of imaginary dinosaur poop so come on, make poo these. And I was like, oh dude, I'm working out right now. And then he just started. He, he, he, he's very interpersonally sensitive. So he knew how to, to make me feel guilty. Like he did this big demonstration of playing ping pong by himself and just showing me how miserable he was playing alone while I'm sitting there working out and watching him. And then he comes up to me again now that he's sort of induced a little guilt, right? And he says, now do you want to, now do you want to play ping pong with me? And I, I felt my heart close and I was like, no, dude, I'm, I'm exercising. Then I went over to my wife and even though she's not awake yet, I text her, come get your nephew from the basement. Right? And so now I am closed hearted and setting boundaries. But what I've learned in this process is that boundaries are actually far more effective if you set them in an open hearted way. So I'm like, what does an open hearted boundary look like in this moment? And I, and I realized, like, I get it, like, this hurts for him. Like Uncle Kelly is establishing his separateness and his differentness and that hurts. That doesn't mean I need to change that. It's not my job to rescue him from that hurt, but it is my job to be open hearted to him in holding that boundary. So I just went over to him, got down on my knees, looked him in the eye and I said, dude, I love you and I think you're awesome and we'll play again later. And I can't wait to do that. And his eyes filled up with tears. Because I think when you set an open hearted boundary, people know that they may be separate from you, but they're not severed from you. That there's still a connection there even though we weren't going to be playing together. And so that's one of the things that I, especially with parents, I think as parents we tend to think, I often say there's a spectrum that we think that we're on from boundaries to empathy. And if we're gonna have empathy for our kids, then it's really hard to hold boundaries. And if we choose to have boundaries, we think we can't have any empathy because then we'll get weak and we'll, you know, we'll let go. But actually both of those things can go together. You can have deep empathy for your children while holding healthy boundaries with them. I'll never forget a Time with my son. He was 15 years old at the time. We're driving in the car and he was just, he was acting like a 15 year old and I'd been really patient with it. And finally I said to him, dude, I love you unconditionally, but I don't drive you unconditionally. If you keep treating me this way, you're gonna have to get out and walk. Right? And to me that was an example of like, and I was really meant, I think you could feel it. I do love you unconditionally and I want to drive you there, but this is my boundary. This has got to stop if we're going to stay in the car together. So yeah, my encouragement to parents. You can set open hearted boundaries and they're far more powerful than a boundary you set with a closed heart card.

[Jenny Ert]

Yes. It's so that that situation is so relatable because you know, of course the kid wants to play poo these. It was fun yesterday. Yeah, super excited, like, and that's how kids are. They want to read the book again. They. But also life has got this part where you've got responsibilities and so here's what you say. When do you turn your need into a boundary? You set a boundary when your heart can't be open without it. You can't keep your heart open without it. You talked about like, this is why you charge clients when they miss their appointment. And I think that makes sense. You know, it's like so I, I do it so that I don't get angry with you. It keeps my heart open. You say many of the most likable people I know are closed hearted and unboundaried. They have this intersection. You say they're generally nice, you know, people like them, but they're miserable. Codependence often masquerades as saintliness. So this is really going to help you. It's going to help you, you know, with your parenting. And you know, I had read, now this is a book I read and I would talk about we're going to go into tears. Did you talk about sadness and tears? I never heard this phrase. I read Dr. Gordon Neufeld's book. I wish I would have read it a long time ago. It's called hold on to your kids. I read it recently and I was like, I wish I would have read this to my kids were younger. But he uses this phrase, tears of futility. And I was like, I've never heard that phrase. But there's so many situations in life that are Futile. Like, I lost my podcast with Michael Hyatt. He said some really nice things about me at the end. I would have loved to have that. You know, I don't have it.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

It.

[Jenny Ert]

And, you know, he was like, specifically, this is why I really like how you do your podcast interviews. You know, And I was like, oh, that's so nice. It's gone. You know, life is filled with futile moments. So he uses his phrase tears of futility. And, like, part of childhood and life is learning that, like, you. You have to cry them. And it's. It's not going to change. You're not going to play poo these, because you really do need to take care of yourself and you need to exercise. And this is part of being a healthy person. That's right. Okay, so you talk in the book, then, about that. Kids have open hearts, but eventually they stop crying altogether. There are a lot of ways to mark the dividing line between childhood and adulthood. I wonder if the day the tears stop is one of them. So you talk about tears in this book, and here's what you say, that we think that the sadness is going to drain our energy, but it's actually the suppression of sadness that's what's draining our energy. And you talk about the 90 second rule. So can you. Can you talk to the person who thinks, okay, if I hop these ripples, all right, Kelly, I'm going to hop the ripples. I'm going to be too sad. It's going to be too much. It's going to be too overwhelming. But There is this 92nd rule.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Absolutely. Yeah. So this is something I realized early on in my work, my clinical work as an outpatient mental health therapist. I worked with individuals as much as couples, was that the clients I was meeting with who were clinically depressed were not people who were crying all the time. More often than not, they were people who never cried. And I started to realize that, and this is not true of every form of depression, but of many forms of clinical depression, that clinical depression is not an intense form of sadness. It's an intense emotional exhaustion that comes from bottling up our sadness. It takes a lot of emotional and spiritual energy to keep all that sadness in there, and we end up sort of like feeling empty and exhausted because of it. And so my job, ironically, the only way I saw to move people out of clinical depression was to get them crying regularly. And once they could fully release the tears, then their mood started to improve. They actually started to experience joy and energy and vibrancy that they hadn't experienced in a long time. And, hey, if it's true of people who are clinically depressed, it's probably true of all of us to a lesser degree. And the 92nd rule is the good news and the hope of this is that any emotion that you allow yourself to fully experience without inhibiting it or suppressing it, you just allow it to come all the way through unimpeded. It comes and goes in about 90 seconds. And so I tell people that you might have stopped crying when you. I mean, I went through a point, Ginny, where in 2012, I probably hadn't shed a tear in 20 years. And I was a therapist, and I had a moment where about 20 years of backlog tears came through all at once. And you know how long it lasted? Not more than 90 seconds.

[Jenny Ert]

Wow.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Right? To clear 20 years and 90 seconds. And then, of course, after you clear the backlog, it's never quite that intense again. But, yeah, that's the promise, is that we are walking around weighed down by unfelt feelings and that in 90 seconds, we could move those through us and get back to some of the joy and vibrancy and passion of childhood that we had before we started blocking those feelings.

[Jenny Ert]

This is what you say. This is the point in time where you started to write. You release your teachers. Okay. You said you watched Lars and the Real Girl. So I watched that with my kids. They were like, this is such a weird movie.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

It's a weird movie.

[Jenny Ert]

It's a weird movie. But they sure like the. Who's the guy that's in it? He's the guy that was just in Project Hail Mary.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah, Ryan Gosling. It's one of his first big movies. Yeah.

[Jenny Ert]

Yeah. So. And they like that movie, Fall. I think it's called Fall Guy, the Fall Guy. So I was like, oh, my kids are going to like this movie. It's got Ryan Gosling in it. And everyone was like, this is odd, Mom.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

It's strange.

[Jenny Ert]

But you said you watched that movie and that was kind of like somebody allowed you to release your tears.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

I had known for, at that point, probably for three or four months, that I had a lot of emotions in there that I was just not feeling and not moving through me and my wife. And I watched that movie at someone's recommendation that night, and Ryan Gosling is an utterly lonely character in that movie. And she asked me what I thought of the movie, and I started to say something about his loneliness, and the tears just sort of came through finally. And I often say that, like, the you know, one of the many things that that chatgpt gets wrong, they say, you know, if you have. If you have feelings you need to feel. You probably need to feel them alone, and then you'll get good at it and then you can go feel them with other people. But in my experience, it's the opposite when you've sort of got like a backlog of feelings. I very rarely see anybody first feel those again on their own. They feel them in the presence of a safe. Another safe person. And that's where sometimes therapists come in. But, yeah, it came through for me in that moment. And it was a really bizarre movie that happened to be the trigger. But one of the things I talk about in the book is you feel your way to understanding. You don't understand your way to feeling. Right. You don't go, well, this movie made me feel sad for this reason. So now I will cry about it. You let the tears come through and then you go, oh, the tears tell you what the sadness was about. And now you totally understand.

[Jenny Ert]

Yeah, yeah. And that this just really opened up a whole new part of you. Like you talk about. You could. Things are lodged. You know, they're lodged in there. So you say that a week later is when you started writing regularly for the first time in your life. So that, you know, this goes back to Lars and the Real Girl, whoever recommended that to you. And I'm sure it maybe would have been something else had it not been that. But you say, a few months later, I started a blog. And so this USA Today bestseller that is literally sold out on Amazon, you're gonna have to wait a couple weeks to get it because it's already in its second print. Maybe wouldn't be here except for those tears, and they didn't last for longer than 90 seconds. You write, people are afraid that it's going to be so intense that it's going to eviscerate you.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

It won't.

[Jenny Ert]

Second, it feels like it's going to be so bottomless that it fears like it. You feel it's going to go on forever. It won't. 90 seconds is all it will last. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is. You would do well to pay attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not, God is speaking to you through them. And. And so it's just. It's gonna help increase your power. You say, until you face your past and face your. And feel your pain, you are operating at a Fraction of your power. It takes a tremendous amount of energy, emotional energy, to keep your pain trapped inside of you. And then you also talk about how painful if you. If you can't feel pain, you're not going to feel joy either.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah.

[Jenny Ert]

You know, when you black pain, you also have to block pleasure. I. I want to. We're running out of time. I want to bring up one more topic.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Can I say one last thing about that?

[Jenny Ert]

Yes, go.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Okay, real quickly. The last thing I would say about that is this is not a story. That's just true of me. It's a dynamic I've seen play out with, you know, countless clients. I get friends who text me and they say it happens. Like, last night, it finally came through and I felt it. And the story is always the same. Last night I felt completely hollowed out and emptied out. I wondered if I would ever feel anything ever again. And this morning, I woke up with more energy and vibrancy and passion and creativity than I've experienced. And the answer is, since I was a kid, since I started blocking that, because all of those energies are trying to get up through you, but they can't get past that. That. That sadness you've blocked, that blockage you've created. Once you do, it's a whole new world, man. And, and, and, and for me, that was. That was writing and, and where we're at today. Thanks for letting me share that.

[Jenny Ert]

It's so important. I mean, in, you know, in general. I think men don't cry that much.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yeah, right, Right.

[Jenny Ert]

You had this question in here. Why do we. Someone had asked, why do we treat the people? This was like at a. I'm totally changing subjects. I want to.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

You're good. Go for it.

[Jenny Ert]

I just want to say, because it's in my notes and I have it bolded. You were at. You were like doing a marriage retreat or intensive couples there. I don't know. It was like a thing. And your wife was there too. And someone said, why. Why do we treat the people we care about the most, the worst? And your wife said, because they're around. And I was like, this is one of the most insightful books I've ever read. I guess this my last topic that I would love to talk about. And then the book obviously covers so much more. I cannot recommend it more highly. I mean, I think everybody should get it. The road less triggered. Turning conflict into connection with a single choice. If you order it today, you might get in a couple weeks or, you know, like, go order it now. Maybe order Four copies. Because you're gonna think, oh, a bunch of other people are gonna want to read this. But you know, talking about the people that are the closest to us, one of the things that you say in the book is we are tempted, or maybe not even tempted. We think it's a possibility to eliminate how our heart closes. We want to eliminate the closing. And what you say is that, and this is why the book matters so much, you say your heart will forever be triggered to close. No matter how long you go between triggers, another trigger will always present itself. You're going to close. It's going to happen. So can you. As we're wrapping it up, can you talk about the salt in the lake thing?

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Yes, absolutely. So again, saving you time by putting all my failed efforts into a book. And I watched couple couples and clients do this as well. We all want to like, not be triggered again. We all want to never. Like, once you get it as your junior experience, like, once you start to really realize what open heartedness is, you don't ever want to be close hearted again. And so the temptation is to want to eliminate that tendency. But the reality is our hearts close because in that moment, the experience we're having is a little more than we can handle. And so there's really a great grace in the fact that our hearts can close, that our hearts can kind of go, oof. I'm not sure if I want to go through this, not sure if I want to feel this. And so that capacity is one that's a gift, not a curse. The curse is when we are not in charge of it, when we don't feel like we have a choice over it, when we start to realize, like, oh my gosh, my heart's closing all the time, or it's always closed. And I don't really have a say over it. So one we talk about early in the book. One of the first really places where you get a choice is learning to number one. Your body tells you your heart's about to close, gives you an 80% earlier warning. I present a study of that in the book. If you can use your bodily signals, you get an 80% earlier warning. Your heart's about to close, and that's a lot of time to make a choice with. Then you watch your defenses kick up inside of you. You watch them instead of wielding them. Them, we say, and by the way, that is a skill you have to learn and practice a little bit, because everything in you is going to be telling you to respond, but then ultimately you have to get that nervous system regulated, you have to tell it and train it that, hey, we're not in danger right now. There's no mortal threat to us, so we can actually calm down and bring our higher mind back online. And one of the mistakes and the salt and the in the lake that you're talking about, one of the mistakes that we make in trying to calm ourselves down is we. Is we try to eliminate the feelings of tension in our body. And oftentimes that becomes a more stressful process because you're like, you're doing the breathing technique the guru told you to do, and it's not working. And you're like, oh, no, if the guru stuff doesn't work, what chance do I stand? And so a new wave of psychology has come through in the last 20 years. It's like, is, don't try to fix the arousal. Don't try to get rid of it. Learn how to be with it. Learn how to expand your capacity to hold tension in your body. Become a space in which that tension doesn't feel so overwhelming. And then all of a sudden, you just develop a sense of resilience in those moments. So there's an old parable that I share in the book where, you know, a student comes into his teacher's sort of meditation, how it's an old Eastern sort of of story, says, hey, I've been working with you for a year. Still got all the same tension, still got all the same terrible thoughts, all the same terrible feelings like, when's it going to get better? And the teacher says, smiles, been through this before. Says, go ahead and get me a cup of water and a fistful of salt. So the student comes back, he says, put the salt in the water. Does it just drink the water? Student chokes down the salty water. How is that? Almost want difficult to drink. Go get me another fistful of salt. The student does, and he comes back. And the teacher gets up and sort of walks out of the hut and through a wooded path down to a crystal clear lake. And he says, go ahead and throw the salt in the lake. Student throws the salt. And he says, now cup your hands and drink from the lake, right?

[Jenny Ert]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Student does it. And he says, how was that? He says, quite refreshing. And the teacher says, quit trying to eliminate your salt and become a larger lake. Right? Same amount of arousal, same amount of attention, but the capacity to hold it expands. And all of a sudden you're feeling quite refreshed in the midst of the same level of tension.

[Jenny Ert]

Wow, what a book. The defenses you've come to depend on cannot be dismissed, discarded, or destroyed. They cannot be fixed, healed, or transformed. Your heart will forever be triggered to close. Your defenses will always be standing at the ready, wanting to come to your aid, lead. You don't pivot by becoming defenseless. You pivot by surrendering to the presence of your defenses and softening to their purposes, to their purpose. When your emotional heart is closing, your physical heart is entering fight or flight mode. This is an incredibly important book. It's wonderful. Honestly. Honestly. My heart was kind of closed in reading it. I was like, man, you know, being triggered. Then I was gonna change my life. And I wanted to say, I know we're out of time, but here's what you said. The other people around you noticed even they. When they didn't know you were doing it. And that is one of the things that I noticed. It's like you can just do it. You don't have to tell anybody. And it will completely work. It works. It's called the road. Less triggered. We are out of time. Turning conflict into connection with a single choice. Dr. Kelly Flanagan, thanks for being here.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Thank you for having me, Jenny.

[Jenny Ert]

I'll get this up soon, and then I'll put Michael Hyatt's right after it.

[Dr. Kelly Flanagan]

Sounds good. And I'll get it out to everybody, too. Okay?