Rooting in Your Preciousness: Self-Worth, Systems, and Sustainable Care (with Scott Watters)

Renae: Good morning, Scott. We are so glad that you are here joining us today for the Becoming TraumaWise Summit, So good to see you.

Scott: And you as well. Renae I, you know, we've known each other, I've known you longer than you've known me just because I've, I've seen you in action before we ever got to really meet in person. What I have really enjoyed hearing your story and even watching as we got to know each other, your journey into more and more healing and more and more understanding of the impact of caring and some of the best ways that we can sustain in that. And so I'm just really glad that you're here to share that with people today. Could you start by introducing yourself a little bit and then telling people what it is that you're doing right now and a little bit of what led you here?

Scott: Okay. My name is Scott Watters, and I am honored to be here. So thank you so much, Renae. I started into childcare almost sixteen years ago as a residential house parent. My wife and I didn't have kids at the time, and we decided that we really wanted to give back. We had actually looked at fostering and adopting older sibling groups, but that was not in the cards because of our living arrangement. I just got laid off from the mortgage bubble burst in 2007 and we were just looking for something else. So we became house parents. And soon thereafter we were introduced to a mindset in a training or, you know, types of training called TBRI trust-based relational intervention. And it really shapes the way that we grew as house parents and caregivers. But that job was really, really hard. We quit after a year and a half, and we decided to go into the fostering and adopting process. And we had a sibling group that we fell in love with, and they became our Forever Kiddos. And with the residential program, I did training. I did all kinds of support roles and ended up going and getting my bachelor's degree finally in basically corporate training. And then I had a friend who said, Hey, you might be interested in the counseling program at our local university. And I she was a dear friend, so I decided to check it out. And two years later I was a counselor. So I've been doing license counseling for the last several years, recently had a job change and moved from the residential program. And I'm doing a community mental health here in Fort Worth, Texas. So it's been quite the change, as you can tell behind me. Don't have all my stuff up, still industrial, but working into that role and really excited about bringing hope and healing to families who don't always have an opportunity for that. Yeah.

Renae: Well, thank you so much. And I, I want to go back even to the beginning of your story of how you got here, because in my story, I think all of us who care deeply have those moments of what brought us to this place right now. And it's, it's through this lived experience. Right. That we are able to share a little bit of our stories and our failings and our and our successes with each other, because we've, we've been there. We've done this. So we know what the costs were. And I have to ask, we knew it into it not to throw any program under any bus whatsoever when you went into that house parent role, what, what was the preparation like for you? Was it clearly it wasn't a sustainable setup in that, yet. I’ll stop right there.

Scott: Well, it wasn't, but, but at the same time, interestingly enough, it was part of our on board training that they discovered a trust based relational intervention, which has been really life giving for my family and me. I still serve with and bring TBRI to a whole lot of families through the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development, and other places as well. I work with professionals and families at the same time, so it was really interesting that they were just on the cusp of picking up this new model which has been great, but they still hold on to the other stuff. And so, it was something for the kids, not necessarily something for us or for the staff or even the adults involved. And so we did make that shift as an organization a little bit later on. But that shift is so vitally important. How can you lead a child to a place that you don't have the tools to get to yourself? If you're looking for healing for a kiddo, you need to have healing for yourself at some point along the way, or at least the method of healing. And that was what made that model so unsustainable. We needed more support. We needed more into our ways to meet our own needs rather than what we were having because we're all in. We just didn't have the capacity to do it all that we wanted to do. And nobody taught us how to lower the bar for ourselves or to lower it for what we expected from more kiddos. And so we needed that.

Renae: Yeah, I love that. That saying that we can't lead people to places that we haven't been ourselves. And, I know that the caregivers who are watching this, whether they are caring for children or in elder care or special needs or in a hospital setting, in a school setting, whatever it is, if we're not able to find a way to embody our empathy, we're not going to be able to create that level of felt safety that's needed for that person to reenter into relationship. They're just going to continue to isolate. And if we haven't experienced that over and over, it's going to be hard for us to be able to embody that for somebody else. So, tell me a little bit what is, what would, what is that process like for you now if you have people that you're working with, clearly in this community support, you're, you're supporting caregivers, you're supporting scaffolding in a lot of different levels of the system. How do you communicate that to them? Because we do tend to identify someone, the patient's the person who's being cared for as the issue or the problems or the thing that needs to be addressed or solved or whatever. How, how do you back that out for people?

Scott: Well, and really what I try to do is bring it all into the mind of attachment. And so if I think along the lines of an infant who is just being pushed out or pulled out of everything that they've known for their entire lives, the experience is terrifying. It's so when it's the neurotypical in a healthy-ish birth, the first thing that we try to do is give the skin-on-skin contact, right, and try to meet that need by caring for the child. Now, working with lots and lots of birthing parents. When that happens, after nine or so months of pregnancy and our bodies are changing, and then we go through a process called labor for hours upon hours. What should happen at that moment is when we receive this kind of wrinkly, slimy thing, we should go, really? All for this? I did all this for this thing? But something happens along the way, whether it's oxytocin or other neurochemicals. But love enters the relationship, and that relates to delight. Okay? And it's so vitally important because infants can see about this far, which is the difference between that skin and skin contact in the face. And they're hardwired to seek eye contact and seek eye contact. So the first thing that that infant receives that they can finally see that they haven't been able to see ever and focus on, is that birthing parent or that caregiver looking upon them with delight. Okay. And when I've worked with families and I've heard about their birthing stories, they say that usually that freakout, that cry of distress is usually met with that care and delight. And it usually takes about 30 seconds, maybe a minute for that, for that infant to calm. Okay. So the thing that they think is leading to death is being calmed within 30 seconds to a minute by care and delight. Okay. It's so that condition in that situation continues to go out through our lifespan and we go through periods of people caring for us or caring for ourselves and delighting. And usually in the first year of life, this happens hundreds of thousands of times when a caregiver is meeting the need and delighting in the child. Okay? But now that I'm an adult, I'm the one who's responsible for meeting my own needs, and I'm the one responsible for delight being in myself. Okay. So in order to do that, I've got to find other people who will work with me in order to do that. So I've got to seek others who will be delight in, delighting in me and who will meet my needs. I came to work at this job partly because they met the need of paying me money. Okay. But I also moved to this job because I started realizing I can live more authentic, authentically in this role, in this position, working in community mental health, believe it or not. Then I was at my former place of employment, so the move for me was another further attempt to surround myself with people so I can meet my needs and delight in myself. Okay. And so we as caregivers, we get in this very it's almost a colonial mindset where we get stuck in feeling like we've got to give, give, give, give, give, give, give. And we're not receiving anything and we feel selfish and we fill all the things about receiving, but we have to be able to receive as well, because we are the ones, we're the only ones who are responsible for meeting our own needs. I love the phrase, and I can't remember the guy who said it. ‘I used to think that I will take care of you, and you will take care of me. But the reality is I will take care of me, for you, if you take care of you, for me’. So my responsibility to my family, my responsibility to my coworkers, my responsibility to my friends, is to take care of my own needs and care for and delight in myself, delight in myself in order to be fully present with them because I'm not coming to them to meet all of my needs.

Renae: Right. Right. I so appreciate that. That concept. It’s the interconnectedness. Right. So it's moving away from dependency structures that where they get really bent out of shape because of power, the need for power and control and influence and all those types of things which are based on fear. And instead, we're talking about basic things and love, right? That The vulnerability of of a caregiver or that says I don't have all the answers all the time. And I need to have an ebb and flow of retreat and availability in order to be able to refuel and find my sources and and do all of that. Right. It does it does flip that power dynamic to say, like we're all humans and we and this is part of how we can sustain. Right. That's the sustainability piece. Because if not, we start I think we start objectifying ourselves.

Scott: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we start to get that. And then so that's one of the flaws in the system, right, is that we start to really make it., We try to get other people to meet our needs. But the other flaw in the system, and I'll speak to the parents specifically that are doing, that are parenting kids who are experiencing and working through their own, own individuality, their own autonomy. Okay. And there are two main times and groups of autonomous thinking and explosion. The first is the Terrible Two’s. Terrible, because they're resisting. They're trying to figure out who they are. And the first thing that they say is, I don't know who I am, but I'm not you. And nothing about you and I can do it myself. But then the other one is adolescence, and they're trying to figure out how they're going to be able to meet their own needs, and whose other needs that they're going to be able to meet. And then they are absolutely terrible at it. And we get really frustrated because they're terrible at it and we expect so much more of them. The other problem in that system is oftentimes as adults, we realize, we don't realize, but we feel the pain of our kids have been meeting some of our needs and they're now resisting doing that system. Okay. Our kids are never, ever, ever responsible for taking care of us or meeting our needs. Perhaps if there's a contract or some sort of agreement when you're late in life, like with my mother right now, who is 80 something years old, I agree to take care of her. But there is never especially for an adolescent to take care of the parent's needs. And so we as vitally important as adults, for us to find a way to meet our own needs. Okay. I'll give you an example. When I grow in more autonomy and more individuality and realize how to do this system of meeting my needs and recognizing my own value, what we call our preciousness or our infinite worth is, as Kent Hoffmans often describes. And if you're not familiar with Kent Hoffman's TEDx talk, just Google, Kent Hoffman's TEDx talk and it's on YouTube, it's fantastic. But when I come to fully, more fully realize I can see some of the toxic relationships that I'm in, there is a program, in fact, the program that you and I met at right before the pandemic, like a weeks before the pandemic was called Making Sense of Your Worth put together by Halo Project in Oklahoma City. And at the end of that, I came to terms with the toxicity that I was surrounding myself with. And when I finally made a decision to break away from that toxicity, and separate myself from that, and learn to value myself more, my kid came out, and finally felt safe enough to tell me who they really were and who their authentic self was. And so authenticity, I can't even say the word. Authenticity breeds authenticity. Okay. We know who our safe people are because we see those safe people being and living authentically.

Renae: That's beautiful. Yeah, I see. What, what a concrete example of what you started out with saying. We can't lead people to places that we haven't been ourselves. And feeling, when I describe, feeling my worth. I, in that when I don't need to continue to receive false narratives from, people, from any messaging, from anybody anywhere it is not true. It's I can rest in it like I am so comfortable in my skin of knowing what my worth is that it doesn't actually matter what someone else does or says in those ways, because it's not the truth. It's not real. It's their reality, but it's not real about me. And in a so I don't even have to get upset anymore because it's just like, and I then I can start to respond with just even a little bit more compassion because I'm like, you poor thing. Like, what must be going on in that body of yours to feel like you need to put that kind of narrative on me, cause that, that, that feels like a lot of fear. I don't know what's going on there, you know, versus, you know, I don't have to go into my fight mode. I don't have to go into fight or the freeze because I can root into the truth of who I am.

Scott: Yeah, you're describing a more perfect style of parenting, right? Wouldn't it be nice if the things that our kids say to us in their frustration or them trying to figure it out don't affect us personally and we can take it and look at the need behind that behavior that they're giving us, you know, But inevitably, you know, when I'm working in and not fully knowing my worth, then those things do trigger me. Okay? And I'm still guilty of that. I mean, it still happens because it's part of the process. But my goal and I think the goal of of us as humans is to fully know how valuable we are and how loved we are and how lovable we are. Because we are. We are. Yeah. Yeah. So I would love to hear what is what do you do when you know, when you're recognizing that you're maybe falling back into old patterns of understanding of yourself that are not fully true?

Renae: Yeah. So I would love to hear is, what do you do when you know, when you're recognizing that you're maybe falling back into old patterns of understanding of yourself that are not fully true? Well, I mean, I don't know how else to say it, but how do you, how do you get back to that core, what is, what are some things or even one thing that you do, a practice, something that might resonate with other people?

Scott: Well, first off, I know what my trigger responses are. Okay, when it comes to fight or flight, I'm a flight. Okay. And so what I do on a daily basis, I do fifteen minutes of walking every day. Okay. And when I walk every day, what actually is going on is I'm telling my body I honored the need that the amygdala has to leave. But I'm doing it in a space and time that I want to do it. Okay. So time and space are very, very important. So I'm going to meet that need. And it's almost like if I'm especially if I'm in a therapy session, it would be horrible if your counselor said, this is too much. I'm out of. So what I try to do, is when my body is feeling it and it really doesn't feel it as much anymore because my body is so used to leaving on a repetitive basis or moving my body. So that's one technique. The other thing that I try to honor is the emotions that I feel okay. When I feel sad, I can feel sad and get a time and place to express the sadness. For me, sadness usually needs to be expressed through tears. So, what I tend to do is when I'm feeling sad, especially in this session, and there's nothing wrong with a therapist crying in session. But I'm a male, in a western society, and when men cry, it shuts down the entire room. And so I don't want that for my clients. I don't want it to be about me. So I'm going to hold back my tears and not just kind of, you know, I'm going to feel the feeling. Usually right here, my chest is where I feel it. And right here behind my throat. And when I feel it, I go, okay, point taken. I better find a good space that I'm allowed to cry a little bit later on. Usually in the car ride home, I'll put on a sad song, and I give myself space to cry. And sometimes the tears come and sometimes they don't. And it's okay. Yeah. My wife and I actually had the opportunity to go see Hamilton in person for the first time. And man, what a great place to cry in a dark theater when that song comes on. You know, it's better, you know, something about the town and I can't remember it. And I'll start crying if I start singing it for you. But that one hit me to the core. And I was like, Okay, this is a good space because I can do this. Now's the time. Now it's the place, but I can set that. So I usually tell my clients, Give yourself no more than 24 hours, and usually to start with no more than 15 or 30 minutes of that time of space. And you could do that in the shower. You could do it in the car wherever it's appropriate for you to do it. So it's honoring my body and honoring what I need to express these things, because those set the stage for me to know that I can rely on it. Okay, so those moments do happen, but they happen with less frequency, with less duration and less intensity, which any time I'm working with kids with the meltdown, those are the three items that I'm looking for every time. So I like to measure my own meltdowns. The same way.

Renae: Beautiful, I really thank you for those very practical, tangible examples. I think in the proactive, I will talk to people a lot about the reason we make plans is that, it actually puts that strategy in our brain. So we're much more likely to go to our prefrontal cortex than downstairs because our school campuses, yes, I do have a strategy. And so you have a strategy, you put them into place. And that's what I'm hearing there, is exactly what would typically happen in a consistent caregiving situation is that caregiver is giving those strategies along with the comfort that, that there's a, I'm creating that neural pathway of what you felt like this before and there is a way we felt like this before and there is a way like you're going to be okay and you've done that. And so too, for us to as is caregivers, to be curious about your coming not running away, but practicing flight, but not to run away from those feelings, but to be aware of, okay, there's a need. The need is to what? How, what is a healthy way I can do that. And setting that time and space I think is such a great tool and idea. And we're getting right at the end of our time. So I wanted to just ask if there is one thing that if people fast forward through the entire talk up that they would because you're awesome. But if they did and there was just one thing that you wanted people who had shown up for this today to know, what would that be?

Scott: I'm going to rely on our former, I guess, teacher, in Dr. Karyn Purvis, and she and I were driving in the car one day and she asked me what every parent needs. And I gave her some answer. And I said, What do you think every parent needs? And she said, if every parent, if she could give every parent one thing she'd actually give them to one is a balance of nurture and structure and understanding that for themselves. And I've worked with people from domestic violence situations where they've had to turn on the nurture while their spouse love the structure. And when their spouse left, they were stuck with a bunch of nurture and, you know, they didn't know what to do and how to do that balance. So internally, each person knowing that. But the other thing and I'll never forget it and I try to relate it to every person that I do, she said. Every parent needs to know their value, and their preciousness, and how lovable and loved they are. They need to know their infinite worth. We have to know those things. It has come to me in such, as moments where I just heard those words: Every parent needs to know their preciousness, and it gets me out of that downward spiral thinking and feeling so that I mean, that that is the one to never, ever, ever forget your preciousness, your value. You are not the sum total of the things that you've accomplished. You are worthy because you are human. You are valuable because you are placed on this earth. You are precious because there is no one else like you. And I know I sound a whole lot like Mr. Rogers, but man oh man, did this guy have a bunch of wisdom that he could share with us? And so don't ever, ever, ever forget that.

Renae: So thank you so much for spending this time with us and for being part of everyone's journey here as you share from your your wisdom. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being awesome. You that you are. And in sharing that with us. We really appreciate it.

Scott: Thank you. It's been an honor also.

Renae: Thank you so much.