Thorpe-Scott — Kan Yan

Thorpe-Scott - Kan Yan

[00:00:00] 

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: Welcome to, we Don't Have To Live Like This, the podcast that dares to challenge the status quo of how we work, lead, and live. This season, we're exploring the theme of conflict and connection, and today we're diving into how these forces shape parent-child relationships with Kan Yan, the founder of Parents Reimagined. Kan Yan has coached leaders and organizations at various stages of development, from startup founders to C-suite executives at multi-billion dollar companies. He's worked as a lawyer for the UN and US Federal Courts, and as a management consultant for McKinsey, where he consulted Fortune 500 clients across numerous industries with a focus on strategy, culture, and leadership development.

Khan has spent more than two decades cultivating wisdom practices. He has spent hundreds of days in silent meditation retreat. He teaches meditation and volunteers as a Buddhist hospital chaplain.

He designed and facilitated McKinsey's Inner Wisdom Retreat, which convened C-Suite [00:01:00] executives from some of the largest organizations in the world to learn about mindful leadership. He has a law degree from Harvard Law School and a master's in diplomacy from the Tufts Fletcher School.

Most importantly for today though Kan Yan is the founder of Parents Reimagined, a podcast and transformational platform that helps adult children heal and reimagine their relationships with their parents. Much of his work has centered on working with adults, especially those from immigrant families to unpack legacy burdens, shift from parent child dynamics to adult to adult connection. Con.

I'm so excited to have you on the show to talk about this,

Kan Yan: Thanks, Sarah. Delighted to be here with you.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: can you tell me a bit more about what you do at Parents Reimagined?

Kan Yan: Sure. So I do a couple things. One is I host a podcast myself called Parents Reimagined, and in each episode I interview someone who, in their adult lives, healed and transformed their relationships with their parents. I also run a number of programs like [00:02:00] workshops to help individuals move through that journey themselves.

I also coach individuals as well as, adult child and parents together. So helping them find better relationships in their dynamics.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: I'd love to know more about motivated you to do this work. why did you start Parents Reimagined.

Kan Yan: Yeah, so it actually was my own journey with my dad that had me. Even think of this as a thing to do, and I actually resisted it for a long time, I was terrified of my dad as a kid. Uh, we were immigrants to this country and came from a culture where corporal punishment was normal and, you know, he had his own trauma experiences that had him, have a temper.

And so, that all left me feeling this confusing mix of feeling a lot of love and affection and respect for this guy and a lot of fear in my body just at a nervous system level. And I think, you know, as I got older and was doing my own inner work, creating more awareness in myself, it just became a major incongruency in my life.

Seeing how much [00:03:00] in my mind I was, I thought, well, I really love and feel close to this person, but in my body, oftentimes I would disassociate and feel unsafe. And I didn't even realize that for a long time. 'cause I think a lot of people, myself included. Our parent relationships. Our family relationships, they're the water we swim in.

And it just seems so normal and it takes a lot of, let's say, awareness building to even see what that relationship is. And as I saw that more and more, and I was, as I was professionally doing more and more work, helping people work on conflict, um, and relational dynamics, I really saw this as an incongruity.

And I saw it just magnetized my attention, And so I started trying to talk about it with my dad, and I found out that I couldn't, essentially when I would bring this topic up, I would disassociate. And that was really fascinating. Like the more I realized that, I was like, oh, something strange is going on here.

And it took me in a whole journey of self-reflection and learning tools around [00:04:00] processing trauma, around developing skills for relating through difficult conversations. And, you know, I was doing that for a long time with clients before I could really do this with my dad. One of my clients recently described this as, the final boss on a video game to be able to confront, you know, a caregiver, somebody who, who kind of originated a lot of the patterns that, that we have.

And it felt like that it was really difficult and it wasn't until I had some big breakthroughs, that I could actually feel connected to my dad. the more I was doing this work, the more I started telling people about it, the more people were really fascinated.

'cause I think oftentimes we don't talk about these parent dynamics as adults. And oftentimes there's shame, especially when there's something unpleasant going on. And the more I talked about it, the more people said, oh, I really have a hard time with my parent and I wanna learn about what you're doing because, this is something that is really challenging [00:05:00] for me, but I have no resources around. and, you know, I really realized that that was the case for me too. Like I was really trying to find my way in the dark and I really didn't have many resources and templates to know what to do with this problem. And so that's what motivated me to start this. Uh, this originally it was kind of a side project for me, but it's becoming more and more of a, a central part of the work I do.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: I too see this a lot with a lot of my friends and also professionally.

I see this with clients. I think a lot of very successful executives I coach, To put it mildly, have tricky relationships with their parents. And I also see related dynamics sometimes within family enterprise systems, where I coach teams and individuals there. And I just think that this work is so relevant.

And to your point, a ton of people don't seem to talk about it because of that shame component that you mentioned.

so the name of this show is we don't have to live like this [00:06:00] and we ask every guest this question as it relates to this work. I'm curious, what was the moment that you realized we don't have to live like this?

Kan Yan: You know, there's been, many moments in the journey of my own journey with my dad, but 

there was one point, maybe five or six years ago where I think I just built up all the requisite skills and capacities to break through on this. And I ended up sending, this is during the pandemic, sending a voice memo to my dad and asking him, Hey, would you have a conversation with me where I share everything that I am sad, angry, and resentful about my childhood that I've never ever shared with you, and you just listen to it and play it back to me? I made that request of him and I didn't know what would happen, but he sent me a text message back and he said, yeah, I would do that for you because I love you. And I just started crying, receiving that text message. I really had no idea what he would say back. And we ended up getting on a 90 minute zoom [00:07:00] call where I just went through everything, all the things I'd never talked to him about, that just rolled around in my mind and kind of set up the container for having him play it back to me.

And you know, I just wept the entire time. I wept for 90 minutes. gosh, there were so many powerful moments in that call. At one point I was sharing a memory and my dad said, I don't remember that happening. And I told him, well, I'm not claiming that it happened. I'm just telling you what I remembered, what I remember today.

And he thought for a moment. I'll never forget this. He said, okay, well I guess that's what matters most here right now anyway. And that felt like such a gift. And I just, you know, cleared everything. and for the first time in my adult life, I felt like I had a totally clear, clean relationship. Nothing was in the way.

Nothing was hanging out in the periphery of my awareness and the relational dynamic and my fear of him really dropped [00:08:00] enormously. It'd be like 90%. And the fascinating thing, and this maybe gets to what you were saying about all the clients you see with these kind of issues, is I realized when that fear dropped so much that there was some fear I had of everybody, of just people in general.

And that dropped a bit as well. And so it really illustrates how, you know, these family of origin dynamics are upstream of so much of the relational patterns that we have with everybody else in our lives.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that so openly and vulnerably. Uh, I have a question that I think some listeners will want to dig into more to help, to help us understand when you've talked about disassociation, what does that mean in layman's terms? 

Kan Yan: Yeah, it's a great question because I wouldn't have known either until I started learning about disassociation. because I think this gets back to what I said about, how our relationship with our parents is the water we swim in [00:09:00] and how the way our nervous systems react to distress can be also the water we swim in.

It can be just so familiar that it doesn't even seem like it deserves a, a label or a designation for me at the time. What I noticed when I would try to have these conversations with my dad. Is that I, you know, I would have something in mind I wanted to talk about, and then he would respond in some way that my nervous system would react such that my thinking would slow down.

It would be really hard for me to think, and in retrospect, I wasn't aware of this at the time, but I am now, my body would kind of numb out. Like my access to physical sensation, tactile sensation would drop enormously, maybe 95%, a hundred percent. And so it was really hard to do anything other than just sit still.

It was kind of like a freeze response. Um, and so from that place, all I would have the capacity to do is either sit there in a kind of dumbfounded state or wander off. And so it made it really [00:10:00] hard to make any progress on shifting things because I literally had no capacity mentally to engage in the topic that I wanted to address.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: so. People are feeling like they're numbing out or freezing. Is that how they know they're disassociating? Or what should people be looking out for?

Kan Yan: that's a great question because I think for me, I wouldn't even have known that I was doing it in a way, it was almost like a fog had descended until my nervous system calmed down sometime later, and I wouldn't even be tracking what, what happened. At some point I'd just be like, oh, I'm back in my room doing something.

and so in a way, disassociation could really obscure itself. I think if you're not familiar with that as a experience that you're having, it's actually quite hard to recognize it's happening. Nowadays, how I know it's happening is I'm somebody that's very, I'm a dancer and so physical sensation is very important to me.

Somatics are very important to me, it's almost like trying to check if you're dreaming or not. It's that level of obscurity. You have to really be [00:11:00] mindful. So I check like, oh, I notice my thoughts are a little slower than usual. Or I notice, oh, I can check in with my hands and I'm just touching my fingers and I'm not feeling very much.

Okay, that's interesting. Something is happening in my nervous system that's subconscious and I'm have to having to use these kind of deduction tools to figure out what's happening.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: so I wanna dive deeper into what we think is really happening here.

To explore how we even came to this status quo that's not serving us. I think we all know friends of ours who are the adult children of adult parents, where there's just negative or difficult relationships, or many people listening may in fact have that kind of relationship with their parent. What's, what's behind all of this, in your opinion?

Kan Yan: I, I have a couple different answers to that.

So in one way, one way I like to think of the work that I'm doing with my clients is we're moving from an adult child dynamic, like a parent child dynamic to an adult, adult [00:12:00] dynamic. And for a lot of reasons, you could say just the patterning that the parents had, you could point to trauma if you wanted to.

You could point to culture if you wanted to. Intergenerational dynamics, it becomes the familiar pattern for somebody to relate to their adult child in a parent child way rather than an adult, adult way. And it's that stickiness of being defaulted into that relational dynamic that keeps people in a variety of different kinds of problematic relational states together.

my working theory that I work on with my clients is if we can get to an adult, adult place with a meta awareness of the relationship for both parties, that allows us to then evolve our relationship toward what it wants to be. And I want to clarify that that does not mean that you get to have the ideal parent, that you want to have the fantasy one that you never had when you were a [00:13:00] kid.

It just means you get to be two adults aware of the dynamic between the two of you, and you get to see where things evolve from there.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: So when we talk about the adult child dynamic and the need for it to evolve to the adult, adult dynamic, can you help us understand what that actually means? how do these dynamics actually manifest and practice? , How do we actually spot that dynamic in real life?

Kan Yan: Yeah, I love that question. One thing I encourage all the folks I work with is to create greater awareness of the ways that they are contributing to these patterns. Um, because oftentimes what tends to be the case with adult children that have a difficult relationship with their parent is they just blame the parent.

Like, my parent is so da da da, da da. And it's so hard for me. I'm trying to change it, but they just keep doing it, da da da da. And The majority of relational dynamics, we are contributing in some way to the dynamic perpetuating. It's actually very hard for the dynamic to perpetuate if we are intentionally like trying to block it from continuing. [00:14:00] So I'll give you a few examples that are really common that I found 

 One is when there's a controlling parent, the child tends to become a rebel child or a ghost child, meaning somebody that just sort of energetically spaces out leaves, doesn't really engage, is just kind of, yeah, uhhuh, uhhuh like responding in that kind of way. similarly with a critical parent, you also tend to see these kind of ghost child dynamics or also pleaser dynamics. there's some children that just constantly try to please their parents by doing whatever they think the parent wants. And that's the case with critical parents. It's the case with anxious parents. It's the case with withholding parents. So these are just some examples of kinds of, relational patterns that show up commonly.

So 

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: I see in my own work that we often end up in sticky situations out of a fear of conflict, but I know you talk about that fear of conflict actually being a fear of disconnection.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Kan Yan: Yeah. What I often see, both in the parent context, but just in general when it comes [00:15:00] to conflict, is we're often afraid of conflict because in our past experiences, conflict results in disconnection, and that disconnection is really painful to be with. And I think that's what's really powerful about, you know, people who are skilled in having skillful conflict is that they're able to maintain connection in the midst of conflict. Oftentimes, what's the case in these parent child dynamics is that we, we try to resolve some difficult situation with a parent and it results in disconnection. That's really painful. It kind of, it brings us oftentimes back to, especially if we were children and we didn't feel sufficient connection with our parents, it, it's very painful and it really brings us to these acute experiences of distress.

And so a lot of what I do, especially, you know, sometimes I coach these adult child parents together, is helping them learn to have friction. Let's say. I'll use that instead of conflict friction while maintaining contact with each other [00:16:00] and learning the skills to do that and how that can be really beautiful.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: yeah, it can be really difficult for people, myself included, to hold friction, um, and to really tackle that conflict head on. I am curious, when I see people taking this approach of avoiding conflict, both in my work and in my own personal experience, I see that it very rarely actually works out for that person.

when you specifically focus on this work that you do with adult children and their parents, what do you commonly see is happening? when either part of that pair is avoiding conflict.

Kan Yan: this is a, a bit of a nuanced question in terms of adult children and parents because people are in very different places. Um, you know, you can imagine there's every possible type of relationship. I use this model where I think about like a, a two by two matrix, where like one axis is the person's [00:17:00] will and desire to improve the relationship.

And the other axis is the person's capacity, let's say psychological capacity to improve the relationship. so in a lot of cases, if say the parent is in a low will, low capacity place, there's not much that can be done other than trying to generate more goodwill, 

But if somebody is high will, even if they're low capacity, a lot can be done. And so what I tend to do in those scenarios is that, you know, you ask about avoidance, you know, it's, it could be both parties, it could be one party that are avoiding the conversation. it's really about creating container that allows people to depart from the patterns that they're very familiar with.

And this is really hard. I'll use myself as an example. Like I mentioned in, in that story I told you where I had that 90 minute weathon with my dad. When that was over, I thought, wow, this is gonna, this has changed everything. My whole, you know, I've never said any of this. My whole dynamic must be changed forever.

[00:18:00] But then of course, our kind of dynamic that has had existed for 30 something years just showed up again immediately afterwards. And I think it's something really important, especially with the relationships that have lasted our whole lives, to know that catharsis does not break through those patterns of avoidance.

It's only consistent re-patterning over time. That changes the well worn grooves of, in this case, avoidance. It can be a lot of other things. And so what that meant for me was at one point I invited my dad to join me for therapy every week. And we did that for over a year together with a therapist. And it was only by doing that every single week over and over again, having a different kind of conversation other than the avoiding one that I, that I was having, that the kind of gravity of our relationship centered somewhere else other than the pattern that was avoiding, I'm, I'm not even gonna say I was avoiding, I'll just say the dynamic was keeping us from having the [00:19:00] conversations that were more present with what's actually going on in our relationship.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: there's so many questions I wanna double click on so many of these things. I wanna ask one more question before we get into what we can be doing differently. I know that you've mentioned in this conversation and elsewhere that,the way we show up with our parents often mirrors how we show up at work and everywhere else.

if we don't have great relationships with our parents, or if people listening don't have great relationships with their parents. It is kind of obvious why they might want that to be better, but beyond that fundamental relationship, why is this even important to deal with for those who might say, uh, it is what it is.

I'm gonna ignore that.

Kan Yan: Yeah, a couple different answers to that. If you don't have a very healthy relationship with your parents, that is likely upstream of the relational problems you have everywhere else in your life at work, certainly, but also probably your romantic relationships and even friendships as well.

you know, I'll give an example of myself. You know, my relationship with my dad and that kind of fear [00:20:00] thing really colored my experience and still does to some degree my relationship to authority. And that shows up in professional dynamics. I'm either kind of deferring to authority or really very actively resisting authority, maybe unreasonably resisting authority.

and when I talk about, so they're coaches, they're all like, oh yes, all my clients, they really, their parent issues show up all the time. You know, whether it's with their co-founders, you know, their reports, their bosses everywhere, you know, these same dynamics replay themselves because they're unresolved at some fundamental level.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: I've never coached an executive leader. where these dynamics with their parents do not come up, and it is not me leading them there. It just always comes up as an important thing that they need to work on and, and learn from.

so there's a lot in here, that you've shared already.

 I'm curious though, from your perspective, what is the first step in re-imagining parenting and making a [00:21:00] shift towards doing this differently and doing it better?

And I know that could be really overwhelming, so maybe what's the first baby step?

Kan Yan: You know, I'm not sure about baby step, but I've thought about this a lot. So I'll share what I view as the, I have kinda, kinda like a model of how to do this work, and there's four parts to it. I'll, I'll say a little bit about each one. The first part is really releasing what is stuck inside of ourselves that keeps us in the pattern.

So I mentioned how I would always disassociate, essentially, you know, that pattern really lived in my nervous system in my cells. And so a lot of what I did was doing a practice that was discharging at a somatic level, the distress I had around these patterns with my dad. 

So that's the first step. The second step is really around reimagining. So we oftentimes have a story of who the other person is. This is the case with parents, but this is the case with any conflict. We have some story about the other person, and the degree to which that we can dislodge that story and reimagine them differently really [00:22:00] enables us to have much more flexibility in shifting and transforming the dynamic.

A third piece is around support. I already mentioned how helpful it can be to have a third party intervene, What a lot of people do with parents in particular is they'll try to shift something and they'll struggle with it. And so, so they'll, they'll give up and they'll say, well I tried.

Right? And then they won't talk about it with anybody. And that's part of the shame that I mentioned at the beginning of this interview. And so support really looks like being open and having external parties to the family constellation, being a part of looking at what's going on. 'cause that really enables much more space to reimagine and it gives everybody in the constellation more space to behave differently. the great example of this is, you know, maybe you bring a friend or a partner home to visit your parents and they behave very differently. That's because it's quite difficult actually to engage in parent child dynamics when there's somebody who's in present time looking outside in. It would feel weird for most people to start regressing [00:23:00] with somebody who's outside the constellation present.

The fourth piece is experimenting. this really gets to what kinds of things can I try out to really find out where both I and the other person are at in terms of will and capacity to change this thing? one thing I think is so beautiful is that oftentimes a lot of people don't know the will and capacity of the other person, the parent in the case, often of with the people I work with.

And that was the case with me. Like when I initiated that conversation, that 90 minute conversation with my dad, I didn't know if he would say yes or no. That level of will, I really had no idea where he was at. It was only by running experiments that I got to have a more accurate understanding of where this other person was at.

And then from there, I could really start moving the relationship in a different direction using those experiments. To recap, it's release, reimagine, support and experiment, and the first step is release. It's about [00:24:00] really discharging the things that are stuck inside of our nervous system that keep us really hooked into the pattern regardless of what the other person is up to.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: I'm naturally thinking about the adult child of, of the parent in this situation. do these steps work for a parent who wants to change the dynamic as well? Or shall we just assume this is for the adult child?

Kan Yan:  yeah, definitely the steps work both ways and it's really about whoever has more capacity, because whoever has more capacity to change the dynamic has more responsibility to change the dynamic.

Like oftentimes adult children will say, well, they're the parent. They should really step in and do something. It's not my job. I'm the, I'm the kid here. And if the parent has less capacity, there is no way that is ever going to happen. But if the parent has a lot of capacity, then by all means they could use the same model to do the same thing.

And sometimes the adult child will have less capacity, especially if they're younger, and are earlier on in their developmental journey.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: so con I wanna double click on each of these four steps.

When you [00:25:00] talk about releasing, you mentioned discharging at a somatic level. Can you help us understand what that means in practical terms and what range of options are available to people to do this first primary step of releasing?

Kan Yan: yeah, sure. So one frame I find is helpful is thinking about. Trauma. Like there's this great book, the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel VanDerKolk, where he talks about how a lot of difficult experiences are really stored in our bodies. Like we often think about them as a mental thing. 'cause culturally we tend to be very heady.

But these patterns actually live in our bodies. even if we think we, we can behave differently, it's actually hard to behave differently. And I think most people can resonate with this. Like, you know, we may want to behave in a certain way with our partners, for example, but oftentimes we find ourselves, becoming, um, distressed in some way where we behave in a way that we're not proud of, that we wouldn't have chosen.

And so those patterns of behavior actually stuck in our body. [00:26:00] And releasing is all about finding ways to kinda loosen those patterns in our body. And I'll give you a few examples of what that looks like. So there's a body of work called somatics, which is all about what it's like to experience the body from within subjectively.

And there's all sorts of methods, to move those kind of stuck patterns in our body. Sometimes it's shaking. sometimes it's finding, you know, exertion full ways when working with that material to let it, to let it metabolize. a lot of people I interview have used psychedelics, which oftentimes brings people to that kind of discharge of that body material, uh, naturally.

so those are a few examples of ways that people tend to release these, these kind of stuck patterns in their body.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: So quite the range. I'm sure some people listening are like, whoa, psychedelics, that's out there. And then for a lot of people that's becoming kind of more standard common things where there's certain people who talk about like work retreats or soon gonna be psychedelic oriented. That might already be happening with [00:27:00] some coaching work probably out in the valley.

Um, I, I'm curious for those who maybe are on earlier stages of even thinking about this, what do you think is the most accessible, real life way for people to move into releasing, on their own? How would they go about doing that?

Kan Yan: Yeah, I would look into working with a therapist and in particular therapists that are trained in trauma and trained in a somatic modality. So common ones that I tend to get a lot out of that other people I work with do include ha somatic experiencing, um, and people that do that in a relational setting in particular.

And you can use these kind of terms as you look around and interview a therapist that might be appropriate for you.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: then if we move to the next step of re-imagining, how would people practically begin to start doing that work of having a, a different story about the other person, 

Kan Yan: So the first step I always recommend for everybody, no matter where they're at in terms of will and capacity [00:28:00] themselves, or with their parent, is to record an oral history with their parent. where you're just asking them questions about their early life. Like, Hey, tell me about what your first memories were, what it was like when you were a kid, how you spent your time, what was school like, what was it like at home with your family?

what was challenging? What was fun and beautiful? what were some of the hardest things you experienced as a kid? You know, really getting into the details. And what I recommend too, um, is oftentimes, uh, folks have commonly replayed stories that they tell. But to really kinda dig into the details, like in my family there was, um, you know, we're from China and so people would oftentimes just talk about the culture evolution being like a difficult, bitter time.

And I remember I, I interviewed a family member and I was like, well, that was 10 years, like what happened in year one? Day one, right? And so just like getting past this, the superficial normal storytelling into the details and really understanding that person through the details of their experience.

what often happens when you [00:29:00] record this is you really get to see the person in a new light. Especially when you understand some of the hardships they went through as a kid, it naturally induces an empathy and a compassion for them that helps you see differently. The behaviors that that person does that tend to bother you.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: I love that. It's actually something I've started to do with my own parents. Not really for this reason, but more for recording. And it, and I deeply relate with what you're talking about. You start to see your parent in different light and to understand them in a more of an adult to adult kind of way. maybe even sometimes, I don't know if this is right technically, but almost more like.

parent to child 'cause you're the adult now and you think about them as a child and what that was like for them and something shifts. I find that really, really interesting and sounds fun.

Kan Yan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: okay. And then on third support, so getting third party, external help practically, like what might people look for there?

Kan Yan: So I mentioned in, in my experience, you know, I [00:30:00] brought in an external therapist. So I worked with my dad with a third party every single week. That was really helpful. And I do that myself as a coach for some of the clients I work with because, you know what I mentioned before, if you bring somebody in, it's actually harder to maintain these regressive dynamics and it forces you to, to become more present in an adult, adult way.

So that's, probably, you know, the most powerful way of shifting from parent child to adult, adult. Oftentimes parents, and I'll say especially parents from immigrant cultures, will be resistant to, to therapy 'cause there's all sorts of connotations around mental health around that. Some simpler things you can do around support are, Instead of just hanging out with your parent directly, you could bring a friend, have lunch with a friend, or have dinner with a friend, and you could even prep that friend to ask some interesting questions, right? So that also shifts the dynamic naturally between you. It's also really helpful to, you know, if you decide you want to go on the journey of shifting the dynamic, to have some supporters that are outside of your family constellation.

[00:31:00] You know, that could be a group of friends. Um, I oftentimes in my work set up the folks I work with into pods of people that are working on similar things and they meet on a regular basis to hold each other accountable. And that's often very helpful, just as like a support group to know that other people are going through the same things.

You can see them making breakthroughs, you can see them, overcoming challenges, and that's tends to be inspiring. And when you're going through something difficult or a moment of despair or discouragement to have other people to. To hold you and to encourage you to keep going and telling their stories of times they were discouraged and where one gets to if they keep persisting.

So I think those are all wonderful ways to, to give and receive support.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: And then finally, in the fourth stage of experimenting, what would you suggest practically there? 

Kan Yan: So when it comes to experimenting, I really love to use the that two by two I mentioned of will and capacity because the kinds of experiments that you run will be different depending upon, where [00:32:00] you're at and where your parent is at in terms of will and capacity. Like if you have a challenging parent, meaning low will, low capacity, the experiments to run are really just about.

How can I build more will to invest in this relationship? Like how can I put some investments in the, in the trust bank, in the will bank by maybe that looks like doing some things they're interested in. Uh, maybe it looks like doing the oral history. That's a great, great thing to do. Anywhere you're at, it might look like doing shared projects that, you know, that's already something that they're interested in.

But building a kind of connection if, especially in situations where there's not much connection to start building that so that there's more will, so that when you ask them to do something that's a little more edgy for them, they'll feel more likely to, to meet you in that. Now if you're actually in a high will situation, you have a lot of options that open up.

And that's what I discovered. You know, I had that big clearing conversation that's oftentimes really powerful. I do that for some of the clients I work with. having a [00:33:00] recurring, um, conversation where you're looking at the relationship together, that's what family therapy is. And, um, a supported one is what I would say if you're in a high will, low capacity situation, um, because it's often, it's really hard to get there on your own.

but I'll actually say, you know, once, once the capacity increases, you don't need that. Like my dad and I graduated from having a therapist and we still have a weekly call and we still explore what's happening between us every single week. And we learn more like every week. It's crazy that in this relationship that's been so familiar for so many years, we're just learning about each other.

Every single week we do this. some other things that I've run as experiments is I've gone on one-on-one trips with parents. you know, oftentimes a lot of people, they tend, when they hang out with their parents, they hang out with both of them. And that actually makes it very difficult to shift dynamics.

'cause when there's a lot of people involved, the dynamics become more entrenched. So if you're there and your siblings are there, it's like, it is really hard to shift things from that place. So what I did was I took my dad on just a trip, the [00:34:00] two of us, and that alone actually shifted the dynamics. 'cause like when the other family members aren't present, then we're just looking at each other like, oh, who are you and what's it like with just the two of us?

Um, so I really recommend finding opportunities to just spend time with one parent. 'cause that oftentimes creates more, more space.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: Yeah. Ka there's so much in there that's really helpful and it feels like there's, you know, at least people will be able to pick at least one thing that seems doable for them there. So I love that. Um, and I also love the concept of experimenting, where if one doesn't work, you can try another. 

 so this might be a big question that I'm gonna ask you to synthesize in a short amount of time, but you've mentioned a lot. Again, this will and capacity framework, the two by two, which I think is really helpful. When thinking of low will parents and high will parents, I can't help but think of like Logan Roy from succession, if you've seen that 

 I can think of situations where there is maybe zero will on behalf of the parents are very low will, which would be really tough. And I also [00:35:00] imagine there's situations where, like in your case you mentioned you weren't sure how high the will was.

 is there often, in most cases, some degree of will from a parent.

Kan Yan: There is, and I think the more important thing to note is that oftentimes we don't know. Like I didn't know. And so it's only by experimenting that you can only get a sense of what is possible. And I'll also say that some people run experiments and they don't work and they just say, well, the will is zero.

It's impossible. Um, that may be the case. I'll talk about that in a moment. But I'll also say that if you haven't tried doing it with all four components, which is releasing your own pattern, sabbatical, getting support, reimagining the other person, it makes it very unlikely that when you try and experiment to shift things that it will work.

And so it's really easy to then get ossified in a story of the other person as their zero will. They're never gonna change. and so you can actually be stuck in that story and not realize [00:36:00] it. it is also possible that you're among the people that have a situation where there truly is a near zero will on the other person, or for whatever reason, developmentally, the other person doesn't have the capacity to shift at all.

those are real things that that happen. What I'll say is that in those cases, you may not be able to change the other person, but you can definitely change how you're reacting to the other person. And that oftentimes, you know, transforms the whole thing. And I talk to a lot of people, I interview folks who have done tons of work, just accepting what is true and finding a way to love the other person.

Despite all of that and releasing all the ways in which they're still really stuck to clinging, to needing the other person to be different. And that in and of itself creates such relief and it creates such a better dynamic and relationship between the people. And in some cases, just getting there allows the other person to change.

there's a lot here beyond just what we think the other person is capable of.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: [00:37:00] I'm wondering if you have a parent who you think might have, will, like if we go back to your example where you weren't sure, um, 

Like what do you do? where do you start and like maybe where do you continue experimenting based on what I just heard you say? Like how, how should one approach that

Kan Yan: Yeah, I would say start with the oral histories. start by seeking out some support as well. So, you know, working with a therapist or a coach or support group. I would say work on discharging some of your own distress around the relationship. And then in terms of the experiments, you know, I mentioned the oral history, you might just start, you know, broaching some of these subjects to the degree you can, using all the other tools that I mentioned and seeing what level of will the parent has.

You know, just make it gradual. And if you find out that there is sufficient will, Try to see if you can have the, the supported recurring conversations, either you know, therapy or working with a coach where you're able to shift the patterns gradually over time. [00:38:00] And that's really getting into that high will, high capacity quadrant.

I call that the mature parent, and there's all sorts of like magical evolutionary things that are possible once you get there.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: con, thank you so much. There's so much in this, and honestly, I could talk to you for hours about this, but if the goal is to give people more education, more information, and more ideas of what they can begin to do, I think we've surfaced a lot here already.

I wanna orient us towards the future, For me, as someone who's always thinking about how we can do things differently, I'm often very motivated by the legacy that we're handing down to the next generation. Um, and personally I think about that with my own child. you mentioned this adult child dynamic and how it needs to transition to the adult to adult dynamic. And I guess throughout this conversation I've been thinking that's such an obvious thing and that makes so much sense. Yet I've never heard anyone actually say that out loud, and I'm [00:39:00] not sure that we really have rituals in place as a society for this really.

I, I'm wondering, I guess as we think from the lens of being a parent of a young child right now, for all of those people who are listening out there, who are those people or know those people, how might we do it differently? To think about how we more, uh, proactively help that shift occur rather than someone having to change it 10 to 20 years after it's already gotten outta whack.

Kan Yan: I would say the biggest thing you can do is clean up your own relationship to that with your own parents and in your relational dynamics with everybody in your life. And if you can do that, you're naturally gonna do it with your kids. And I see that a lot with the folks that I interview. Sometimes I interview dyads of adult children and their parents.

And most people that come on willing to do that, the adult, the, the parents have done a lot of that, their own work on that. And so they've already cleaned up whatever that [00:40:00] impulse is to regress into that dynamic. And so they naturally don't do it. And that allows them to have a relationship that's pretty mature with their kids without much, design.

It's just the way they're operating and behaving relationally.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: And then what it will, this is a little bit morbid, but what would you say for those people who maybe they're not fortunate enough to have their parents still around, but they know that they need to do that work, what would you recommend to them?

Kan Yan: Yeah. You know, I, I interview a number of people in the podcast and I'll also mention that on my website, parents reimagined.com. There's a database of the podcast you can search search by issues, and one of them is postmortem. And so you can search some of the episodes where people have done work with parents who have passed away.

Uh, there's two main things that people have done. One is, you know, we mentioned psychedelics before. Oftentimes in psychedelic ceremonies, working with deceased parents, um, can become a natural part of that. And having conversations with those parents that have passed on in a way that allows one to release things that are still present.[00:41:00] 

Um, outside of that, some people do, um, ancestral practices, ancestral healing practices, and this is another, this is a methodology of engaging those who have died in a way to still clean up those dynamics. And so there's a number of bodies of work that help people work on their relationships with parents who have already passed.

And you can learn more about those in those episodes.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: Uh, it was so interesting. I've actually heard about some of that ancestral work, um, being useful in the context of multi-generational family enterprise too, where there's been trauma or other, other difficult things in the past that have been addressed in the present day and a dynamic with people who are long gone, which is fascinating.

Alright, so when we think about looking forward to the future, what do you think future generations will thank us for?

Kan Yan: Wow. That's a very optimistic question for a pessimistic time. But, uh.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: hmm.

Kan Yan: I would hope that they thank us for really entering [00:42:00] into a time of descent and darkness with a lot of awareness and care, and finding ourselves able to compost into something more beautiful on the other side, and specifically in the context of parent child dynamics.

I hope what that looks like is having more adult, adult dynamics among adult children and their parents as a way of cleaning up unresolved intergenerational patterns that tend to be harmful for everybody involved so that what we hand down to our children and and their children is a gift of clean, clear, loving relationships.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: And when it comes to this parent child dynamic that we've been talking about, what do you think future generations will wish we'd done differently?

Kan Yan: you know, to the degree that they happen to have parents that didn't clean up these patterns that exist in them intergenerationally, they'll have wished that they did because, [00:43:00] you know, they'll now be saddled with doing that work. Just like many of those who are listening may realize that they're saddled with doing the work that their parents may not have had the privilege of knowing how to address.

And if you're listening to this, you have that opportunity in a way that your ancestors did not, and this is your chance to shift that for them and for all your descendants from here on out.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: and then finally, in this future focused questioning, how would you like the norm of parenting to shift in 20 years time? 

Kan Yan: Well, you know, you mentioned not having kind of say rites and rituals to move us into an adult, adult dynamic. So I hope it becomes more a part of our cultural that we have rights and rituals that help us shift to know when it is the appropriate time to move from a parent child dynamic to an adult, adult dynamic.

And really making that a beautiful rite of passage for young people to enter into, and for us to then be able to shift how we relate to them [00:44:00] in, in these responsible, respectful ways.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: we've talked about what we can do on a personal level, individually a lot today and to a degree also within our families. I'm curious on a societal level, when we think about social expectations, social infrastructure, support systems, are there things that you think would help us get to a better place as it relates to this parent child dynamic?

Kan Yan: Oh, totally. I mean, so much of this around capacity is structural. It's like I mentioned before, if you're listening to this and you have this problem, you're the first generation probably that has any chance of addressing it in terms of even having the time and the resources of looking at it. Right. So, you know, these problems are structural problems.

It's like, do we have the time and resources to attend to our relationships? And for a lot of people, because of various things, class oppression being one, there's just, there's no time and resource to do [00:45:00] that or education. To the degree that we can create a society that allows for more people to have more time and attention to tend to the things that matter most, that's essential.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: Is there one thing you would call for that you feel like is maybe most doable? On a practical level, if there were a policy change? Or some kind of infrastructural change that's not necessarily like the dismantling of capitalism, Persie, or something as extreme as that. Not saying that's what you or I are calling for, by the way.

Kan Yan: Yeah. You know, what comes to mind I often think would be really beautiful is having relational skills being part of. Childhood education and you know, I understand there's all sorts of reasons, there's resistance to that. But you know, I never learned any of that. And it caused me all of the problems that I had as a young person.

And if I just learned some very basic things around empathy and listening and connection, then I think that would've really made my life much more peaceful, less harmful, more [00:46:00] beautiful.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: That's really intriguing and really interesting. we're all about being hopeful and feeling empowered to do things differently on the podcast. So if you could give listeners one tip and one tip only to get started with re-imagining parent-child relationships, what would that one thing be?

Kan Yan: Go invite your parent to do an oral history project and record it for posterity.

Sarah Thorpe-Scott: Love that. Okay. Thank you so much con for taking the time to be here. This has been really fascinating and I know that the work that you've done here and what you've shared here is gonna be helpful for so many listeners, so really appreciate it.

Kan Yan: You're welcome and thanks for having me on the show.