The Power of Belonging with Special Guest Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble

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Reena Ninan:

Episode 197 with special guest, Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble on belonging. 

Lemme guess you have your holiday list done. You’ve got the gifts wrapped. Everything’s good to go. How are you feeling? How are you doing? 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

No, I do not. And every year this time, I think next year I’m going to do it in the summer. I’m going to get Christmas done in the summer and every year I do not. No, I am totally behind the eight ball. How about you?

Reena Ninan:

You know what? I’ve just decided. I’m pairing it down this year. I’m finally pairing it down this year and people will just have to understand because there’s just too much going on, Lisa. Too much.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s a lot. I am always happy we celebrate Christmas. I’m always happy on the 26th. I feel like I’ve crossed some finish line and I can relax.

Reena Ninan:

I know Grandmother Nani used to say that Christmas ends on Christmas Eve and start packing up the tree because it’s a full on month. It’s a full on month. But I’m excited to talk about the subject. You have wanted to have this guest on who we met. Remember back in the summer at our parenting conference or digital parenting conference.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It was so fun to be with her in 3D and it’s someone who’s work I’ve admired for so long and I’m just thrilled that she’s here with us.

Reena Ninan:

I’m going to go ahead and introduce her right away. Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble or Dr. Alfiee, as we call her, is a pioneering psychologist, researcher, author, and speaker specializing in mental health for diverse populations, particularly youth of color. She’s got over 25 years experience and she founded the Aakoma Project. It’s a nonprofit dedicated to helping young people and their families navigate mental health challenges. Dr. Alfiee’s, a frequent media expert appearing on platforms like NPR and CNN and even the Breakfast Club. 

Her work is rooted in advocacy for culturally responsive mental health care and empowering communities to really prioritize mental wellbeing. She’s a thought leader in her field and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Dr. Alfiee to help us talk about belonging.

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know what to say. I’m flattered. It is truly an honor to be with you. Both Dr. Lisa and I go back probably a couple years we worked on, Sounded Out Together this project through the Ad Council and Pivotal Ventures, so it was really nice to be acquainted in 3D this summer. And both you all are people whose work I admire deeply. So thank you so much for extending an invitation and allowing me to be here.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

We are thrilled to have you. Alright, we’re ready for some wisdom here. So let’s just get down to it. Thinking about belonging and starting with a foundation, belonging is such a core human need from the earliest days. What can parents do to foster a sense of belonging in their kids?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

The first thing that comes to mind is we as parents and caregivers, I think have to be able to be in touch with a sense of belonging ourselves. I feel like we need to know what it feels like to be able to share it authentically with our young people. And I always like to say parents and caregivers because we all know not everyone who parents is biologically related to a child, but there’s those love bonds there. So that’s the first thing. We have to be in touch with it ourselves. I will share very openly, I am a parent caregiver to two young people. My young people are 17 and 20, so I got grown folks in my house. And the second thing I’ll say is that I really feel like I gave a talk about this at Mial over the summer and it was such an incredible experience and it really helped me crystallize my thoughts. And I really do believe there are three things now. Dr. Lisa, we love to talk in alliteration and rhyme, right? That’s what we do. But I think that it requires three things, three things, courage, boundaries, and vulnerability. And I’ll stop there. We can expound on it later, but those are some of the things I think are required for belonging.

Reena Ninan:

When you talk about belonging, when you look at sort of the essential building blocks, what do you think it is that families can do at home in their communities to help create those building blocks of belonging?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

I think some of it is modeling. I mean, you all know this. I mean, I know you’re expert at this. Some of it is modeling for young people what belonging looks like. I think that’s one. I think some of it is also talking with our young people openly about what you need to do to feel like you belong, and then how do you extend that to other people? And then going back to, as I said, courage, boundaries and vulnerability. I think vulnerability is critical. Like we all know, Dr. Brene Brown talks about this all the time, but this idea of vulnerability is key to allowing ourselves to enter into a space and be open to somebody extending themselves to help us belong. But if you don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable, how do you even know when someone’s extending that olive branch, so to speak?

And to use the gift of discernment to be able to enter into relationship with somebody. I think that’s hard. And then having those boundaries and being courageous enough, right? Because we know courage doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. It took me a long time to figure that out. Courage means you work with the fear and you keep trying to move forward. One of my favorite movies is Meet the Robinsons, keep moving forward. So those are some of the things I would say are those building blocks for both us as parents and caregivers and our young people.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Dr. Alfiee, talk a little bit more about the boundaries piece. 

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

Absolutely. So for me, in my family, full disclosure, I’m the boundaries queen, everybody, right? One of the ways that those boundaries show up for me as an individual in relationship to others is because Dr. Lisa, you and I, because of what we do, everybody wants free therapy all the time in an elevator at a party, they want free therapy.

Reena Ninan:

So true.

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

And I think what I learned to do so that I wouldn’t frustrate myself and wouldn’t frustrate my loved ones, for example, those boundaries are key for setting the parameters for how we’re going to be together so that nobody is entering into it with unrealistic expectations. So one thing that I do is when people want to talk, I say, okay, this is setting a boundary. Do you want me to listen or do you want my advice? Tell me which one. That way I know how to enter into this conversation with you. If you don’t tell me that I’m going to get it wrong, like invariably I’m going to get it wrong because I’m going to proceed from my understanding. So this idea of boundaries is really an opportunity for us to get clarity about what we need. I think we have to be articulate about what we need in a relationship to give the other person an opportunity to give us that thing or not.

And once you either get what you want or you don’t, I think it makes it that much easier for us to decide what’s my next step with this person? If I need safety and I need safety to be communicated in a certain way and you’re not able to give me that, then I have to decide is this a person that I really need to be in community with in this way? So I feel like boundaries help you set parameters and set yourself and that other person or other persons you want to be in community with. It helps set us all up for success.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I love that. I love that. All right. Let’s think a little bit about belonging and such a hot topic right now. Social media, right? This is a huge part of how kids connect to one another, but it’s also a place where a lot of kids end up feeling pretty crummy and pretty left out. So if we just think about this from a tween teen perspective and belonging and social media, how do we make it so that social media is a force for good in this and not a force for things that make kids feel less than connected?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

Absolutely. So I love the juxtaposition of all the ways in which social media can be used, right? I’m a Star Wars fan. Is it a force for good or is it a force? Well, I’ll say not so good. So I think for our young people, what we’ve learned through the, you all are familiar with the research we’ve done at the Aakoma Project, and we put out a brief about diverse young people, racially, ethnically, culturally, gender identity, disability status, all those things together, looking at intersectionality and the relationship between that mental health and social media use. And what we find is Dr. Lisa, exactly what you said. There are pieces and ways in which social media is a space where young people belong. I think the more marginalized identities a young person carries within him, her or themselves, I think they have a greater opportunity to find like-minded people or people who share aspects of their identity that are important to them in social media.

It really brings the world into your device, into your home. That’s when it’s for good. And for some young people, that is kind of the only or the primary source of connection that they have. If they’re, for example, LGBTQAI+, and in a home where that is not valued, then it becomes your social media interaction that allows you to feel, as I always say, seen, heard and valued, particularly as a young person. Then I think the downside as we learn from some of our research is social media can be the place where you feel racially, gender, lgbtqai+ or having a disability. You can feel harassment from other young people related to that identity, and that has a negative impact on our young people’s mental health. So I think our job as parents and caregivers, not caregivers, parents and caregivers, is to work with our children to develop, help build that muscle of discernment to understand when you’re scrolling, for example, you talk about this all the time. We talked about this through sound out together. What are you feeling when you’re scrolling? Are you feeling down? Are you feeling made up? More up? I’ve actually seen you post about this on your socials. 

So once you make that determination, then again, you are informed enough to decide how do you want to interact? And so the other thing I’ll say is what I teach my young people, both my one biologically related to me and otherwise through Aakoma, is you want to be an active consumer of social media, not passive. Don’t allow the algorithm to just feed you. And I always tell young people, because a lot of them get their news from social media, and Reena, I know you know this as a world renowned journalist, curate your news. You have to be active and conscious about what you’re choosing to consume and not just consume everything that gets thrown into your feed. So those are some of the things I think are important,

Reena Ninan:

Dr. Alfiee, when you talk about this sort of social media and the peer pressure, it’s so tough. What do you do when you want to create and help your teen navigate social media? You don’t want them to simply fall into the crowd, just take any old thing that’s coming your way like you’re talking about. But how do you also help them not feel isolated or left out? How do you strike that balance and what do you say and do?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

The biggest thing is, I think, communication. You have to have open minds of communication. So back in my former life, I call myself a liberated academic now, but I was in psychiatry for 18 years, worked in departments of psychiatry at Duke and then at Georgetown. And one thing that I really learned is this idea of, and again, something you all always talk about, active coping. 

So we have to give our young people and provide them with skills that show them how to do something, right? Because Reena, you’re very astute question. It’s not enough to just say, you should do this. How do I do it? Right? And I think that’s our job as parents and caregivers is to give our young people tools. So teaching them what does it mean to use that gift of discernment? What does discernment mean? I think part of it is, again, coming back to how do we define that as parents and caregivers, how do we model that?

How do we operationalize that? And if we have those ideas under control, it makes it that much easier for us to provide that information to our young people. I happen to believe that a pound, what is it, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I’m doing my Gen X old school, that’s what you say back in the day. And part of that ounce of prevention is understanding, sometimes it seems weird to people, but do you understand what these platforms are for? 

How does TikTok differ from Instagram? They differ. Differ from Facebook, differ from LinkedIn, and then how do you use that knowledge to help you decide when you’re consuming the stuff that’s thrown at you, how are you going to consume it? How are you going to be a good consumer? So I think when we empower our young people with tools, I feel like what we’re doing is we’re giving them life skills. It’s not just about the discernment for social media, right? Paying attention to what you consume, not being a passive consumer, questioning what you read, finding reputable resources, right? Reena as a journalist, finding reputable resources to give you the kind of information that you need that’s not just for social media, that’s life skills. And so if we can model that, if we can practice that and then share those skills with our young people, again, we are empowering them, which doesn’t mean we hand over our power. You can’t do that. To me, what empowered means is we teach our young people, teens and tweens, how to embody the power that already exists within them. So you’re helping them shape and mold and hone those skills to fit something that works for them. And when they find something that works for them, it sets them up, I think, in a much better position to be successful.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I want to ask you a question. I’ve got lots of questions, but before I do it, I just want to reflect for a moment on your use of the word discernment. I am obsessed and I’ll tell you why. Because you’re talking about using it with kids, about them using their discernment, and in one word, you are doing so much work, and I just want to look at it a little bit because part of what you’re doing is you’re doing what we know works for teenagers is they live up to expectations and down to them. So by saying, use your discernment, you are bringing their discernment on board. I think so few adults or so often adults assume that teenagers don’t or can’t, won’t do this. You say the word, they’re suddenly doing it. 

The other thing in that one word that you are articulating is this is what I’m hearing and check if this feels right to you, is you’re telling them create a space between this stimulus and the response. Whether it’s how someone has treated you or what you just saw on social media or any variety of things, income’s your discernment. You take it in, you weigh it, you use your wisdom, you reflect, then you decide what’s next. You’re nodding, so I feel like I’m barking up the right tree,

But I just am kind of wanting to rest in the moment of how much deserved credit you are giving young people that they don’t often get, and what you and I both know about how effective that is actually at changing behavior and that you’ve got it boiled down to a word that both raises the expectation and also tells ’em exactly what they need to be doing. It is so cool.

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

Oh, thank you. I’ve never heard it articulated that way, and it really fills my heart up because what I think it does is something that I’ve always really wanted to do and that I strive to do all the time, going back 25 plus years, and I’ve worked with young people, which is there’s so many young people out there across the board universally who don’t feel that adults, older adults see them, really see them. 

When I was a kid, again, being a Gen Xer, coming up as a child of the civil rights generation and the Boomers and veterans before them, a lot of what you heard, which I know is somewhat rooted in my culture as a black person, a black American and African American, is children should be seen and not heard because there was a time when that was a safety mechanism. You have to be quiet because I can’t protect you if you are talking.

You know what I mean? Going way back. And I think somehow over time, again, universally that gets translated into we don’t have to listen to young people. They need to develop. Their brains are still developing. They need more time to really figure out what they really want. And I think that’s unfair to young people. And so what I always want to do, particularly for our young people who are marginalized, is let them know part of marginalization is people don’t listen to you. They don’t see you, they don’t hear you, they don’t value you. So what is one little thing that I can do that’s relatively free, low cost and effective to allow you to know that I see you? I hear you. I value you in everything about you. And when I do that, it’s exactly what you said. I am creating the space in helping you to hone the tools that you’re going to need for the rest of your life.

Think about how important it’s going to be. We’re all women as a woman to be able to take a beat before you lose it on somebody because they say something to you the wrong way. Or because there’s clear discrimination or sexism. You got to be able to take a beat. You got to protect yourself. You’re sort of pushed by society to behave in a certain way, and people have these expectations of you without really knowing who you are as an individual. And so what I want all our young people to have the opportunity to experience is to know you have something in you that needs to come out so the world can see it, and it’s unique to you. What can I do to help you always operate from that place of I’m important, I’m unique. I’m special just like I am. And so discernment is a way to help them do that for me.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Absolutely. It’s incredible. Okay, so we’ve talked about kids who may be in a position to discern who’s trying to connect to them. What about kids who aren’t in that position? They are really struggling with belonging. They don’t even get to the step of getting to decide who to be vulnerable with or who to allow into their worlds. What do we do for those kids? What are the signs?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

I think it often mirrors two things, which I know you all talk about all the time, depression and anxiety. I think it’s a mirror, right? I’m not saying that being isolated means you have those things, right? Because correlation, as we know, is not causation. So I think what we’re thinking about is when I look at young people who are isolated, what are some of those symptoms or what are some of those things that I see that go along with feeling isolated? I think the obvious answer is you don’t have anybody with you, or at least you feel like there’s nobody with you, right? Sometimes I think it can turn into young people asking themselves, why am I like this? Why doesn’t anybody want to be with me? I’m thinking of a kid. I remember from third grade, he used to sing this song. “Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Nobody likes me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.” 

Think about a third grader singing something like that. So clearly there were not a lot of places in his life where he felt like people were seeing him and he felt very isolated, and that was his way of asking for help. I think sometimes when we think about depression, what do people do? They isolate. Why do people do it? In part because it takes a lot of energy to try to engage people. And if you are feeling depressed or you feel symptoms of depression, you don’t want to be bothered with people. You want people to leave you alone. And so it’s like a vicious cycle. You reinforce and act from behaviors that allow you to be isolated, and then you’re isolated and it’s sad to be by yourself. What I like to tell caregivers and parents is one saying we have to hold space without taking up space.

What does that look like for a parent or caregiver? It means sit down, ask your child not how you doing? Because the answer we can all say together, fine, fine. That’s not the answer you’re looking for. You want some meat? So one thing I like is I’ve heard people talk about roses and thorns. Tell me a rose from your day today, tell me a thorn from your day today, and then you have to do this. Put your hands down, put your device down, look at your child in the eye. Don’t stare at ’em, but look at your child in the eye and listen. It’s doing multiple things at once. You’re holding space.

Reena Ninan:

That’s so hard.

Because you’re right at home. We adapted this from their elementary school years called, what’s your glow and your grow today? Where did you shine and where do you need improvement? But slowing down when you’re so busy, especially I was talking to Lisa at the top of this show about how busy we are at this point of the school year, and everything is so overwhelming with the holidays. When you see though a child who is struggling with belonging, it is so hard and so painful for that parent going through it. What’s your advice? You can’t force social groups, but how do you help your kid reestablish a sense of belonging when they feel they don’t belong anywhere?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

Yeah. I think we have to start with ourselves. How do we show up with the young person? How do we interact with that young person and having an open and honest conversation about Baby, the way I’m behaving with you, where I pay attention to you, where I listen to you, where I don’t interrupt you, where I respond to you after hearing what you have to say, this is what we’re looking for. So you’re modeling it, but you’re also teaching signs that they need to look for, for how to trust, how to be open, how to be vulnerable. I think it’s also us in an appropriate age, appropriate way, talking to young people about the ways in which we struggled throughout our lifetimes with isolation. How did we work through it? What tools do we have available? What tools do we wish we had? And then again, it comes back to, yeah, we’re busy and I still think we can find creative ways to create connection with our young people. Sit and listen. I like to tell people a couple things, cook dinner together. Even if everybody doesn’t know how to cook, teach ’em how to cook once a week, once a month, take ’em out for ice cream. Just you and the child. You’re trying to flex the muscle of trust, vulnerability and connection, right? You are modeling that. So those are some of the things that I like to share with parents and caregivers about what they can do even when they’re busy. Small things to teach our children the skills that they need to be successful in overcoming or working through isolation.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I love it. I want to actually as we start to wrap up, go back to where we started, where you started, where you mentioned about parents’ own feelings around belonging and their own experiences coming into this. So how can a parent’s experiences around this be helpful and also how can they be unhelpful?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

I’ll start with unhelpful. When we assume that our children or young people we care for are growing up in the same circumstances that we grew up in, they’re not. For me, for example, growing up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, eighties, nineties, I grew up around Pharrell Williams.

At Hugo, the Neptunes were all from the same area, Timberland, all these, the producer, we weren’t friends. We all grew up in the same vicinity. So it’s literally one degree of separation. Anyway, with that said, in that time as an African-American girl, I know what my experiences were being in gifted classes and all that kind of thing. If I take those experiences and I think about my children in high school and assume that the isolation I felt is identical to the isolation they’re going to feel, I’ve done myself a disservice and I’ve done a disservice. Because I’m skipping over the part where I sit and listen to them talk about what are their experiences.

So I think that’s part of the challenge is we don’t listen and we make assumptions. I think it’s really important for us as parents and caregivers to be willing to try to learn without grilling our kids. So the internet can be your friend. They say Google is free, right? There are ways, there are podcasts out there. There are lots of ways in which we as parents and caregivers can learn better to understand what are the circumstances that our young people are dealing with. So I think there’s one way in which we don’t do our young people a good service assuming their experiences are like ours. And I think we have an opportunity to go learn for ourselves and again, educate ourselves and model for our kids. This is what you do when you’re trying to help somebody you care about. You go get information, process it for yourself, and then share that information with the person you love because maybe there’s something you can say or perspective you can give that will help them.

Reena Ninan:

Dr. Alfiee, for parents who might be struggling with their own sort of sense of belonging, what is your feedback for them? If they are struggling with belonging, how do they make it right with their kids if they’re going through that as well?

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

It’s such a good question. I just think it’s the first thing that I think of is therapy, go to therapy, but not everybody has access, right? I get that.

But I think processing for ourselves, what are those areas of stuckness? Where do I struggle and what situations do I struggle? What are my triggers? I think we have to be willing to educate ourselves about what are the challenges that make us feel isolated? How do we try to work through that? Because I think what happens for a lot of us is we never take the time to do that. So by the time the child comes, we’ve never thought about it. So we have no way to be able to share our insights with our children. 

I know that sounds simplistic, but I think just the act of taking the time to understand and unpack these things for ourselves, I think that’s the gateway to everything. If you don’t understand it for you, how can you teach somebody else? How can you empathize? How can you relate to their experience? So I really think it starts with us as adults, parents, caregivers, mentors, whatever the case may be, taking the time to figure it out for ourselves, and maybe we’re still working through it, but think how powerful it is to show your child that you’re working through something that they might be struggling with that makes you human and that humanizes you to that young person.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s so fun to shop talk with you, Dr. Alfiee, because thinking about it, I’m actually covered in goosebumps. There’s things that we know as psychologists, they’re sort of built into our understanding and our training, and you’re throwing something into high relief that I have such a reverence for in our field, which is that insight alone is a solution. I think Reena and I are firing all these questions that you like, what about this and what do you do about this, and what do you do about that? And you are holding the line and saying, well, why don’t you start by reflecting and thinking about what it’s about and learning a little bit about yourself. And you are right. We know this as psychologists, to have more self-knowledge is an answer unto itself, and either it fixes the problem or it points you in the right direction. And I’m so grateful to you for just bringing us back to that and to that really central tenet of how we as psychologists think about how to make things better.

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

Yeah. Thank you for that, 

Reena Ninan:

Dr. Alfiee. I’m so grateful. I mean, I’m telling you, you got off the stage. We got to talk to you. And Dr. Lisa and I walk in and she’s like, we got to get Dr. Alfiee on the podcast. It’s going to be a great episode. So we are thrilled to have you, and thank you so much.

Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble:

My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.

Reena Ninan:

Wow. I think the conversations to me, Lisa, what she said about talking to your kids and sometimes having these conversations and checking in, because you might not even realize they’re not fitting in. You might think that they are fitting in, and then suddenly you realize they’re not.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Exactly. And the other thing that she reminded us, reminded me of is we can think about our kids belonging or not belonging as something that’s happening outside of our homes. And her guidance reminded me, no kids understand what it feels like to belong and what makes a good sense of being vulnerable by how you are treating them in the very kitchen of your own home. And I think, again, we go casting about for answers. We go looking outside for what’s wrong. And she just held up a wonderfully gracious and generous mirror to say, no, no, no. Why don’t you start by looking in and why don’t you start by assessing the dynamics that are happening right in your very own home with your kid.

Reena Ninan:

So valuable. So great. I’m so thrilled we had her on. So what do you have for Lisa for Parenting To Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, I really, how do I even, so I’m just going to tell what Dr. Alfiee will understand, a free association, just something that came to mind while she was speaking. My eighth grader has gotten really into wanting to play gin rummy with me, and we usually are playing a game at night, and we keep this running tally, and we often aren’t even speaking, we’re just concentrating on the game. This is my favorite part of the day. I’ve enjoyed it. I know she’s enjoying it. And then thinking about what Dr. Alfiee was saying, this is holding space to be together. No agenda, no questions, not even a conversation. It is as connected and meaningful as anything I could hope for. And now based on this conversation, I’m hoping it is helping her build out her understanding of how she should be treated and how she should feel with others.

Reena Ninan:

Being able to find that sense of belonging with your own child, and sometimes it’s not talking to them all the time too. Right. That’s a good, great example, Lisa. Fabulous example. 

Well, now that we talk about belonging, next week we’re going to talk about gossip. What do you do when you’ve got lots of gossip going around and it may or may not affect your kid or somebody? We’ll take that up next week. I’ll see you next week. 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I’ll see you next week. 

Reena Ninan:

Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop, and send us your questions to ask [email protected], and now a word from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast does not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child’s wellbeing, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you’re looking for additional resources, check out Lisa’s website at Dr. Lisa Damour.