Eager to Be Healthy – Becky Funk and Connecting to Teens

Becky: Hi, my name is Becky Funk and I am eager to be healthy.

Michael: On today’s episode we have Becky Funk — a former educator, certified master life and confidence coach, and creator of the Safe Place Parent Model. After overcoming years of crippling anxiety and navigating her family’s health challenges through nervous system regulation and vagus nerve techniques, Becky developed powerful tools to help moms of teens move from walking on eggshells to deep connection. She now equips parents to regulate their own nervous system so kids actually want to talk to them. Becky, welcome to Eager to Be Healthy. I hope you don’t mind me rewriting your intro — I wanted to make sure it was in my voice.

Becky: Thank you, I’m excited to be here. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s wonderful.

Michael: Okay, so let’s not waste time. Have you always been healthy?

Becky: Have I always been healthy? No, I have not always been healthy. But I think I realized in college that I should probably stop drinking soda and tea all the time and maybe add some water to my diet and start working out a little bit. So it’s definitely been a journey over the years into getting healthy and trying to be healthy for future me as well.

Michael: Okay, so besides not drinking soda, have you done any other lifestyle changes?

Becky: Yeah, I started working out in college. We tried to eat the outer perimeter of the grocery store, as they say, and added in daily movement of some kind of exercise. So it’s just built into the morning routine now — it’s something I have to do. And I just started working with a friend of mine who’s a trainer and has got me on a nice new plan. So I’m in day two. It feels good.

Michael: Okay, so you said day two? What’s that — like prep for the interview?

Becky: I had an event with my son’s health five years ago and I was chronically stressed through that and I developed chronic back pain. So I was seeing a physical therapist and got that under control. And then this January, when we had a snowstorm, I was shoveling — and I threw my back out again. So I’ve spent the past three, four months trying to recuperate from that and not do something stupid to hurt it again. And so I’m at a place where I’m finally ready to get back into it. I thought the smartest way — I have a friend who is a trainer — I should just ask her for some help so that I get back into lifting weights again and not hurting myself all over in the process.

Michael: Yeah, so I’m originally from New England — as much as I like the snow, I never liked it.

Becky: Yeah. Well, it was one of those times where we’d been cooped up inside and I was like, I want to go shovel snow because I want to move my body and I want to get outside. I walk every day and I hadn’t been outside, and… well, that just did not work out in my favor.

Michael: No, I totally get that. The shoveling’s great for the first five minutes and then you’re like, maybe I should just rent.

Becky: Yeah, I told my husband — he and my son are on shoveling duty from here on out. I’m done.

Michael: So anyway — have you always been happy?

Becky: Have I always been happy? No. Happiness has been a hard one for me. A lot of that comes from, I think, mental health issues in the family in the past and just learning to… I was always a very anxious child. You know, back in the ’80s and ’90s, we didn’t really discuss those types of things. It was just develop some thick skin and kind of move on. So for the longest time, I had really low self-esteem and really did not think very highly of myself. And it’s hard to be happy when you’re struggling in that way. It took a lot of work for me to learn to value who I am — that I’m not too much or wrong or whatever it is — and learning what it means even to be happy. It’s that internal thing. You have to find it. It’s not just how the circumstances fall on you.

Michael: Well, from life experience, I’ve learned that the truly intelligent people are always the ones that tend to have a little bit more anxiety. So that just says that you’re probably smarter than me.

Becky: I’ll take it. I don’t know about that, but I will take the fact that anxiety means I’m smart. I will love that.

Michael: My better half always criticizes me and says, “why are you happy?” And I say, “it’s a choice.” And she’s like, “that’s not a thing.” And I’m like, yes it is. Of the reactions that I can make, I choose the one that makes my body feel better, which tends to be happy. I could ruminate about everything that’s wrong in the world, but that’s not going to help me be mentally well.

Becky: Right. It’s not going to change anything other than making you feel worse. So why bother? I totally agree with that. I think that’s a very smart thing to do.

Michael: Well, it took me many years to figure this stuff out. As you can see, I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I’m not old, but I ain’t young yet anymore. Anyway — so before we get into that little segue, let’s start talking about how you started to get happier.

Becky: How I started to get happier. So I used to be a high school teacher, came with a little bit of stress. I was already a very anxious person and I just realized I was miserable. Like, I had my dream job. I had wanted to be a high school math teacher since I was in third grade. Weird, I know. And I was showing up to this job just stressed out all the time. My husband was kind of like, what’s going on? And I stopped and realized — I’m the only one that can change this. Nobody else can change it. And like you said, I can ruminate in my circumstances and see how wrong everything is, or I can start to see how right everything is. I was tired of feeling miserable all the time. So I started to do the work in my early 20s of just changing how I viewed things. If something bad would happen, it was not just, “this is bad and this is horrible and doom and gloom and I’m just going to go to bed now because life sucks” — but, what can I learn from this? What can I get out of this? How can I use this for something good or to help somebody else? That’s always kind of been my mindset. I’m a teacher, I love to help people. So it’s something that flowed naturally from there. When you’re feeling horrible, the best thing you can do is probably help somebody else, and that’s going to lift your spirits anyway. So it was just that long journey of realizing what can I do? What do I need to think about? What do I need to change in my lifestyle that’s going to make me feel happier? How am I going to find that happiness and choose that happiness?

Michael: So how did you transition into helping other people?

Becky: Great question. Teaching high school, I always loved working with kids. They’re very easy for me to talk to. Some adults are like, “they’re kind of scary.” I don’t think so — I think they’re kind of fun. And it wasn’t just that I went to work to teach them math. I loved being able to help them see the value in themselves. That’s kind of where it really first started for me — being able to tell a kid, “do you realize you’re actually good at this?” Nobody’s ever told them that before. And then I could come in and help them in that way and guide them towards making really good decisions as they walked into adulthood. So I realized that’s kind of at the core of who I am and what I love to do.

I left there when my kids were young and started working for a church, which is all about helping people. I’m an introvert at heart, but I love to meet people, talk to them, get to know them. And then after my son’s illness, I’d quit working at the church and was like, what am I going to do? I was in my 40s — what do I want to be when I grow up? I kind of just fell into going back to helping teens, and to helping parents in this transition, since I really understand teens and how they’re wired and how to help parents bridge that communication gap. So I just fell into it and realized it’s who I am at my core. And it really is very fulfilling for me and makes me happy.

Michael: And now your work targets relating with the younger generation?

Becky: Yeah. So right now — I used to work with anxious teens, but through working with them, I realized that the household really just needs a lot more support. It starts with mom usually carrying the emotional load in the house. So now I work with moms and I help them. The problem they always come to me with is: “my kid just won’t talk to me. I know something’s wrong and they won’t talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on.” And it’s usually just a few tweaks that the moms need to make. So I help moms become that safe place for their kids to come to. Because every parent wants to be the first place their kid comes when life gets hard. But sometimes we do things that push them away instead of pulling them into us. So I help moms bridge that gap and become that safe place.

Michael: Okay, so you train parents — mostly moms — to be a safe sounding board for your children so they will come to you and let you into their life and you get an early warning if something’s wrong.

Becky: Right, kind of like that, yeah. Teens are supposed to do stupid stuff. It’s part of what they do developmentally and you have to expect it. And when they do something stupid, you want them to be able to come to you and be like, “look, I did this thing” — and get the support and learn through it. You want them to learn that while they’re under your roof. So yeah, I help coach the moms so they learn how to become that safe place for their kid.

Michael: So if you were to distill some of your techniques down to actual steps that will prompt people to learn more — could you introduce us into some of the ideas or technologies you use to make children or parents more relatable to the children?

Becky: Yeah, absolutely. One of the first things I always teach parents is what I call the magic question. It came to me through a situation with my own son. He came home from work one day and was kind of going off about everything — it was a bad night. And I’m jumping in trying to give him advice. “Well, why don’t you try this next time? Why don’t you do that?” And he just was like, “Mom. I just want to get this off my chest. I don’t always need you giving me advice and telling me what to do. I’ll figure it out.” And I was like — noted.

You’ll hear this magic question from other coaches as well. But the question is: when your kid comes to you upset, you just ask them, “Do you want to vent? Do you want advice? Or do you want me to help you come up with a plan?” And that puts the agency in your kid’s hands. They can say, “Look, I just want to vent.” And then they get to talk. The hard part is then mom has to smile and nod and reflect — what’s called reflective listening — and engage but not give advice.

For a lot of the moms I work with, we want to give advice. We have the life experience. We want to help our kids. They don’t always want our help. So when we’re constantly giving them advice, they just learn, “I’m not ever going to come talk to you again because you’re not hearing me. You’re not listening to what I’m saying. You’re just trying to think of the next thing to say.” That’s the first thing I always teach parents to do — and it’s always the one where they’re like, “oh my gosh, this is amazing.” It is literally changing their relationship.

I preface that with a lot of parents — because a lot of these moms are dealing with a lot of stress and worry. So I teach them various nervous system regulation tricks and tactics they can do to calm their nervous system. For some moms it’s, “do this thing before your kid comes home from school so that you’re not already frantic.” Because their kids are going to come home fried from the day and not want to talk, and mom’s ready to go and have conversations.

It’s unique to each person — whatever that thing is. So I work with the moms to help them figure out what those things are. Sometimes it’s going for a walk and just getting outside. For some moms it’s going outside and being in the grass — whether you’re sitting in the grass and reading a book, getting some sun, or working in your flower beds. Everybody has a different thing they love.

I often encourage them to match their energy. If there’s a lot of that nervous energy you’re feeling, do something that matches that — go for the walk, go outside and weed a flower bed, work in your garden. If you’re a little bit more down — when you have a lot of energy, that’s your sympathetic nervous state; when you have low energy, that’s your dorsal vagal state, where you get really depressed and lethargic — parents can react in either one of those ways. If they’re low energy, that’s where you might want to go outside and read a book, or maybe you’re really into journaling. You try and find something to do that you enjoy that brings you back into what’s called your window of tolerance, or the way I learned it, window of regulation.

So I give them these tips — how can we bring in these things to help your nervous system and also show up to be the parent you want to be? Because eventually what’s going to happen, as you’re using this magic question and taking care of yourself, your kid’s going to come to you with some big, heavy thing. Say your kid comes and says, “Mom, I need to let you know that I was at a party last night and there was a lot of drinking going on and there were a lot of drugs.” For a parent who didn’t even know their kid was at a party — they thought they were at a friend’s house having a sleepover — how you react to that is going to speak to whether your kid’s going to come back and talk to you again or not. Because if you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you did that!” and you’re visibly upset about it, your kid’s like, “Well, now I can’t come tell you anything because you’re just going to freak out.” So it’s learning to use those nervous system techniques and keep that poker face on while your kid’s telling you everything that happened — and then you can go scream into a pillow later, whatever you need to do. So those are some things I do initially with parents, so listeners can get those quick wins right away in helping to relate to their teens, or really to anybody else in their life.

Michael: So I’m going to simplify it a little bit more than you would like. The first thing is turning off the reflex. As a man, we’re born with this reflex — I’ve been told this a number of times and I’m still working on it. Then we have the calibration. I learned that when I’m on, I typically calibrate my response at a slightly lower energy than the person I’m talking to, to control the pace of the conversation. But I know when I’m off — I have no calibration and I’m typically high energy, which makes people nervous. And then the last part is being non-reactive. So you hear something and you just process it internally but don’t react. And in that non-reaction, you create a vacuum that allows a conversation to continue in a safe way.

Becky: Yes. You boiled those down perfectly. Not bad for a man. When you do those things, your kid is learning that they can trust you — they can come back to you with the big things and have those conversations in the future. I always call it the poker face.

Michael: And you need those conversations to build an early warning system. Because if they’re too shut off, they’re not going to give you the hints that they’re in trouble — either emotionally, physically, with friend relationships. All this stuff could be pressing on their mind. But if they have that outlet, that safe person to talk to, you can guide them more.

Becky: Exactly. Our job as parents is to expect them to make mistakes, expect them to fail, walk with them through it, help them learn so they don’t make it again — without turning them off in that process. That’s the job.

Michael: And unlike the kids in this generation, we grew up in the time before the internet. So all our mistakes don’t go on Facebook or Instagram or X.

Becky: Exactly. We were lucky. I wouldn’t give anything for that again.

Michael: All the pictures from my childhood are pictures my parents wanted to take. Nowadays — click, click, click — digital photos, you can take embarrassing photos and not care about them because the cost of taking pictures is no part of the equation.

Becky: Exactly.

Michael: So you create a safe space, you turn off the fixing, you empower the children to choose, and then you calibrate the energy. Even though they’re telling you something that might upset you, you choose to not react to it. Is there anything more, or is it just that simple?

Becky: It’s just that simple — no, there’s a lot more that goes into it. It’s parents learning how to dissect: “Oh, my kid just did this. They just blew up. We were in a restaurant and I thought everything was fine, and all of a sudden it’s not. What do I do in that situation?”

The teen years — I always call them toddlerhood 2.0. So much brain development going on. The only other time that happens is when they are toddlers and growing. So there’s going to be tantrums. There’s going to be things that don’t make sense because their brain is just finishing. I always tell parents your job raising a teenager is now to teach them how to manage all of their emotions — learn how to gain control over that. It’s something we’re always still working on, because how many times do we hear, even as adults, “you need to respond and not react. You need to calm down and count to 10 before you say something.” Those are the things that start during adolescence.

So I work with parents to help them understand what typical teen development is. And part of that is — they’re watching you. It’s called co-regulation. You need to model the behavior you want them to learn. I remember having an argument with my oldest. He loves to argue about everything — “why is the sky blue?” and all of that. We were having an argument one day in the kitchen as he was a teenager, and he would start and I would go back, and he would come in, and we kept escalating. And I was like — wait a second. I’m the adult in the room. I’m supposed to be teaching him how to have a conversation and engage properly, and I’m clearly not doing that.

So I learned to calm myself down. We could just have a conversation, and I could say, “We can talk about this later when you don’t want to argue about it, but I’m not going to argue with you.” And he really hated it at first because he just wanted to argue — he wanted the dopamine hit from that. And I quit giving it to him. Then it became a co-regulation thing where he could be like, “Okay, I’m a little worked up about something. Can we just talk?” And we just talked, and it would calm him down.

A lot of parents get really upset because their teen starts to pull away from them. “What’s going on? Why are they no longer wanting to hang out with me all the time?” And I’m like — well, that’s because that’s what teens do. They need to pull away so that they can eventually move out on their own and become healthy adults. If they don’t start pulling away at some point, they’re going to be living with you forever. And you don’t want that either. So it’s helping them understand: is this typical teen behavior? Is there something wrong? How do we navigate through the typical stuff? And when does the hard stuff — if it’s not typical — when do I worry about that?

Michael: So it’s setting baseline expectations of what is normal and healthy for the moms or the parents — because not all moms are female. The paternal can be more maternal — it’s rare but it happens. Setting those baseline expectations: these are normal expected behaviors. Allowing the child to develop into an individual. Because you can keep them in the cage, but then they might get used to that cage, and then you’ll have to have an extra bedroom for the rest of your retirement. Which isn’t good for anyone, especially if you want grandchildren.

Becky: Exactly. It’s the price you have to pay.

Michael: Get them out the door, make them safe but not too safe, and just lead them to becoming individuals through conversations, through all the ups and downs. So is there a third part?

Becky: Yes. The third part would be just learning how to have a conversation with them — which I think we kind of covered. We talk about how to become that safe place, the steps to go through, and then it’s just engaging with them, learning how to have that conversation. Teens will talk side by side. When you’re face to face and make eye contact, it can feel like an interrogation. So we do little things like that.

A lot of times parents are like, “they always just give me one-word answers.” And it’s really because you’re not asking them questions they want to answer. That’s what it comes down to. If you’re asking how school was, they just got home from school — they don’t want to talk about school. But ask them what their favorite YouTuber just posted, and they’ll talk for hours about that. So it’s helping them understand how to bridge that gap into having those conversations and get them talking. That’s probably the last leg of what I do — how to have that continuing conversation down the road that gets past the hard stuff in life, but really just getting to know who your kid is and enjoying that blossoming adulthood friendship of getting to understand who they are.

Michael: So it’s the body language, learning where they tend to be more open to have conversations. The side-by-side thing — I actually never noticed, but that makes sense. And then the next thing is to put yourself in your child’s mind as far as what they want to talk to you about. Because if you talk to them about what you want to know about, you’re less likely to get an answer. But if you get them to talk about what they want to talk about, the conversation starts flowing.

Becky: Exactly. We all share videos back and forth with each other. That’s a good way to go — “what did you think about this?”

Michael: Okay. So you have a website?

Becky: I do. It’s thebeckyfunk.com. Everything you want to know about me is probably on the website. And I have a free resource for your listeners if they’re interested. It’s called How to Tell if it’s Anxiety or Just Typical Teen Stuff. That’s a question I get from parents a lot. There’s suggestions on how you can help them. It includes the magic question we talked about, and a big section on co-regulation and why it’s important. So that’s on my website as well, and they’re welcome to download that.

Michael: Okay, and if they want to work with you, can they do that?

Becky: Absolutely. They can contact me through my website. My email address is on there and there’s a “let’s chat” tab — they can just fill out a form and we can get a conversation set up. I offer three different things. There’s a quick Nervous System Reset for parents who just want to figure out, “what do I need to do?” We talked earlier about those things that bring you back into your window of tolerance. By the end of that session, you leave with those things very clearly, so you know exactly what to do.

I’m also very big on the Enneagram, and I use that with my clients. I have one called Understand Your Teen, where the parent and the teenager both do an Enneagram assessment that I provide. I can tell the parent how they are compatible with their teen, where they’re going to clash, and I give them action steps on how to minimize conflict, motivate effectively, and communicate compassionately. So it gives you your own personalized roadmap into how your relationship is with your teen and how you can relate to them better.

Michael: I’m assuming there’s different skills for daughters versus sons — or just a little refinement, because boy children are different than girl children.

Becky: All teens go through the same thing, though. Your boy children are still going to need to learn all the emotional stuff. I just saw a real recently that made me laugh — somebody said, “good, you have boys, you’re not going to have to deal with all the drama during the teenage years.” There’s drama. There’s still drama. It’s just different.

Michael: Different drama.

Becky: It runs the gamut for kids, yeah. We can definitely get into some of those nuances for sure.

Michael: Well, I want to give our audience an opportunity to reach out to you. So they can go to your website?

Becky: Yep, they can go to my website, or they can come follow me on Instagram. My handle is Becky Funk Coaching. Just shoot me a DM, tell me where you found me, and I’d love to have a conversation and get to know you.

Michael: All right, sounds good. And with great gratitude, I want to thank you for coming on the show and giving us a little bit more wisdom in relating to our younger generation. Thank you.

Becky: Thank you, Michael, for having me. I enjoyed this.