How to Reframe Your Negative Thinking and Change How You Feel
From Blame to Understanding, One Reframe at a Time.
Here’s How.
Kelly Williams, a clinical social worker and ADHD parenting specialist, explained something so many working moms need to hear: your brain is wired to notice the negative first. She calls it the poison berry theory, our ancestors survived by remembering what hurt them, so negative thoughts reach our conscious mind faster than positive ones. That means when your child melts down or your morning falls apart, your brain jumping straight to "this is a disaster" isn't a personal failing. It's simply how you're built, especially when you're already stretched thin.
Kelly's practical fix isn't forced positivity, it's neutral thinking. Instead of leaping from "my child is being impossible" to "everything is amazing," she teaches parents to land somewhere honest in between, like "my child is overstimulated" or "this morning is harder than usual." That small shift moves you from blame into clarity. She also pointed out that harsh self-talk doesn't stay contained. As she puts it, being a taskmaster with yourself means the people around you feel your whip too. Pairing every hard thought with something true and strong, "I'm not great with time management, but I'm flexible and spontaneous", helps break that cycle.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Negative thoughts arrive first because of how our brains evolved, not because you're failing.
2️⃣ Aim for neutral, honest self-talk instead of forced positivity.
3️⃣ Harsh self-talk affects everyone around you, so balance it with something true and strong.
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“Your body has to calm before your mind can help.”
Guest Appearing in this Episode
About Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams is a parenting coach, family therapist, and creator of the Read. Regulate. Rebuild. Method™️. With 28 years of clinical experience, and as a mom of two kids with ADHD and a late-diagnosed adult with ADHD herself, Kelly helps parents understand what's actually happening underneath their child's behavior so they can stop reacting and start responding with clarity. Her work is rooted in a simple but powerful idea: your child isn't misbehaving, they're being misread.
Full Transcript
Tia Graham (00:01.612)
Hi Kelly, welcome to the show.
Kelly Williams (00:04.419)
Thank you, Tia. I'm happy to be here.
Tia Graham (00:07.68)
You have been an ambitious, hardworking, because I know all the different things that you do, mom, for 21 years, and you have a lot of experience and wisdom and tools for me and for the listener. can you just start off by sharing how come you're really passionate about helping?
Parents with neurodivergent kids. What's your your kind of your why there?
Kelly Williams (00:41.839)
How did I get here, right? Well, be long before I ever had kids, I became a clinical social worker. So I went to undergrad, went to graduate school, did my clinical supervision for two years and became a family therapist. And and I worked in community mental health for about 16 years before I had my son.
His name is PJ and and you know, that's what I did. I I was a family therapist, I treated families, I worked with families, I helped everybody get along in community mental health. It's kind of a medication clinic. So medicine was a big part of it, working with physicians and psychiatry and all the things. And then my son was born and I
And I thought, okay, I'm gonna stop doing all this. And I took a job at the University of South Florida on the faculty there. And that and anyway, you know, you think it's gonna be easier, and then it isn't, right? Like, so you've got these kids and you're doing all the things and it's all still happening. Well, then when my son was in first grade, he got diagnosed with ADHD. So that was the year that our crisis happened, and it was
Awful, right? Like i i you know, I thought
Tia Graham (02:06.605)
First grade the year of our crisis too. Yeah.
Kelly Williams (02:10.125)
Yeah, yeah, first grade. Right. It that's how it is for a lot of people. In my practice, first, third, and ninth are the years. So anyway, but so yeah, first grade was when he had his crisis and we got referred, you know, for things and I thought, okay, well, no problem, right? Like I work with psychiatry. I I got this. No problem. Well, guess what?
Tia Graham (02:18.765)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Williams (02:36.419)
Wasn't quite like that, you know? And we we finally got in to see the doctor, because of course I wanted to see the best person in town. And so we had to wait months and months and months for the appointment and all the things. And, you know, and basically we get in there and the doctor says to me, you know, sorry for your luck. He's the most hyper kid I've seen in in a long time. And here's a prescription. Good luck with it. And I was like, Okay, wait a minute. This is not enough. Not enough.
Tia Graham (02:43.639)
Yeah.
Tia Graham (03:05.185)
Right. Like I waited for that. Like I could have told you that.
Kelly Williams (03:08.321)
Mm-hmm. Exactly. So, so you know, that kind of put me on this path to how what do I do? Right. And I think another another thing that happened for me was that I sought out a local support group. Dr. Walt Karniski happens to be somebody local to where I live in Tampa, Florida. he has a book about ADHD medication and he's a a person who
contributes to Attitude Mag and kind of the bigger education websites. so I wanted to take my husband. He was doing a talk locally and so I took my husband to see his talk because he is a geologist, right? Like I'm a therapist and I work with people and I understand he like works with rocks. Okay. So he had a lot. He had a lot to learn, right.
Tia Graham (03:45.901)
Yeah.
Tia Graham (04:02.766)
Right. Easier than people in a way, I would think. Right.
Kelly Williams (04:08.045)
Right. And so, you know, so it was kind of through that support group that where I really started finding the connections and learning and understanding. And so at that point I had a little private therapy practice, right? A little part-time practice. you know, what I decided to do was I transitioned my practice to focus only on ADHD and that and started supporting families. Now
Tia Graham (04:15.406)
Mm-hmm.
Tia Graham (04:23.085)
Yeah.
Kelly Williams (04:34.987)
At that time, you couldn't have both an ADHD diagnosis and an autism diagnosis. So back then it was quite different. I totally, totally. So you know, so those early years we had to work around stuff like that. And anyway, so I, you know, kind of my parents, my families who came to my practice, they helped me.
Tia Graham (04:40.632)
Right, which is so crazy now, like to even think that you couldn't have both.
Kelly Williams (05:01.433)
Create my method, right? The thing that I teach now. So I teach it online now because I wanted to reach more families and support more families. And the truth of it is, is there's a lot of things that you can do to make parenting a neurodivergent child easier in how you structure the environment and how you understand what is causing the things that make our lives so difficult, right?
Tia Graham (05:22.402)
Yes.
Kelly Williams (05:31.312)
and so, you know, being able to reframe what you see before you is a big part of what I teach parents to do. and so that word reframe means, right, like see what's happening, but train your brain to think about it, maybe more as a feature rather than a flaw, right? In a more positive light than
Tia Graham (05:31.81)
Right, right.
Tia Graham (05:52.536)
Mm-hmm.
Tia Graham (05:58.891)
No.
Kelly Williams (06:00.172)
always yeah, thinking about how hard things are.
Tia Graham (06:01.654)
Always negative.
Right, right. Well, I have been obsessively studying, and then I teach and write and speak about positive psychology. And so you are speaking right to my heart and soul, just with that, you know, the the tidbit that you ended with. for the working mom who's listening, who is feeling super overwhelmed, very stressed.
anxious and life is so full with with work with all of their kids' needs and really I say you know it's like two full-time jobs and then you might have other children then you have marriage then you have the house family friends everything and and it feels like there's a lot of big challenges feels like there's a lot of big obstacles
And it feels like there's a lot of just negativity happening, right? And I was in this space for a good three and a half years. It was like felt like non-stop huge boulders come. Speaking of the rocks, I was like, dear God, can I catch a break, right? So can you talk about how that working mom can use reframing, not just in parenting, but
Kelly Williams (07:10.511)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kelly Williams (07:19.247)
Sure.
Tia Graham (07:35.008)
in different ra in different ways to help their stress and to help their overwhelm and can you get like really practical like how can we actually do this?
Kelly Williams (07:45.272)
Okay. Well, you know, I think, you know, everything that I teach, I think it's important for parents to kind of like understand the why, because it does take effort to change behavior, right? Like the hardest thing to do is to is is to change human behavior. Right. So so how
Tia Graham (08:02.284)
Ours included, right? Like human behavior.
Kelly Williams (08:08.739)
Right, your how we think about things is actually related to how we feel about things. And kind of that
Tia Graham (08:17.132)
Wait, let's just let's just double click on that one. How we think about things affects how we feel about things. And then I'm thinking it also affects how we act.
Kelly Williams (08:20.835)
Okay.
Kelly Williams (08:25.389)
Yes, it does.
Absolutely, right. Yeah. So you know, like let's take the situation of somebody cuts you off in traffic, right? You're driving to work, you're late, you know, and somebody cuts you off in traffic. And your first thought is, what a jerk, right? That a-hole. I mean, I can't believe, you know, and then the feeling that it generates, anger, frustration, irritation, right?
But look, what if somebody cuts you off in traffic, you're driving to work, and you think, my God, they must really have something important that they are trying to get to today, to be driving like that. Right? What what is the feeling that comes with that thought? It's not so angry. It's not so irritable, you know? So it's really quite that simple, right? But it's not that simple.
Because there is this theory. neuroscience calls it the poison berry theory. Have you come across this one?
Tia Graham (09:27.407)
I've never heard about this. The poison berry theory. Okay.
Kelly Williams (09:32.099)
Poison berry theory. This has to do with how our brains evolved. Okay. And so with early humans, it was actually more important for them to remember something, like if they ate something that made them sick, it was more important for their brain to remember that than if they ate something that tasted good. Okay, so our brains evolved.
Tia Graham (09:49.378)
Right.
Tia Graham (09:54.488)
Right. Remember, remember what hurt us or could hurt us.
Kelly Williams (09:59.896)
Yeah, yeah. Th this was how we survived, okay? And so our brains evolved though, where the part of the brain that holds our negative information is is situated in front of the part of the brain that holds the positive information. It is
Tia Graham (10:16.504)
And this is the negativity bias that we have.
Kelly Williams (10:19.637)
It is, yeah, yeah. So literally every single time you have a thought, a negative thought will will reach the front of your mind, right? Your consciousness faster than the positive thought. Every single time, because of the structure.
Tia Graham (10:35.596)
Okay, so every single time I've never heard it said like this, so every single time the negative thought will reach your sorry, what did you say?
Kelly Williams (10:42.913)
It will reach your logic mind, the front of your brain. This is the part where we we are aware of what the thought is. The negative will always come in first. It will always be the first to arrive. Because the distance it travels is shorter. Like I don't think that's technically right. You know, think about it that way, right? Okay. So it's right. So when all these things are
Tia Graham (10:46.71)
Yeah. The prefrontal cortex. Yeah.
Tia Graham (10:59.662)
Got it. Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly Williams (11:09.209)
Harder than average because let's be honest, right? Like as parents of neurodiverse children, our parenting job is harder by a thousand percent. In so many ways. Correct. Right. So okay, so right, so so everything is harder for us.
Tia Graham (11:20.108)
I say a million sometimes. Yes. Yes.
Kelly Williams (11:30.447)
And when that happens, we're overwhelmed all the time. That means we have less effort, we have less energy available to put effort into changing how we think about things. And a negative thought is always going to arrive first. So this is no small thing that we're talking about here. Okay? No small thing. All right. So, but you said what are some practical things that parents can do? Right?
Tia Graham (11:38.935)
Right.
Tia Graham (11:50.124)
Right.
Tia Graham (12:00.716)
Right. Yeah. And I would love to take like just what you're saying, like let's get practical with, so let's say you have a busy work day, right? You have meetings, you have things, and
Something happens in the morning with children or spouse that is challenging, that is triggering. Let's that you get triggered. And that negative, that negative thought is coming first, right? And you're like, you might be, you might get angry, you might react, you might, your cortisol and your stress is on the roof, that sort of thing.
Kelly Williams (12:32.695)
Rendering. Okay.
Tia Graham (12:50.38)
Because it is this, let's be honest, it's a high, like you said, it's challenging and also add work on top. Like it's there's a lot of stress, right? And a lot of priorities. So let's say you're triggered, you're triggered in the morning. You have this crazy full day and someone you love dearly triggers you.
Kelly Williams (13:03.947)
So reframing.
Tia Graham (13:13.654)
And you're y and you're the mom in the house.
Tia Graham (13:20.014)
So ca what specifically, let's say someone like says something or does something and you feel heart's going faster, blood's going faster, jaws tight.
Kelly Williams (13:26.808)
You feel the trigger.
yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the first the first step in any of this is to notice that you've been triggered, right? Like just bring awareness to that. And then you know, I have always coached parents like
When when we're reframing something, right? When we're trying to take a situation and think about it in a more positive light, I don't know, but for me, I cannot that feels too Pollyanna to me. Like I can't be like go from super negative to positive. That doesn't work for me. But I can.
Tia Graham (14:04.716)
It's yeah, it feels a little toxic. Right. If it's like your kid can't go to school, you're not like, this is so great. My whole work day is messed up. Like, you're right, it feels too fake.
Kelly Williams (14:13.134)
No, no.
Right. So I always coach parents to go from negative to neutral. And this is all that it is. Yeah. Just pay attention to what you're saying to yourself. That's all it is. Just and you know, like if you can pause for five minutes to to let that negativity be there a little bit, but then decide, like, okay.
Tia Graham (14:21.681)
well.
Kelly Williams (14:45.174)
I I've been angry and now I'm gonna move on from this, right? So this is like what we call recovering. you you know, and we have like we can't when you're triggered, that's your fight-flight-freeze activation. Okay, your your body is doing its thing. You have hormones, you have all these things are going on on the inside.
The only way to communicate to your body to have your body calm down is through your breath. It is not through your mind. So so to help your body you need to do body body movement, breathing, somatic work. That's correct. But when we w
Tia Graham (15:21.506)
automatic work.
Kelly Williams (15:27.396)
When we hold on to that negativity. Okay. So when you can't let it go in the morning and you're getting yourself into your ten AM meeting and you're still kind of grinding your teeth and kind of being mean to the other people maybe that are in the room, that's we call like that's kind of ruminating. That's kind of like letting this trigger, sort of like sneakers in the dryer, right? You know, that that thud, thud, thud. It's like you it gets on a
Tia Graham (15:48.376)
Right.
Tia Graham (15:53.421)
Right.
Kelly Williams (15:57.292)
loop and you cannot let it go. Okay. so just noticing that and then you know sometimes you have to do something more dramatic to unhook it right like sometimes taking a really brisk walk or splashing freezing cold water on your face right like there's yeah yeah like sometimes you have to do something but once you can get the thought to unhook
Tia Graham (16:00.45)
Right.
Tia Graham (16:16.14)
Ellie, I had to take a walk this morning.
Kelly Williams (16:26.286)
The reframe is trying to go back and look at the situation and take turn it from be honest, okay? Be honest about what happened, right? My child was overstimulated. They could not handle the tag on the clothing this morning. I really wanted to get out the door on time because I have this big meeting. I was rushing them sh and they reacted in the same way they always do.
And I wrecked it, right? Because half the time it is our interaction with our child that is causing everything to turn into like a tire fire. So take, you know, right? Like feeling frustrated, you know, it's upsetting that it is so freaking hard. And that I I'll talk about myself personally, right? That I forget that he is so sensitive to this, or that when I'm running out of time, I can't rush them. I can't. And I forget. And then
Tia Graham (17:10.956)
Yeah.
Tia Graham (17:20.705)
Right.
Kelly Williams (17:22.68)
And then it all goes to shit, you know. So anyway. So
Tia Graham (17:24.77)
Right, right. So really like when you're saying looking at the situation and be honest, it's like what were the facts actually? Like what exactly happened? And you're looking at it like bird's eye view objectively and taking the emotion out of it. And then you're yeah, you're gonna have a different perspective.
Kelly Williams (17:31.15)
Yeah. Right.
Kelly Williams (17:38.19)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Kelly Williams (17:44.356)
Yeah, and then you know, I think too also important is not you what is your expectation of yourself, right? Like what parent can handle this with grace 100% of the time? If that is your expectation, that's unreasonable because what we're dealing with is a thousand times harder than anybody else, right? So, in truth, okay, like
Parents' ability to to think more, right? To like keep the focus on what's strong, not just what's wrong, has a lot to do with how they feel about themselves. Okay. So, like, for example, if you are a taskmaster, right? If you are like, I'm gonna get to work, I'm gonna get and all this stuff done. If you're a taskmaster with yourself, then
Others are gonna feel your whip. That's what they feel from you.
Tia Graham (18:47.778)
Okay, this is hitting home because I am a
Kelly Williams (18:50.039)
Okay.
Tia Graham (18:56.952)
There's a million titles, right? Like what's coming to mind is like type A overachiever. I say I re I'm a recovering perfectionist, but if you are and you you call it like a task manager, but it's like it's like do do do do do do do, think do think do think do, then it and you expect that of yourself, then you expect it of others.
Kelly Williams (19:02.681)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Williams (19:08.632)
Kelly Williams (19:23.47)
Mm. You do. We do. Like this is just human nature, right? So even if you don't mean to.
Tia Graham (19:28.13)
Yeah. How did you see it? You said it in a very cool way.
Kelly Williams (19:32.705)
If you are a taskmaster with yourself, others will feel your whip. And that is actually a quote from my favorite book in the world, written by Deborah Adele. It's the book is called The Yamas and the Ni Yamas. it's the ethical practice of yoga. So the Yama, Yamas and the Niyamas are
Tia Graham (19:50.252)
Never heard of it. Okay.
Kelly Williams (20:00.107)
a framework for how to be in life. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tia Graham (20:01.558)
Yeah. Got it. Well, I love, love, love yoga. So I will I will look into it. and so going from ch making the choice, and this is practice, and this is not about being perfect, like you said, like there's no, you know, you can't be zen and calm all the time, you know.
I say like the Dalai Lama is well, he meditates four times a day and he doesn't have kids. So, you know, a little different life. in this case, when you you're noticing these these I call painful emotions, right? That like you're noticing what your thoughts your negative thoughts too, and then pausing and you're letting that emotion happen, right? And you're not trying to like stop it.
Kelly Williams (20:31.406)
Right. Right.
Kelly Williams (20:48.676)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Williams (20:56.645)
Mm-hmm.
Tia Graham (20:56.672)
And then paying attention, connecting to your body and looking at the situation just like this is what happened, that's getting the neutral.
Kelly Williams (21:07.172)
Trying to be neutral. That's trying to be neutral, yeah.
Tia Graham (21:11.262)
Right. Whereas trying to make it positive is like, well it's a great thing that my kid was screaming about their socks and I lost it on them and missed my meeting. Like that was so great. That's like, no, we're not trying to get we're not like, this is so this is a positive thing.
Kelly Williams (21:28.208)
Mm-hmm. Well, but we can look at it as like he instead of saying he was really finicky, you could say, you know, he really is discriminating, right? He knows what he wants. Right? Mm-hmm.
Tia Graham (21:40.8)
Yes, yes. That's so it that's really interesting you brought that up because my husband and I have been practicing collaborative problem solving and for for years and our collaborative problem solving coach noticed a few things my husband was saying and she and was like don't say it like that because just and it's it wasn't like a really negative thing, but just the way like finicky ver, you know, kind of what you just did and like the language that we
put towards things, then change how we think, feel, act for sure.
Kelly Williams (22:11.396)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Williams (22:18.712)
It's all connected. And so even just paying attention, right? To how do you talk to yourself? Are you using those kind of like not super negative, but kind of negative for it, right? Is there, you know, like I am terrible with time management. Man, I can't be right terrible with time management. but I can be really spontaneous, really flexible because, you know, that's right. So
Tia Graham (22:20.258)
Yeah.
Kelly Williams (22:48.676)
So, like kind of just every time I think about something wrong, I try to match it with something right, right? Or something strong. Yeah. And you know, this is important just as a habit because over the course of a day, we get easily 300, 400 times more negative thoughts in mind because of that poison berry theory, okay?
Tia Graham (22:59.743)
So he's got yang yang, right.
Kelly Williams (23:18.456)
So like we really do, it it is good for us to be mindful about how we're saying things and how we're thinking about things. And it changing your self-talk is going to change everything on the outside.
Tia Graham (23:29.624)
Right.
Tia Graham (23:35.614)
life life-changing. And I agree with you 1000%. Four years ago, I read Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristen Neff and started being very intentional about the practice of self-compassion with self-talk and also the practices of common humanity. And it had like it has been life-changing. And
I was very self-critical, very hard on myself. really for a decade as a working mom, like really flipping hard on myself. And the last two, two and a half years, I'm like, you know, it still comes, but I'm like, nope, not you anymore. Like, I'm I'm gonna listen to this cheerleader, this really nice friend, this best friend.
And gosh, I wish I learned about it when I was 18, way before I had kids. So absolutely.
Kelly Williams (24:35.322)
Yeah, right. Why don't we teach this in schools, right?
Tia Graham (24:38.562)
We need to teach this. Yes, yes, yes. Kelly, you have shared so much. And for me personally, I am gonna use this. I think in marriage, it's really gonna help me too. If people want to learn more about you and like find you, follow you, where can they go?
Kelly Williams (24:57.48)
I am at ADHD Parenting Balance on Instagram. My website is parentingbalance.com. And I would love, yeah, I would love for your listeners to check it, check me out. And I am offering a a masterclass in September. so
Keep an eye on my Instagram for like how to sign up for that. yeah, like I would love for your, you know, for your listeners to be involved in what we're doing here.
Tia Graham (25:30.624)
Okay.
Tia Graham (25:35.726)
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Feel Good Club show. You've made me feel good today. And I look forward to seeing you soon.
Kelly Williams (25:42.672)
Thank you. Okay, thank you.