Dr. Becky knows parents yell. She says what's most important is what they do right after.

• Becky Kennedy, also known as Dr. Becky online, has a new TED Talk focused on the power of "repair."
• She focuses on how repair after emotional outbursts can drive resilience and attachment.

Many parents wishing they had a voice of reason to carry with them have often relied on the clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy, aka "Dr. Becky."

Kennedy doles out her advice, branded "Good Inside," on Instagram, where she has nearly 2 million followers, and in her podcast, book, and a paywalled membership program of the same name. In face-to-face Instagram video posts, she often offers scripts for parents to use when their children are dysregulated and acting out ("It might sound a bit like this," she often begins). But as it turns out, even she sometimes fails to find her inner Dr. Becky once she's walked off the cliff of patience and understanding and finds nothing but rage for 500 feet down.

"Humans are fallible. We all struggle, we all have triggers, we all have moments where we act out of alignment with our own values," Kennedy told Insider, behaviors like "yelling at our kids or calling them a spoiled brat — both of which I've done."

Her latest endeavor is centered on what to do after you've messed up — and she assures parents that they will.

Dr. Becky has a new TED Talk on 'repair'

In a new TED Talk, Kennedy focuses on the concept of "repair," meaning the self-reflection and conversations that happen after the yelling to unpack the triggers and defuse the patterns behind an incident.

"I remember having this light-bulb moment that the mistake, the yelling, that isn't the element that impacts kids as much as what we do next," said Kennedy.

Her interest in attachment theory — obtained while earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Columbia University — taught her that the presence of repair was protective for children, and she dove into the topic to look at how learning to repair equipped kids to manage relationships.

"Changing the narrative from our focus on a single event to how an event ends up getting processed felt like it could really, really open up possibilities for so many people," she said, "and I am a hopeful person. I really do believe it's not too late."

It's time we acknowledge that parents have emotional blowouts, too

For a parenting expert to base their message on the assumption that parents will have emotional blowouts — rather than trying to cauterize that emotion — feels somewhat radical, especially for mothers, who have long acted as the emotional dampener in their homes.

"When we rage, we signal our refusal to be mistreated, undervalued, and uncared for. Without this first fueling of anger, there will be no change in the family structure or the societal system," Minna Dubin writes in "Mom Rage," a book that examines the structural underpinnings of frustrated, angry parents, set to be released on September 19 by Seal Press.

And parenting takes an emotional toll, Amanda Montei writes in her new book, "Touched Out." "It all stirred memories of sidelining my own desires and of waiting for others to finish taking what they wanted from me," she writes.

Feeling guilty is not helping parents

The cocktail of extractive emotional work and subsequent guilt isn't helping parents, Kennedy said. "So many of us have learned to layer self-blame on top of our struggles. When something's hard, we learn to tell ourselves, 'It's all my fault. Something's wrong with me,' instead of learning to say, 'Wait, this is hard, and I'm struggling, but it doesn't actually mean anything's wrong with me. I'm a good person having a hard time.'"

After an outburst — whether it's yelling or even using the kind of millennial mom voice that feels like yelling to the current crop of children — parents have an opportunity to reflect with their child on what happened. It might sound like, "I yelled, that didn't feel good to you. I believe you," Kennedy said.

Then parents need to look at what led them to the moment where their rage cup overflowed. It's a matter of parents asking themselves: "What would I need to do differently over the course of my day, not just in that one moment?"

Kennedy's framework — which she emphasizes is about "sturdiness," not gentleness — relies on firm boundaries rather than simply validating kids' feelings. The latter sounds like, "'Oh, you really wish you could have ice cream,'" said Kennedy. "If that doesn't go hand in hand with, 'I will not let you hit, and, no, sweetie, we're not stopping at the ice-cream store today,' then that is not helpful for a kid and becomes very, very overwhelming both to parent and child."

Asked whether the work of learning and spearheading a new parenting philosophy could pile more mental labor on women, Kennedy teased apart the parenting thread from the marriage thread.

"Any time we say to a partner, 'Hey, this thing is important to me, and I'd love you to learn more about it, so even if we're not on the same page, we can have a common language to discuss it,' and our partner essentially says no, then we're really talking about a partnership where our partner doesn't really respect us or want to learn more about the things we say matter to us," she said.

Add that conversation to the pile of to-dos.

The challenge of parenting is to diffuse the maladaptive strategies that shaped the caregivers now looking to navigate stressful new calamities on a daily basis — to rebuild the marriage boat and the childhood boat as we sail along.

"I think subconsciously we think we'll be healed along the way, but our kids don't heal us," said Kennedy. "They trigger us."

So before we feel good inside, there is discomfort.

"It is an opportunity to learn a lot about yourself and grow and develop and help your kid do the same," said Kennedy, "and I think actually the framing of parenting that way makes it a little less daunting."