Cazier Counseling

Big feelings are normal for all of us. Feelings are never the problem, but the behaviours those feelings come wrapped can be.

Those behaviours are also opportunities. We want little ones who grow into big ones who can feel big. Being able to handle big feelings in a way that doesn’t cause breakage is a skill that takes lots of time (decades sometimes!) and experience. The only way children can learn how to manage big feelings is to have big feelings.

Our job isn’t to stop those feelings, but to give a safe harbour for those feelings to flow into. Then, when they are calm and feeling connected to us, we can take those feelings and behaviours with gentle hands, and start to show that they can be separate. Big messy feelings don’t have to drive big messy behaviour: ‘My darling there are no wrong feelings. All of your feelings are important and I can handle all of them. What you do with those feelings isn’t always okay - like yelling, but I know you know that. What might you do differently next time you get angry? What can I do that would help your anger be here in a different way to yelling at me?’

In the meantime, it’s going to get messy. We want them to feel the full range of human feels, but driving a nervous system isn’t easy! They’ll learn how to do this best with us right beside them.

For sure our job as parents would be so much easier if they only showed us the convenient feelings -but we don’t want little ones growing into big ones who have learned to put themselves away for the convenience of others. We don’t want convenient humans. We want feeling ones -ones who love big, feel big, who know their own minds, and who do their important things because of it.

We don’t get to choose which feelings have the on/off switch. When we shut down their big messy feelings, we risk shutting down all their feelings, or at least in front of us. We can’t guide them if we can’t see them.

What we want to do is help them find a healthy way to express those feelings. This will take time - and a lot of mess, and that’s okay. We’re building humans, and like all beautiful things, the way through is never clear or pristine. But it was never meant to be.♥️

💛 credit: Zanna Keithley

I’m learning this about love as I am redefining what it means to be married.

STOP TRYING TO FIX ME

Love me instead

Please, don't try to fix me. I am not broken. I have not asked for your solutions.

When you try to fix me, you unintentionally activate deep feelings of unworthiness, shame and failure within me. I can't help it. I feel like I have to change to please you, transform myself just to take away your anxiety, mend myself to end your resistance to the way I am. And I know I can't do that, not on your urgent timeline anyway. You put me in an impossible bind. I feel so powerless.

I know your intentions are loving! I know you really want to help. You want to serve. You want to take away people's pain when you see it. You want to uplift, awaken, caretake, educate, inspire. You truly believe that you are a positive, compassionate, unselfish, nice, good, kind, pure, spiritual person.

But I want you to know, honestly, friend, I feel like a steaming pile of s**t when you try to 'love' me in this old way. It doesn't feel loving to me at all. Quite the opposite. It feels like you're trying to relieve your own tension by controlling me. Under the guise of you being 'kind' and 'helpful' and 'spiritual', I feel suffocated, smothered, rejected, shamed, and completely unloved. I feel abandoned in your love! Do you get that? I feel like you don't actually care about ME, even though on the surface it sure looks like you care! But deep down it feels like you are holding an image of how I should be. Your image. Not mine!

It looks like your love, but it feels like your violence. Do you understand?

Yet as soon as you stop trying to 'help' me, you are of the greatest help to me !

I stop trying to change to please you !
I feel safe, respected, seen, honored for what I am.
I can fall back into my own power.
I can trust myself again, the way you are trusting me.
I can relax deeply.

Without your pressure, your demand for me to abandon myself and be different, healed, transformed, enlightened, awakened, mended, 'better', I can better see myself.
I can discover my own inner resources.
I can touch my own powerful presence.
I feel safe enough to allow and express my true feelings, thoughts, desires, hold my own perceptions. I no longer feel smothered, a victim, a little child to your expert adult.
The courageous adult in me rises.
I breathe more deeply.
I feel my feet on the ground.
Loving attention drenches my experience, even the uncomfortable parts.
My senses feel less dull. Healing energies emerge from deep within.
I feel light, free, liberated from your fear.
I feel respected, not shamed.
Seen, not compared to an image.

You help me so much when you stop trying to help me, friend !
I need my own answers, my own truth, not yours. I want a friend, present and real, not an expert or a savior.

And do you see, when you are trying to save me, you are actually abandoning yourself ?
You are running from your own discomfort, your own unlived potential, and focusing on mine ?
I become your ultimate distraction.
I don't want to be that for you anymore.
Let's break this cycle together !
Let's stop trying to fix or save each other.
Let's love each other instead.
Bow to each other.
Bless each other.
Hold each other.
As we are.
As we actually, actually, actually are.
~Jeff Foster~

Link to my books in the comments

Here here 💞 be your best you!

Love and light xx Les

6 Things That Happen When You Apologise to Children

CREDIT The Calm Classroom

Insightful information!!!

Love this conceptualization!

What if nothing’s wrong with you? What if your boundary struggles are legit and fair and founded?

What if you had *wise survival instincts* that protected you?

What if it wouldn’t have been safe to take up space?

(What if sometimes it’s STILL not safe to take up space)?

Boundary issues in our adult lives are often born of having to deal with problematic boundary issues in earlier times.

Times when we had to focus more on surviving (not thriving).

So maybe it’s time we take a minute to HONOR those survival instincts.

They aren’t a pathology, a problem, or a defect.

They are wisdom.

They helped us do what needed to be done to get us here today.

And now?

Now it’s time to begin shifting.

Because things are a bit different now.

There are realms now within which it’s okay to take up space.

(More than okay. Needed. Necessary).

We can *honor* our past survival skills while we lovingly discover, nurture, and hone our new thriving skills.

After all, it’s our survival skills that got us here.

And we don’t have to disparage or pathologize our needed survival skills in order to grow and change today.

We honor the past when we joyously step into the new.

❤️

Molly

PS. If you resonate with my cartoons and wonder if working together more closely in my 8-week online intensive for women might be a good fit, come check out my free intro class.
Http://boundaried.com 🦋

I have found validation to be a major key in healing relationships!

Thursday Thoughts

Embrace it.

Are you willing to reach to others?

"The strongest among us are those who can reach for others." -Dr Sue Johnson

As parents we want our children to be respectful of other’s feelings and be quick to admit when they are wrong. We want them to give a sincere apology and learn from their mistakes. But how many parents will apologise to their children? We seem to live in a culture where adults feel that they are superior to children and therefore they don’t owe them an apology even when the adult has done the wrong thing. Adults worry that if they admit that they are wrong to a child that this somehow undermines their authority. Or they feel that whatever they did was justified because it was the child that drove them to behave that way, so they shouldn’t have to apologise. All of these beliefs are false and by following these beliefs we are damaging our relationship with our kids and missing out on the lessons our kids could learn from us simply by saying “sorry”.

More information on my blog:

https://www.thetherapistparent.com/post/why-parents-need-to-say-sorry

Link in bio

I like how this quote encourages each partner to be aware of their own attachment wound, and how it shows up in the relationship.

"It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help"

I love this message! Let's learn to just be BE THERE for one another!!!

With

I’ve never thought about it this way! What do you think? Let me know in comments below.

In my couples therapy, healing and reconnection occurs once each partner is able to take a look at the impact their coping behaviors are having on their partner. Owning vs blaming = healing!

This is true! And sometimes we are taught what to expect. For example, cultural programming teaches us that our romantic partner should be able to meet all our needs, and fix all our childhood wounds. We feel heartbroken, and unloved when they don't meet those expectations. Maybe we need to challenge our expectations, but not suppress our needs.

💔 💔 💔

Parents, if you have a child or children who are struggling, and you feel they need counseling - please seek it out systemically (meaning together). Go into it with the idea that YOU need help from the counselor to create a healthier environment for your child. Please don't turn this around on your kid and make them out to be the problem. You're all in this together, and you need to fix it together!

Here's an analogy: Let's say the battery in your car is dying (it's because it's not being charged by the alternator, but you don't know this). So you take it in to the mechanic (the therapist) and you tell him/her that the battery needs to be charged. The mechanic charges up the battery but over time it dies again. You continue to repeat this process and eventually you conclude that A.) your battery is faulty or B.) that the mechanic is not competent.

Truth is another reason may exist - C. (the alternator, which recharges the battery, is faulty and that is why the battery is dying).

A good mechanic thinks systemically, and should be able to identify, and tell you, that the battery is draining because the alternator is not working properly (Spoiler Alert - parents you are the alternator in this analogy). But once you fix the alternator, you can re-charge the battery (the kid), put them both back into your car, and everything will run more effectively.

Unknown Author

💛 credit:

You can't rush your healing, you need to embrace every feeling. Years of layers need pealing, so you can begin revealing the pain you've been concealing. This is how you start dealing with all the pain you've been feeling 💖