Learning to become Wise
Right now it might feel like you live in a war zone. Your difficult teen is unpredictable, unmanageable and ready to fight you on anything and everything. She thinks she knows everything. You don’t know when the next bomb is going to drop. Nasty comments. Refusal to do as you ask. You feel like you walk on eggshells. You’re also afraid of your own angry reaction which just adds fuel to the fire and makes an already difficult situation worse. And when you react badly, you beat yourself up for being a “bad” parent. It’s a painful cycle that seems impossible to change. Often we're part of the problem because we're reacting from fear, anxiety or frustration which creates a negative reaction from our kid. We can learn to use our "wise" brain and transform dysfunctional patterns.
Building Trust and Connection
When our child is struggling with mental health issues that impact their home and school life, trust and connection may be lost. Your own mental health may be on the line causing you to be more reactive, controlling, anxious etc. Rather than focusing on how to "fix" our kids, we can focus on our relationship to build trust and connection back. We help our kids the most when they know we're their ally not matter how difficult and messy their life is. It’s not going to happen overnight. You’ll need patience with the process, but over time you’ll see amazing outcomes.
As We Change, They Change
We’re conditioned as parents to believe that it’s our kids who need to change and improve. Rarely do we consider our own part in the relationship. We have a huge impact on our teen in how we speak and think about them. We blame them for being overly emotional or hostile, rude or disconnected but we fail to notice how OUR emotions and failure to regulate them contributes to the dynamic.
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How We Relate To Our Child
When we take time to examine ourselves, we notice that we have a lot of negative thoughts about our challenging child. We believe these thoughts are just “observations” about our kid's life and struggles. But, there’s many ways to think about behavior. We respond with thoughts that are conditioned with “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” and judgments based on our own upbringing.
These thoughts impact all the ways we show up as a parent with our teen. We think we’re just reacting to our teen as he or she “really is”. The truth is we always view and evaluate their behavior through a filter of conditioned thoughts and beliefs about them. Do these thoughts sound famiar?
“She’s extremely stubborn;” “She’s argumentative and nothing’s ever her fault;” “We butt heads;” “He can be brutally mean;” “He’s lying to me all the time”; “She just has a difficult personality;” “She can be super sweet when she wants something;” “He’s so defiant all the time.”
Coaching Gives You The Tools To Create Change
Therapy seeks to bring clients from a dysfunctional place to a “normal” functioning level and focuses more on emotions and how the client feels. Much time is spent on exploring the historical roots of problems. The therapist is viewed as the expert, and the client is treated as a patient with inherent psychological disorders.
Coaching Is Not Therapy
Coaching is a partnership between coach and client. It offers deep insight and practical tools for change, growth, and understanding to achieve the results you want in your life. You’ll learn the root cause of your difficulties and how to take the steps to transform your life. The coaching process supports the client in transforming belief systems, thought patterns, and behaviors that don’t provide the results they want in life: relationships, career, and overall wellness. I’ve watched clients reach such high levels of personal, interpersonal, and professional life growth.
And all this can be accomplished within a fraction of the time taken with traditional therapy.
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