Alienation didn't just take your child — it may have convinced you that you deserve to suffer. In this episode, Shelby Milford exposes the hidden ways alienated parents unconsciously punish themselves through isolation, deprivation, and burnout — and reveals why misery isn't the bridge back to your child. If you've ever felt guilty for being happy, this episode will change how you see your own healing.
Main Points:
-
The "Toss-Up" Metaphor — Why the brain defaults to self-blame when alienation strips away your sense of control, and how self-blame becomes self-punishment (the "serve").
-
Hopper One: Isolation — How alienated parents withdraw from friends, community, and social life, convinced that hiding away is the only "acceptable" response to their grief.
-
Hopper Two: Deprivation — Denying yourself basic comforts, financial stability, joy, and rest because you unconsciously believe you don't deserve them while your child is suffering.
-
Hopper Three: Intentional Burnout — Using hyper-productivity, perfectionism, and exhaustion as a way to "prove" your love and effort, often rooted in childhood coping patterns.
-
The Tether Illusion — Debunking the belief that staying miserable keeps you emotionally connected to your estranged child.
-
Breaking the Cycle — Practical reframe ("This is my self-punishment mechanism trying to keep me safe — I choose peace") and the lighthouse parenting metaphor for stable, sustainable healing.
Key Takeaways:
-
Self-blame is a control mechanism, not truth. Your brain prefers the "certainty" of being at fault over the terrifying uncertainty of having no control.
-
Misery is not a bridge back to your child — in fact, it creates more emotional distance, not less.
-
Isolating, depriving, or burning yourself out doesn't honor your child's pain — it just adds more suffering to the situation.
-
You don't need to wait for reconciliation to reclaim joy, connection, or peace. You can begin healing and feeling love for your child right now.
-
Self-punishment feels like accountability, but it isn't. Compassionate, shame-free accountability is more effective and sustainable than harshness.
-
Recovery starts with naming the pattern — recognizing when guilt, isolation, or overwork is a self-punishment mechanism, and consciously choosing differently.
Episode Transcript
Why Alienated Parents Secretly Self-Punish
On this show, we talk extensively about healing your life after alienation, right? Today, I wanna ask you a tough-ish personal question, And that is, are you secretly punishing yourself
for the breakdown of your family?
Because when alienation strips away the control, the sense of control, and I don't mean that in the pathological sense, um, sense of safety and control that you used to have, your brain will often default to the predictability of self-punishment over the terrifying uncertainty of a peaceful life.
Today we're gonna be pulling back the curtain on how we use misery as a survival strategy
and how you might just be actively keeping yourself broken So let's get into it
You are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 203
Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you.
Stay tuned.
Hey, y'all. How we doing today? So today is part two of our four-part series on reclaiming your agency after alienation or estrangement. Okay? So if you listened to last week's episode, hopefully s- you already started unpacking the tent that you pitched in the wreckage, right? And so today we're gonna be looking at what happens next.
because if and when you realize that you've been passively bowing out, and if you haven't listened to that episode, it might be helpful for you to go listen after this one. But when you realize,
Self-Blame is the Toss Up, Self-Punishment the Serve
if and when you realize that you've been passively bowing out, the guilt that you might feel because in your mind of this fractured family, it doesn't just vanish.
Often the guilt just morphs into an active internal system of rules, So I came up with this metaphor, a couple weeks ago when I was, whenever I was doing, writing out the, outlines for these four episodes, you know? And I thought of how self-punishment actually comes up, like for us as alienated parents.
I mean, like there's obviously something that comes first, right? We don't just punish ourselves out of nowhere. And so I, for right now, I want you to visualize a game of tennis,
okay?
before a player can actually hit, deliver a powerful serve, they've gotta toss the ball up into the air, right? That toss of the ball up into the air, sets the entire motion, right, game into play. In the upside-down world of alienation, I'm saying here for us today
that self-blame is the toss-up in the air, When your world is shattered by alienation or estrangement, the helplessness that we all feel can be terrifying, The human brain just on default, by default detests a lack of control. And when I say control, I don't mean it
a pathological sense.
I mean it it's what every s-single probably being on this earth, but especially humans, we The brain wants, strives to find a sense of control and safety, right? So to escape that helplessness of feeling out of control, your mind might reach for self-blame, the toss-up, okay? Even though you know that the alienating parent, like with your higher thinking, you know that this is not all your fault, it doesn't matter.
You will end up absorbing the guilt because your brain would rather have absolute certainty,
The certainty of being the, quote-unquote, "bad parent." this may be compartmentalized for you. You may all... now not always feel like that. But look at your behaviors. it's very, very common. Um, so to You'd rather have the-- sorry,
you'd rather have the absolute certainty of being the bad parent because it's controllable, it's fixable, it's solvable, you get me, right? Than accepting this devastating, maybe, reality of having zero control over what is happening, what has happened to your child, happening to your child, and what's happening with your life, with your role, and all the things, So you toss the ball up by internalizing the guilt, And the self-blame. And once that ball is in the air, self-punishment would be the heavy hit, the serve
that brings the ball down and over to the other side of the court and creates this artificial system of security, Structure and safety.
So subconsciously you adapt to this distorted sort of unspoken rule that suffering equals accountability. You begin believing that if you are hurting
You are actively paying the debt to your child, to society, to your own conscious conscience maybe, to the karma gods , you know? it's sort of an, uh, an illusion. Suffering ends up becoming your currency. You begin to isolate yourself deprive yourself of basic joys, possibly run yourself into the ground because you believe that exhaustion is the only visual receipt
That proves that you're a good p- person, a good parent. So, um, today we're gonna catch that tennis ball. Okay? We're pulling back the curtain on th- this internal prison
So that you can stop using misery as an absolution that you don't really need. S- self-punishment is basically conscious misery, okay? It's done mostly, internally, or that's where it starts anyway, right? You're blaming yourself, you're blaming yourself, and then you're like, "I must absolve myself in some way."
W- every person does-- has probably done this at some point in their life, and usually the idea there is that, " If I'm not harsh with myself, then I won't learn my lesson," you know, kind of thing. So it's done internally. It's usually done within your own mind, your own emotional life, right? And it sounds like, um, I'm being an accountable parent, who refuses to forget maybe the tragedy So you become really harsh on yourself, to yourself. The core fear with self-punishment, I think, is like, "If I feel happy," this is-- you say some version of this to yourself, "it means that I don't care that I lost my child," you know?
How Your Mind Stores & Feeds the Self-Punishment Loop
Now anyway, I wanna talk about how your mind actually stores and feeds the self-punishment loop, I'm-- it uses what I'm calling three ball hoppers. You know, in tennis, they have those, little ball baskets? They're called ball hoppers, okay? So there's three ball hoppers or three pillars, really, these are basically the containers that keep your misery organized, structured And constantly supplied. Okay? So let's look at the first hopper right now.
The Isolation Trap: Feeling Like a Burden
All right, so hopper one is isolation, feeling like a burden. And now last week I spoke about this too.
But today I wanna talk about a different aspect or nuance of it. Okay? Slightly different. The mechanism here, what happens is you will pull away from your friends, pull away from family and your support networks, all of it. Your f- pull away from your community. You may decline invitations, you may choose not to go out with a group of people to some restaurant where you know you might be seen.
It, it can happen in all the ways, but basically you isolate yourself. Okay? And the unconscious lie can sound like, " I'm damaged goods." My grief is way too heavy and I don't wanna bring anybody else down with me. I don't wanna burden them with my situation, with my reality." Right? But the reality away from that unconscious lie is that you likely are isolating yourself, and this can sound in different ways, I'm gonna present it in a couple different ways.
Because hiding away feels like an outward display of your unworthiness. it's showing, it's stating to the world, and I'm gonna talk about this actually right now,
stating to the world that you are hurting, that you are miserable. I convinced myself, when I was there and when I was isolating myself and saying no and, um, not going out, you know, not going to the Christmas parties or the, baseball, other kids' baseball games with my, the moms and all that stuff, I convinced myself that I didn't have anything in common with them anymore.
And I also worried that they'd judge me or th- or that they would ask me questions that I didn't have any of the answers for, right? Like, "What's going on? Where is she? When is she coming back?" All of that. I had no idea. I had no idea. And I didn't wanna always sound like the mom that was like, "Oh, it's gonna be soon," and then have that not happen, like cry wolf in the opposite way, you know?
It just felt s- like so much. And those questions already
put me in a huge stress response, and then I felt crazy when I was answering them because I was stammering and all the things, right? So I just decided that it was easier to not, right? To not accept the invitations, to stay by myself. And I told myself that community, the only community that I knew
was just basically inaccessible to me now, right? Like, that is not even an option. I had to shut it down. It-- the way that I was thinking back then, and I was not managing my mind at this point, I had not started on this path, right? And so I, I, I just told myself that that is not an option for me anymore.
And so it was like grayed out in my world. And then I absolutely did have the idea bobbing around in the back of my head that if I stop all social activity, like cease all the activity, um, social activity,, that probably because for me, I... Before that, before the alienation really took hold, I lived my life, and if you guys have been listening for a while, you probably know, I lived my life out loud.
It was, I was, I did because of the community and where I worked, I knew a lot of people, and if I walked in somewhere, whether I liked it or not, most of the time I felt like it was a curse and not a blessing, especially w-when it came to this whole situation of alienation because I didn't wanna, be noticed, and I always ended up was.
Um, and I think it has something to do with the way I project my voice. I don't know. But because of the fact that I lived so out loud and because I was so active socially, boisterous and at- I'm sure if you asked somebody else what, what they thought, depending on who the person is, they'd have other adjectives for me.
But anyway, I, I knew that it being gone wouldn't go unnoticed, that people were gonna notice that I was nowhere to be found, That I just dropped off the face of the earth. It looked like that's what it was, right? So it was a statement for me. Like, see, I'm grieving and I'm also in a state of self-inflicted punishment.
I'm not allowing myself the liberty or the basic human right of being out there with society, is I-- and in fact, it's so true that like now I'm saying it the way that I just said it, I didn't feel... I, I ma- did it to myself. It was my own thinking. But I probably at the time thought that it was just a fact that it wasn't within my rights to go out there with other people.
But it was really my own thinking that caused that, right? I didn't feel worthy enough to be amongst others. I didn't fee- I felt in p- going to places where I used to, frequent quite a bit, there came a point where it didn't feel right. It almost felt like I was doing something bad. Like I was uh, it was against the law or something.
Like I don't belong here. That's what it felt like. It, it put me in a stress response. I do not belong here. Like, who's gonna see me? This isn't legal, you know? but it, was all made up in my mind because of the, what I was believing, and it happened so, just like I was talking about last week, so subtly, gradually, that I didn't never realize because it was this story that was just being sort of built throughout, you know, months and months, years then, you know?
And so undoing that later was interesting. It really was, now that I think about it. It was like, "Oh wait, I have the right to be here. I have the right to go do this stuff." I had a hard time, and I have clients too to this day that are like, "Is that allowed?" Of course it's allowed! It's basically if you're doing this, it's you executing a sentence of exile on yourself. Like, I'm picturing, uh, Survivor, Exile Island. Yeah, except for you're the one giving yourself the punishment, that you don't belong with the other people, And so you're gonna be over there by yourself. And though you don't want that, you also feel like that's what's needed to ha- that's what has to happen. It's necessary, in that part of your mind. There may be another part of your mind telling you different, but look at and see what your results are and which part of your mind you're listening to on the daily and how your experience is when you're listening to that part.
You hear me? Okay.
Depriving Yourself: Denying Basic Comforts & Joy After Alienation or Estrangement
hopper two is deprivation. The mechanism here is that you deny yourself basic comfort, joy, proper nutrition sometimes, or financial freedom, peace, financial peace, and otherwise peace, abandoning hobbies, all of that.
The unconscious lie that you might be telling yourself if you're here is that you don't have the right to a kind of... It's an extension of what I d- was just talking about.
I don't have the right to a good meal or a vacation even, or maybe just a simple smile, cracking a smile out in public while my child is out there
living in a broken reality, in a reality that doesn't include you, And so what would that say about me if I was out here living it up? When usually living it up isn't really in this state. it's not what you're doing. It's just actually giving yourself the basic rights, you know? So, um, I carried on a way that kept me scrounging.
Like when in the recent past, like back then, money wasn't truly a problem for me, in the couple few years leading up to the timeframe that I'm talking about right now where I was, um, self-punishing. you know? So I was living in this beautiful home, gorgeous home on this private drive, that I couldn't afford the electric or the gas, all the utilities.
I could have afforded them, but I was telling myself that I didn't deserve those things, and so then I'd-- all my actions sort of lined up with that. Does that make sense? Like, I wasn't taking opportunities, kind of like I mentioned last week about that Walmart thing. There was many other times, um, especially in business, that other opportunities that I turned down.
That was just one example, right? So I was doing that, and it-- the way that it would show up is I literally, I remember one time when my daughter was at her dad's for the weekend, um, or maybe like, I forget what our schedule was back then. Maybe she left on Thursday, probably, yeah. And then she was gone until Monday, right?
And my, my gas got turned off, and it was in the winter. And in Austin, you don't think of Texas as being cold, but Austin in the winter, sometimes we would get like full on ice, you know, and snow and all the everything. And so it was freezing one weekend, and they turned off my gas. And I remember carrying this little space heater from room to room in my house.
And I don't know. I feel like I had candles too, like I didn't have electricity or gas. I, I, I was
seriously deprived living in this gor- gorgeous house. It was just ridiculous, you know? I froze my ass off though, I remember. Um
I can even rem- re- remember that, I can't believe I'm getting ready to tell you guys this, but I even learned back then how to rig the water lines, like my... at the, the, the main thing at the, at the street, so that when I couldn't pay water, and I knew that my kiddo was coming home, like when she was still going back and forth, that I could just go turn it on for the weekend or whatever if I hadn't paid the water bill, and then turn it back off on Monday whenever she went, and then I would pay the bill whenever I paid it.
It's so embarrassing that I'm actually saying this. But I could have actually just gone and made the money to pay the bill. But at the time, I was in the state of like punishing myself. Like, "No, you don't deserve to make money." It was cr- insane thinking. So that was, to me, I think that that's maybe extreme for some of you, maybe not for others of you.
It just depends. But look at your life and see where you might be depriving yourself of life's simple pleasures. Taking a vacation, like I said. "No, I don't deserve to do that. What if my kids found out?" I have so many clients that, um... I'm thinking about one previous client from a while ago. Um, she's got daughters, and she wouldn't be seen out in public or where she knew that they would-- maybe it would get back to her, word would get back to the kids, because she was so worried about them thinking that, she was happy.
So instead, she actually lived by this like rule set of keeping herself, um, like almost like she was gray rocking herself in her own life. She just kept everything very blah, dull, doldrums, because at least then they would know that she knows that she's supposed to be miserable.
then that would show them that's a demonstration of love Like, who am I to be happy and be out there living it up and going to nice dinners or even just going to dinner when my kids are over there? You know? Misery, basically what I'm saying here is, is that misery may be the only way that you feel allowed to occupy any sort of space, is by being miserable, outwardly, showing misery. And you may actually feel that on the inside too, like, "I don't deserve." I have another, um, mom that I'm thinking about right now who's like, "I don't..."
And that dad too, that, "I don't deserve to be happy because my kid is being abused, and what? And so I should go out and pretend like that that's not happening?" And so they acquiesce into this role of have-not, right? Like the have-nots on Big Brother.
Yeah, that's kind of what it is, Except for they're probably having way more fun on Big Brother than you might be having or definitely me back, you know, when I was rigging the water lines, Because to do anything else would be taboo, you know? So, if you're depriving yourself, telling yourself Who am I to to enjoy nice things, go to a spa day on your birthday, or even have a piece of cake on your birthday because look what's happening over there.
Ugh, this is like a thing. And then actually sometimes here, and maybe I should leave this and do it on a different, um, day. No, I'm just gonna say it now. It'll become such a set of beliefs for you, like rule sets that you live by, this deprivation, that you will actively judge other people. Not-- If this is going on with you, um, then
you might actively get to the point where you're actively judging other people for being
frivolous with whatever activities they're doing, especially if it's other parents who are in a similar situation as you. You You're-- y-you get resentful and judgmental of them because look at them, they're out there having fun while our kid is hurting, and how dare they do something like that?
This is no time for you to love life because it doesn't fit the situation. But that's also a good way to develop sickness and, dis-ease, you know, is by not taking care of yourself because some way, shape, or form, you think that that's going to make anything better. But it actually doesn't. It does the opposite.
You know, you depriving yourself only shows outwardly to everyone ar-around that maybe that you aren't worthy. And we don't care about what other people think, but it's still... If we're looking at the-- through the lens of alienation and, uh, the public and the And I know the kids, depending on what they're being fed, because kinda damned if you do, damned if you don't, they're gonna think they're being influenced, And so what I had to do, and I'm going a little bit off-topic right now, is I had to go back to... You know, I did an episode recently on It's Not Your Task on, Adlerian theory. That's what I had to, live into.
It's not my task what she's thinking right now. I mean, I would love to know that she's thinking lovely thoughts, but it might not be the case. And when I am wringing my hands, worried about how I appear and w- if what I'm doing is allowed or how it's gonna be received all the time and punishing myself as a result, it's only gonna end me into what I wanna say right now is the gutter, like living, not living and withering away, you know?
Intentional Burnout: Endless Striving & Exhaustion
Okay. So hopper three, intentional burnout. And so this is the last, last little area, last pillar of how... that, that I'm mentioning today. There are probably more, but I... th-these are the three that I, that I chose the most common. Intentional burnout. It's like this endless striving as an outward display to absolve,
to get absolution. so the mechanism here is maybe you're burying yourself at work, being hyper-productive. maybe you've developed... For me, I developed, like- What's the word for it? Not ticks, but like superstitions about cleaning and if I don't... I've actually developed this as a kid, and a lot of these-- all of this actually you may have developed the habit of self-punishing from when you were a kid, because this whole, pattern, You know, starting with self-blame, is so common for kids to do because it's more controllable for them. Just like how I was talking about in the intro that kids, m- children in general, it's just the human brain's, default to either take responsibility or place responsibility as a way to keep things certain, It's in adulthood is really where people end up learning the habit of placing other t- responsibility outwards. But as children, and back to what we're talking about, you may have developed this as a child, where you... Something happens. There's some upheaval in your-- the home, And so then, as a child, you may have learned, in order to feel safe, we've talked about this a lot, and maybe you already know this too in order to feel safe, in your environment and with your parents, you blame it, turn it all on yourself, because at least then you can fix it, like I was talking about in the intro, right? It's a lot safer, uh, feels more secure to say, "Okay, it wasn't my parents, because they're supposed to keep me alive.
They're supposed to keep me, moving in the world." And for me, it's a lot safer to say, "Okay, it's my fault because then I can fix it." Okay? So you may have developed this in, in childhood, and it sort of, kind of carried over. It would make sense that, you would have kept that throughout this whole situation of alienation, right?
So back to what I was saying. As a kid, I, would often... The o- one habit that's coming up for me right now, and it's like not the most visually appealing to think about, but it's the first thing that's coming up, and I'm not gonna sit here and think of more, is that I remember being like in public restrooms, you know, like as a kid, and thinking that if I didn't change the toilet paper roll if it was empty, or if I didn't flush the toilets in other bathrooms that I wasn't gonna be using if they were not done, if I didn't use my foot and flush those that, um, I was going to be damned, It was my way of keeping myself, absolving myself from any future
Persecution, I developed this sort of obsession with always closing things, which is so crazy 'cause then later on in life, I, because I'm ADHD, I used to leave all the, the doors and the drawers open. I don't know what happened there. But anyway, back on task. Um, you may be, hyper-productive in telling yourself that if you're not hyper-productive, that if you don't get this stuff done, if you don't clean every corner of your kitchen where it's all ding, shining perfectly, that you're not worthy enough or that it's not...
you're not doing a good enough job, especially if you don't have your children home because you have this extra time, and then you'll start to punish yourself even more, blame and punish yourself even more. Like, "I can't even just do this one thing right. My child isn't even home with me. I have this time, and I can't even clean my kitchen right," or, "I can't keep my laundry done," or whatever it is, or, "I can't perform well at work or make the sales," whatever it is.
You can be e- super hard on yourself, use the situation of alienation to re-punish yourself over and over and over again, like you're going through the car wash on repeat, right? Literally, actually, that would, that makes sense, that you're just, like, cleaning your life, trying to absolve yourself in all the ways, right?
Redeem yourself. Um, but the tone of the way that you're doing it, it's, it's not productive, you know, and it's an awful experience. Maybe you're over-scheduling stuff until, like, your health or your other things collapsed or deteriorate. You're in this place of constantly striving.
It's a bit of a nervous energy that might be happening with you, while doing this, while in this headspace, state of mind, so the unconscious lie here You might be telling yourself that you just have a massive work ethic, right? "I'm doing what I have to do to survive. This is just what I do.
I have to keep myself moving." it just reminded me of a, Parks and Recreation, that show episode with, Rob Lowe he went through a bad breakup, and so he just kept going, going, going, going, going, you know, as a way to cope. But actually, it's not really coping, it's keeping yourself striving, distracted, and it creates a...
It actually fuels more anxiety. Anyway, the reality here is that you run yourself into the ground because exhaustion is, especially in stress response and anxiety, well, they kinda go hand in hand, m- mostly, exhaustion is an undeniable visual receipt of your effort, That's the way that you see it.
It's like your way of screaming to the world, "Look! Look at how hard I'm working to make up for what I've lost. Look at all the other areas where I am, like, exceeding and excelling above and beyond." A- and it could just be your way of screaming inside of your world.
Like I was saying earlier, you have to keep everything perfect. In fact, gosh, you guys, I know I'm saying this... It, it just reminded me of a neighbor of mine. Uh, I, he might listen to this episode, but I know there's v- two things. So I have a neighbor that Is like this, where he keeps everything I don't wanna say OCD because I don't, I don't know if it's that, even that, but it's like at this level where everything is just so. He's micromanaging all the areas. I, I, I don't know if it's because of this, but it might be, you know? Where... So let me just say this right now is that, you know, yesterday-- I live in a neighborhood.
Maybe I mentioned a little bit of this to you one other time, but I live in a 29-house neighborhood, right? And yesterday, the fourth or fifth resident of this neighborhood, I just had a conversation with him. He just tell, told me, he asked what, what I do. We don't talk very often. He's a really nice guy. Um, he's remarried and, and lives just a few houses down, but he's always out of town.
Anyway, he stopped to ask me, we were talking about something and, um, he'd asked what I did and what my podcast was about, and I just told him basics, grief and post-traumatic growth and then he said, "Well, what's the name of it?" And he typed it in. He's like, "Oh, is this you?" And reads it out, "Beyond the High Road of Parental Alienation."
And I was like, "Yeah, that's me." I was like, "I help alienated parents that have been dealing with high conflict, custody situations," yada, yada, yada. And he was like, " That's me." He's like, "That's me. That's what I went through." And with, like I said, four or five, I think it's five people out of this very tiny community are also alienated, which is n- I shouldn't be so excited about it, but at the same time, I, it's, it is amazing too that people are feeling more comfortable these days to out themselves about it.
Um, but it's taken me, I've lived here now five years, and now I've just, this is the first time I've heard about him. But like, um, yeah. Anyway, so I'm not in love with the fact that they're all going through it or had, did go through it. He's, by the way, has been reconnected with both of his daughters when they, soon after they turned of age.
I guess the message there is hope that, things do turn around. And another neighbor actually just recently re-, um, connected with her, um, daughter. So anyway, back on task. The idea here is like, look how hard I'm, I, I'm working to make up for what I've lost, And so You may notice that you have become, like, dove yourself into work, which isn't a bad thing. I mean, I definitely dive myself into work. That's pretty much all I most of the time am doing, you know?
But I also love it, and it's purposeful and meaningful to me. But if you notice that you are burning yourself into the ground, right? And you're just exhausted, and maybe you've noticed that you're getting sick lately, or inflammation or whatever it is, or you're just brain-dead. And I don't mean that-- I just mean mentally exhausted, um, then maybe this is something to look out for you.
Debunking the Tether Illusion: Misery Doesn't Connect
in summary to everything that I, we just talked about with those three ball hoppers, one, that there's this sort of tether illusion and I've talked about this previously. I forget the name of the episode.
I can link it below. But like, if pain is the only remaining connection that you have to your estranged or your alienated child, you will fight tooth and nail
To keep that pain alive. You hear me? Like, you think that that is the only way that you can hold on to the connection between them is by being misery because that is the outward... Um, mis- miserable, sorry. Is the outward expression and evidence that this has affected you. Um, I want to let you know that there is another way that your pain is actually not keeping you connected to your child.
In fact, it causes you to feel further away from them. 1,000%. Think of any time that you have said, something like, " I must be miserable because my child is over there suffering." Do you feel closer to them then? Or do you feel closer to them when you say, " My child hates me"? Or I haven't spoken to my child in, uh, 380 days," Any of those things are going to keep you feeling much further away from your child than thoughts like, " My child is not speaking to me right now, but that's okay because I can carry the love for the both of us." It's going to cause you to feel a little bit closer, probably a lot closer to them.
Or, "It's okay. This is temporary." Rejection is temporary. what's going on with them, this is all temporary, and This itself is all an illusion. You focus on your love for them and watch how close you begin to feel to them. Okay. So, where was I? So being happy feels like a betrayal of their absence,
Reclaiming Peace: Stop Self-Punishment & Become a Lighthouse
th- that's one of the summaries, and then also I just wanna say that your misery is not a bridge that's going to bring your child back. It's not gonna lead them back here by you being miserable. And I know that you guys all know that with m- most of you anyway that know that with your higher thinking, but then all these other behaviors, you'll notice if you look at your life, they may not seem rational or logical w- when we're spelling them out like this, but it doesn't matter.
Look and see if your behaviors are as such, if you are isolated, if you don't have any... You're s- telling yourself that you don't have any options with community. You know? It's just because you've built that that way, and it's okay that you have, just like I did. But you can also, if you built yourself in, you can build yourself out. in my experience, it was a prison cell that I locked myself in. And also, the good news is, is because I locked myself in, I could just unlock the door and walk out. Okay? It's not as simple as that. There's more context to that, but it's one step after another of you just looking for opportunities to not punish yourself, because the punishment It's not productive, and it's not creating the experience and the life that I know that all of you want, and the relationship even, um, with your children that you want, because you can start that now. You don't have to wait for them to come back for you to resume the relationship with them. You can start feeling all the love, all the closeness, all the respect, all the anything that you ever, um, are craving from your kiddo.
You can start to feel that now. Okay? Don't shut yourself out and exile yourself from, uh, from the world, and especially your children, because you think that that's gonna send the quote unquote right message.
So let me go back to the summary. The illusion of control that happens here is we cling to self-blame because we're believing that it's my fault is safer, Than accepting that the world is random or that painful things happen. People do bad things. that feels a lot scarier because then we don't know when that's gonna happen next, and I know that that's a thing for a lot of us.
Like, when's the other shoe gonna drop? What's gonna happen around the corner? But if you live that way, then you're actually creating the what's gonna happen around the corner every day of your life. Like you're cr- you're, penalizing yourself by creating the reality that dun, dun, dun is happening all the time.
I hope that makes sense, like the way that I'm wording. I hope I'm articulating that, clearly, Also too, there's like this- Fallacy in the accountability that you feel like you might be taking And I, you know that I'm all about personal responsibility,
but like when you are executing self-punishment, it feels like a conscience, your conscience at work. It feels productive. You know, like, "Oh, I need to do this because then it's me taking accountability," but... and you may fear that if you stop punishing yourselves too, that you're, condoning your own bad behavior.
And I maybe mentioned that in the beginning. I know I was thinking at the beginning that like, "No, no, no, I need to be hard on myself because if I'm not, then I'm condoning my bad behavior and I'm inviting in a repeat of that mistake. I'm gonna just keep doing it if I'm not hard on myself." But it's actually been proven study after study that that attitude actually promotes more bad behavior.
If... I'm not calling your behavior bad, I'm just saying that this mindset of telling yourself that you need to be harsh on yourself is only gonna create more harshness for you. It's not gonna actually get the job done. So you can take accountability in a loving, understanding, compassionate way that is shame-free, And you will be much more successful in your future efforts than doing it the harsh way, um, punishing yourself. So self-blame generates intense, intense shame, like I just kind of alluded to, which triggers a perceived need for self-punishment, That's the whole point of this whole episode.
Which in turn deepens your depression and anxiety rather than resolving the core issue. So it's not, it's not productive. I just keep saying it, but it's true, and I wanna hammer that in.
Okay. So we... Like I said in the beginning, we- today we're catching that tennis ball. We're stopping the serve, your child I don't care what they're saying right now. In the long run, in the big picture, They don't need you to suffer to prove your undying love for them. They need you to have a stable healthy foundation so that they can return to that if and when they I wanna say when, wake up and see it all. Ugh. When I said wake up, realize what's going on. Okay? So
I think the easiest way that you can, we could do a little audit for yourself ongoing is that you can call it the joy audit or call it the, um, enjoyment audit, whatever, is that when the automatic spike of guilt hits, like I don't deserve this, or I need to isolate, whatever it is, any of those three pillars shows up for you, name it out loud.
Okay, you guys? It's like just, just name to yourself something like, "This is my-" Self-punishment mechanism in action right now, and it's trying to keep me safe
And then you can just say something like, "I choose to feel peace." Do, like actively create peace anyway. All right? So that's all you need to say. This is my self-punishment mechanism actively trying to keep me feeling safe, and I choose different today. We're gonna just try it. Let's just see if it works out.
I'm gonna allow myself to go to the dinner. I'm gonna make the phone call to the friend that I keep telling myself it's been too long, so what am I even gonna say, right? whatever it is for you. Take the baby step out create proof for a different reality for yourself, a different truth for yourself.
What's coming up for me right now is, you know, um, in past episodes, somewhat recently in the last maybe coup- few months ago, I was talking about lighthouse parenting, being the lighthouse parent, that a lighthouse doesn't go compromise its foundation or crash, fall into the waves
To prove that it's there for and cares about the ships on their way in. No
It stands tall, it anchors down deep
And it keeps the light burning
So stop setting yourself on fire if this is you today
And let's start rebuilding that beautiful foundation that you know your kids will love to find when they return. All right? So next week we are doing, Oh, we're doing, next week we're gonna be talking about, and about a year ago, almost to the day, we did a whole series on, um, drama, chaos addiction. We are gonna go back to that, but different nuances, okay? So next week we'll basically be tackling creating chaos, how that comes about for us. Um, and that's all I have to share with you guys today. I hope you have a lovely week, and I'll see you next week. Y'all also too, I have some openings in the next couple few weeks for Clarity calls.
So if you have not had a clarity call with me and you've got something going on that you would like some help with, I- the first one's on me. It's free. So come on down. Come on down. You can find the link on my website, which by the way, that's another thing I should've annou- ooh. I wanna announce this in the beginning too.
So, um, I'm gonna maybe go back up and do it. I have just gotten this beautiful website designed, and it just went live. However, it's still... It went live, I had him do it a little prematurely because it looks so pretty, but it's still in a, a work in progress and so there are some links that need to be, fixed.
But the, the clarity call one is there. Y'all, it's beautiful, he's amazing. His name is Connor, and I will give you his details.
If you want You've been looking for somebody to design a website for you, it's beautiful work. Um, and you can go check out my website to see. So, um, but just know too that m- all my links aren't working, and that's not actually Connor's fault. That was my fault. 'Cause I wanted it up, it looks so pretty.
So come on down, come schedule a clarity call. All right. Y'all have a wonderful, wonderful week, and I will see you next week. Okay, bye.
Thanks so much for listening today. If you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more, please make sure to click subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Also, for bite-sized clips and tips, be sure to find me on TikTok or Instagram. See you next week.