Contradictions + The Power of "AND" In Parental Alienation

you are listening to the beyond the my road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 119 stud welcome to be on the high road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby mford 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 hello everybody how are you doing to did what's the extent of the singing that you ever gets to me because it's no that pretty I'm sure I've told you before I have a video somewhere of me doing this um this um singing exercise after I took

voice lessons back in like 2020 we were all board and it is a treat let me tell you it's so funny I did it yeah anyway I'll have to find it it's somewhere I think it's on my Facebook um like on my personal one or Instagram yeah it's on my Instagram my personal one which by the way I have not I know some people still like go on and follow me there I have not opened up or looked at that Instagram so if you've ever sent me a message to like the Shelby Milford like my not business one and I haven't responded to you that's why I haven't opened it up in Years anyway I don't know where that he pral came from me doing a little diddy in the beginning anyway um today we're going to be

talking about contradictions in alienation not so much other people's contradictions and the perpetrators contradictions but our own contradictions in the way that we're thinking during that whole healing the trauma and the grief process if you will okay and the power of and that's actually not meaning to be redundant how this came up just as it always does it's like the universe just flops down little hints I didn't know up until yesterday what I was going to be doing like what the topic was going to be and then it always through the power of the thought download is very evident what it was going to be because there was there have been some themes going on some recurring

themes in my own healing over the last few months really but they're all kind of coming to a head right now and so that's kind of what I want to talk about um so how it started though was a couple couple weeks ago I started rewatching that series that was at on the TV originally announced it was on crime big little lies when it came out it was right at the end of that really ugly period of time very dark period of time for me and though the show itself like the content like the storyline was pretty dark it was also such a dreamy set and it just reminded me of a of a really awkward time back then so there's that I don't know if I mentioned that um another fellow alienated mom parent out

there is just went through this past week this really big major surgery and she pulled out of it it was on Tuesday that she went in and she pulled out of it but I sent her recommendations for some shows to binge you know while she's sitting in bed she's going to be healing she just got home back from the hospital um yesterday the day before and so I had sent her because I just started walking the first season again big little life and I was like you should watch that and then I wasn't thinking wasn't thinking about the fact that it had been haunting me already over the last week or so of watching for a season and then of course I go and recommend it like what am I

thinking second season has meral strep in it makes me want to crawl out of my skin I forgot how activating season 2 can be and even season one if you guys haven't seen the show it's about Ms of young children right they in like first and second grade and there's some drama going on and somebody gets killed and one of the characters in it Nicole Kidman's character in it was an ex attorney but stopped working at the request more demand of her narcissist husband abusive physically abusive controlling man they had a really tumultuous weird relationship there's so many similar ities between him and my last ass that it's ridiculous both guys actually and I was sitting there

watching it over the last I don't know how it's been like a week two weeks I don't know wondering to myself did I ever when I was walking at B P because I was just leaving him was I seeing the parallels or was I still so in it foggy coming out of it that I was in the same kind of denial that Nicole Kidman was in in the show and so in comes the second season and of course it's so crazy how we forget like the major details this is reminding me of back when I remember showing my daughter and I we would do classic movie days and she got old enough to care about non cartoon sort of shows we would watch Goonies we did Annie and one of them was ET and I was like oh can be's such a great one to do

completely forgetting that ET TR white sickly W you know in the gutter or whatever he was like in the woods he looked awful right and it like traumatized my daughter she was like why why did you B they watch this you know anyway I started watching season two of big little lives and it finally dawned on me walking my dog every night I've been having these kind of violent thoughts about my ex My Daughter's Father which I haven't had those in I don't know how long I can't believe I'm actually saying this on like out there to the world but these like mean thoughts like I wouldn't mind if he died I wouldn't mind if something happened to him you know but I wasn't really

acknowledging those thoughts they were just there sort of like nagging at me and I wasn't putting it all together that I was just walking this and woring myself in the show that was talking about this very thing so obviously it was bringing up some little trauma for me right and so then of course I'm having these thoughts I wasn't really recognizing them and season two was lift Marl Street and it gets really bad because it's really some blatant attempt to alienate I'm not going to spoil all of it for you but she is really going for the kids Nicole Kidman's character her kids in the show it's been really really hard to watch I'm not sure why I haven't stopped watching it I still was

watching it last night after I realized all of this anyway I noticed that I started thinking last night while I was on the walk about what I was going to be talking with you guys about today and I wanted to talk about the thoughts I was having about my ex the fact that I have this idea that no I wouldn't want it if he died I really wouldn't it just seemed so shocking to me that I had these thoughts about my ex who by the way is also still my daughter's father and my daughter wants him right so I was shaming myself for having like The Duality having this huge contradiction where part of me wouldn't mind that he had something really terrible happened to him and then there was this other

part of me the immense love for my daughter part of me that says I don't I would hate to that to happen because for my daughter's sake the the pain that she would go through and the loss that she would experience even though they're taking acts to alienate and not abusive there's still an immense amount of loss that my daughter would have and feel and just experience you know if this is you if you have noticed that you have done a good amount of work and then all of a sudden something comes up and anger comes back again it's okay it does not mean that anything has gone wrong and I know that you know this but I think sometimes when we're really in it we start to to make it mean something like

what kind of mom or what kind of person would wish such bad things on another person no matter what they done still what doesn't make me right to think those things but also too remember that you're coming from a lot of pain and Trauma and it doesn't mean that you would ever have those terrible things done to the person it's just the emotional brain trying to work out the pain that that it feels has been inflicted on you you know and so just because the thought occurs to you and I know you've heard me say this before that just because a thought occurs to you doesn't mean anything about you it just means a thought has occurred it's just a thought imagine it to be like

something that you can hold in your hand like a sentence that you can hold in your hand or like Float by you just imagine the letters floating by you it's not you to be able to acknowledge it like I wasn't M I was saying that I wasn't even acknowledging that I was having these thoughts they were there but but I was just allowing it to go on in the background in my mind without using my preferential cortex to say hey what are these thoughts about you know what I'm saying like I wasn't recognizing them it's like when you see somebody in a room or like when your kid wouldn't go to bed at night and you know that they are up but you're too busy doing something else so you just don't

acknowledge it it's the same kind of thing and then finally when you're done doing what you're doing then you realize and you go and you talk to your kids like hey you're supposed to be in bed right now it's the same thing with our thoughts acknowledging him is the first step but also allowing for the contradiction to be there it's totally normal I've been having some not so nice thoughts about my ex appear in my mind and I would abut not want those things to happen or maybe still you want those things to happen but also you have hold another truth right my really mind is to happen but also I love my kid I'm having these thoughts about him but I also know

that I'm not going to do anything about that these are just St this is just my the anger speaking or the hurt speaking and that's okay I didn't want to share with you guys in at first and I was thinking about doing the episode I didn't want to share that I had these terrible thoughts because I thought well that's not who I'm supposed to be I should be more healed I'm the one I'm the expert here and I have been doing all the work it's in fact it's my job to be doing this work on the reged so showing up talking about the very things that all of y'all need help with um it at the time the way my brain was presenting to me was the wrong thing to do like I should not show that I am

still having those problems these challenges and then afterwards I was like that's craziness that's exactly why I should share it and I want to share it is because these are the kind of things that I know that y'all are going through and I want to be able to help you through it knowing also what I know now about it right so I at the time the Sham me part of me that was telling me no don't share that to the world you can't do that you're supposed to be more healed you're supposed to be above this you're supposed to be further along than this I had those kinds of should shouldn't sort of thoughts still on and then I thought it doesn't have to be like that and I know it for me it is

like that I'm confident in that I know that I've done so much work on myself like like I said it's my job to do the work on myself not only because I'm a responsible adult and I'm want to take care of my inner workings right but also I I work with other people all the time and know these tools inside I sh them people and you guys do but then I remembered this is an and situation it's like I have these thoughts and I've done so much work on myself and and it's not necessarily like trying to like make up for our use of positive to to make the negative better but it's like there both things can be true these thoughts have occurred to me and also they mean nothing about me or anything that I

might do right these this thought occurred to me as a direct result of seeing this show and it can happen with anything talking to an old friend or hearing an old song and then facts and ceilings come up for us often times what's happening is the trauma that you weren't able to process up until like now really um or especially back then when you were doing for me like when back then when I was doing the active work to forgive my ex and his wife today having this come up for me doesn't mean that I didn't do the work thoroughly enough it just means there's some leftover stuff there and I feel like our job as humans is really never done processing through trauma all of us

really like even the people that you think have no trauma they do they have stuff we all do you know and I think as we grow and we enter in relationships and get out of relationships we're getting and R traumatizing our own selves throughout all of it you know so it's really our work is never going to be done in processing and learning and growing and what have it right so it makes sense that you could do work heal you could feel like I'm now done with that I I will never get activated about that again and you may be right but just don't be surprised months years down the road whatever it is for you if something happens to quote unquote trigger some doctor and or emotions for you it makes

sense because now that your body feels safe enough to handle it it's going to give you access to some other areas that maybe you weren't able to access back when you initially processed so it's really just a matter of recognizing the thoughts that are there and then understanding why they came up for I know it was more situational but then I had to go a little deeper and like what am I angry about right now so I guess my point of this is not to get into a whole another topic here it's okay you can still have really unhe helpful thoughts come up today and it doesn't mean that you having grown you have you have you have it's inevitable this is just the process this is just the way of it okay

so just don't make it mean anything about you when you have these the contradictions in your healing and the way that you're feeling about those who have hurt you right like that was talking about with my ex and whatever contradictions can also happen with our kids and the way that we're thinking about them we can miss them and we can also be angry at them and that's okay I know know this you guys but when we're in that emotional part of the brain we don't give ourselves the permission the way that we give other people we allow for that we understand it better when we're in our own especially when you have an overactive or disregulated trauma response system we we tend to

forget so it's entirely possible to miss your kid and also be creating a beautiful life for yourself this is one I know so many of you guys don't allow yourself this luxury if you will this rights this basic human right to love your life even while you miss your kid it doesn't mean and I know I spoke about this recently sowhere you can have both you can feel very sad and want things to go back to how they were I mean I suggest you do the work on that at some point but it's okay to wish that this didn't happen alienation didn't happen and also be building a beautiful life for yourself it's okay to not feel grateful for what has been done to you and your kid kiddos and also be working

to rebuild your life you don't have to be one or the other see and this is where I think so many of us get uh tripped up too because if you have been with somebody that was the kind of abusive or the kind of narcissist that wanted to piggey hole You you know and you like no you said you were this and that's the story you need to stick to this is who you are blah blah blah you're the problem you're you know how they are right we feel like that we need to carry that persona on and reveal that to whoever we meet next and all the things as if that has to be your only identifying qualities moving forward but it's not true the contradictions are reality that's what makes us human right

to have one and also have the other in the very same moment many times like I can be missing my kid like crazy being angry for what my ex has done but I can also be very excited about building the life that I'm building right now that can all go hand in hand I can be I'm now I'm not there yet but I know people that are so excited and in love with a partner right the life that I'm building here and still so angry about being here to begin with right like why aren't I bath with my kid I would take anything over that but also at the same time be madly in love with whoever I'm I'm building a life with they don't need to be separate you can have both and there's nothing wrong with you and you

are not less loyal to the kid or to your partner or anybody or your kids that are living with you currently whether they're your stepchildren or your kids after the last so many parents I know feel the weight of giving love to the kids that are in front of you like they're being disloyal to their children who are alienated you know but your kids deserve that love and so for you to constantly be guilting yourself yourself about giving them love because these your alienated kids also need your love yet you can't reach them allow for both things to be true you can be missing these kids be wishing that you could also love them but also be giving all of your time to your current kids you know

it's the problem is when we fight it when we start resisting either one of the your realities your truths that's when you start to notice that you're not present all that conflict inside is causing you to go inward like you you're having an internal war and so then you start to judge yourself and you're making your making it mean something that you're a bad mom for not attending to your alienated kids even though you can't and there's like actually not a possibility for you to access but we'll blame ourselves for it because we're good at that you know so just like make for all of it laugh for all the contradictions all the incongruity in inconsistency you

know that's going on it's okay in fact it's it's so normal for that to be that gives you the texture and vibrancy the beautiful person that you are all the layers another contradiction is one we'll say I was kind of hinting at this earlier I was doing so well and everything went downhill instead of saying I was doing so well but then I whatever whatever ad an ant I am doing so well well and I had a cry session today I am doing so well I've been doing so well and I'm angry today too see how that changes everything I'm doing so well I've been doing all the things I've been present and I've been feeling in charge of my life and I also been going through a Resurgence of anger about my

ex and you can include that with it in fact I think that that really compliments I doing so well because you're being real about what's going on doing so well doesn't have to mean that you don't have emotions or that you don't have leftover trauma that is unprocessed at this point doing so well just means that you know that you're on path but anything that comes up for you doesn't set you back there are no setbacks there are no setbacks please remember that that's would be the title of this there are no setbacks to any of your healing it's just all and also two you know this also came out I was watching these videos I record client sessions for them nobody El

season except for me and them unless I get permission from them so I was just watching sessions from clients who have just recently graduated the program one of them in particular was he was like I you know who you are you has been just such a pleasure to work with because he's really wanted to apply and incorporate these tools in his everyday life he's been very inquisitive also challenging in conversations because he allows his objections to come up with in our conversations so that no stone is left unturned and he doesn't just agree with me because he thinks that that's the right thing to do he's really made so much progress from the time that he started back last May beginning of last

may he finished up back in December not only in his his growth and his relationships right the way that he thinks about and sees his relationship with his sons and also his ex he's also progressed in the case so so much like when we first started I think he was seeing his kiddo for half hour at a time every other weekend I forget that all the progressions but back when we stopped in December he had his kiddo for like full weekends which is so good he had been at a standstill basically for two years prior almost two years prior to and I'm not taking the credit for that it's just that we got him to step into his power and take back his time so it was amazing he really had done the

work on himself and willing to do the work on himself and apply it to his relationship this kid and and and what happy and I don't always suggest this to every client but he was was is ready and had already started to do the work on forgiveness right on forgiving and loving what is and so we had a conversation about how resistance always feels worse um and is taxing and there's a degree of suffering depending on how much you're resisting but when you decide to accept like rically accept and love what is then obviously things flow in all areas of your life wherever there you can always tell when somebody is in the resistance and inciting something and wanting things to go back to how

they were or wanting things to get better up there and not presentent today by the results that they have currently in their lives they're like I just can't get past I can't do this frustrated all the time then they're obviously resistance about something and so obviously there's so many benefits to allowing what is to be so that it can release its the toxicity right and power so that you can then get to work on fixing it if that's what you want to do fixing it is the wrong word but you know what I'm saying and so he asked me so is that what you do on all areas of your life and I was like yes for the most part I do but there was one area that I brought up clearly I was still feeling

some resistance I had done some radical work to forgive and also to love what is and loved even my ex and stepmom years ago and I did it to the point where uh I prayed for her and not just uh yeah I pray that she figures her out and blah blah blah I prayed for her like in the most compassionate and sisterly way I prayed and felt connected worked to feel connected to her in love rather than in resentment and hate and I tell you this was such such difficult work to do but when you do when you're able to and it came in Windows back then and then those windows became more and more and then at some point the windows were bigger than the than the off times were you know where I could actually feel

myself sending loving energ of her way um and it released so much friction and tension and weight off my shoulders to allow her to be and wish love for her for her to receive and give love and for her to to grow in all the ways for her own good not for me which y'all as you know doing this for somebody that has been abusive to you and your child is some hard work right it's really hard hard um but as I say that I also know what's even harder is not doing the work you know it's allowing them to eat you up on the inside because of the way that you're thinking about it you know so it is harder to to be in resistance anyway so that's a contradiction in itself when I was talking about it with

him I noticed the resistance in me because since then doing all that work back then really giving myself to it and then years later to these sitting were right here actually while I was talking to him noticing the other day while I was watching it the resistance and the anger that had come up for me since then and so I again did do all that work back then but of course if I let that go or even if I didn't if I was still practicing it and other stuff stuff comes up I mean this going through life you're going to have other things come up and you just get out of that thought habit of thinking lovely thoughts for them it's going to recur is what I'm saying just as like I was saying earlier

you can have done all the work to heal yourself and still have ugly thoughts come up ler you can still have resistance and anger come back up for them about them and it's okay it is all okay it's an ant it's I did all this work and I prayed and I felt connected to her in a sisterly way in a bigger than me kind of love away for her even though she was also my abuser and today I have Angry thoughts about her feel resistance towards her so I also know that it's by time to go back and start doing that radical work that I once did with her revisit that stuff again with her and that is okay so I just want you to give yourself the permission to not make it mean anything about you when

comes up it just means that you're human you know talking about pigeon huling if you went to court for this whole situation you know that the opposing attorney also wants to pting hold you and label you as this irresponsible unloving not present person but this is where I think it's so important for you to understand that those words and I know that you do with are prefrontal but what they were doing was exactly what I'm asking you to put the anend on I have been not present I made mistakes in my path whatever it is get specific maybe you had one dream too many and drove with your kids in the car that doesn't make you a child abuser or you the kind of person that always

drives with children in your car drunk that was something that you did Back Then and Now blah blah blah you can be selfish we all are and you can also be the most giving loving caring whatever right again I just want raise this conversation because most of us when we're doing our everyday all the time thinking we're so lean to our ownselves in the way that we speak right that we talk to ourselves like you shouldn't do that you shouldn't you should have known you should have done better why do you always get so angry about this why can't you do better be better get over this you should be over this by now we say terrible things to ourselves so now you just become aware of it just be kind to

yourself and um know that in the beginning when you're trying to make the things that you've done or the words that you think mean something about you just the simple thing to remember is where I think that there's a period here there's an and and there's another sentence fragment that goes with it you don't have to make the negative a positive but you also don't need to make the negative statement or the negative thought the end all the Y so that's all I have for you um hope you all have a wonderful day y just remember too Facebook group I do it every Friday I keep forgetting to announce it so Facebook group is uh the private Facebook group I'm live every Friday

from I'm doing it at 12:15 now um so 12:15 on Fridays in the private Facebook group I'll put a link for that the group if you haven't already joined down below okay so that's what I got for you youall have a lovely day 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 Tik Tok or Instagram see you next week