Do You Self-Erase (as an Alienated Parent)?

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 80 stay tuned 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 twice certified life coach with an advanced certification and post-traumatic growth in greed I'm also a Target parent using proven Concepts based heavily in neuroscience and psychology I developed my own playbook for reintegrating with life and reframing my role as my daughter's mother even while living apart I went from feeling agonized helpless and directionless to feeling energized confident and most importantly at peace

today I get to help other parents like you to do the same stay tuned

hello you guys how are we doing today my lovely fellow parents if you're watching pardon the entire I do have jeans on and earrings and makeup I just have a ripped up shirt and a sports bar on because I was working out earlier and uh frankly didn't feel like getting dressed with work attire today so here here I am and I love this shirt too cuz it's from Austin City Limits which I used to love doing and also South by Southwest I tell you I do miss the crap out of Austin I miss it like a lot in fact I have to manage my mind around it on a frequent basis because it and it was my choice to move here right to be closer to family so I have to keep reminding myself of that

and reminding myself of all the good things that I things that I do love about being back in Florida too but I do I miss the heck out of that town I mean I guess it's all over in the news now like there's so many fun things to do there it used to be I kind of feel like it was the best kept secret because it doesn't feel like you're in Texas but it does anyway it's just a rad place so if you're ever thinking about going to visit or moving there is two thumbs up in my opinion don't know what you have till it's gone and now I've got that song stuck in my head dating myself Cinderella okay Hing a long today it's kind of a continuation from last week a little bit we're going to be

talking about do you self erase the habit I want to call it to not consider yourself to the point where maybe you don't know who you are what your purpose is yada yada so last week I was providing you with those examples if you listen to last week's episode which is a long one I told you it was going to be maybe I didn't mention it till the end but if you haven't listened to that one yet make sure you get your like favorite drink and cozy on up because it is it's about an hour long but anyway one of the examples that I provided in that episode was with me how the unresolved trauma showed up throughout my childhood the rest of my childhood and into adulthood

was that I could not see a future for myself and so because it didn't make sense to me clearly I wasn't taking steps to invest in my future right I think we're all sort of healing all the time throughout our life and different parts of our childhood will sort of Ree present themselves in our adult life even if you've been to therapy and all the things I like to think as a way to tidy up the areas that maybe we weren't able to fully get to earlier so for me it did show up in a way that I did not understand how to consider my future but not everybody's like that obviously there are other coping strategies that we develop as kids you may instead have overachieved maybe your

role in your family was that of the hero the one that was always wanting to live up to what you thought others were expecting of you maybe you were constantly seeking approval maybe you were the one that was like the caretaker there's so many different ways that this can show up but I will say I have noticed that most of us have this feeling of not enough chances are that developed sometime in earlier childhood you know children are so honest when they're little that's why we love hearing toddlers talk and even up into first second grade kids are so raw and delightful I think but earlier Generations meaning like our parents I don't know saw it that way sometimes

kids were an inconvenience like what I learned and maybe y'all too was that children should be seen and not heard children should be good and and for me look pretty and be polite be respectful kind and giving never cuse anybody to feel any bad way always be accommodating my mom was uh big into etiquette and at all costs smile what that taught me was my honesty wasn't welcome what I was feeling and I don't feel a victim to it now but I just I think it might be helpful to just explain I'm assuming to that many of y'all also received mixed messages as far as who you could be who you were allowed to be at home at school in the family functions what have you we

start off all candid and innocent and cute and inquisitive Relentless with our thirst for knowledge and desire to communicate with others and feel a part of as children but somewhere along the way we get the message from maybe multiple sources that our eagerness our boisterousness our excitability all of these things aren't welcome um that Honesty isn't always the best policy in certain occasions like in certain circumstances but not all circumstances even though you were supposed to be honest with our parents about where we're going and what we're doing and who we're with but they don't tell you we're not allowed to be honest about what's going on in our own head and our own

thoughts our own anger maybe in your house emotions weren't welcome because it made your parents feel one of your parents feel discomfort and so we start learning all of these little intricacies like exceptions to the rules that our parents were so strict with us about or school or whoever your role models were wherever the messages were coming from there were these inconsistencies and as a result you learned not in so many words but you learned to hide who you were and this is actually what's considered self erasing self eraser I think we all do it like across like it just really depends on how and why we learn from society we've got peer pressure and this what have you and oh

this isn't socially acceptable but this is and blah blah blah but I also do think like for me again not complaining about my childhood my childhood was exactly the way it was supposed to be I believe that's how it works for me but would I want to provide that environment for my child you know had I do it all over again absolutely not I would want home to be the one place that my child and I hope truly hope that that's how I mothered my child right that home was the one place where we could be everything that we we needed to be you know like be this is where you can relax and be authentic and that's why now I'm going to go into a different subject because as soon as I said that I

reminded myself of I believe what most of us did provide for our children because we feel so strongly about that you wanted them you encouraged them and your children felt like they could be relaxed and grounded around you right as alienated parents that's one thing that I think we we have a lot of things in common but this is one of those things that we all share is this desire to be a source of grounding and support for our children but when we were children most of us did not get that maybe that's why not sure but if there's any sort of abuse from your past and like I said many dare I say most of us had some sort of abuse in our past that caused us to believe that we could not be our true

authentic self then there was a sort of separation of you your true you and who you needed to be in the moment a dissociation you realize that maybe you couldn't share what happened with one of your parents because they caused them to be uncomfortable it caused them to get scared and so they didn't know how to deal with it I was just talking with one of my clients this morning about this very thing that our parents again I'm generalizing but that era didn't possess the skills and the language to support us best we often were left feeling unsure of how to move forward because they didn't know how to deal with it they didn't have the resources so bit by bit with each little incident that

happens that we learn maybe for you this was definitely in my house I learned from a very young age that expressing displeasure or any negative emotion that I was having if my mom could have taken it as a direct hit on her um she would have and so I had to learn how to P tail and curb pretty much everything I said as to not make her fly off the handle and so um it is actually really sad I mean I'm okay about it now again not trying to dredge things up for y'all the great news is that we're all adults now and it's not still happening right it it happened before now we are responsible for ourselves this is actually the whole point of this episode is that that your

story does not have to own you you can own your story and that would be the quickest way to freedom is to learn how to be in control of your entire story and have agency over all that happened so that nothing can be really triggering this is not happening anymore you're an adult nobody can abandon you because you are an adult a lot of us have abandonment issues and that is all actually still goes back to this self eraser feeling uh the need to put all of our eggs in another basket not our own we feel like we need to grasp on that we need somebody else this codependence that we develop for those around us because of a childhood wound um that we haven't yet fully addressed so we put

our identity and our self-worth into somebody else at our own expense and each time that we do this we reinforce the need for that and we also then take a little more away from who we are as our own individual persons right people and if we repeat this over and over and over again like you know day in day out for a number of years maybe your entire life well of course you don't know who you are today of course you don't know what you want to do for dinner let alone what your purpose is because you have been investing your all of your time and energy into things outside of you makes perfect sense if this is you you learned it early on whenever the first incident

happened you learn to detach yourself from it from whatever the characteristic or experience or whatever it was and then because you know that skill so well in any vulnerable moment you're like nope stuff it one more thing we're dissociating from detaching ourselves from so then we start to develop we just turn into um chameleons and just start taking on the attributes traits likes dislikes of other people what we think would be pleasing to other people well Jimmy likes that so I probably should too right the teacher laughed last time Sally said whatever so maybe if I say something like that the teacher will laugh at me too and so then maybe I'll be in their good favor that kind of

thing you know and so when we get to relationships age and when we're picking out our child's parent or maybe you didn't even do the picking maybe they picked you you were the perfect pick for them you were absolutely 100% there to serve whatever they wanted you had already done the self erasing years before of course I'm speculating here it could be that this happened during your relationship I definitely you know the second guy I learn to push down a lot of me in that relationship because of a an ENT entirely different kind of abuse that I did not experience ever before that you know like with my daughter's father so I learned very quickly to suppress some of the most charismatic

parts of me I just pushed all of that away and became sort of a walking zombie you know um didn't realize till after the fact so a lot of it did happen for me too uh as an adult but it started off I never would have attracted him and I would never would have accepted him and into my life and same goes for you if this already hadn't started from a way earlier age whoever we attract and partner up with is a reflection of how we already feel about our own selves and so if you're not feeling good about yourself then of course you're going to attract the same level of person the same frequency if you will um and the more that you work on yourself you hear a lot of people I've heard people um a

lot talk about well I don't want to get back into a relationship because I'm scared that I'm going to just attract the same thing and I've been over so much in my life that I just don't want it to happen again and I get you I was there for a long time as well but I also know now today that I could never attract what we can this is not even talking about dating this could be friendships and what have you I could never attract the same type of person into my life and welcome them in because I think differently about who I am I'm an entirely different person I wouldn't accept that into my life and I probably wouldn't even be attractive to whatever friend or romantic relationship the on

the other side of things like my either of my exes wouldn't they probably wouldn't even see me in a room today because of the level of self-respect that I have today I am not willing to self erase anymore do you know what I'm saying and so the same good go for you so if you've done this work and become aware of these patterns the likelihood of you attracting the same kind of person into your life is very low sort of how I was talking about um last week with in high school and the people that did come from quote unquote good upbringings how we were missing there was no way I felt I was like this is so awkward it's so weird and so I'd always go back to the bad boys now after you've

been through the storm and you're doing the healing y'all won't connect in the same way that you might have years ago so if you're ever scared of this then this is why but because you learn to dissociate younger and this became a pattern for you you felt more and more comfortable diverting to others to find out what they wanted for themselves or they wanted for you then you learned how to press it away press it away and then of course you've lost the skill like your subconscious understands pretty early on oh okay we're not supposed to connect with the true who we are we can just adopt what is external attune ourselves to our environment that's why a lot of us are such good people

people you know like we know how a lot of us know how to work a room even if introverts because we've been doing it our whole lives it's not that you're trying to to pull one over on anybody the only person that you're really pulling one over on in the end is you you know it's a coping mechanism you just may not be fully aware when you're doing it but if you find that you feel highly uncomfortable when you're by yourself and with your own thoughts this can show up a couple ways cuz some people really like to be alone especially after 2020 but after being alienated for so long then we learn how to like self-isolate so we're self-isolated self erased people and may

be erased from your alienated child and so we're on this island like it's highly uncomfortable and that's why many of us pick up habits that aren't healthy we can't be who we are anywhere we don't really know who we are or what we want out of life so things can feel pointless like there's no meaning at least with our kids around we could serve them we could pour our everything into them that gave us our identity but then all of a sudden now our kids are gone and we're like what the do we do how were we going to freaking get by my daughter was my identity she was how I felt good about who who I was and what I was doing each day when I went to sleep at night I

gauged whether I had a successful day on how well I was able to support my daughter in one way or another first and foremost people ask me who I was I'm a mom I'm a mom I'm here to support my daughter and so when that's taken away and I don't know who I am it's like well what now and plus I'm not worth getting to know anyway because I got in trouble when I exposed who I was right so we stay lost for a really long time because we don't know where to go from there like the only thing that we think will make lives better is for our children to come home if they could just return home then everything could go back to normal but I I will tell you that depending on how long it's been I I

don't know if this is fully true because once something like this like the alienation has happened in your life and you've gone through what you have this huge upheaval and like I said if it's been more than you know a year or two you going back to normal isn't an option whatever normal was and was it even normal back then anyway I mean maybe yes it was amazing because your children were there with you right and as you know I would give all this back and go back to that time knowing everything I know now and not make those same mistakes again I would do it in a heartbeat but number one we don't have that option and number two I just don't think that if things were to go back we

go back to court and you were ordered you know custody full custody and I don't think everything would just settle back into how it was not fully authentically deep down here you can't go back after all of that now you can develop the relationship with your kids and things can be great there but also you've already been faced with this adversity you can't pretend like that didn't happen this causes all of us those of us that want the healing anyway if you're listening to this podcast you've already started down the path so now even if you have your kids and whatever you're still going to be wanting more you're still going to be wanting to evolve yourself the ball's

already rolling really what I'm saying here is that I believe this is a Shelby ISM here not only have we maybe been for me I was I erased from my daughter's life or that's what they're trying to do I'm not going to say I was erased from my daughter's life but that's what they're trying to do this started way before I ever met my ex-husband this started for me as a child the client I was talking with this morning started for her when she was a child and I'm going to bet for you too you learned long ago to turn your back on yourself and you learned that it wasn't going to get you where you needed to go at the time this was how you coped and it's a natural there was nothing wrong with

what you did it's what you needed to do what you thought you needed to do in order to get by back then but doing it over and over for yourself you had already been erasing yourself when probably when you met your spouse or your the other parent you were already willing to be erased because you were doing it on a daily basis with yourself and so whoever is alienating your kids from you maybe they didn't detect this on the Forefront of the runs it's usually not that way but somewhere in them they knew that right I am in no way blaming you for for alienation but I think that we always put ourselves in situations that reflect what our reality is what we're already thinking you know

I just basically said that with our partners whatever we're putting out there we're going to get back you know the equal amount and so if we're choosing partners that are abusive and whatever it's because we already don't think highly of ourself right and the same thing with self erasing if you were already willing to deny ignore dissociate from your true self back then then of course here we are years and years and years later where somebody is trying to erase you from your child right so make an agreement with yourself to lovingly compassionately with curiosity start noticing where this is showing this might be showing up for you start noticing where you are lowering your

standards for somebody else because you think that it might be easier or less uncomfortable or make you be looked more highly upon by somebody else maybe you are hoping to get into somebody's good graces so you ignore what you really want for the better of the situation of the relationship of whatever they want become acutely aware of the times that you are tempted to place more value on somebody else's desires over your own right something as simple as like where do you want to go to lunch today I don't know where do you want to go I don't know I don't know let's go to that restaurant that you like down the road right notice those little tiny things that you do and just slowly but surely

start with just noticing them you don't have to change them right away have compassion for yourself just oh that's interesting to yourself you know you could say it out loud too if you want it to depending on the person but that's interesting that I just did that I may not know where I want to go but that's because I'm out of touch with who I am right now but let's pay more attention to what I really want sometimes what I have to do because I am still getting in touch with who I am and what I want um I think for the rest of my life probably will be but I go through the list of what I don't want and then go to the exact opposite of what those things are and then start to play with it then you

have to go start doing things right and finding out who you are and redefining who you are moving forward you are not Tethered to whatever you defined yourself as before today really anything that that was before today it's gone what do you want to Define yourself as today how do you want to see yourself in a month a year so on and that can keep changing as you go too as you learn more if you just sit quiet with yourself the answers will come it's going to take a little while if it's been a while since you've been in touch with yourself it is going to take some practice but you got to start sometime so yeah so start noticing the areas in which you've been deferring to somebody else for your

sense of self-worth or sense of direction or um even emotions this happens so often I mean I can't tell you how many times per day that I talk with somebody that they're like they don't appreciate me enough my mom doesn't appreciate me my dad doesn't appreciate me there a recurring theme for us we have little patience or tolerance when it comes to everybody else because we feel like we're already working from a deficit we feel devalued and underappreciated as a parent right and so we don't have it coming from that direction anymore so then we go and we hope that it comes from our you know close friends family members maybe significant other we want them to Value

us but really honestly that is fleeting that will never be consistent will sort of like rise and fall like the tides what is consistent is when you value you every single time I say that to somebody people like um yeah I guess but what's the point the point is valuing yourself and knowing from deep within you that you are infinitely worthy and have so much to offer the world when you have that from your inside like truly know this it's okay if they don't value you you don't need anybody else to do that for you is a feeling like no other then were you're not so butt hurt when the kids aren't in your eyes not respecting you or not considering you then it's not a

big deal when your significant other or parent isn't giving you the extra attention you want because you value yourself it it's their loss when you get to that point it is the most freeing place to be my friends I tell you what and then what's so amazing about that is when you're there you are actually at the point where you can offer your unconditional love because you're not expecting anything in return from anybody it's all coming from within and I tell you from that Source when you tap into that part of you and you all can do it when you stop ignoring and erasing yourself when you tap into that energy that comes from within you it flows non-stop NeverEnding source of

unconditional love that you are able to give out not only to yourself but to everybody else there are no conditions on what you can offer to people you you're doing it with boundaries right but you don't need anybody to be anything or fill any role for you you don't feel at like at the effect of your relationships you're not hanging on every word that your mom or your partner or your cousin or your brother said do you know what I'm saying they're just there and they're making your life feel more enriched on top of the fullness that already is you when you get there and this is telling you 100% doable I did it and I was a person like I've stressed so much throughout these 80 episodes now

that I bounced off the energies of everybody outside of me I was like a ping pong ball like a pinball just bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing who do I need to be how do I need to be are you going to laugh I was const you know I thrived off of that energy and that's another reason why I always think like if you're one that feels like you um are constantly looking for the next best thing this is also why because once you get it from the person that you think that that's going to be the end all be all if I just have that relationship if I just have that whatever whatever you get there and you realize that you're not full and that it needs to be somewhere else but this is

not what I expected it to be so I have to go find it from somebody else so you never of course can settle because you're actually always looking for that one thing that's going to like uh satiate you right that's going to satisfy you but that one thing has been inside of you all the while okay so when you stop self erasing and ignoring and denying yourself and you start becoming aware of where this is showing up for you this is the first step start becoming aware of how you're looking outside of you to feel better to feel relief to feel love needed all those things and now when I say that when I say the love needed just know too that we do need connection but

connection only happens when you're able to share yourself with another person maybe up until now like this was for me maybe you haven't actually fully connected with many people throughout your life like in your mind this is what connection is but maybe you've only been acting as how you think you should be acting for that person for that relationship so you never actually connected because they don't know who you truly are and what you truly want and how you truly feel because you don't know who you truly are and what you truly want and how you truly feel do you hear me so when you stop self erasing or first become a like aware of the areas where it's showing up

for you then you can start digging deep and finding the answers that are truly yours and that is when you actually find true connection with somebody that's when you have the vulnerability and the true feeling of safety and love and acceptance and all of those things but it has to start with you you have to come at this with a curiosity for who you truly are and what you truly want with without judging yourself right because when you come at it like gosh why can't you just be yourself you're never going to find the answers because your subconscious like your emotional brain is like we're not coming out now like conditions don't look so good out there you know we'll wait until things

feel a little bit more welcoming so be patient with yourself it's going to take some time if you've been denying yourself for you know years and years and years which many of us have okay so just be patient with yourself and for right now if this is something that's new for you just start noticing all the areas that is showing up okay notice when you have like automatically deferred to somebody else to make the plans or to decide what you want for whatever it may be maybe you have been always searching for somebody's approval or like you maybe it was up to you to take care of your family and so you're just doing because that's what you have to do and you sort of lost yourself there so this

is when you can take back your power some if you're if look all these things by the way I'm making these suggestions if you're not happy with where you currently are if it's working for you if whatever you're doing is working for you and like I this just brought it up because I was like if you're taking care of your family if you're happy taking care of your family you know like your nuclear family mom dad or whoever whatever it is that you're doing if you if it's work for you don't change a damn thing but if you're really wanting to get in touch with yourself and you're not sure of who you are anymore and you feel like you've constantly been trying to trade up and trade up and find the

thing that's going to fill you up this is how you do you got to give yourself the grace and allow yourself the the freedom and hold space for yourself to divulge who you are so it's going to take a little bit of coaxing to pull you out right look for the areas where you might be unconscious ly self erasing separating from yourself in order to avoid discomfort or pain is what your brain will probably tell you you self-protect and deny who you are and what you want in order to appease others by doing this work you can stop the cycle that might have been going on for generations and generations in your family okay okay guys that's what I have for you y'all have a lovely lovely week and also

April 27th is the event I'm going to be having taking back your power in three steps oky doie Smokey Friday Facebook live okay guys have a lovely week 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 bit- siiz clips and tips be sure to find me on Tik Tok or Instagram see you next

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