Every Decision Feel Like a Trial? How to Overcome Self‑Doubt for Alienated Parents

Hello, y'all. How we doing today? So, if it feels like every decision that you make as an alienated parent has to go through a hostile committee in your head before you're allowed to act, this episode is for you. You maybe you go to send a text and suddenly you're rewriting it 10 times. You think about filing a motion or booking a consult and then somehow weeks go by, right? You play every visit back in your mind convinced that you said the wrong thing, looked the wrong way, breathed too loud. You know how it goes, right? So, today, if this is you, then I want to offer you a different way to see all of that. I want you to picture that inside of you there's a

scared little kid gripping the steering wheel of your life. Every time you move towards your child or toward a decision that matters, that kid, the kid I'm talking about, not your kid, yanks the wheel and says, "Nope, too dangerous. Turn back around. Turn back around to what we know." So, in this episode, we're going to talk about how alienation and chaos put that scared kid in the driver's seat to begin with, how that shows up in your day-to-day, and what it looks like to begin taking back the wheel without having to shove that part of you back in the trunk. Last week, we talked about the comfort regret loop, the way that your brain sells you short-term relief that turns into long-term pain.

Today is part two of that mini series. We're zooming in on the role that self-doubt plays in that loop. So, before we dive in, I want to come back to the homework I gave you last time. Last week, I asked you to notice any comfort regret loop that you have going on, and then write down one instance where you chose comfort in the moment and then later regretted it. For a lot of you, I know that that looked like scrolling instead of reaching out, shutting down instead of sending the text or the card, deciding that today's not the day to schedule either some consult or paperwork or whatever, right? Emotion. Basically, all of those is choosing to stay in the same daily routine instead

of taking the risk you know that will pay off long-term. If you've noticed any version of that, um I want you to hear me. Nothing has gone terribly wrong. Nothing. Here. Okay? I'm not talking about your situation for Alienated Parents, but I'm saying with you in this loop. It doesn't mean that you're lazy or that you're unmotivated or that you don't want it badly enough. You don't want change or um growth or reconciliation to happen badly enough. It has nothing to do with that. Each one of those moments are actually a giant neon sign pointing to one thing, one thing only. It's that self-doubt was in the driver's seat at the time. And it's a habit, probably that a

protective mechanism habit that you might have developed. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. So, if last week was about spotting the comfort regret loop, this week is about meeting that part of you that keeps pulling you back into it. It's the self-doubt loop that manages you. Okay? So, let's put some language behind or on what I mean by self-doubt here. And self-doubt is the habit of believing the loudest, harshest voice in your own head over what you actually know to be true about yourself. For Alienated Parents, it often sounds like, "I made this worse. If I were a better mom or dad, this wouldn't have happened. If I say anything, I'll push them further

away. Maybe everything everybody else is right about me. If I move forward with this, I'll ruin whatever tiny chance that I have left." Does any of that sound familiar? When those sentences show up, your brain doesn't present the most random thoughts. It presents them as facts. Though, I'm going to touch on that in a second. There's a uh caveat or there's a there's an add-on to that that I'll touch on in a here a minute. But here's the thing that I really want you to hear. This is not a character flaw. It's a trauma pattern. Your self-doubt is not fact. Like each one of your doubts about yourself, they're not fact. They're not some verdict. It's a trauma pattern.

Your brain has learned over and over that doubting yourself felt safer and sometimes was safer than trusting yourself. So, this is a good time to actually point out many of you um talk about quickly we'll talk about hypervigilance here. And so for many of you your self-doubt doesn't live only in your thought. It lives in your body as hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is basically just your body stuck on high alert. It's constantly bracing for something to go wrong even when you're technically safe after emotional abuse. And it's not even just for something to go wrong. You're just hyper aware of all of your surroundings. Yes, you're scanning for threats, but hyper aware of

all of your surroundings. Like for me hypervigilance often looks like fawning, you know, where I'm overly people pleasy, you know, I've kind I've grown out of most of that, I think. But not without some pains and definitely not without I mean there was a lot of diligence to work through that, you know. So, I saw a great speaking of that. This is off-topic, but I saw a such a great It was probably a year ago um Instagram post on exclamation points and how hypervigilance can show up in using a ton of exclamation points. It was absolutely hilarious, though. I'll have to find it. I don't know where I could I guess I could link it here like in the show notes. So so funny and so true. But

anyway, I'll find it and I'll put it I'll link it in the show notes cuz it is it's such worth the watch. It's like you know what it's under 90 seconds so you know it won't take you that long it's hilarious. So after emotional abuse, high conflict co-parenting if we want to call it that even, years of walking on eggshells with your ex maybe and the shock of losing your child, your brain security system gets locked into overdrive. So of course you find yourself double and triple checking every text or email, analyzing every word in a court document or other documents, replaying every micro expression from your kiddo during a visit, scanning constantly for the next

attack, next accusation, or the next shutdown. It all makes sense. Your body is trying to predict and prevent the next explosion before it happens. That's what I mean when I say that this is a trauma pattern not a personality flaw. Your self-doubt is riding on top of a nervous system that has been trained by experience to see threats everywhere. So here's the picture that I want you to hold for the rest of this episode. Self-doubt is the scared kid in the car with you. Self-trust is the wise steady parent. Confidence is just how many miles you've already driven together and the knowing of those miles and how many roads you've been on. When the scared kid is driving, they're gripping the

wheel, eyes huge saying, "Don't turn there, it's dangerous. Don't do that. That's going to get us hurt harmed ousted. Don't send that, they'll hate you. Don't speak up, the judge will think you're crazy or whoever will think you're crazy. Don't reach out, you'll just get hurt again." More examples of that and the way it looks for us like detailed in real time. One of the ways is we fall into this I always want to second-guess saying that we fall into it. Yes, before we're aware, we can fall into the distortion trap and like memory sabotage, where you're questioning your own history with your child. So, when the alienating parent, your your ex or whoever's doing the

alienating, distorts past events telling your child and sometimes you that what you thought was a fun vacation was actually miserable, or maybe that you were the never there. We be was the narrative for them is that you were just never there. You never spent time with your kid anyway. You may begin to doubt the validity of your own positive memories and the experience, right? You might think, was I actually present as present as I thought? Maybe I did ruin that trip like they said, you know? Or maybe it was that my time away from work or whatever was more negatively impactful on my child than I thought. I have this experience for me where certain things were blown up. I think we

all do. Certain things uh time frames or like vacations is the one I've got on my mind was blown up and taken all hearsay out of context. And I still to this day, when I think back on it, I'm like, was that hurtful? Was that harmful? Or what That was probably the narrative, right? That they were using. Um There was this we had this I don't know if I'm going to include this or not, not only just for time's sake, but we had I my dad has a place down in the Keys in the Florida Keys. And we always used to go to it like for long weekends and any of the holidays. My daughter and I would go down there and use it. And it wasn't just a place down in the Keys. It was

like a compound. So, there were there were three houses on in the compound. One of them was the architect who did all the houses, right? And then it was my dad's house that was right with both all of them are on the water. So, the backyard was the bay. And then the house behind it, which is like a football field away, maybe less, past a football field away, was the back house, which was where me and my daughter stayed. And um one night I went down to the dock. And somehow, because my daughter and I slept together at the time, and she was um six, maybe five or six years old, six probably. And she woke up, I guess, when I got up, right when I did, and she didn't know where I went. She couldn't

see the dock. So, then she wandered over to the architect's house, who was like her grandma. And that story, looking for me, and then anyway, it was a whole thing. But, of course, that story got blown up as to I went out partying and um left my daughter to be fend for herself. When this is a gated compound where my dad and his wife and everybody it was family, you know? Um there's croquet out I mean, it's just it was anyway, safe and whatever, but I did always wonder, was that was that me? Did I do it wrong? Should I not have gotten out of bed and gone down to the dock, you know? Whatever. So, there you go. Maybe you have something similar happened with you. Another way

is we can assume responsibility for the rejection. Because our children will often offer ridiculous sounding excuses for rejecting us. Like, the house smells bad or it's untidy or disorganized or not fun or whatever it is that they're saying, we as targeted parents may actually spiral into self-doubt, wondering if the trivial issues that are being offered are actually deep character flaws. Which will lead to a belief that we're somehow I'm good enough. And then not, of course, is going to lead to intense self-loathing, shame, self-doubt. You might conclude, "If my child hates me this much, that I must have done something truly terrible that I'm just not seeing." Or this must have,

like I mentioned a minute ago, this must have affected them way deeper and more negatively than I ever believed or thought at the time, right? Here's the thing, is that this often, like that I must have done something truly terrible that I'm just not seeing, oftentimes this will fly way under the radar, like you've heard me talk about before, because we're so used to being on defense to the world, trying to prove ourselves worthy, you know, that even with ourselves, we want to argue ourselves out or our way out of that deeper, quiet fear of like, maybe it's something truly terrible that I'm not seeing, the self-doubt fear, we'll completely argue our way out of it

because we're so used to being on the stands publicly. And so, that mindset of being a bit hyper-vigilant and on defense ends up bleeding into our own talk with ourselves. But then, because awareness and acknowledgement are the like the first step to your evolvement, and that you're we're too busy denying all these accusations even to ourselves that we end up the fear that you have that maybe it was me ends up going unrecognized, and then no change can happen because you're you know, already argued your way out of it and tossed it aside, dismissed it. But if it keeps coming up for you, like, was it me? And then you're like, "No, of course it wasn't me." And I hope I'm

making sense here. Of course it wasn't me. No, I've done all these things. I've done blah blah blah. That that argument becomes center stage, and then you because we want to protect ourselves, our system wants to protect ourselves. Well, we're going to go with the more positive one because we've been fed so much negative about ourselves. So then what happens is that true fear that you have that maybe it was me ends up getting drowned out by your correction of it, but then you never deal with the actual deep-seated fear, so then it will keep coming up for you. Does that make sense? Okay. So another way is you may go into a state of like hesitation and also walking on

eggshells. So constant threat appraisal leads us to doubt our natural parenting instincts. We end up being fearful that any discipline or normal parenting boundary will be used by the alienators as proof of abuse or being too strict or being too lenient, too. So we end up instead over-correcting and becoming super passive or over-accommodating, which of course this creates a cycle where we doubt our ability to lead, which will come out in thoughts like, "I can't tell them to do their homework because they'll tell the other parent that I'm mean and I will lose my job forever." Or I can't tell them to put their phone down while we're eating because again, I'll be too strict and then I will lose

them forever. They'll want to go over to dad's or mom's house and and that will be the end of that. So instead we sit quiet, sit tight, and let it all go over, which reinforces the child role for us and them as the parent role. So the problem is not Oh, one more of them. Sorry, I forgot another one and I'm not watching my notes. Um the other one is that you internalize and this is kind of what we've been talking about already, but you internalize the villain label. So alienators will often frame us as the targeted parent is dangerous or unsafe without any factual basis, right? This is nothing new for you. After years of being told that we are narcissists or

toxic, right? We're the ones that are narcissists or toxic, you might start to monitor your own behavior for these traits through an obsessive doubting lens. This is something that happened with me. I I was called an alienator before I even knew what that term was. I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" Because my daughter at the time would cry every time she would go over to dad's. But this was all new and at the time that it was happening, she was still um I mean not she was in my arms. She was going through this phase and I don't I haven't really done much thought about this until just now, but she was going through this phase where she just didn't like men.

And um I don't know if it was ever something that I said because I was never she was little itty bitty and I didn't Anyway, it's it's a thing. So, she wasn't comfortable also because he was um gone pretty much I mean he was around he was a consultant software consultant. So, he was in sales. He's consulting and then he was sales. And he was gone Monday through Thursday every week. So, she wasn't spending that much time with him. And then when we split Anyway, so she as I'm saying I'm just proving my point here of what I'm saying is that we'll be the ones that are called narcissist or toxic or alienators even, right? So, you may start to monitor your own behavior

for these kinds of traits through obsessive doubting sort of lens on your own self. So, the problem is not you guys that you have this scared little child of self-doubt part. Of course you do. It makes sense given everything I've just shared with you, right? The problem is when you keep handing them the keys and allowing them to be the tour guide through your life. So, let's talk about how that scared driver got there in the first place. First, number one is emotional gaslighting and blame. When you're being told that you're too sensitive, you're too much, the real problem, or when people work literally labels you as high conflict or unfit, your brain learns a

very brutal lesson here. My perception your perception is wrong. I can't trust myself. That's what happens there. You may not say it in these words at all, but the idea there is they're telling me this and even the professionals are telling me this. What is What does that mean about me? Is this who I am? And so then a lot of times we'll go and try to find other people that know us to validate what our true feelings about are about ourselves. Like am I blah blah blah overbearing and this that whatever am I I'm not caring for my kid or am I You know, you ask other people what they witness with you because it feels like crazy town in your brain. So, that's one way it gets there. The second way

is unpredictability. Right? One minute things are calm and the next there's an explosion. Your ex will flip the script, your child will suddenly pull away, a work decision will blindside you. Your nervous system from all of those things and many more, your nervous system will learn any move could set off a bomb. So, the safest move starts to feel like no move at all. So, you make yourself small. You try to go unnoticed. I have just a funny show scene coming to my mind. If you guys have watched I love this show, Arrested Development, where Buster is going to the Milford Academy, funnily enough, and he their whole thing was children should be seen and not heard,

you know? And so, Buster met like mastered that skill so well and he became like he actually stayed in the school an extra year after he graduated because he liked the school so much and he went unnoticed throughout that whole year. He blended into the Anyway, funny not funny. I know we're talking about alienation, but I think sometimes it it helps to have some funny pictures in your mind of and Buster always does that for me. Anyway, um the third thing, back to here, on task. Loyalty binds and the terror of losing your child completely. When the message in the air is one wrong step and they'll hate you forever. Any loving parent's system is going to miss lay on the brakes. Of course, right?

If you've been through all of that, of course there is a a little one right, your little self-doubt, screaming in the backseat, "Please do not drive that route again. Please." Of course, also that there is a part of you that believes from the bottom of his or her little theoretical heart that the way to keep everyone safest is to keep you small, quiet, and still, unnoticed, right? Your self-doubt is your brain's clumsy, overprotective attempt to keep you from ever feeling that level of pain again. The problem is is it doesn't it's not always as successful as it aims to be, self-doubt. So, the next time that you hear that inner voice of self-doubt say something

like, "You're ruining everything." or "You always make it worse." or "Don't do that." "Don't go there." it you're going to get noticed or chastised or whatever, I want you to try on a couple questions for yourself. What if that voice that you're hearing is not any sort of proof that you're a terrible parent or you're incapable? What if it's proof instead that your brain has been working overtime to protect you? Taking into consideration the wrecks and the collisions you've been in, the court battles, the character assassinations, the ache of an empty room where your child's belongings used to be, it makes sense that you would want a protective part of you to slam on the brakes

sometimes. We are not going to let self-doubt drive forever, but we also don't have to treat it like the enemy. We can start to see it as a scared little kid, like we're talking about, who needs a steadier driver in the front seat. That's all. So, this week, I want you to take that same homework that we were talking about from last week one step further. So, step one is to grab what you wrote down last week. And if you didn't do the homework, no shame at all, not a big deal. Just think of one recent moment where you chose comfort and later regretted it. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode, maybe go get that a listen to. But so, choose one recent moment where you chose

comfort instead of growth, right? And then later regretted it, or you know that later you're going to regret it. Step two then is to rewrite that moment as a little scene with the scared kid driving the car. Literally describe it like this. Mhm, bullet points is fine. My scared kid was driving when I whatever you did or didn't do. Didn't send a text, put it off again, whatever, right? My scared kid was driving when I blank. In that moment, my scared kid was saying and finish the sentence. Whatever that was is really helpful. I know this sounds like um elementary to do, but it's really helpful to do this because you're bringing awareness to the parts of you

and your system that are trying to deny it, kind of like I was talking about a little bit ago, okay? So, in that moment, my scared kid was saying what? Okay? And then step three, I said I'm holding up two, but I mean three. And then I want you to add one line from the confident city driver in you. Even if it's tiny. Something like, I get why you're so scared. We've been through a lot. This is parts work, okay? Next time, I'm going to practice taking the wheel for one stretch of the road. That's you That's what you're going to say back and then you can write this down, too. Because writing it down, well, you've probably heard me talk about this if you've been listening for

a little while. Writing it down will have you get some separation, but also bring more awareness in a different way to the parts of you that want to la la la la la. Shut the ears down and, you know, deflect or go pretend like it's not happening. You don't have to change the whole pattern this week. Your only job is to start seeing with compassion. Like, oh, that wasn't just me being a mess. That's what I used to say to myself all the time. Oh my god, I was a mess. I'm being a mess again, you know? That's how I talked spoke to myself, but I never really knew I was thinking to myself like that. Because because and because I was a hermit, I wasn't talking to anybody else back then.

You know, it was just me and so I wasn't aware of all the way the nasty ways I talked to myself and what I was believing about myself. So, that's another reason why it's good to really get it right down. But, that wasn't me just being a mess. That was my scared kid driving the car again. My scared kid of self-doubt. My scared kid of whatever it is, you know? But, right now since we're talking about self-doubt, self-doubt. Um, so this is just last thing I want to say here is the fact that you're even here listening to a podcast like this, right? On your healing after something as traumatic as we've gone through and are going through, tells me that there's already a

steady driver inside of you right now. You are not the scared kid. That is not who you are. You are the one that gets to learn how to drive again, even with that kid sitting in the backseat. Okay? Next time we're going to look at next week we're going to look at what self-trust actually looks like after alienation. How to stop painting the keys over to self-doubt waiting to feel 100% confident first. And we're going to get into what it means to have your own back. Right? Which I talk about a lot. Even when the courts, the exes, and sometimes your child children don't. If this episode helps, it would mean of course, as I've been saying, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with one

other alienated parent who's been stuck riding in the backseat while self-doubt has been behind the wheel. So, you are doing so much better. I promise you than your brain is probably telling you. We're going to keep building on this. Too. Okay? So, next time I want to walk you through how to start actually taking the keys back from that scared kid. In a way that doesn't blow out your nervous system. So, you can move toward your child and toward your future from a place of self-trust instead of constant self-doubt. All right? So, that's what I have for you guys today. I've got so much love for you guys. So, so, so much love for you. And I'm offering that you love yourself so, so, so much.

This week. Okay? And I will see you next time. Okay. Bye.