Are you an alienated parent feeling stuck, defeated, or like you’ve failed? Discover how to break free from the pain of alienation, reclaim your sense of self, and step into a new reality where healing and hope are possible—no matter what’s happened in your past.

 

Main Talking Points

• Moving Beyond “Failure”: Why the feeling of having “failed as a parent” is rooted in old beliefs, and how to shift out of that mindset.
• The Power of Self-Accountability: Understanding how your energy and beliefs shape your experience—even in the face of alienation.
• Reclaiming Your Identity: Learning to separate your sense of self from external circumstances, including your relationship with your children and the actions of the alienating parent.
• The 99% Solution: Tapping into your spirit and energy (the “99%” of you) to create real change, rather than relying solely on thoughts or external validation.
• Practical Steps for Healing: Daily practices like sitting in silence, detoxing your environment, and redefining your boundaries to start living as your most empowered self.
• Transforming Your Problems: How to move from “low-quality” problems (feeling powerless) to “high-quality” problems (creating the life you want).

 

Notable Quotes

• “The you that’s living the life of your dreams already exists—even after alienation, even after all that’s happened in your past.”
• “Your circumstances will not change until you do. If you’re waiting for the world to change, you’ll be waiting forever.”
• “You are not just a character in someone else’s story. You are the author of your own life.”
• “This may have been true for me before, but it’s not true anymore.”
• “If you can separate yourself from the version of you that needed others to make life easier, you’ll realize you are all-powerful.”

 

Key Takeaways

• Feeling like a failure as a parent is a common but false narrative—one that can be rewritten.
• True transformation starts with taking responsibility for your own energy and beliefs, not waiting for others to change.
• Healing requires detaching from old patterns, sitting with yourself, and redefining your identity beyond your role as a parent.
• Daily practices—like meditation, environment detox, and self-reflection—are essential for regaining your energy and sense of self.
• With commitment, your life can become unrecognizable (in a good way) within months, not years.
• The journey is about moving from surviving to thriving, and from being defined by alienation to being defined by your own empowered choices.

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Episode Transcript

 You are listening to the Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 168.

 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.

  📍 📍 Hello, y'all. Okay, so I'm recording for the second time, I thought I was being all early to record and get everything done proactively, and the universe said no to me anyway. Okay. So today what I was gonna do, um, pardon my, if you're watching you guys, you should see my busted nails right now.

I've got like. Five nails on, five off, something like that. I was supposed to go to, to get them done now, but here I am. It's okay. It's all not a problem. Maybe there's a reason for it Anyway. Um, so today we're gonna be talking about, I was going to for the next few episodes, I was gonna name this the failure series, but I figured that not only two reasons why I didn't, um, and I haven't, is that like today's was gonna be. , I failed as a parent and that kind of thinking and where that came from with you and why you're doing it, we are still gonna talk about that, but I'm actually going to include some more stuff.

So it's not just gonna be about failure and how to get out of that mindset, the yes it is, but also some other things. Um, and also I just wanted it to be a little bit more palatable because people see failure written. It just might be a little, offputting. So anyway, but that's basically what it's gonna be about is the next few episodes.

It's about moving from your current reality of stuck inness, right? Um, dead end. Like feeling like you've got no more moves to make to a new reality. An entirely new reality and a reality that thus far, you probably, if you've, you're listening to this, you probably haven't even considered for yourself.

You may have seen other people's realities like be a certain way and it seems great for them, but it feels impossible for you. Well, I'm gonna show you, hopefully convince you that it's not impossible for you. Alright? Um, so today we're gonna be talking about basically your sha I, we don't always address it this way.

I don't know that I ever have, but it's basically your shadow self, where that came from, where your not enough feelings came from, and then how to get over them, how to get over your, your current limiting beliefs and just what you think is possible for you and move to  a different reality completely.

Okay.  And so I have a very short little spiel and the rest of it is pretty much like written down and the rest of it is just gonna be off the cuff.

 so what if I told you the you that's living the life of your dreams already exists? Like even after alienation, even after all of the whatever's happened in your past, the highest version of you at the age that you are currently, And this timeframe, this timeline is already existing. It's already possible. It's there for you, it's in the bag. what? If all that you have to do is align your now version of you with that version of you. 

Right now, if you feel stuck or that you have no moves to make, I wanna lovingly tell you that you need to open up your horizons. Broaden your horizons. The long dark hallway that you see is your life right now, or the dead end is only one reality. That reality is coming from what you've created thus far in your past from the energy that you've emitted until today.

So whatever you came from, like as far as your family life, whatever happened back then and whatever created Your beliefs from back then, you're likely still operating on many of those, they were your foundation, however you were raised, whatever was possible for your parents, whatever was possible for the people around you, you likely are still living on somewhere in your subconscious today.

That's what you're working from. And so in order for you to shift your reality, like completely change it if you don't like the results that are in your life today, even alienation,

First, foremost, you have to take full accountability of all of your experiences in your current experience too. Fully understanding that whatever has happened thus far, whatever the alienating parent has done, whatever your children have done, the boss you had 10 years ago, all of it, your experience of it was because of your energy.

Yours,   this is very good news

Because once you've gotten rid of the things that are dragging you down, not only do you feel better, but now you actually have the power to change it, it will come easy for you once you have done this preliminary work.

I have talked about this with you guys in different terms than I'm using today, but we're gonna try a different angle. You just need to take some steps, up until now, you've likely had your focus placed on all the wrong things, So whatever it is that you want to change, you can do it. And like I said, it will be easy. The steps are easy. It's possible. It is more than possible for you to shift your reality and start living in, start creating the life that is worthy of you, okay? Even after alienation, I don't care what has happened or how impossible that you believe your life is right now.

You absolutely can If you're, if we're looking at this metaphysical quantum leap. To a new reality, a more desirable reality, a more desirable youth. Okay?

Most of us. Have been until now or throughout most of our lives, have been allowing the external to define us, And provide our experience for us determine how we show up in the world, So you cannot shift until another reality. It's impossible for you to shift, to a better reality or a, more evolved reality. Any other reality, until you shift yourself.

Okay? Your circumstances in your life will not change until you change. I mean, now obviously we know that somebody else can do something, and it may be it's a stroke of luck and things will feel good. Kind of like winning the lottery and then. If you won the lottery and you didn't know how to manage money and you hadn't changed, like shifted with it.

That's why you see lottery winners. I've used this example before. Lottery winners, most, the majority of them don't go and put their money away and know how to manage their money. So in a few years from the time that they won the lottery, they're broke again. same thing with you and I. If we don't change, if we don't level up, we cannot experience a new reality for any, set period of time.

So your circumstances will not change until you do. So if you're waiting around for the world to change, for somebody to come and save you. That's, I I definitely was there. I thought if you listen for a while, you know, this is my story about how I truly believed, truly believed that I would get on the knock on the door one day, and my ex and the, his new wife, the stepmom, would be there on the other side of the door apologizing and telling me how sorry they were and that they wanted things to go back to normal.

I truly believe that that was, had to have happened. Once I changed the few things in my life, like, um, my behaviors, I thought, well, that will get rewarded. I think I was listening to Joel Osteen back in the day and I, he always talked about like, well, if you change some of your behaviors, then that will get rewarded.

And I, that's what I believed, right? But I didn't realize that I actually had to dismantle pretty much my whole belief system and change my energy for me. Then my experience would be different, right? I just thought that if my circumstances changed, then everything would be fine, and then I could go back to being happy again.

But if I look back, I don't know that I was ever fully happy. I don't even know if I'm knew what that was except for being, maybe being like ignorance is less sort of thing. I was just bebopping through my life. And I believe for me, you choose to believe what you want. That , alienation and all the things that have happened throughout this whole journey, the negative things that happened were there to show me. , The areas that I needed to face and walk through, like move toward so that I could become the version of me that I am today and moving forward my continued involvement.

Right. That's what I believe. And you can choose to believe however you want, but back to what I was saying, of course, I just went off my notes. I depended on the world around me to dictate how I felt, how I acted, how I dreamed, even, right. Whether I dreamed actually, because before, if you've heard me talk about that, I never actually did dream from the time I was a kid, like dreamt about what I wanted in life, you know, because I didn't, I never, I, I was so in.

Living in the pocket of the people around me, starting from when I was a kid, that I didn't know how to have dreams of my own. I thought that my dreams should be whatever somebody else wanted, right? Maybe some of you. I think now that the more clients that I have over the years, the more that I realize, and other people have told me that that was a similar experience for them too, many of us as alienated parents.

It started from childhood where we were parenting our, parents, you know, in some way, shape or form. So maybe you didn't have your own dreams too. But anyway, I put my external circumstances on a pedestal and I was a product of those circumstances and I was a slave to those circumstances.

Like I thought that the things that happened in my life either happened because of luck. Or because I was acting good, like I was being a good girl or something when I was younger, or that those were the people, it was fate and those were the people that were supposed to be in my life

but when the rug got pulled out of me and those circumstances weren't in my life anymore, then I felt really empty, you know? And so, basically, I allowed the world. I was very reactionary and I allowed the world to determine

which way my ship sailed.

 You know how the alienating parent seems to always win. Things seem to just come to them without much effort, many of them anyway. I can't say all of 'em, but the parents that I hear from, it's always like the, the alienating parents is above the law.

They always seem to win. Nobody seems to care what they're doing and how bad they've been. And no matter what, they're always winning, you know, and everything comes with little effort for them. This is mostly because, and I'm sure many of you've thought about this before, this is mostly because  they believe that they can, they are so audacious to believe and to behave as if that they can have and be whatever and whoever they want. 

This is also true for highly successful people. You know, I think for the alienating parent though, they have this, what I'm talking about here. To a dysfunctional degree. And there's more actually to that. But I think that that's for another conversation on a different day. 'cause I don't wanna focus so much on the alienating parent.

That's really, they're not our focus. But I also know that many of you get so upset because how is it that , they always win. How do they do it without hardly any effort? They just command attention. Then people just listen to them. No matter how crazy their stories are. People believe them.

 

The Power of Self-Respect and Boundaries

But also think of other people in your life or that you've witnessed who just command attention. People that you respect, they walk into a room and it's like they're floating and they just, they're magnetic. 

I was just watching that Eddie Murphy special, um, recently, like, I don't know, last week or the week before. My coach had recommended it. And anyway, the one thing that I took away from that is he believed from the time that he was a little, he was, doesn't even drink, he never drank, partied, whatever.

Even though it was around him constantly back in the eighties, and he would say, no thanks. I don't want it. Because he loved himself so much that that was never even a, consideration for him, But he also said, what stood out to me is that he believed from the time that he was a little kid, he wanted to be famous, that was his dream, is, I wanna be famous, I wanna be famous.

And he believed it in his bones. There was never even a question that he wouldn't become famous. And you hear about this. And of course he went on and he did what he did. And he's been such a, like, probably the most successful comedian, 

It's true for anybody. Most people that are highly, highly successful. And I'm not, not talking about just famous people, but any highly successful person in order to become successful at whatever it was. I mean, you get the occasional person that just sort of fell into it and it became luck.

But then once they got into it, they fell into it. At first, they believed all the other things were possible for, for them, because if this was possible, then anything else could be possible too. It's all about belief. All the successful people, they believed, they were so delusional to believe that they could do it, and that's all you need too.

But if you have your old programming going on inside of you at all times and your behaviors and what you're surrounding yourself, and I'm gonna talk about that in a minute, if you have that going on telling you that you can't, that you failed, this is where the failure comes up, that you failed as a parent, that you're not good enough, that, uh, other people have a better, that you should have had better upbringing, better support, better guidance, blah, blah, blah.

Of course you're not gonna be successful. Does it make sense? Because you're not believing in yourself and so you will stay in this stunted no choices. I have no moves to make. I'm down a dead end. It feels like a dark hallway. Or like my example, the picture in my mind, way back when was standing in the bottom of a pit with no exit doors or windows or anything.

No ladder. I was stuck down there. It was very dark, you know,  because of what I was believing. I was always waiting for somebody to come save me. Always. I needed, I just needed a break. I just needed somebody to save me, somebody to mentor me. And I know I've talked with you guys about this before, but for those of you that are new here, I've been here, I've been where you might be at right now.

 My today life. I am a completely different person as far as the way that I carry myself, What I believe is possible for me, and that's what I want for you. So anyway, for the people that who are highly successful

what I've noticed with them too is that they can make the distinction between their own selves and somebody else. What I'm talking about is they have and hold really defined boundaries, inner boundaries, and external boundaries.

If you have really good internal boundaries, then you usually don't have to express them very much. You don't have to say them to other people. When, I mean, it does happen where there's like, Hey, that wasn't cool. Let's not, if you do that, then I'm gonna not be around you or whatever.

But most of the people have you ever. Seen or do you know people in your life that just walk into a room and they're just magnetic. They command respect attention and they also don't take any shit. But they don't need to tell people that they don't take any shit because it's just felt It's because their inner boundaries are so defined, because they exude self-respect, which causes other people to sort of fall in line. This happens because  they're not looking outside of themselves for others to define them. They know who they are. They know where they're going. They know what they want.

They've done the work around that.  Some people will brought up with that. Yes, that's their walk. So for us, at least for me, I know, and if you're listening to this, then our walk is facing all of this Walking through the fire,

 How many of us Google the same question or the same issue over and over and over again expecting some different result to pop up, the perfect answer to come to us.

It's what I just remember feeling like if I could just find the answer, not to just alienation, but to all the things. If I could just find the right attorney, if I could just find the right, you know, crack the code to all the things. I was always searching for something outside of me, and it came from, again, that really neurotic sort of energy, like the needing anxiety, anxious sort of energy. 

And that had me, it was almost like I was constantly, and also I've always been somebody that lost my things, my keys, my purse, my school books, back when I was a kid. I lost stuff all the time, clothes, whatever. Because I was living so outside of my own body and dropping things, places, and then constantly searching for those things.

I was always on a search for something, But then I realized that  I am, the answers not only do I have the answers, I am the answer, I'm the solution. And I determined, determined, and determined all of it.  This actually reminds me of an episode, um, for that I did a while back about, the things that I learned from Dan Sullivan, but I didn't name it that, I forget what it was.

But the, the gist of it is that you were the author of your life, You determine at all,

like, you're not a character in the story. You know, some supporting character, not even the main character. You are the author and maybe a character, but you're the author. You write it, you determine every part of it. And when I realized that, that I wait, I'm not just some character that somebody else is writing, that the alienating parent is writing that my mom wrote, that my dad was writing.

None of them. Determined it. I am and will always be the author of my own life. I can determine exactly what I want to happen, where I wanna go, how I wanna feel, how I am feeling, all of it. But first, in order for me to get there, I had to be okay with what was and be okay with who I was. So then the, the, the question always came up is, who am I?

Who are you?  

Who Are You? Rediscovering Identity After Alienation

 

Many people will say, I'm a mom. That's what I said. I'm a mom. I'm a mom. That's all I wanna be. That's what made me happy. Sure, okay. That's what made me happy before, and I'm not saying it won't make me happy. For the rest of my life, even now, I still love the fact that I'm a mom, but that's part of me that is not all of me.

And I used to say too, that i'm a fitness professional. I teach classes. This is what I do. It's not who I am. who are you? What you up?

Many of us get stuck there. So let's talk about actually who you are.

All of us are,

The 99% Energy: Flow States and Spiritual Healing

 99% of you is your spirit, your essence, your energy. Okay? 99%. This is where flow states derive from. Like when you get in a, in a, if you're creative, I mean, all of us are creative because you are creators, but like if you've already been in your life, an artist or something like that, or a writer and you know that when you get going, things just start blowing.

And sometimes you don't even know where the information or energy or, , stamina. All the things are coming from. This is coming from your spirit, the 99% of you. Also, when I ask you, to become the watcher of you and get meta on yourself.

This too is coming from your spirit, from the energy side of you, the 99% of you, most of us don't use that 99% when we're living unconsciously, hardly ever.

It's a rarity. This is where you have to get to. But because we've been looking for external things to define us, to fix us, to bring us answers, that that part of you will get blocked. you've blocked your energies.

 This just reminded me, and this is off of my notes right now, but this just reminded me of a time back in Texas, I went, I had, acupuncture or And they were trying to release, clear some blocks, some energy blocks And they did, my ears I had, this is what they told me there. This was at a medical facility. This wasn't at like, um, some place in a strip mall. Not that there's anything wrong with those places 'cause I think that those places are sometimes better than the medical facilities. They did this ear and then they did this ear.

And by the time they got halfway down this ear I went into and I never had one in my entire life. I went into a seizure, I passed out and went into a full on seizure on the floor, shaking, convulsing my eyes going in the back of my head. They said there at that facility that I had so many energy blocks.

That's what happened as a result. Crazy, right? Because I was living as a product of my environment and holding on to so much trauma, which was blocking me, so many judgments of myself, so many harsh judgments on how life worked for me, That was blocking my energy. And so I, until I started to face my own, fears, my thoughts, my beliefs, all that sort of stuff, I wasn't allowed to go back to that facility. That's what that, they didn't say it like that, but they basically told me, you need to, all the things that you're avoiding in your life right now, you have to walk towards them. You have to stop hiding from them and avoiding them,

 So then the other 1% of you, just one measly percent of you is your mental, your thoughts, your beliefs, your physical, like your body, you know, 1%. So when you want something and you have a goal, you've decided on a, some goal that seems crazy. That's where I always want you to go to somewhere you think is impossible for you.

You need to align both your spirit and your mental, the 99% of you and that other 1%, the 1% is absolutely necessary because that 1% is your, your physical being. You know, it's who you are here on this earth. I know it might sound a little woo , but it is, I promise you this is if you start step into this mindset knowing that there's so much more of you, that is probably untapped and it has to do with it coming from a source that feels easy, flowy, and.

Like plentiful, like infinitely plentiful.  Have you ever heard about people that like, all of a sudden know a new language and they don't know why, or , maybe their profession is one thing and then all of a sudden they know math problems or crazy complicated stuff that they never knew that they knew when they just got into a flow state.

This is it. This is why. I just want for you to consider like, push the walls out like I've talked about before with you guys. Push the walls and all the limits that you already have on you and start to think  really big because the power that you have inside of you.

is fucking magnificent and would blow your own 1% of you mind. if you don't know what you want or what you wanna create moving forward and you feel like when somebody asks that to you, or when I posed the question throughout this episode to you,  if you feel kind of drained or directionless. Wanna throw your hands up or it feels frustrating to you. It makes sense.

I used to feel the same way. This is happening because you're probably still in survival mode.

You're living in primarily fear.  You know, I talk about, I talked about recently, um, with you guys that I asked my clients in the first few sessions, what are the top three emotions? Like, what are the most common emotions that they feel on a day-to-day basis? Or even in the last week, most of the time, those, if you're coming from survival mode, they're fear-based emotions, , Scarcity and lack, ,

shame, maybe feeling like they're not enough and anger or frustration if that is you right now where you notice that the thoughts that you're thinking on the, or that you're putting a cap on where you can go and what you can do, or maybe you feel like how I was saying earlier where you feel like life is over.

What's the point? Why even try anymore? Or I can only do this much, I can only make this much money in my life. I can only do this career, like the sunken cost mindset where you're like, I've already been in a relationship for this long. I've already invested this much in this person or this profession.

It would be crazy for me to try to jump and do something else and create a different reality for me, and I probably couldn't do it anyway. Right? Many people are there, especially coming from what we have. So it makes sense if right now it feels exhausting for you to think about what you actually want, like your true desires, maybe it just feels like there's a complete detachment from it.

It's like, I don't, I don't know what I want. I don't, I just wanna make the rent or my mortgage. I just wanna get my kid home. If that's where you land, then it would be really helpful to finish listening to this episode because I'm gonna give you some steps. Okay. All right. So, if you're feeling zapped of energy and you feel like maybe your top three emotions right now are exhausted, frustrated, and defeated, okay?

It doesn't have to be those emotions in order to do step one, but you have to get your energy back. Like not just how you're feeling on the everyday basis, like whether you've got short term energy, now energy. But I mean, your actual true 99% of you spirit back. Okay. Because like for me, I, I had shut that part of me down.

I don't even know, probably from back when I was five years old when that first abuse happened with me. Like the first time probably then. In fact, now that I say this out loud, I bet you that's when it was because, and I have done the work around this, but I never worded it like I am right now. Um, I can remember pictures, photographs of me from before the abuse happened and right after the abuse happened and the difference in who, like where I stood in photos and the look on my face, I became very angry and shut down I changed My whole personality, kind of everything, like my persona, what I showed people on the outside, I wanted to be, anyway, it isn't for another episode,

 

but, if you've been in survival mode, you've determined that, yeah, that's probably where I've been. I've been an extended freeze for how, who knows how long, or you don't know what you want. Look back and I'm not trying to make you go and relive all of your life here, but it would be really helpful to go back and find where all of this stemmed from.

This part can just take five minutes. You wanna get that energy back. But you hear me say this all the time. I think I said it last week or the week before, we cannot move through what we don't understand. . Maybe it was in the happiness episode, which by the way, I did that happiness episode for you, uh, cerebral people out there that really like to understand and hear stats and overthink through things.

That was for y'all. In the next couple weeks, we're gonna be doing the work on the energies so that we have both and we can integrate both the 1% mental and the 99% energetic. Okay? So, your first step, step one A okay, is to get your energy back by you, ready for it, sitting in silence.

Nobody wants to do this step. Nobody that's come from trauma. Many of you anyway. But sit in silence and get comfortable being with you is step one A   📍 📍 📍 📍 and detach from your thoughts, detach from the old beliefs, your old energy and the old you, like I was talking about earlier with you have to be willing to divorce everything.

You are, make the separation and feel the space in between, energetic you, the new energy, you, I mean, it's always been there, but like the, the fullness of you and the old energy, you started at five minutes and really work up to 20, minutes of doing this daily.

15 minutes is fine, get to a place where you feel okay being in your own skin and closing your eyes and actually feeling your energy separate from the old you. There's a great, um,  there's a technique and you can look it up. He's on YouTube. His name is Aaron. I think it's Aaron Doherty or Aaron Doughty. Um, look him up. He's actually Austin based, but he does, and this is not just his technique, but he's got so many videos on YouTube. Look up the frame technique, the magnetic frame technique, this would be a great exercise to start.

What I'm getting ready to tell you today, to get the separation, it's a visual thing. You light a candle and you on your inhales, you look focused only on the candle and on the exhales. You focus on the peripheral, the candle, uh, signifies oneness. Like being with you and then letting the peripheral be everybody else.

Okay? But look, his video up to get it done right so that I don't butcher it. That technique will help you to detach from your need to get validation from the world around you like if you're at the place where you feel like your kids or whoever else can solve your problems, they bring you the answers, they bring you the joy, they bring you all the things.

If everybody else in your life would just fall in line and do those things and behave a certain way, then you could feel okay. Maybe you don't word it that way, but that's the idea. Then do this technique , it's an a daily practice until you feel like you don't need anybody else's validation or that you need to, , people please throughout your life.

Once you're there and you truly have that, embodiment and your own self. You can feel the separation, then you can move forward. At the same time

Detoxing Your Environment

.   📍 📍 📍 📍 So one B step is to, detox from your own environment. So start it for a week, for one week, move social media outta the picture.

These are just options for you. Whatever it is that you do on the regular, like what are you putting into this brain, this temple of your body, and of your mind, because currently the thoughts and beliefs that you have have gotten you this far. And if you're listening to this episode or even this podcast, then it's likely that you want to get somewhere else.

Right.  We had alienation happen. We had all these things. That was the old energy. We were attracted to people that carried our energy for us, or our, security for us And so now you doing that, you feeling fully confident, capable, and, um, unstoppable we have to remove all of the things that have made up who we are, your own algorithm of life, okay?

So whether it's social media, your friends who you speak to, what you watch on TV or stream on Netflix or whatever, what pops up for you on YouTube, even what you've clicked on before. Um, and so I've told clients it, it can be helpful to just start a whole new, account on whatever social media, if you must be on social media.

I told you guys, I've been on a, really long hiatus, break away from social media, like months, and it's been freaking glorious and I need to get back for my work for business, you know? But gosh, it feels so good because I value my time and my space and my own generating ideas and all the things.

It's so great. It's such a relief. Anyway, that's just for me. You, you don't have to love not being on it. But if you want to get back on, then make a new account and start clicking on things or information that you respect, like the new you the person that wants all the big things

and create all the amazing results that feel impossible to you. Now, you've gotta surround yourself with ideas and people and things that support that. And right now, currently, whatever you're surrounding yourself with, likely is holding you back, reinforcing the limiting beliefs in your views on what you think is possible for you.

Coming from alienation, especially and I talked about this just the other day, about , doom scrolling, the other week. Anyway, it pollutes our minds. It's a cancer in a way, once you step away from it, it's like when you stop drinking or you stop eating bad food or whatever. Once you step away from it though, it feels hard at first when you look back, you're like, why didn't I quit sooner? Like, what was I holding onto?

It's the same exact thing here. So it's doing an audit on your algorithm of life, how, what you're listening to, the kind of music you're listening to too. Okay, I've beat it in. I know that you guys get my point. But you wanna take, at least start with a week and extract all the things in your life that, that make up your day and do new things.

Create a new schedule. that way it'll make it much easier for you to detach from your old thoughts, from your old beliefs and your old energy.

Okay.  📍 📍 📍 📍

During that time, get good at being okay with what you currently have. And I know I was also just talking about this, all of that was setting us up for today. it was the Thanksgiving episode Get good with what you have at current. Like it's all okay because that was coming from the old energy.

But now we're gonna be, we're stepping into a new energy and these results are just temporary. They're, it is what it is. We have to be okay with that in order to create new 'cause. If there's any resistance in your current life, like the way that you're thinking about your current life, it's gonna keep you in the old energy, okay?

So allow what is to be at current.  If you do not do this step first, you will not be clear on what you want, okay? You have to create safety in your world and get out of fight or flight or freeze mode in order to ground your new energy and your new you in today with new thoughts, new beliefs, new behaviors.

 So during your meditation. mantra and actually throughout your whole day can be something like, and make it yours.   📍 📍 My responsibility is me and me alone. Everything else is not mine.

It's not mine to change. It's not mine to control. It's not mine to handle. Okay? So my responsibility is me and me alone. That is all.  Now I understand if you have other kids that's fine. You tend to your kids. I'm not saying to vacate your life, but  vacate the way that you went about being in your life until now. 

Right? Zip out of that suit and let that go. Imagine during your meditations, you doing the zip out. Stepping out of and having the what you, what the, if you're picturing, you imagine that being a ball of light, and then eventually what you'll do is then step into the new energy and the new you, like the desired self, you, the one who has the goals and has, is living the life that you really, truly want to cultivate, create for yourself.

Then you'll go into that. But right now, if you don't know what you want, then start with this stepping out your energy. It's just you, you're this radiant ball of like, okay, so once you've done this for a while and can, you can really get a clear picture of you being separate from your old self. Now you should start to be feeling safe in your everyday world. This could take a week. This could take three weeks. This could take three months.

It really just depends on how dedicated you are to this practice and everybody is different. And depending on how much you're still holding onto, it might take longer. It's, it is what, it's okay. I wouldn't be so concerned about rushing through this because that will also not get you the lasting results that you want.

You really wanna do this from the inside out because once you divorce that old self, it's gonna be much, everything else is gonna flow from there. Okay? Everything else is, I mean, you're gonna, things are, I have difficulties and you know, everyday life challenges, but. Things will start to fall into place for you much easier than you feeling like you have to find the right key or the right puzzle piece to make everything fit together.

It feels like you have to control the world at this point. That's not, it's not gonna feel like that once you do this work. Okay?

Processing Trauma and Emotional Triggers

So now that you're feeling safe and you feel like you're in control and you are embodying your own self, like the, your energy is regulated and you feel back to being you and, uh, the world isn't out to get you and you're not so concerned about living in the head of your kids or your, the alienator. 

What, that was really the key for me once I realized that, how they thought, how they behaved, how I behaved, how that was gonna affect them, and all the things once I, that didn't matter anymore. I gave it zero energy, not because I was being a liev for being defensive. I truly was like, it's okay. That was a good clue for me that I could start moving to the next phase. 

Okay, so once you are there, you're gonna still be meditating every day or just get quiet time. You don't have to call it meditating, you're gonna have other things come up, right? This is when, when you start to do work on you and you're getting somewhere,

I think I talked about this last week or the week before. That's when other stuff starts coming up. The stuff that's been tucked away behind, back in the deep corners of your body, you know, it's true that you hold trauma physically, right? We have somatic symptoms because we're, we store trauma in areas and so once you've. Create a safe enough environment, you've cleared some of the other stuff. More stuff is gonna keep popping up for you. And this is good. I just, one of my clients was texting me last night. She was saying everything was fine.

I was doing so well and she, we had, you know, in our sessions, she seemed, she was doing great. She was smooth sail. Then yesterday she sat down to write, uh, some Christmas cards to her kids. You know, I use this client for, um, an example. I've used her like three times, four times now in episodes, but I don't know why she sometimes in a, I do that sometimes Ill get on a kick of using one client's examples Anyway, um, but she sat down to write a Christmas card to her kids, and all of a sudden all these emotions.

And then she felt like in her words, that she was spinning outta control again. And she was going, you know, down a spiral and she felt like she was regressing and now all these emotions are coming out and fuck, what do I do, sort of in a victim based space, but I told her just as I'm gonna tell you the same thing if this is happening with you, and once it does, once you do this work, once you clear. Whatever might have been going on for you like that surface, more stuff will start to come up. Little pesky things will come up, or big emotions. This is good news.

This means that you've now become ready and other stuff will come up. Okay? Or maybe a lot of times too, if there's childhood trauma that you still have, it's been unresolved, you might start to notice that things, situations will come into your life, right?

When you think , you're in the clear and quote unquote trigger you again or set you off and you're like, fuck, everything was fine. And now boom, this happens. It's not doing that. Or life isn't handing that to you because. You're off track or because life's just shit for you. See, this is what I thought.

I knew it. This is always what happens. I get going on a roll and then bam, something comes and pulls the rug out from underneath me. This is normal because again, it's an opportunity for you to face those things.

These are like the deeper things that your deepest challenges will come up. The further that you get to your goals or to where you want to be, the deeper stuff will start to come up. The ones that are harder to process through so back to where I was saying, notice your thoughts of scarcity, of unworthiness, whatever it is, and question them.

When they do come up. So one like where did whatever thought feeling come up from? Okay. Let's say you carry the belief that you failed as a parent. That one stems from not enoughness, And usually thoughts of not enough stem from childhood. Like the first time that you experienced not enough was likely when you were a little one, And then you carried it throughout your life until today. so if you can remember when that feeling of not enough occurred to you for the first time as a child or the whatever the most standout, incident was, or time period. What was it? What was happening, this is the shadow work that I was kind of referring to

Shadow Work: Healing Childhood Wounds

 so like, if you were, as a kid, if you needed to work for love because it, you didn't get it from those around you, Or when your parent didn't recognize you or validate you, it didn't feel safe to believe that it was. And I've talked about this too, when it comes to, um, our own children, right? Um, but as a kid

 

, You weren't loved by your parents, that was the feeling that you had. Maybe you didn't say that as a kid, but you didn't receive the love that you really, really craved. So at that time, the only thing that felt manageable for you to think is that you are unlovable, which is a painful as fuck feeling, right? To think, well, it must be me. I must be unlovable, or I'm not worthy, or I failed at being their kid or something.

But that feeling though, painful as hell, or that belief, felt much safer to you than for you to say, my parents are not loving parents. Because if you think that your parents are not loving as a little kid, then that means that they're not take care of you.

And then where would you be? You would be left to your own devices. And as a five, 6-year-old kid or however old you are, that's death, and so between death and the problem being you, of course you're gonna pick the lesser of the evils. And so what happens is there in that moment, you become a perfectionist, or you become a people pleaser.

Even though it's clearly your parents' issue, right? Because they're the parents. You're the kids. They're supposed to love you, nurture you, and bring you up and do whatever. But you couldn't have had that belief because that would've meant death.

So you right there, a people pleaser, a perfectionist, whatever is born if you're older and it's the first time that you get this feeling like your parents stop. Paying you attention. Maybe somebody passed away in the family and their attention went over to some the persons who passed away, right? They're grieving or whatever.

And if like you are a teenager or maybe pre-teen and all of a sudden love stops coming to you, you may not go to perfectionist. You might, you might not go to perfectionist or people pleaser. You might at instead get angry and that's your like, so you'll push unworthiness, shame, whatever else into the shadow, and then you'll create our bodies.

Do this, we'll create another emotion of protector emotion, like the night and shining armor emotion to cover up the shame, the unworthiness, the whatever, whatever, right? And that emotion might be resentment, anger, defensiveness, whatever. Okay? And so if you, avoidance is another one. So if you avoid,

you're an avoidantly attached person, then this might be what has happened with you. And now I'm getting all into the weeds about attachment styles and shadow work, but I did wanna touch on it because it's really helpful. Information is power, right? Knowledge is power. And in order for us, I just said this in order for us to get a handle on something and make changes, we have to understand it before we can make those changes, before we can move through it, So it would be really helpful if you've done this work, you're doing the meditating, you're doing your every day, and you're trying to now ground yourself, and now you're filing the separation. But all these little thoughts or feelings are coming up for you. Go back. You don't have to spend much time on this.

This can be a five minute exercise. I know I'm making it long, but it doesn't have to be long. But wanna go back and do some exploring on where that. Thought, emotion, belief came up for you first or the first time you, you can remember it. Gain some understanding around how you developed it.

So let's go back to, so parents didn't show love to you at some point, and let's say your night and shining armor. Emotion was perfectionism. People pleasing too. That was your go-to. From that point, likely on, whenever you felt a risk of not being loved or not being worthy, you went to perfectionism.

So then you went outward and started directing like your compass then got stuck in the environment around you. Okay. Like, oh, well, I'll look to them. Maybe they'll, they'll give me love or they'll do this. If I do the right thing, if I act the right way, if I bake all the cookies, if I, whatever it is, if I do things the way that they like them, then maybe I'll be loved.

. You wanna find that. if you're still doing it today, notice how it shows up in your everyday life when perfectionism, people pleasing, whatever. Whatever your, protector emotion or uh, behavior belief is.

 Then you explain to yourself, okay, that was when I was a kid.

That doesn't need to be true for me today. And so once you make that distinction, like, okay, this makes sense why I did it back then, it was the safest option for me back then. And it worked all the way up until however long, but it's not working for me anymore. And now it's just causing me more shame.

Now I don't need anybody to protect me the way that I once did because I'm a grown person. I can face any emotion. This is for you. I can face any emotion that I have these days because I know that I'm the curator, the creator of my experience moving forward.

And the sooner that I face whatever it is that I've been avoiding or resisting up until now, the sooner I get to creating the life of my dreams. Okay. Not that it's a rush 'cause you don't wanna rush through this, but it, it can be done within a matter of like, under a year, way under a year. But it depends on, on you and how much you've been avoiding or resisting thus far.

Um, it could take anywhere from, like, this whole process could take anywhere from six months, maybe a year at most. You can, your life can be unrecognizable. Like if you're coaching with me one-on-one, I tell my clients all the time, we do this, all of this work throughout our sessions talking the way that we, my method, in six months your life can look unrecognizable if you apply yourself during our time together, if you're willing to face all the, the challenges that are holding you back, okay? If you're willing to let go of the old energy you and move into the fullness of you that you wanna create. So when.

You find the experience or the behaviors that you're holding onto in order to avoid the other emotions, the shadow emotions, the shadow self. This is what you ask yourself and in fact, what you can use also as a second mantra.  📍 📍

So this may have been true for me before, but not anymore. It rhymes. So it's easy to sort of flowy as a mantra. This may have been true before, but it's not true anymore.

 And then you wanna ask, how is it not true for me anymore? How is it in a different reality, in the reality that I am creating? How is this not true for me anymore? How do I want it to not be true for me anymore? What do I want to believe instead? This is when you can start to get into, and this will take some practice sitting still with you, right.

And detaching from your old self. Because if you try to come up with the idea of, like I was kind of saying earlier, if you try to come up with the ideas for what lights you up and where you wanna head. Coming from the old self, coming from all your fears and all your covered up shame and all the things, this will not work.

This exercise, this practice will not work. You will find yourself frustrated and exhausted, and you feel like your energy is those already zapped. It'll feel even more zapped. it'll make you avoid more things. And you're, you're frustrated with everything. So, if you still feel clueless and you have no clue what you want and where you, where you wanna head, you know, then come back to the step, the meditation and imagining being detached from the old cell.  When you feel safe in your environment, when you don't feel the draw to get attention from the external,

that's when you can move to the next phase.  And so step two would be to write down all of your new beliefs. All of them, write 'em down. And now I've heard it before to like draw a stick figure of yourself or draw a real picture if you're an artist,

you wanna put this somewhere where you actually will see it. And right next to yourself, who, the little picture you draw, you wanna write down, fill in. All of your new beliefs, all of your new desires, like the physical desires that you want, goals that you have for yourselves,, Um, new feelings, like the top three emotions that I was talking about earlier are usually fear-based.

If you're still living in the old self now, how does the person you're becoming, how do they feel on the everyday? What do they look like? How do they act? And I've talked with you guys about this many times over who do they speak with? Who do they like hang out with on the other day? What kinds of shows do they watch? If they watch any shows at all, what kinds of content are being put into their ears? This new version of you's, ears, All the things that, this new version of you is written down on a piece of paper so that you can see them every day, and then you wanna do your meditations now shift from zipping out of the old self to yes.

You watch yourself detaching from the old self in zipping into the new self, how they look, how he or she looks, how all of the things that you've written down, you imagine stepping into that new you for good. And you do that practice all the time too.  You wanna live it, like create that new reality for yourself in your mind. 

What does a day in the life of your new self look like at the goal level, at the highest level?

What does that look like for you? And really imagine like get very crystal clear on what you look like living that life.

 That's the you that you need to tap into in order to even fathom what it is that you want. Because if you, if you go and you ask yourself what you want and you're still coming up with these surface things or like these ideas that still feel old and needy, then that's when you have to go back to step one, A, B, C.

continue it until you're ready to, you feel, inspired by the new creative you, unstoppable you that can get anything he or she wants. Anything you can create anything you want. The reality that you see for yourself is truly only a sliver, only a partial. It's like wearing blinders on and trying to see through some sort of crap there in the middle of the night.

The reality that you're living now. The reality that you can be living and you can jump to within a matter of six months, really a year. Like I said, time shouldn't be a concern right now, but you can do that within a short, very short, relatively short period of time and create a you that you feel is impossible right now by doing these steps.

I promise you I've done it. I've done it. So you can too. And then that you, this is the last thing I'll say, that you won't have the, problems, the quality of problems that you have right now. The quality of problems, I'm betting, I'm not telling you what your problems are, but the quality of problems that you probably have right now are low quality problems.

You wanna be able to create high quality problems, meaning there are problems that you want to solve, okay? You wanna get to a space where the problems that you're, you're creating for yourself, you're cultivating for yourselves are ones that like, get you to the next level. And it feels amazing to solve those problems because they're not problems that are steering you.

They're problems that you're, that yeah. That you're creating for yourself. Those are the high quality problems that doing this work will help you to provide for yourself. Okay? So that's what I think I have for you.

If you wanna stop feeling the self-hate or the, I failed as a parent, I failed at life, my life is over, there's nothing left for me, that's impossible. All of those kinds of thoughts or feelings or like maybe you don't only even notice it in your thoughts, but you see it in the results in your life.

The easiest way to tell if this is something that you should, can, should, if you will do for you, is look at your current results in your life and do you like those results? And if you don't like the current status of your life. Then do this. And I promise you, if you are diligent about it, if you do the 15 minutes a day, that work alone of being able to sit with you and then seeing the separation between the old you that needed other people, your kids, your spouse, your friends, the world to do things to make it easier on you, if you can separate yourself from that version and not need anything knowing that you are all powerful because you truly are.

you can change your destiny if you want, all you have to do is decide it's just taking these steps. Spend the 15 minutes a day, get the distance between the old version of you and step into the new version of you. if you feel like that you have a problem creating boundaries or you're a people pleaser or all the things doing this work and also the work of, um, Aaron Doughty's, , the framework, it will change your life. Okay. Alright, I'll see you guys next week.

 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.

 

 

01:19:00 - Shifting from Stuck to Empowered as an Alienated Parent

02:42:00- Why You Have to Shift Your Energy to Shift Your Circumstances

11:24:00 - Why Alienating Parents Seem to “Win”

12:44:00 -  The Power of Self-Respect and Boundaries

19:47:00 - Who Are You? Rediscovering Identity After Alienation

24:14:00 - Healing Energy Blocks and Trauma

32:05:00 - Detoxing Your Environment

39:11:00 -  Processing Trauma and Emotional Triggers

44:07:00 - Shadow Work: Healing Childhood Trauma

48:40:00 - Letting Go of Old Beliefs

50:30:00 - New Beliefs and Desires

55:30:00 - High-Quality Problems and Changing Your Destiny