Fear as Your Secret Sauce? Transform Terror into Clarity for Alienated Parents

You are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 157. Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you. Stay tuned. Hey y'all, how we doing today? So, we have another review this week. I have to go to my email because it's one out of Canada and it's from I already know before I even get to it. It's Rebecca um wrote this one. She says, "Understanding symptoms. This episode

really took my whole memory bank back to the beginning. Such a great episode. Thank you for unraveling all of this information. You are my hero. If I dive deep, it all makes sense. I was always questioning what was going on with her anxiety, etc. until it actually happened and she left. Now into my fourth year of my experience, I now know what was really going on. At this time, I am so emotionally in tune with the present because when you're going through the initial stages, you're hanging off a cliff. At the time, I had no idea. I just knew something wasn't right. But now, I definitely know. This whole episode just answers my questions and opens my heart to knowing I was and am

still doing all the right things with her. I still have some contact on her terms, and I show up always and remain consistent. When she is at my house and decides to stay for the weekend, I see her in there. But her outsides for the first day show me exactly what you have described. Even when we went camping for 2 weeks, it took her 3 days for her to just to come down from what she has to uphold all the time. It's like she released and became herself. As soon as we came back home, it's like she zipped herself back up and hid her true self again. Oh my gosh, there is so much detective work that goes into PA behavior of a child. And being able to understand it because of people like you

really makes me hang on to hope that much more. I feel like I could write a book. There are so many pages I could write that I remember and pin the moments that all add up to now. Shelby, keep up all your hard work. I really appreciate all you do for us in our community and educating us. Thank you, Rebecca, for such a heartfelt and thoughtful review. I really appreciate it and I'm really glad that that episode helped you. I hope it resonated with a lot of you out there. Um, I know it just as you described it is such feels like such detective work because of course we all know what's going on with our kids even in hindsight to gain that understanding. We know of

course knowledge is power and just you can equip yourself with understanding and reminding yourself too that all of us that it isn't personal like really all the way down to their biology the way their protective mechanisms are put in place are protecting them by doing what they're doing. So, it's really not though you feel it against you and the acts on the outside seem like they're against you and you're not spending the time with them, how it affects you and the time that you have together, the interrupted time. Yeah. But it's not actually about you. And when you know that, then you can calm your nervous system down quite a bit and be able then to see the picture more clearly so that

you can advocate for them yourself and for them in the best way possible. So anyway, I know that you guys know that, but um your response here just sort of solidified that um too. So thank you for that review. So today we're going to be talking about I have the agenda for the next few weeks actually, but today we're going to be talking about repressed fear, fear, fear-based emotions, negative emotions really, and avoidance of them. I said that kind of backwards, but you get it. I haven't titled it yet, but it's um yeah, how we avoid the the negative fear-based emotions and what that creates for us and what you can do about it. Okay, triggers really, you guys know

I'm not in love with the term or the word triggers. trigger because I think using it for yourself causes you to feel more out of control and like the trigger has power over you, right? So, I don't love the term when you're using it for yourself in your everyday life like, oh, that's a trigger. And I'm actually going to be explaining all of that in today's episode. And then also next week or the week after Luke yours is coming up. I've got a request that's been he's requested this some time ago. It is coming up. Just know that it's either next week or the week after that I will be visiting performance anxiety. Performance anxiety not like some of you might be thinking

right now. Not a sexual term but performance anxiety with regard to alienation and also in your whole personal life like how it might affect you outside of alienation. But of course I'm going to gear towards us as parents first. So there's that and we're also going to be visiting being addicted to anxiety and negative emotion. Okay. So today we're visiting fear and avoidance of negative emotion. And then either next week or the week after we'll be doing the opposite end of the spectrum and looking at how some of us might be indulging in negative emotion because the body's become addicted to it. Okay. All right. So today, here's how it's going to work. There are six parts again to it this

week. Something like that. I'm just going to go into it. I have it all like written out as if I would write a blog post today. So I put as the title this seductive trap of emotional avoidance. When you're navigating the devastating terrain of parental alienation, fear becomes your constant companion. The fear of saying the wrong thing, triggering your child's anger, facing another rejection, encountering judgment from others, all of that can feel so overwhelming, right? And the natural human response is to avoid the trigger, which seems logical at first. If something causes you pain, stay away from it. If certain conversations lead to conflict with your child or other

people, stop having them. Social gatherings result in awkward questions about your situation, decline the invitations or don't answer the calls. Right? If court proceedings feel traumatic, minimize your involvement. Avoidance provides immediate relief. And that's exactly what makes it so dangerous, so addictive. Really, the immediate relief becomes your long-term prison, though. Experiential avoidance is the psychological term for attempts to escape, suppress, or avoid unwanted thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories, bodily sensations, offers negative reinforcement. Right? Every time that you successfully avoid a trigger, your nervous system will reward you with relief. Your anxiety drops,

your fear subsides, and your body relaxes. But here's the shitty part of that is that each avoidance behavior that you practice teaches your brain that the feared situation was indeed dangerous. Nervous system doesn't differentiate between avoiding, we've talked about this before, avoiding a real threat like a car coming in front of you, right, getting ready to hit you, and avoiding an emotional threat like your child's rejection, which actually poses no real threat to you physically. like it's not going to actually incur harm. It's the harm that you perceive, right? Not trying to minimize that. Just hang on for a little bit because I'll get there. The message it receives is

exactly the same. This is dangerous. Good thing that we stayed away from it. So, your body receives this reward. It's like, check, good deal. We should repeat this behavior. The problem is that avoidance creates this shrinking world effect, right? where prolonged avoidance leads to constriction. Your whole life space like your geographic and social spaces where you feel comfortable accessing begin to contract systematically. For alienated parents, the shrinking usually goes something like first you avoid direct confrontation. You stop addressing your child's concerning behavior or questioning their distorted narratives because it leads to explosive reactions.

Right? If you've got a teen anyway or um middle schooler, what have you, you know, you don't want to you want to avoid immediate confrontation or any chance that they will take your words and bring them over to the alien meaning parent. So you you zip up, right? You stop talking. Next, you start avoiding social situations where you might be asked about your child or where you might feel judged. birthday parties, full events, family gatherings, they all become minefields to navigate around. It's like, I can't go there. I can't go there. I can't go there. There they are at the grocery store again. I got to go around. He remember me talking about um going to the grocery store at certain

non- peak hours with a hat on completely incognito so that I wouldn't run into anybody that I knew so that they wouldn't ask me about my daughter. You know, I didn't want I didn't want to I was so scared of running into people for fear of me just breaking down. Not that I thought that I was going to say anything. I thought I was just going to be a puddle, you know, and it w I would have been. I know that I would have been because I had been tamping down, pushing down my feelings and telling myself and telling the world that I was fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. It'll be okay. I've got this. it's all going to be okay because I'd already pushed away all of

my social all of my support, right? Much of that was because I realized by trial and error that the people that I had in my life were not necessarily equipped to quote unquote handle my support. And now that I just said that, I wonder too if it was my interpretation of what I was expecting of those people, which could have also been a little bit skewed back then, you know, but either way, I didn't go and find anybody new. Instead, I was like, I can't rely on anybody but myself, so I'll just shut down, which closed the world in on me even more. Right? Okay. So next, then you avoid professional help or legal action because the processes feel overwhelming and have been previously disappointing.

I mean, raise your hand if you've done that before. Forget it. The courts are broken. The counselors suck. Marunification doesn't work. So, forget it. It all sucks. So, there's another avenue closed down for you. Eventually, you may avoid, as I was just talking about, your own support systems, friends who don't understand, family members who offer unwanted advice or support groups that feel too painful. Right? Finally, you be you, me, too begin avoiding your own emotions, numbing out through work, substances, or isolation rather than feeling the full weight of your grief and fear. So, this was the case for me for so long. I had finally I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine for so long to myself that I

just learned to evade like suppress, repress or circumvent my emotions and I started to completely disconnect from myself, disengage with who I was and what I was doing. I felt very robotic and like mechanical just going through the motions. I wasn't feeling up or down most of the time anyway. I was just kind of numb like a slow steady numb through my life which is what long-term unresolved trauma will do at least in my case and I'm just knowing from the parents that come to me I mean I do have not everybody that comes you not all the parents that I speak with are emotionally numb some in fact are more along the lines of high anxiety and really I know when I say this I said it

earlier but please don't take this the wrong way but almost addicted to the anxiety or quote unquote negative emotions. That state has become so normal for you that you don't even realize that that's where you are. So either they're there um that they're completely numb. They feel numb. Usually the parents that feel numb, it depends on the degree of it, but usually those parents aren't coming to me because everything's fine. It's fine. They just don't have it's just life is just plain, right? So, they don't want help. They're still cut off most of the time. And then the other third of them are here where they're still trying to avoid all the emotions, avoid the fear. They find it

problematic that they're feeling negative emotions, right? They don't want them anymore. And I will say that being addicted also, most of the time you don't want to feel the negative emotions, but you still are. And it's like a cyclical pattern if you notice. So, if that's you, don't worry. We'll get to that in a couple weeks. So, anyway, the neuroscience behind why avoidance backfires. When you consistently avoid negative triggers, several changes occur in your brain. One is that your threat detection system becomes hyper sensitive. Instead of learning that you can handle all of your difficult emotions, your amygdala fear center, which by the way, it's not

just a fear center. People always say that. I thought that for a long time, too, that amydala was only responsible for fear, but it's not. Anyway, your amydala becomes increasingly reactive to anything that might lead to those feelings. The next thing that happens is your window of tolerance shrinks. The range of emotional experiences you can handle without feeling becoming overwhelmed gets narrower and narrower. You become less comfortable with less things. your problem solving abilities start to diminish. Avoidance prevents you from developing the skills or maintaining the skills to manage challenging situations, leaving you feeling increasingly helpless when they

arise. Do you ever notice when you've had like you feel like you have a short tolerance to sort of thing when you've got so much on your plate, but you keep avoiding that stuff? And so now though you were able to handle stuff before now that alienation happened you feel like you can't handle anything you don't or much anyway except for the regular stuff you you don't trust yourself to be able to pull yourself through right your memory and interpretation processes become distorted without processing actually processing difficult experiences your brain starts filling in the gaps which we talk about frequently with worst case scenarios and catastrophic thinking. So this will

those gaps that you're filling in with the quote unquote negative information like the supposing of what's going on becomes so true to you that that alters your memory and your sequence of events and it distorts your whole reality about what's taking place, what you're capable of and all the things. Okay. So the social cost, isolation breeds more isolation. The most tragic part of avoidance is that it creates this self-perpetuating cycle of isolation. When you withdraw from social connections to avoid potential judgment or painful conversation, here's what happens. Your social skills atrophy. I don't know if you've experienced that, but I know I did. Just like an unused

muscle, your ability to navigate social situations weakens because you you're out of practice. Others begin to avoid you. When people consistently experience you as withdrawn, unavailable, or unwilling to engage, they naturally drift away. I will add here, I wrote that down, but I will add here that when people experience you as avoided, right, or as awkward and fearful, maybe avoiding eye contact, stumbling over your words or wanting to avoid certain conversations, predirect, maybe you're low on patience and tolerance, you know, and so you seem a little agitated. they're going to avoid you because they're not sure if something is wrong with them or if there's something wrong with you. Even

though you they've asked, they're not getting anything back from you. So, conversations feel like feudal and so they naturally drift away. So, um your support network shrinks precisely when you need it the most. The isolation you create to protect yourself from the pain eliminates the very relationships that could provide you the comfort and perspective that you're looking for. Okay. your sense of belonging deteriorates. I used to feel like I belonged. I mean I I say that it's not the the depth of belonging that I feel today and with the conviction or with like the grounded nature that it is today, but I definitely was confident and felt that I could belong in any group. And then

alienation happened. And though I'd had some awful relationships before alienation and some awful relationships during the alienation one alienation itself is really and what my mind did with it when I didn't have the tools really deteriorated my sense of belonging my confidence that I could feel like I belonged in any situation instead because I was avoiding triggers like all the everything I'm talking about here. I really shut down and as you guys know I was became the hermit on the hill as I call myself. I really pulled myself away from all the things because at least by myself I created certainty but by myself too without the tools I wasn't belonging to anybody. I

felt like an outcast. But as you you hear me say all the time, we're wired for connection. And prolonged isolation triggers what researchers call social pain, activating the same neural pathways as physical injury. The pain that we feel emotionally triggers the same part of our brain when we feel physical actual pain like something actually hurts. It feels just as dooming, you know, when we don't have a support system. The crazy thing is, the paradox of it is safety seeking behaviors create more danger for us. When we want to hide from our fears or like the uncomfortable emotions, the quote unquote negative emotions, the very behaviors that you use to keep yourself safe and unharmed actually

increase your vulnerability over time. When you avoid difficult conversations with your child, you surrender your influence in the relationship. When you withdraw from social connections, you lose your sources of support and perspective. When you avoid legal or therapeutic intervention of some way, you allow destructive patterns to continue unchecked. Not that we can control the alienating parent, but you we if you want to advocate for yourself and for your child in the best way. Avoiding things is not going to be the way. You're actually reinforcing the very thing that means the most to you. Avoidance also robs you of the evidence that contradicts your fears. If

you never risk vulnerability in relationships, you never discover who might actually be trustworthy, right? Because you're saying, "I don't want to get into another relationship or I don't want to go be vulnerable with somebody because I can't trust them." But then you never learn who you can trust because you're holding your hand up in front of you, right? If you never engage in difficult conversations, you never learn that you can survive them. That you actually have the strength to pull yourself through that difficult conversation and you're stronger on the other side. Instead, you atrophy and keep yourself away from it. I don't want to deal with a difficult conversation.

If you never advocate for yourself, you never discover your own strength and your own resilience. If you always avoid triggers, you hear about people doing this all the time. Like I hear it often. Oh, I don't want to go there. That's triggering. I just don't want to do that. That's just triggering. That's just no. You know, but those triggers are the very things that will actually get you to where you want to go. Like the triggers, if you have a trigger, it's showing you that trigger is is your data, your information, your messenger to show you where something in your past still is unresolved for you. It shows you where your work is. But if you keep avoiding all this stuff, then all that

stuff just stays and sort of it's like on a simmer bubbling. It's there anyway. So instead of avoiding all your triggers, which will then just remain and grow, probably multiply like little gremlins, you could actually decide to start questioning what in you is wanting to be heard, you know, outed to you or to, you know, your therapist or your coach or your best friend or whoever, somebody on the street you don't know. Maybe those are the things that your the universe or whatever you believe in is actually plopping right down as your little gift to move you through it and let go. Once you do and you face the trigger, the rest of the little gremlins start to sort of dissipate, right? They

sort of break up and maybe they're still there, but they're there in smaller pieces instead of these big boulders. You know, the relationship erosion effect for alienated parents specifically, avoidance often accelerates the very outcomes you're trying to prevent, right? When you avoid challenging your child's distorted narratives out of fear or further rejection, you would inadvertently validate those narratives, which we've talked about before. But when you avoid setting boundaries with the alienating parent to prevent conflict, you enable continued manipulation. Now when I say that just know too that nobody can manipulate you like they can attempt to

manipulate but you cannot be manipulated if you don't play the game and if you're aware you know so just know that but also too if you keep avoiding setting the boundaries and stating what you will do and what you won't do like if you then I that's a boundary the cleanest boundary you could ever set if you then I if you take my kiddo without letting me know again, then I will file for contempt, whatever. And that feels very confrontational because of course they're going to make a confrontational, but that is their business. I'm not saying that every single time that that's what you choose like to lean into confrontation. It's of course on a case-by case basis. It's based on what

you value most. And then you can assess your situation and make the choice as opposed to leaning into the avoidance or going around it and feeling manipulated. You know what I'm saying? Okay. When you avoid your own grief and trauma responses, you show up as emotionally unavailable in the exact moments when authentic connection might be possible. Your child already receiving messages that you are dangerous and or untrustworthy begins to experience you as distant, disengaged, and or fake. I know that that happened with my daughter a couple times where she like her wording was that I was being fake. And so, and I was like, what? Like that's that's one thing I've always been

very aware of. So, I didn't understand that. But that's because I was masking my intentions because I didn't want to rock the boat, you know? And I'm not saying rocking the boat is always the way, but we're so stuck in fear that we think that anything that we do is going to rock the boat. And then we don't show up as our authentic self. And of course, if we're doing that, then we're putting a wall up. And how can connection happen if you're not being yourself? You know, out of fear. So the authentic self that could potentially reconnect with your child becomes buried under layers of avoidance and emotional suppression is what I put but I just described it you know. Okay, I will say

that during this whole all of this research, this is a side note, I noticed that though that I could not locate the thought because our thoughts cause our emotions, even anxiety in most cases, I noticed that I started feeling really anxious and even talking about it now, it's very lowlevel anxiety that I have while researching and talking about anxiety and fear, which was so interesting for me because I can't really locate a reason for it for me except for that this topic is so close to home and that I know how much that you guys are feeling on the other side. It actually makes me really emotional to think about it because this was such a activating topic for me and such a

source of uh contention, not really contention, but pain for me for so long is that I just kept trying to get away from anxiety and fear because fear is really central to our whole experience of alienation. And I'm going to go into this in a couple weeks from now, but we either buff our feelings by leaning into the fear so much and embellishing the fear, making the fear bigger and like spinning our wheels and anxiety, which seems like we should do the opposite, but sometimes we go there, depending on your what happened in childhood and leading up to alienation and what have you. You may do that or you want to say, "I'm fine." You could have a combination of the both too. Um,

you want to say, "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'll handle it myself." And by doing that, you bottle up all your anxiety. And I think that that might be what's coming up in me is like some leftover unprocessed like fear and anxiety just by talking about this. It sort of brings it to the surface, you know? So, so interesting. It's just so close to home, I guess. Even though I really truly like I was I was trying to I did a thought download a little bit ago and I was like, is there something that I'm really worried about right now? Is there something that's going on for me? And no, I mean, other than wanting to get this episode out to you guys, I it's not. So, it's just really Anyway,

I'm feeling for you guys. That's what it is. And I'm going through I guess there's just some stuff that I'm also processing through. Anyway, what avoidance steals for me, like the opportunity cost. Okay. Every moment spent in avoidance is a moment not spent in building resilience, developing skills, creating connections, and living authentically. Avoidance doesn't just limit your present. It mortgages your future. When you avoid grief, you don't process it, you preserve it. I need to say this again. When you avoid grief, you don't process it, you preserve it. It's like you're imagine taking your grief and all the uncomfortable emotions and putting it in one of you know those

like plastic cubes or balls that you put artifacts in to preserve it and keep it like looking how it was. That's what I imagine we do with our grief, our fear and all the things when we want to protect it. We put it in this little plastic container, right? because we want to hold on to it so tight, keep it away. But by doing that, it hardens up. It's so much harder to process through. You know, when you avoid fear, you don't overcome it. You feed it. That's the thing about fear. And I've kind of just been talking about that and I mentioned it earlier. Every single time you avoid a situation that's causing you fear, right? Like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to see

them. You reinforce the idea that that's something to be feared. But really, you always have the capability to move through that. Maybe uncomfortable for a few minutes, but it's better than a lifetime of building on that little tiny fear that you started because you didn't want to walk through something like walking over a bridge. You walk over that bridge and the next bridge you come to, you're going to be like, "Okay, the last bridge was fine. I can do it again." Right? But if you don't walk over that first bridge, every time you come to a bridge, you're going to have the same problem. And it builds and builds and builds because you've built all this evidence around that you can't

cross bridges. You know, same thing. Okay. When you avoid vulnerability, you don't protect your heart, you imprison it. Vulnerability is your ticket. It's the currency to real connection and love. That's where love grows. That's where all the goodness of a relationship grows. But when you avoid it, you're now hardening your heart and moving away from it, like retracting yourself from the very thing that you are craving. It's crazy. We all do it. I'm just saying it is crazy. So backwards, you know. So I've wrote here, the greatest tragedy isn't just what avoidance takes away, but what it prevents you from discovering. Your own capacity to feel deeply and still survive. to be rejected

and still have worth, to face uncertainty and still find meaning. That's like a one of the biggest fears for so many people is the fear of the unknown. And so many of us just want to stay comfortable in our own little bubble of familiarity. But that familiarity often is such a living hell. You know, that's why you see people that haven't had a job for a long time. And maybe that's you. You know, you haven't had a job and you hate the fact that you have no choices. You have no opportunity because you can't create it for yourself because you have no money, right? You can't meet people and find a new partner or do all the things because you're sitting in your on your couch in your

dark shades down. Huh? So, the very thing that we need in order to do all the things, we don't because your body, your survival system is saying, "Nope, here is better. At least here's familiar. out there is the unknown. But the unknown is actually what gifts you all of the things that you so desperately want. Okay. The path forward requires obviously facing the fear. Feel the fear. I did read that book, you know, as soon as I said that out loud. I did read that book, Feel the Fear, and do it anyway. And I agree with a lot of those concepts. It's been some time since I've read that. I listened to it on Audible. I also think that just the term feel the fear and do it anyway.

I think embrace it. Embrace the fear and know that you can do it. Something like that because the other way kind of suggests that you should just power bulldoze through it. And I don't think that that's going to provide you the result you want either because then you're just teaching your mind to a full ignore fear and have the I'm fine attitude which will end up not working to your advantage like I've already said. Okay. So understanding the problems problem of avoidance is the first step to reclaiming your emotional freedom. So the very emotions that you've been running from contain the information you need to live authentically and reconnect with what

matters to most to you. Fear isn't your enemy. It's been sort of a misguided protector. Now, it's time to teach it in a new way. The solution isn't to eliminate fear or pretend triggers don't affect you. I'm going to say that again. The solution isn't to eliminate fear or pretend that triggers don't affect you. Okay? That's going to keep you in that numbing state. The solution is to develop a new relationship with your emotional experiences. They're just data. Every time you feel the bubbling in your belly or the tightness in your throat or whatever is going on for you, fuzziness in the head, in the legs, whatever is happening, it's just asking you to notice it. It just

wants you to feel it without attaching the crazy story that you have going on in the head. That has become a habit for your brain to do is to make sense of what you're feeling. But when you can just notice the experience and say like narrate it. I've talked about this. It's been a long time though. Narrate out loud if you can. If you're not near anybody and if you're your own environment, you know, like I feel some swirling in my belly right now. And exhaling longer than your inhales while you're doing that. Like every time that you inhale and fill your belly, not your chest, up with air, like expand it to the point like see your belly rise. When you do that, the air and your belly

expanding actually serves a great purpose. So don't just chest breathe. The pressure goes straight to a really important nerve and that's your vagus nerve. that will signal to your parasympathetic nervous system that things are fine because you don't ever take those belly breaths when you're in actual real threat, right? And a real threat, your chest breathing or your quick shallow breathing, right? And that signals to your body that shit's going down. So instead, when you take those deep breaths, hold for a count into the belly, like where you feel it all expand, your rib cage just expands, your vag nerve gets pressure on it, and it's like, "Oh, we're actually okay. Nervous

system can calm down now." You know? So, okay, now I've gotten off my notes. And so, back to where I was. The solution is to develop a new relationship with your emotional experiences. One where you can feel fear without being controlled by it. experience triggers without automatically avoiding them and stay present to your values even when your nervous system is activated. Leaning into uh learning to lean into the very emotions that have been ruling your life from the shadows. Basically, that's the thing is that when we um and I just didn't even put notes here because I knew I was going to say this is that when you are on autopilot just starting to avoid things and repress your fears

because it's now become a habit. you. We think that we're in control that way, but in that like I'm talking about here now, oftentimes we'll get to a place where we want to disconnect from ourselves and be like emotions are pointless. Let's just think our way through this. We can reason our way. This you overthinkers out there, this is you. You will decide that you don't need to feel anything. You can just reason your way through whatever is going on, right? It's the logical way to do things. We don't need emotions. we'll just use our common sense and that's all you need. But when you do that, you're act we're emotional beings. It's backwards because you think that you're

in control because you're not using your emotions. But your emotions are actually without you even knowing it subconsciously are running you in the negative way because you're working from fear and avoidance. You know, so the emotions are going to be there regardless. So you may as well learn how to lean into the emotions that have, like I said, been ruling your life from the shadows. Make sense? Okay. So fear is your values compass. Transforming terror into clarity for alienated parents. Okay. Fear gets a bad reputation. Understanding fear as an emotional messenger can help transform your whole experience of alienation and of your life really. Right? Rather than

viewing fear as something to suppress or avoid, if you recognized it as a sophisticated guidance system that reveals exactly what matters most to you, how do you think your life might be different? Fear has a noble intention. It alerts us to perceived I want to say perceived threats and directs our attention to what we need to protect. Okay? Or what we think we need to protect. When you experience fear as an alienated parent, your emotional system is essentially highlighting your deepest values in real time. So like when you have you ever gone to therapy or talked with somebody and been really afraid to brooach a specific topic because that felt scary to you because you didn't

want to open Pandora's box and you thought, "Oh gosh, if we do this, then what will I find in there?" And yada yada yada. You know what I'm talking about? But actually, you don't have to look at the negative emotion fear right now. And this is what we're talking about or fear-based emotions. You don't have to look at the negative emotions that you're fearing as negative. You could decide to understand that what those negative emotions, fear in this case, is trying to protect is the positive emotions that you seek. Okay? So, it's protecting your deepest values, your core values. That's what fear is really doing. The crushing fear that when your child rejects you, you know,

it's revealing how profoundly you value your relationship with your child. The terror you imagine missing important milestones, it's showing you how much their presence in your life matters. Okay? So, you could choose to find the value in the fear is what I'm saying. Fear is not predicting the future. That's not its function. It's only telling you that something important to you feels threatened. It's not protecting the future. It's just saying, "Hey, something you really value feels threatened. What what can we do about it?" The distinction is crucial because it transforms your fear from a paralyzing force into a valuable information about your value system.

That sounded redundant into important information about your value system. Okay. Research in psychology reveals that emotions are essentially messengers that carry information about needs, boundaries, and values. Fear specifically functions as an early warning system that scans for threats to what we hold dear. For alienating parents, our common fears include fear of permanent loss, revealing how deeply so of a fear of a permanent loss. If we lean into the permanent loss part, we could start ruminating or catastrophizing and thinking about how they're already lost to us or there everything that's happening, it's going to be lost, right? Or you could look at

it as revealing how deeply you value connection and relationship to your child with your child children. That's how you could reframe that. This fear that I am going to permanently lose them is actually showing me how much I deeply value them and our closeness connection and that gives you your road map to what you need to do next. Okay? Because if you value connection and relationship with your kiddo, then now you say, "Okay, then what can I do to foster that moving forward?" depending on where you are. But you know, I've always talked about that relationships exist in each one of our minds. It's not some magical place that y'all come to. You know, even

connection, the idea of connection, you feel connected. Somebody can feel connected to you and you not feel connected to them. Why? Because connection exists in their mind, not in your mind. It doesn't have to be together. It's not some place, magical place. It's because of the thoughts that they're thinking about you and vice versa. So now that you know your value of connection and having that relationship with them, then you can work on your thoughts about them to feel close to them. I This is huge, you guys, because so many people think, well, I'm alone. I'm alone. But you don't have to be because of the way that you believe on the inside. There's that um I've heard that there's

some maybe it was a book I read or something that says tell yourself the big beautiful lies because like fear will tell you lies just like I was talking about filling in the gaps. We tell oursel lies big [ __ ] terrible scary lies all day long every day when we're living in fear, right? And that's what alienation is. It's just a bunch of fear inducing events that are happening, right? the way that we're doing it when we're not managing our minds and we're filling in all the information of the [ __ ] that we don't know that's happening over there and we're acting like that stuff is fact and we don't even know we're doing it. It's not like you're trying to lie to yourself. It's just the

way the mind works. So if you can do that and have that experience, you can also tell yourself big beautiful lies of goodness like that side of truth, you know, and when you believe those, guess what happens? You feel great. Your life flourishes. you feel connected, belonging, all the things. So, which would you rather? Telling yourself a bunch of lies of all the crazy fearful dun dun or the big beautiful ones that cause you to flourish and grow? You know, I'm not saying that you need to be delusional, right? I don't think that that's great either. But if you're going to pick one or the other, why not pick the one that's going to serve you? You know, okay. The fear of being

misunderstood is showing how much that you value being seen accurately, which accurately when I wrote that accurately is really just that's subjective, but you value being seen as who you are. Okay? And and also you could turn that into how you value seeing others as they are too, which can offer you some sense of empathy, compassion for other people too. You know, you can lean into that like how can I show up more as myself as opposed to putting the wall up and trying to avoid. Okay, that's also roadmap. Fear of your child's suffering. Another big one. It's demonstrating your protective instincts and care for them. Okay, that's really what's there is that yes,

in a situation of alienation, we can't always be there to protect them in the way that we think or want to be able to do. There's been something that's interrupted that. And so now instead of focusing on what we cannot control, we can really lean into our own protective instincts and like the good quality what that's showing in you, you know, like, oh, it is because I care. I do have a desire to protect and advocate for how can I exercise that ability if you're not in connection with your kiddo now in some other way. Fear of losing influence in their lives, right? fear of losing like your legacy and all that stuff. It's highlighting your desire to guide

and nurture. Okay? So again, use that as your road map to how you can guide and nurture today from afar, right? If you have contact with them, there's a way that you can like lean into your desire to nurture. So all of that will help you like if you do have contact with your kids still, it's going to reveal to you how you can show up as more of yourself. Your fears will always tell you what you're scared of losing. And those are these core values. How do I utilize them? How do I act on them with the with what I have right now? Right? Because if you lean into the fear of like, oh my gosh, I've lost everything. I'm going to lose everything or I have no influence

on them anymore. How do you show up when you think I have no influence in them anymore? They don't listen to me anymore. They only listen to them. Well, of course, you're going to retract and stop trying. And so then you really shut yourself out from having any influence on them or whoever else is in your life, right? Which causes you to disconnect from your who you are and your core values. And that's when we get into, like I was saying before, you start going numb, right? Like, forget it. I can't anyway. There's nothing I can do. Nobody's hearing me. you start to feel very unheard from society as a whole. So the way back is to not focus on what you don't have or the fear of that being

lost, but instead developing the skills to cause your core values to flourish. So that you you know what I'm saying? >> Okay. And what I wrote here is what I just explained. Each fear when examined closely reveals the positive value on its other side. Your fear of losing your child means how much you treasure that relationship. your fear of being painted as as dangerous shows you how much you value safety and trust. So leaning into that safety and trust, creating safety and trust in your world. Okay. The neutrality of emotions. One of the most liberating concepts that I've learned and I want to teach you guys is understanding that emotions, all the emotions themselves are neutral. They're

neutral. Fear isn't inherently bad. It's simply information. And just as physical pain alerts you to potential injury, emotional pain alerts you to potential threats to what you value most. As I've been saying throughout this whole thing, the neutrality perspective allows you to stop judging yourself for feeling afraid. It's okay. It's information being brought to you by your own body letting you know what you value most. Hey, this is feels threatened here. What are we going to do about it? And usually the answer is let's avoid it. Let's avoid it. No, let's lean into what we value. that's going to make it better. That's going to give us the antidote, the cure for what we're fearing. Anger

says a boundary or value feels violated. I want to say feels violated and not has been violated because that turns into blame. You want to take it from your side and what you can do about it as opposed to looking at the other person, right? Sadness indicates that you're processing the loss of something meaningful. There's nothing wrong with sadness. It's appropriate when it's appropriate. You know, anxiety suggests you're anticipating threats to what matters. It's like you thinking about what's happening in the future and it could be a threat. So, how can we protect it now without coming from fear, but like build on what you do value. The intensity of your emotional responses

directly correlates with how much you value what feels threatened. The stronger the fear, the more precious the value it's protecting in your mind. Right? There is a caveat to that, but I'm going to wait until the other episode to talk about that. Okay, so transforming fear through understanding. So here's the practical stuff. Okay, guys, the key to working with fear constructively lies in recognizing it as information rather than instruction. When fear arises, this is what you do. Pause and acknowledge the fear without judgment. Like, I'm feeling this rolling in my belly right now. I recognize this is is anxiety without judging. Dude, this is how it normally would happen for

me is God, why do I feel anxious again? This is not supposed to be happening right now. I thought I already dealt with this. Or why do I feel anxious? This has been happening for so long now. Why now? Or it's inconvenient. Instead, just acknowledge it. Like, it's here to tell me something. It's okay. Sometimes that could be accurate. Sometimes it's not. But either way, it's always revealing what we love most. Get curious about the value it's protecting. And then ask yourself like come from a fascinated sort of place. Ask yourself what does this fear tell me about what I care about and then use that information to guide your actions like I was just saying in alignment with your values.

For example, if you fear that your child will forget positive memories with you. This reveals how much you value connection and shared history. Instead of avoiding reminders of the good times or photos or whatever, you do you. But you know, you might choose to journal about those memories or create a photo book which are actions aligned with your value of preserving connection, right? The more that you push away connection, it's crazy, right? We like we're like, they're going to forget me. They're going to forget me. And then what do we do? We shut everything down. No pictures, no nothing. I don't want to think about the memories. I don't want any I don't want Facebook memories to

come up because it's too painful. But that's actually showing you that pain that you're feeling is doesn't have to be bad. It's just showing you what you value most. So why don't you lean into that journal about it and I promise you a year from now a version of you will thank you for that because then you're preserving those memories as opposed to preserving your fear and your pain. Okay. Sorry, I just got really passionate about it. The fear you feel when considering standing up to manipulation or setting boundaries with the alienating parent often reveals your deep values about justice and fairness, protecting your child's well-being, maintaining your integrity, and

preserving authentic relationships. So, just remember that when you feel scared to write the email or like when you're nitpicking your all of your wording on some text response or whatever. Listen, I'm anxious right now because I really value and I want to protect my child's well-being. I can do the best possible job here, but this doesn't have to be a personal thing. I'm going to lean into my values here and use those as my guide, my road map, right? Maintaining your integrity. So, maintain that. Don't go outside of that by matching needing them at their level, you know? Okay. So I'm going to give you some quick prompts like the old approach and the new

approach of things that you can do like dialogue that you can have with yourself. So instead of suppressing or avoiding fear, you can try your old approach would be I shouldn't feel so afraid. This fear is weakness. The new approach this fear is showing me what I value most. What is it trying to protect? That is going to calm your nervous system. Especially if you do your deep breathing, belly breathing, focus on your exhales. It's going to calm your nervous system. It's going to give your brain something to do other than focus on pain about your pain or just the fear itself. Okay, this fear is showing me what I value most. What is it trying to protect? Then it gives like

your brain's going to be like, "Oh yeah, what is it trying to protect?" But be careful not to go right back into that looping. Look, notice the speed of your thoughts. Are they racing? If they are, slow them down because that's going to contribute to the whole anxiety loop. Okay, the old approach, I need to get rid of this this anxiety about my child. New approach, this anxiety reveals how much my child matters to me. How can I honor that value while managing the emotion? And I'm going to tell you right now that one way that you can honor that value while managing the emotion is to allow the anxiety to be present without making up stories about the anxiety,

especially painful stories about the anxiety like that the anxiety is inconvenient or that it shouldn't be there or that you're weak or that you know all that stuff. Maybe anxiety is just anxiety because of past hurts that are coming up for you and they're asking to be processed or just knowing that it's just a sensitive subject for you still or that there are fears that you have and you're working on that. You're showing up. You're every day focusing on being as present in the moment as you can be so that you can see find the clarity to do what you need to do and not avoid all the situations, actions, feelings, behaviors that would cause you to get to actually where you

want to go. So basically the whole episode my offer to you is that you reframe fear-based emotions any sort of negative emotion that you are fearing feeling. They don't have to be something of fear, but instead can be your ally. They can be your friend. Fear is your friend. It's true. There's a lot of wisdom in fear. If you don't allow it to overtake you and reinforce it, allow it to reinforce itself and start repressing your fear so that you preserve it and it now becomes some artifact inside of you. You know, understanding fear as a values compass doesn't eliminate the emotion, but it transforms your relationship with it. Instead of being overwhelmed by fear, you can use it as a navigation

system, pointing you toward what matters most in your life. Your fears around parental alienation aren't evidence of weakness or pathology of your pathology. They're evidence of how deeply you love, how much you care, and how strongly you value the parent child relationship. When you can see fear through this lens, it becomes not something to overcome, but something to honor as you navigate your healing journey. And then I put, fear is simply love with its work clothes on. It's your value system in protective mode, doing everything it can to safeguard what matters most to you. The goal isn't to eliminate fear, but to understand its message and let it guide

you toward living in alignment with your deepest values even in the midst of this incredibly challenging set of circumstances. So, how can you not avoid your life? You know, really everything that we avoid even with all the circumstances is is because of some sort of fear that we cannot deal with it. And I promise you that you can. And each time that you face it, move through it, do the thing that you're fearing the most, you prove to yourself and reinforce the new pattern that you can do it. And it becomes a non-issue. You know, like, oh, that bridge, that's fine. I crossed that. I crossed it with my eyes closed. I have to with one foot over it. You know, whatever you want to say.

But it doesn't you realize I mean I know this is stuff that you learned when you were a kid is that you realize that it really most of the time was nothing to be feared anyway. But the fear is there because the values that you hold are that strong. Instead of looking at it as something that you're going to be losing look at it as something that you can lean into and gain more of. Okay? Like whatever you're fearing to lose. All right you guys. That's all I got for you. So I will see you next week. Okay, bye. >> Thanks so much for listening today. If you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more, please make sure to click subscribe wherever you're

listening or watching. Also, for by-siz clips and tips, be sure to find me on Tik Tok or Instagram. See you next week.