There's a particular kind of exhaustion that only alienated parents know.

It's not just tired. It's the kind of drained that comes from fighting a battle (mostly inside your own head) — one that never stops, never resolves, and NEVER gives you back the hours it steals.

Here's the hard truth: that mental loop isn't protecting you or your child. It's keeping you exactly where the alienation needs you to be — overwhelmed, reactive, and stuck.

In this episode, we're changing that.

Shelby Milford lays out a no-fluff, tactical framework for alienated parents who are done spinning and ready to actually move — the Lighthouse Strategy. Because your child doesn't need you stuck in the storm. They need you to be the one thing that never moves: steady, lit up, and waiting.

If you're ready to stop asking "why is this happening" and start asking "what can I do right now" — this episode was made for you.

 

Get The Impact x Effort Matrix Worksheet: ⁠https://www.beyondthehighroad.com/BetterOff

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Episode Transcript

From Bogged Down to Better Off: How To Take Action NOW for Alienated Parents

You are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number one hundred and eighty-nine. Stay tuned.

welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, 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. What's happening? So, if you're an alienated parent, which I'm assuming that you are if you're listening to this, I probably know where your mind has spent most of this week. I know because if this is your first time listening, I'm also an alienated parent. Maybe it was as simple as you staring at a single simple text from your kiddo, right? And then since then you've been trying to read between the lines about what it was that they meant

maybe it was that you were replaying a string of events and then going through all the shoulda, coulda, wouldas,

The if onlys, or perhaps you were imagining The toxic kinds of conversations that were happening in the moment over at your ex's house it could be, very well could be that you are reeling about all of the events that are happening, like together.

Thinking that no matter what action you take or don't take, there's a trap at the end of it, Your heart may be heavy, your body probably feels exhausted, and your brain probably feels utterly fried, Psychologists have a name for this, you guys. It's called repetitive negative thinking.

It's the simple way to say it. We're gonna call it RNT for now, It's a relentless and intoxicating actually loop where your brain convinces you that if you just replay the trauma one more time, that you'll finally find a solution.

But then you will never end up doing it, right? You end up just staying bogged down. Today, we are moving past that. We're moving beyond bogged down and into better off.

I do wanna make something very clear, though, off the bat. Your pain is real and your anger is justified, okay? And at the same time, the alienation that you're experiencing right now is using your exhaustion as a weapon.

every hour that you spend in RNT or doom loop, is an hour that you're not building the strength that you need to play the long game for your child.

So in this episode, we're gonna turn off that loop. We're moving away from the unanswerable question of why is this happening, why are they being that way, whatever it is that loops through your brain, and we're gonna shift to what I'm calling a lighthouse strategy, 

A lighthouse doesn't run around the ocean trying to stop a storm, It stands firm, it keeps its light And remains the only safe and steady harbor for the ship to find when the storm finally clears.

So today, my promise to you is that we are gonna be looking at the exact ways that RNT, your repetitive negative thinking, traps you

and we're going to replace them with specific solution foc-focused actions that you can take today, like right now. Okay? Your child doesn't need a parent who is mentally spinning their wheels in the past, They need a parent who is emotionally regulated, legally prepared, and is there shining a light for when they're ready.

So let's get out of the loop right now. Let's take action, and let's get better off together. Okay? Let's dive in.

[00:03:46] What Is Repetitive Negative Thinking? (RNT Explained for Alienated Parents)

So first, I wanna give you two definitions real quick. So repetitive negative thinking, it's basically an u-umbrella term to describe thinking that is repetitive, intrusive, and difficult to engage from.

It's always focused on negative themes, as the name already suggests. The, the term already suggests, it explicitly merges rumination, Directed towards past failures. Rumination's always about past stuff, right? Failures, distress, what have you. And then worry, which is always directed towards future threats and the what-ifs, right?

Into a s-single loop. So it merges the two of those, and that's what repetitive negative thinking is. Past negative events, future threats, and we combine them because together the brain says, "Oh yeah, that's the smart way to do it so that we don't-- we avoid pain in the future," So the problem, though, with that is, is by definition, RNT or doom loops, however you wanna call it, lacks any constructive Action-oriented direction, serving only to prolong your emotional distress.

. So now the next one we've got is perseverative cognition,

 perseverative cognition is basically a continuous activation of stress thoughts about past insults or fu- future threats, okay? It represents as an inability to shut off the mental cognitive loop.

Keeping your body's stress response active for far longer than the event itself, 

It's just replaying a loop, So the problem with this one here is that it traps the brain into a state of perceived vulnerability, preventing cognitive flexibility that you need in order to find a way out. It, it locks you up, and it turns your thinking v- to very rigid, very negative, always looking for the, "Oh, shits, what ifs, damn it," that sort of

dialogue, inner, inner dialogue. Okay? So now I wanna talk about what I'm gonna be calling those two things. So Rumination and repetitive thinking is what I am calling the poisoned well. Continually drinking from the past, obsessing over court orders violated months ago, maybe. Um, like if they're in contempt of court, right?

Or maybe it was you that was in contempt of court, whatever it is. You're just constantly reeling about that and sitting in fear or sitting in, um, place of feeling injustice, right? or replaying the last bad interaction, whatever it is. It poisons your, any parent that's going through this, mental health,

leaving them, you, us too weak to fight, So that's the poisoned well, rumination, repetitive negative thinking. Results thinking Is the lighthouse, It's standing firm, keeping the light on, and controlling the only thing possible, which is making sure that if and or when your child reaches out, they will end up finding a healthy, stable, loving parent waiting for them.

[00:06:57] 7 Ways Alienated Parents Get Trapped in the Doom Loop

So right now I wanna shift, and I wanna talk with you guys about seven, I think I've got seven listed, seven here, seven concrete examples of how alienation causes, uh, us as alienated parents to unproductively doom loop, okay? Basically, what I wanna do is capture exactly how the, our brains get trapped in this specific kind of trauma.

Right, so the first one I wanna talk about is text message autopsy. It basically is spending hours rereading maybe even single word texts that your child responses that your child, sent to you, Analyzing every punctuation, maybe the delays that, you know, the delay in their response.

And then you end up drafting some 10 paragraph emotional defense to them, whether that's mentally drafting or actually writing it out, rewriting, right? Maybe you delete it, repeat the cycle instead of se-sending a simple, unconditional, "I love you. Have a great week," sort of response. You don't do that because you're too busy planning it out, mapping it all out, and wanting to explain things, okay?

So that's one way.

The next way is psychological profiling of the ex. You guys, this is one of the ones that I-- it's, uh, it's understandable. I think we all have gone through this before at some point, and so I really-- it, I, I don't wanna, um, c-come down on anybody or push anybody away here, but it is the one of the most un- Productive actions that alienated parents can take, and it's the one action that so many parents do for years sometimes on end, is profiling your ex, obsessively researching narcissism, parental alienation syndrome, or personality disorders online, right?

Watching hours of videos to understand why the alienator is doing this. Learning everything about the pathology while doing absolutely nothing to change your immediate situation. This is the biggest time suck, dream stealer, trap that I see so many alienated parents... The doom scrolling. You know?

Everybody wants to know the why, but you know the why. So instead, you'll get stuck in asking yourself, posing that question to you, wanting to figure out the,

the sinister nature, of the alienating parent, when in the end that does nothing actually for you, though your brain will tell you that it's so important because you're just informing yourself, making yourself aware of the dangers, getting into their minds so that you'll know for next time, right?

But it ends up keeping you, if you look back on the times that you've done that, what action have you taken from there, from needing to know all the ways that they, uh, misbehave, you know?

So the next one I have here is... Got something stuck in my eye, you guys. Um, the what are you saying right now reel, which I also kind of mentioned in the, in the intro.

It's sitting in silence imagining the toxic conversations happening at the other house, right? Or, or happened between your child and whoever's a- doing the alienating, right? Playing fictional scenarios on repeat where the ex tells the child lies. Okay? And they... And I'm not saying... Well, I mean, I can save this for later, but just know that I, I also understand and know that some of this is coming from historical information that could be factual, Based on the fact that you s- you heard before that this is what they did or how would your child know A, B, and C if it wasn't for the alienating parents telling them. I get it. I understand. And again, I'll get to this later, but how is it contributing to your well-being today, your child's well-being today?

So you play the fictional scenarios, and then you get physically angry elevated maybe too over conversations that are only happening inside your own mind. It's like you've entered a mental courtroom. With the alienating parent or maybe just, , observing the alienating parent and your child. You know?

Court order audits, another way. Reading old-- rereading old custody agreements or text threads from months ago. Oh, gosh. I-- so many parents that I speak with do this. They go into these deep dives of getting all of the files out. Now, the one exception I have is when you're going back to court and obviously you need to get,

all of your evidence ready, right? Understand. Otherwise, spotting every single time the ex violated a rule, compiling an organized mental list of grievances to feel a sense of justice rather than clearly documenting verified facts for a lawyer, like I was just kind of mentioning. Okay? 

If I had only, sort of time travel, going back years into the past and finding the exact moment the relationship with your child, it never broke.

I wrote that, but like started to sever, started to, um, distance, . blaming yourself for a specific fight or for a decision, believing that if you had just handled one day differently, if you would've just stayed and not left when you did or how you did, whatever it was, the entire alienation machine is , how we see it,

wouldn't have started to begin with. None of this would have started if I just would've stayed, if I just would've played my cards differently, if I just would have said, if I just would have not said, yada, yada, yada, yada.

The mind reading social media stakeout, refreshing the ex's or your child's public social media profiles, right? Staring at photos to find clues, and I've talked about this before, about whether your child looks happy or sad.

Almost always reading, this is usually what happens, is almost always reading deep, malicious intent into an emoji or a caption, which entirely ruins your mood for the next forty-eight hours, sometimes longer. You know? Usually, when we, and I did this too, so I'm not pointing fingers here. When we s- In that state, right?

And you're repeating all the negative loops and looking for ways that your child must be really bad off and things are really bad over at the other house, not to say that they're not, but it doesn't produce the results that Are helpful for them or for you, meaning your child or for you. It ends up putting you into a, uh, an extended activated state, you know?

And so, but it is-- it's something that we do. It's b- it's a negative bias that we go into looking for all of the clues that must mean this is dun, dun, dun, doom, right? And then the only person that's really feeling doom in that moment is us, you, you know, whoever's doing this. All right.

The next and last way I have here, and then I've got two more detailed examples, is the anticip- anticipatory... 

Can't talk today. rejection loop. Okay? Planning a future event like a graduation or a phone call and immediately predicting the worst-case scenario. You believing that your child will either ignore you, blow you off, or roll their eyes. This is like if you're going to a, a game or a graduation, whatever, and you're thinking about all the ways that you will be humiliated in public, but also that you're, uh, you're gonna put pressure, unneeded pressure on your kid.

It's all in the negative, all the negative things that could happen if you show up, Also, um, and then well, let me finish what I have here in my notes right here, and then I'll give you another example of that. Basically, you're feeling the pain of that rejection today, so you decide that it's safer not to reach out at all.

It's the worry is causing you to feel it in today and then double and triple and quadruple that whole experience all the way leading up to the event if you even go, right? And so another way that this can happen, and I was just texting one of my clients last night about this, is when you're afraid to set a boundary for your children or like say no or say yeah, whatever it is, because you're constantly fearing the outcome, like how they're gonna respond.

So instead, you tiptoe around them and basically are asking their permission for whatever it is that, um, it depends on the circumstance, but like you, you don't wanna tell them no, because if you tell them no, then they're just gonna choose to go over to the other parent's house or out, away from you. And that's like the dun, dun, dun for you because all you want is to feel their closeness.

But by needing them, you end up pushing them further away. Okay. So, um

[00:15:57] Real-Life Doom Loop Scenarios: Email Anxiety & Analysis Paralysis

, let me give you o- one quick example here is of an email loop, right? You-- This is a very pretty quick example here is you receive an email from either your manager or maybe even your attorney asking you for a revision on a report or on whatever you submitted to your attorney,

and then your initial thought, just because they a- Requested More detailed revision. You think, "Oh my gosh, they're judging me. They think my work is poor, that I'm lying," if you're talking about your attorney, "that I'm h- withholding information," whatever. So what happens , in that doom loop, sort of the compound effect that will happen is you will start replaying the past.

You reread the email 20 times, analyzing every word, focusing only on the negative tone, of which, of course, is interpreted, right? And then what you do is you go into catastrophizing. You start thinking, "This means I won't get a bonus," if we're talking about your boss, right? Which spirals into, "I'm gonna get fired, and then I'm terrible at my job," you know?

Or if it's with the attorney, "This means that they're gonna drop me, or they're not gonna, uh, represent me as well as, as they might have if they thought of me well." You know how that goes, right? So then what that adds onto all of that, your catastrophizing and replaying the past or whatever, your physical and emotional cost,

you end up losing sleep, you feel anxious all day, and you cannot concentrate on other tasks, leading to poor performance elsewhere, or poor performance if you're redoing whatever, um, tasks your attorney ha- was having you do. And then, instead of

emailing a polite response, you end up becoming defensive or ignore, even avoid your manager or your attorney out of fear,

making the relationship, y'all's relationship actually strained when it wasn't to begin with, when initially it was just a simple email asking for a revision,

so the result of that is that that simple request for a revision becomes this crisis a ruined weekend, maybe, a genuine unwarranted anxiety. Maybe even, like I kind of stated, a strained relationship with you and your attorney or the boss, whatever, because of the defensiveness that you show up with, if that, that, that's you,

so another example is, this happened this week. One of my clients, she came to me r- r- very recently. Her biggest, thing right now, her biggest desire is to move.

She wants to get out of her place. In her mind, her home situation is less than desirable, right? It's distracting her. Um, I'm paraphrasing, of course, her words. she lives with family members, part of her nuclear family,

One of those persons that she lives with is her mom, who is sick and needs caring for, okay? And then the other one is a sibling who is basically, in the ass to her. And though she's asked the sibling will not leave. because of this, she's convinced herself that she needs to leave, right? My client needs to leave.

And that it must happen, like, now, yesterday, imminently. In order for her to get unstuck and for her to find peace, okay? But she doesn't exactly right now she can find it, she can plan for it, but she doesn't really have the money to upkeep both homes, right? And moving itself is this huge expense.

You guys know all these different little, expenses come up, moving itself, there's like a myriad of other little challenges that always come up. Not a problem. She can, jump those hurdles if need be, But it's a-another stressor to her already, in her mind, stressful situation.

At the same time, she feels stuck because she's been at the same job for I don't-- I forget how many years. I'm gonna say 20 years, She feels like she's just kinda coasting, and she's bored to pieces as a result of it, right? She's also not making the money she would if she were to up her game, which by the way, she admitted that she could do a lot more.

But the home issue and the other things, alienation and what have you, have her mind and her energy locked up, right? She's already in a certain field. Uh, she's in a, the... I, I can say this. It doesn't matter. She's in the finance field, right? She's been on track to get her CPA for a long time now, but has sat on it.

She hasn't done anything about it. Then, at the same time, part of her has this dream that she wants to go back to school to become a, a, a counselor, licensed therapist, so she's got that, and then she's got another dream that we're not gonna talk about right now, but it's basically another side job that she really wants to do.

But that would also require a good amount of, um- Time investment on the, the forefront, okay? To get that certification, what have you. So now she's got all these balls sitting around on a court, right? And not a one is moving. She's distracted, and she's also confused herself to the point that she's sitting in a analysis paralysis.

Why? It's not because the sister won't move out. It's not because mom is sick and she has to take care of them. It's not that her kids are not speaking with her. It's not that... By the way, she's, uh, recently had celebrated a two-year anniversary of, of being clean and sober, you know? So there's that. She's, she's gotten somewhere.

Um, it's not that she ever wasn't clean and sober, It's not that she doesn't have the job that she really desires or that she's bored at work or that, well, anything, right? It's really because she tells herself That she's stuck, that she should have gained more traction by now, that she should be further along than where she is, right?

That's the big gripe that she keeps coming back to when all of these little Whac-A-Mole problems come up for her, Um, which of course then what is she doing? She's being her own bully. She's in self-criticism, like, "Man, I should have been further along than this.

I should have done something. I'm stuck. I can't get unstuck. I can't see the forest for the trees. I don't even know how. There's too many problems." Right? That's where she is. So then to get out of that doom loop, her brain takes her right back to square one, which is her sister is the problem, her mom is the problem.

Her mom isn't really the problem in her mind, but it's just the whole circumstance of not being able to have a peaceful home, right? That's where she goes to. And so in her mind, she needs to change her physical circumstance, and then everything else will fall in line, and then it's rinse, repeat over and over and over again.

She tells herself she's in the exact same spot she was 10 years ago, which realistically, guys, if you're telling yourself anything like that, it can never be true. You can never be in the exact spot you were even yesterday or the day before. Something is always changing for you. You're just... Here is where if this is happening with you, there's a gap.

You're missing the gap in between w- what has happened before and what's happened, you know, up until today. There's always been learning that's happened, you know, or something, takeaways. Things have shifted. You're just not-- You're dismissing them right now 'cause you're so hyper-focused on the problem, which is what repetitive negative thinking will do to you, and I'm getting ready to talk about this in a second.

[00:23:25] The Bridge From Pain to Progress: Effects of Negative Thinking On Your Brain

Rumination and repetitive negative thinking focuses on causes and consequences rather than actions to fix the problem, any problem. Okay? It leads to overgeneralizing and over-focusing on negative details, Creating a distorted reality. Also, it compounds everything by causing you to be emotionally exhausted.

The cycle drains energy that could be used for productive coping, which ends up causing you to feel trapped and helpless.

Now, it is easy to hear all of this and say, "Yeah, but Shelby, you don't understand my specific situation. If I don't think about it constantly, I will miss one of those traps. Something will happen, I will be off my game, and my whole world will blow up. It's happened before, it'll happen again." But we have to look, you and I together, have to look at what repetitive negative thinking actually does to your brain.

It locks your energy up by focusing exclusively on the causes and consequences, like I was saying, things you cannot change right now, instead of the physical actions that are need-- sometimes mental actions, but let's just say the actions in general, that are required to fix what you can control.

It distorts your reality. It makes you feel like you are in the exact same spot you were years ago, just like I was talking about with my client, even when you've made massive personal progress. This isn't just about feeling better, you guys. This is a strategic, legal, and emotional bottleneck. When you run on the emotional exhaustion of a doom loop, you have little to no cognitive flexibility left to manage your actual life.

[00:25:16] The Lighthouse Strategy: Step-by-Step Action Plan for Alienated Parents

So how do we move from the poison well to the lighthouse? We do it by executing a ruthless, systematic brain dump to map your total reality. Grab a pen and a piece of paper right now. We're setting a timer for twenty minutes, and if you're in your car, then you can come back and listen to this again.

Okay? The segment-- Here's what we're gonna do.

The first part of this, like step one, I'm naming it, and I'll put it on screen, but is the twenty-minute total reality dump. Your action, the action, is to stop filtering what belongs on your to-do list based on your mood. Do you hear me? Stop filtering it based on what your mood is in the moment.

Letting your emotions control your actions is what... I don't wanna say this for everybody's, but I will say it for me, is what got me h-here in the first place, in the situation of alienation and in all of the blunders throughout. And so I'm assuming that if it's me, it's probably a good handful of you, too.

Don't base your actions on the mood that you're in. Put a timer on your phone or on your A-L-E-X-A for twenty minutes. The execution here is to

write down everything, and I mean everything, that's right now competing for your cognitive bandwidth. That's number one.

The categorization, how I want you to categorize this, do not just list all, only alienation tasks, you guys. Clients say this with me all the time.

They'll say, when we're in session, they'll say, "You know, I was here..." And this happened actually with one of the clients that I was just referring to a minute ago. "I came here to talk with you about alienation, and all I'm talking about is all the other areas of my life." Y'all, it's like a kinetic chain, you know?

With one thing is gonna affect the other. How you think about your job and your home situation and whatever else that the components of your life is going to affect how you feel about you. And how you feel about you is also going to affect how you think and you act around your children or, with regard to your children, It's an ecosystem, just like I said. It a- it all matters, So don't just list the alienation tasks. Mix them all in together, into the pot together. So daily givens is one of them, things like paying the electric bill, updating your resume, buying groceries, yada, yada, yada.

Put those in the mix. Anything that's competing for your attention or any necessary things that you take for granted through your day-to-day.

Next on that list is also your hard boundaries or, or like your values-based agenda, So maybe that's drafting your next response to your kids, Maybe that's legal consultations. Anything core values related that you know has been bothering you, anywhere that you have been saying yes where you know it, you want it to be a no, or the opposite, saying no when you want it to be a yes, put those things down. It doesn't mean that you have to do anything about each and every one of them now.

But if it's taking up space in your head, get it out on paper, okay? And I really prefer That you do pen to paper at first, and then you can transfer it over into your notes app or whatever. But do whatever is accessible, because that's first and foremost is just to do the task. But if you really wanna get some separation, pen to paper really does do something cognitively, and I've, um, explained it before.

We're not gonna do it right now. But anyway, it does help quite a bit. also, on top of that, you wanna put your forward lifelines. Write those down too, your pr- career progression, if that's what's going on for you right now. Like finally registering for what I was talking about with that one client, um, professional exam or certification you've put off for years, or maybe that's hiring the attorney, or maybe that's, um, starting dating again, making a, a profile on one of the dating apps. Maybe that's getting out there and socializing, if you have been holed up for a while. Whatever that is that's been a pain point for you, like, because you've been holed up and you know that you really wanna, develop some better relationships, closer, more intimate relationships.

Or it could just be, positive, forward-focused, whatever. You know, you get what I'm saying. The laundry list of everything that takes up space, all the reasons why you think your life isn't the way you want it to be right now. I do want to say that you want to make it you-focused, and not, like, "Get my kids to see the best in me again." Okay? You wanna make this useful, because that's-- will lead you right back into the negative thinking, going it to other-focused, okay? All right.

So step two is the impact versus effort matrix.

So you wanna draw a simple two-by-two grid on a piece of paper . And you know what I always do, you guys, is I do it on my sliding glass doors. I will get a, not a Sharpie, but any other kind of marker, window marker or whiteboard markers, and I draw on that.

For some reason, to me, I don't know why, I'm motivated to go over 'cause I'm looking outside, but at the same time, I'm focused on my world and bettering it, you know? And so I draw this, you know, I just put in, uh, a T, right? In the middle of the, my, , sliders.

So you're gonna put in one quadrant, the top left, how I do it, is high impact, high effort, okay? That's gonna be at the top. High impact, high effort. On the top right is gonna be high impact, low effort, okay? On the bottom left is gonna be low impact, high effort, and on the bottom right is gonna be low impact, low effort.

You got it? So high impact, high effort; high impact, low effort on your top right. Bottom left is low impact, high effort. Bottom right is low impact, low effort. Okay? I need to make sure that I said that right. I really should make a freebie,

worksheet for you to do this. Maybe I will, actually, and add it at the end.

So take everything that you wrote in your brain dump above in step one, and you wanna organize it into this, these quadrants. Okay? So,

number one is your quick wins, right? Which is high impact, low effort. Those are immediate power moves that you can make. Example is registering for the course, right? Professional certification. It takes 10 minutes to register, but builds your long-term financial capacity to fund your legal battle, right?

Custody If you also are looking to move or wanna get yourself out of a situation, you want to look at something like that first, because it's going to pay off long term, but also is a quick win, because it's, you can take immediate action on that.

This is something that you can advocate for yourself right there in the moment. It's like signing up for if you're-- got a fitness goal, signing up for the half marathon or for the 5K or whatever it is. Once you sign up for it, it makes it real for you. Same thing here Okay? And then, you know, after that, of course, you do the training if that's, if need be.

But now that you've signed up, that enables you to take the next steps. This is always step one, is get- make it official, okay? In some way, shape, or form. Okay. So next is high impact, high effort. Your major projects, These are strategic moves, stability builders,

an example here would be, um, organizing months or maybe even longer, years maybe, of disorganized court evidence, into a clean timeline for your attorney.

Another example here is actually taking the courses that you need to take in order to get the certification or get the, um, licensing or whatever it is, That is a long-term, longer term task, if you will. And it will also set you up so much sooner than keeping on putting it off 'cause you're telling yourself it's gonna take a long time, right?

So you wanna prioritize those high impact, high effort things in order of payoff and also priority for you. Like what is most important to you and will that trickle down and help all the other areas of your life, all your other priorities? So you wanna schedule those systematically is what I'm saying here, Don't just pick the quick wins always, only. You wanna pick the quick win for getting the ball rolling and then get all your everything else systemed up, if you know what I'm saying. Okay? So then the filler stuff, which is your low impact, low effort, your routine maintenance sorta stuff, like paying your bills, doing all that sorta stuff, do them only when the other top items are complete.

Many people, the low impact, low effort, so many people coming from parents, coming from trauma especially, will wanna go for all the quick wins, and I have personal experience with this too. When I felt really frustrated And didn't have the, the, endurance, emotional, mental endurance to, deal because of the bandwidth that was taken away by my negative thinking.

I always wanted to find quick wins that never actually really paid off. It was like building something, 'cause I used to do a lot of woodworking, you know? I would do something that got my mind off of the stuff that I know that maybe was not comfortable in the m- meantime, like in the forefront, but I knew that was gonna pay off in the long run, right?

Your high impact, high effort stuff. And so I would always circumvent those, skirt around them, and it ended up keeping me in a standstill and spinning, and it made me really unhappy with my life for long term. So I gave... I chose, just like I was... I briefly mentioned last week, I chose short-term comfort over long-term discomfort back then.

That I prioritized the comfort first, which is why so many of us find ourselves stuck, uh, like the cl- my client was saying before, for 10 years in the exact, quote-unquote, "exact same spot." Though she wasn't, she hasn't been in the exact same spot, you wanna give yourself some slack and notice all the wins that you have done over time, because coming at yourself from a negative place is only gonna push you back into a submissive,

not submissive, but a non-dominant action. Basically what I'm saying is, is don't just choose your quick wins, I know it might feel good in the moment, but in the long term, obviously you have to go pay your bills and do all that stuff, but, or go grocery shopping, but don't pick that first if you know you have some food in the fridge to go sign up for the course or do whatever that high impact, low, , effort item is.

Okay? I know, you guys, that this sounds like such easy, oversimplified direction here, but when we're coming from trauma, we don't often do it, and that's why I'm spelling it out. Just allow yourself to go back to school here for a minute and simplify your life by making this list, by using the quadrants, the matrix.

Okay? All right. So the last quadrant is your thankless tasks, which is your low impact, high effort. These are the ultimate rumination traps, okay? Example is trying to draft the perfect multi-paragraph d- textual defense to a hostile message, From your ex or from even your kiddo.

It has low legal impact, And it drains massive emotional effort. Okay, you can do this in all kinds of ways. You can decide in the moment that you need to get something off your chest. I was just talking about this somewhere. Um, need to get something off your chest, and so you find it, deem it, in that moment, so important that you draft this perfectly worded, masterpiece, on Reddit or wherever it is that you're, you're writing, right?

And it-- in the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter. It's not moving the needle on your life. Leave the low impact, high effort tasks alone. They're only causing you to spin. What I'm basically saying is this is not... this exercise, all, all of this, is not clinical busy work here. The science behind it is that taking a chaotic internal doom loop, right, and forcing it onto a physical piece of paper, breaks the pattern Action rewires your brain. By executing a highly prioritized power move, you can create direct sensory evidence of your own agency. I am talking slowly here on purpose, okay, because it's, i-it's not just busying yourself. This stuff will change, interrupt the pattern of negative thinking, it starts a whole new neural pathway.

It starts a whole new pattern for you. And then when you have that evidence that, oh, gosh, this actually does, in the long term, feel like so many quick wins, like stacked up together, this is a better payoff, teaches you that doing this action is way more satisfying than this other negative thinking action that actually isn't satisfying at all.

But somehow our brain, the chemical cascade that's released by doing the ruminating becomes addictive. you prove to your nervous system that you are the parent reclaiming command of your life by doing this prioritization that I'm just talking about instead of the rumination or, doom loop.

[00:39:27] Your 24-Hour Challenge: One Power Move to Reclaim Your Life

Now I wanna pause right here. Look at the list. If you have actually done it, look at the list you created or look at the mental map you're drawing while you're driving or doing whatever. What is the absolute number one item sitting in your high impact quadrant right now?

Like number one on the list, you know it has to be done. I don't want you to think about it. I don't want you to write a story about why it's hard or why it's impossible. I want you to pick one power move from that, from that high impact item that's on your list, like the top priority, okay?

If you are tired of being the bogged down parent, you have to choose to be the tactical parent instead, What is the one thing that you're gonna execute before the sun goes down tomorrow? Drop it in the podcast comments or send me a direct message right now, right?

Send me a message, send me an email, I don't care. Right now, with just that one single action word or one phrase, Don't write a whole email or a whole message. Just send the one phrase or comment on YouTube or Spotify, wherever you are, wherever you can comment. because putting that out there in the world helps you to make it real, and then we can start creating the evidence together, okay?

building it together. So,

we're tracking towards the end of the episode today, But this is exactly where your real work begins, you guys. Repetitive negative thinking relies entirely on distortion. It thrives in the dark, messy corners of your unmapped mind. It tricks you into believing that because your family situation is in chaos, that your entire life is paralyzed.

But the lighthouse strategy changes the game. It forces you clarify that chaotic reality into prioritized, concentrated power.

It shifts you out of the emotional courtroom of your mind and puts you back into the driver's seat of your actual life.

I do not want you to listen to this episode and just move on to another track I want you to have process-driven proof.

[00:41:34] Your Action Steps To Cultivate A Better Life Following Parental Alienation

So here's your non-negotiable homework for the next twenty-four hours, okay? So one is the twenty-minute dump, Sit down with pen and paper, set a hard timer. Do not stop writing until every single task, every single worry, and every hidden to-do is out of your head and onto that page. Number two is the matrix, Plot them out. Find your top quadrant, those high impact, immediate power moves.

Pick the top one to three maximum top moves, 

number three is to execute one item, right, the top item, by close of business tomorrow, by the end of the day tomorrow,

no excuses. So whether that's clicking submit on the professional registration, right? Setting a hard boundary, delivering a clean timeline to your legal team, making your dating profile, whatever your top priority thing is right now that you've been avoiding or telling yourself that it's too hard to do or that it's too complicated right now, it's only complicated because your mind is making it that way.

I promise you. Just start taking action and get one of those balls on the court rolling, moving in the direction you want it to go, There's room for assessment later. It's not now, especially if you've been stuck, So once it is d- done, completely done, you've done the, top priority, task for the top priority item, you wanna open your journal and answer two quick questions,

"what capacity did this action just prove that I have?" is number one. And then, "What negative belief about my paralysis just died on that paper?" So what capacity did this action prove I have? and we just got over talking about capacity versus capability, And what negative belief about my paralysis just died on that paper because of doing it.

Okay? Being bogged down, you guys, ends the very second that you finish making your list.

Being better off starts at the exact moment that you take your first action.

I wanna leave you with one final question to carry into this, next week for you,

How much more of my current reality, like the reality of alienation as it is, right, can I handle when I stop hiding in the doom loop and start prioritizing my power moves like this? Keep your foundation solid, keep your boundaries clean, and keep your light on. I'll see you in the next episode. 

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.