(Ep. 53) Healing the Parent/Child Relationship

What if you could heal the wound between you and your parent — or your child — even if they never change, and even if they're no longer here?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise turn to a relationship almost everyone carries some pain around: parent and child. 

Laura shares her heart for this one — she's watched so many people, parent and grown child alike, decide the relationship is simply too painful and cut each other off, often for valid reasons, only to pass the same disconnection down another generation. 

Her hope isn't necessarily reconciliation, but healing: tending the childhood-level wound underneath, whether the other person ever takes part.

Laura and Brian are clear that this pain isn't only about the dramatic or illegal — far more often it's emotional neglect: a parent who couldn't fully accept, see, or hear their child. And it connects all of us, because everyone has been someone's child.

They explore why superficial apologies don't hold (the pain resurfaces every holiday because the wound was never comforted), why we meet best at our child selves ("two five-year-olds arguing in the kitchen"), how healing gives us new eyes to finally see the good our parents could give, and a gentle counter to cut-everyone-off culture — every parent is a little unhealthy, and distance isn't the only path. 

The freeing anchor throughout: your healing is never contingent on the other person's. It's not about them changing. It starts and can be completed with you.

In this episode: 

🔹 Why you can heal this relationship even if your parent won't change — or is no longer alive 

🔹 Emotional neglect, not just abuse: the quiet wound of not being accepted, seen, or heard 

🔹 Why superficial apologies fail — and why the pain floods back every holiday 

🔹 Meeting at the child self: how "two five-year-olds in the kitchen" reframes the fight 

🔹 A gentler alternative to cutting family off — and why your healing doesn't depend on theirs

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I'm Brian Friese alongside Laura Duncan, and you're listening to the Triggered and True podcast. This is a podcast that's all about you. Discovering you, going back for you, being with you. You're more than the pain you've experienced, the behaviors you're expressing, and the thoughts that run through your head. Together, we will find your true self, which has always been with you. It's just been covered up. Tune in as we show you how to feel your pain, get comfort, and go play. As you return to you, it's time to transform from triggered to true. Hello and welcome everyone to this episode of Triggered and True. This is an episode that I know Laura is really, really excited about. I'm excited too, but I think Laura's even more excited than I am, which is really exciting because it's fun when we get to see her passion come out. And this is something she's very passionate about. So today we're going to be talking about healing the parent-child relationship. So, Laura, why don't you just share a little bit of your heart behind this and why this is something that you're so excited about talking about?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, I just feel like I think we'll both talk a little bit about our experience with this, but from my personal experience, I've just seen a lot of people, clients that I work with, um, whether that be the parent or the adult child, um really struggling to figure out boundaries, to figure out how to have a relationship. And sadly, many people just decide it's just too hard, too painful to have um a parent be part of their life anymore, to have a child be part of their life anymore. And a lot of times people decide to cut that person out of their life for probably very, very valid reasons. But then you see kind of ramifications of then when that um child has the child, now they are not able to be grandparents because they parent differently and they're not able to be in each other's lives because of this pain, because of this ultimate child pain. And I just have a heart, um, a passion for um parents and children to be able to reconcile some of these triggers that have really blindsided the relationship that they have. And I would really love to see um just that healed, not just fixed in a better relationship, but healed on that childhood level.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, and I think there's it's not only that there's the trigger there, there's the reality that the parent was not able to provide something the child needed.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Very real.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

So that's very real, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yes, was not able to meet needs andor abused or hurt, or you know, there's so many different ways that there's pain between child and parent.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be this really big, like when we think about physical abuse or you know, things that are ill illegal, you know, exactly. There's those things, which is true and very valid, but a lot of this is not that it's yeah, just that you know, are my parents didn't do anything illegal, but yet but they didn't accept me. They didn't exactly yes, they weren't able to fully accept my personality, they didn't hear me, they didn't see me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

And I feel like that emotional neglect in childhood, because that's ultimately what it is, really creates a you know, a distance between parent and child, not even just now as adults, but throughout their childhood and throughout their lives.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Well, and the other cool thing about this though is this connects us all in humanity because every single person has this.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

No one has every single person, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Every single person on the planet doesn't matter if you grew up leave it to beaver home or your parents were in and out of jail. Yeah, you're every single person. Maybe the leave it to beaver home is actually worse because it's uh it's so whitewashed, yes, it's so not real. Whereas the jail one was like it was raw and it was real, it's real, exactly. There's no whitewashing being in prison, but the um the reality is is this connects us all as inhumanity because this isn't just exactly certain people had this issue.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

We all had this issue, every single person does, and and that's what's sad about it is we're all in our own pain, you know, caves, and we're isolated and we're alone because we're all experiencing pain, whether we're the parent or the child, we've also been the child, and eventually the child is gonna be the parent as well. So it's like no matter what, we're but we're already experiencing it. And then another thing I saw was you know, how we swing the pendulum, you know, I'm not gonna have my parent in my life because I don't like how they raised me. So now I'm gonna raise my child completely differently, yeah, in order to feel like I can he's safe, I can be okay because I'm gonna do it different. And that's sad also, because we end up parenting as a deep in a defensive mode versus an offensive mode because we're just trying to make sure we don't do what our parents did to us.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

And creates a codependency with our children, which is very unhealthy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yes, exactly. And so, yeah, so it's just, you know, on my heart, definitely, that people would be able to reconcile and not just not even a reconcile relationship. Like my goal isn't to say then all people are going to come back into relationship, but to to be able to at least heal the haunting that comes with it, you know, the shame that comes with it as a parent and the pain that they experience from their parents, and then that child's pain and disconnection.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

I think it's also important to mention at the beginning here that this healing process we're talking about in this great coming together to some aspect of this parent-child relationship is not dependent on your parent being alive.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

No, and that's a really good thing to clarify because even if your parent isn't alive, you might still need to heal from that relationship. Not might, you still need to heal from that relationship. Absolutely, whether they're on earth or not, whether you have a relationship with them or not is still not necessarily the outcome. Whether they're alive or they're not alive, it's a healing that relationship.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

And that's also encouraging because even if your parent is alive, but let's just say that they don't want to get help and they don't want to heal and they don't want to go through this process themselves, your healing is not contingent on your parents' healing. And for the parent, your healing is not contingent on your child healing.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah. So kind of your heart here and your vision kind of behind this podcast and some of the other work you're going to be doing is to create kind of an on-ramp where a parent and child could do this together.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah, I would love it. That would be like my first choice would be that parent and child could do it together. But like I just said, I'm still opening it up for a parent to come, even if the child doesn't want to come, and the child to come even if their parent doesn't want to come, because we can still heal that collectively. But yes, the goal would be that parent and child would be able to come and do this together.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

So talk about where, okay, so that's great. And we we hit that if that, even if that doesn't happen, that's okay. So let's say we're starting this process, whether it's parent and child together or whether it's just one or the other. Where do we begin?

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So we begin with ourselves. And that's something that like I want to be able to start helping people recognize before you even get to healing the parent-child relationship. It has to start with you being able to heal yourself first. Again, our healing is not contingent on the other person. So we start by facing the pain that we already have within ourselves, regardless of the other person. And that's what we do in marriages, that's what we do in any relationship. But specifically being able to say, I have to take care of me first and understand what's going on inside of me first before we can have a conversation together.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah. Yeah. And what makes what makes this dynamic maybe even more difficult than some of the other relational dynamics you run into?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Because the parent is the one that hurt the child and there's legitimate real reasons. And then from that place, we go directly into more of a defensive mode because we're trying to heal our pain that the other person inflicted upon us. And so it feels very difficult because we want that parent to be able to fix what they did or how they hurt us in our childhood. But the thing about that is it's not gonna work. We're never gonna be able to have a relationship for relationship's sake. We have to be able to acknowledge that it's very hard for me to accept this person because this person hurt me. This person's the reason I didn't get what I needed. This person's the reason why I I'm feeling what I'm feeling today.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah, and that's legitimate because it is. We're not blaming here. Yeah, we're not blaming what we're saying here is actually we're we're we're over in our yeah, we're over in our left side of our brain and we're talking about logic. Yes, logically.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Logically, this is very difficult because logically we were hurt or neglected.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yeah. What you're what you're dealing with today is because your parents were either, you know, unable or unwilling or just didn't have it in them to give you all of the 10 gifts that we talk about a lot.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Um, the 10 gifts, the 10 core emotional needs that we need in our early childhood development.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah. So what is your so we're we're doing that, we're doing the healing. And if you know, if people need some more background on that, you know, you're you're going through the remote control exercise, which we've talked about, you know, some of the early podcasts. We we hit some of those, you know, we're talking about the remote control exercise, we're talking about bringing that healing into ourselves. And I did that. I remember this is exactly the process you did with me because this is where all of our focus was at first was my own heart.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

So as I'm starting to grow, you started to bring up my parents more. Okay, yeah, and I was like, slowly but surely, I'm like, why are we talking about them? I'm doing this healing stuff here. It's like we don't need to talk about that. And and one of the big things you talked to me about was starting off looking at my parents not as though they're my parents, yeah, as they're just human beings, like they're just they're just on this journey, yeah. And you know, and um, and I had this opportunity to do this just the other day. I was talking to somebody about my my childhood relationship with my father, yeah, and um he's like, Well, you know, I see your dad as being like a real listening ear and like a real counselor. Wow, and I'm like, Yeah, that is that is part of his true self, totally. Like, people would stop at our farm and just have these really long conversations, and they would I'd overhear these conversations, these people are sharing everything, yeah. You know, and my dad was like a safe place for them to unload stuff, and and he was a very logical guy, and it feels like you could tell him anything, and like it wouldn't throw him off his game, like nothing really would seem to surprise my dad. Like, yeah, and uh he was able to do that. That wasn't as much my experience as a child with my dad, so it's hard, but now like I can see that, and I could see how this other young man is like could see that in my dad because it is in my dad.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Exactly. Just because he couldn't express it to you, just because he couldn't share that part of himself with you, or you couldn't receive it, it's always been there, and it's probably some of both, yeah. I think so.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Right, like he was doing it, he totally was doing it, but because I maybe had some pain in some other area, I blocked it.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Yep, I wouldn't let it come.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

So, like I shut it off, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

And um, yeah, so yeah, so it's it can be very hard to turn off that blame and kind of see them.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Oh, yeah, because it's so justifiable. But once we stop the blame, that's when we can finally face our own pain, and then we can finally see them.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, so that's a great kind of starting point once you, you know, that's what you did with me.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

So I'm assuming that's part of what definitely so taking care of ourselves first, and then and a lot of times people will be like, Well, what does this have to do with my relationship with my son or my or a race relationship with my parent? But it's kind of like the karate kid to a certain degree. You have to get certain things, strengths in place to be able to have those conversations without blame.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Come on, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

What are we even doing here? Why are we talking about all these other things that has nothing to do with this relationship? But we have to have the base of knowing ourselves, connected to ourselves, healing within ourselves to be able to then turn and have a conversation and look at the other person. And in this context, it's looking at the parent or looking at the child through different through a different lens because we're taking care of our pain. But now we have the opportunity to actually have some of these conversations. And so when I work with married couples, I always say I'm not a referee. It's gonna be your individual process and your individual process coming together. That's how I, whenever I work with couples, that's how I work with them. Well, this is gonna be the same thing: individual process, individual process coming together. What that looks like in the parent-child relationship is the parent will be going back to their childhood and the child will be going back to their childhood, both taking care of and recognizing the pain and the lack that they experienced together, not to justify behaviors, but to be able to recognize that their pain, childhood pain is and what your child pain is, and how majority of the time, very similar.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Because generational, exactly. Their parents raised them that way, they raised us that way, we'll raise our kids that way because it's part of our coding. And until that coding is infused with the gifts and infused with the things that we need in early childhood development, both for the child and for the parent, we'll never actually be able to see each other. And it's and it creates a compassion in our hearts to recognize the humanity part like you're talking about, and also the humanity part as a child. We're both children. Because if you really think about it, when a parent was raising a child and they got triggered by the child, so let's just say a child's throwing a fit, five years old throwing a fit, and the parent gets super upset and super angry and lashes out and is, you know, extreme with the child. The child feels hurt and has always remembered that, and they're bringing it to the table now. Well, in that moment, when that parent lashed out at that child, they were in their amygdala, they were in their fight or flight, and the child was obviously a child because they were five years old. Well, their child self was triggered, so they were responding as a five-year-old to the five-year-old. Their big emotions means that they were really little. So many traumatic moments in childhood, we were little together. When I can recognize, oh my mom was little with me when she did that. It doesn't excuse the behavior, it doesn't say it's okay. But now I recognize, oh, I know what it feels like to be little. I can see them being little, but that's not who they really were. That was their triggered parent self. This is their true parent self. This is my child triggered self. This is my true self. And that's what we're coming back to.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

It definitely creates empathy.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah, it creates empathy and that which usually leads to connection.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

And that is the goal because we're not just trying to fix the mistakes. That's when everyone comes together. We'll go to counseling, we'll fix the mistakes, and we'll live happily ever after. It's not gonna work because it's not about the mistakes, it's about what was going on behind the scenes. Not to mention those mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

It happened, you can't take it back. There's no fixing it. No, saying you're sorry does not fix it. It doesn't, it doesn't take all the pain away. Does it is it is it important? Yeah, yeah, it's very important to have forgiveness. It's very important to receive forgiveness. Yeah, but you're gonna have to comfort the pain, otherwise, you're not gonna be able to give or receive the forgiveness. Yeah, because the pain, the pain will block the forgiveness flow.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yep. And that's why a lot of people, parents and children, have already said sorry multiple times. Then they go back for that Christmas, you know, holiday and it all comes back up again. And the sorry doesn't matter anymore because all the pain just came back up like it was just yesterday, because we're triggered again.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah, right. You know that so uh a better, you know, you know, we're starting with ourselves individually, but when you think about how we're both coming together in this vision you have of the parent and the child coming alongside, so really, where do we begin? Is we both begin at childhood.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Because inside of all of us, we're children.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yes, that child is still there, we're gonna come back to the parent, it comes back to their child self, the adult child comes back to their child self, and that's where we meet together.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

What you shared about in that moment, we were both just children. I remember when I was first learning your material, and I've shared this one with you before. Yeah, when we were first learning this material, and I was uh my daughter at the time was 18, and I was some age, 40s in my 40s, somewhere, wherever that would have been. I remember being in the kitchen arguing with her about the dishes. We're arguing back and forth about the dishes, and in that moment, I remembered what you taught me, and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's two five-year-olds in the kitchen arguing. Yeah, we're not our ages, we are two five-year-olds arguing in the kitchen, yeah. And I was like, Oh yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, and it really is helpful because you know, our perspective does affect our lens and how we see our parent, how our parent sees us. That's one of the biggest things, like you were saying before. That's one of the byproducts, taking care of our pain, coming back to childhood with our parent and being able to heal, is that now my lens changes. Now I can see things differently. I can see behaviors differently, I can see who people are differently. We can see who they really are now. And I think that is really the primary goal is to actually come home to ourselves, but also to come home to the other person because they were our home. They were our first, our parent was our first caregiver. Our child was, you know, impacted us so deeply trying to raise a child as we were going through our things that we were going through. But we are actually coming home to each other as we come home to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Right. And along the way, we're gonna be able to see what they were able to give us.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Exactly. That's one of the really great things because when we're in pain, like you were saying earlier with your dad, it blocks us. We can't see it. And then all of a sudden, it's like you're looking around, you're like, oh, it wasn't all bad. And I even say this with like people that come from really, really terrible homes.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

There's usually always some redeeming gift being given or redeeming moment or a moment that we were able to connect with them, even if they were few and far between, that we couldn't see because it's like, you know, we want to throw it all out because of our pain, just makes it very extreme, all or nothing. So they would gave me nothing. But one of the healing byproducts is that you can actually see that they did give in some ways. We just couldn't see it before.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yep. Yep, gives us eyes to see. This process gives us eyes to see. So you this process we're talking about cuts against the grain a little bit of some very popular teaching that's that exists in the world of you know cutting out things, cutting things out of your life that are unhealthy. Yeah, putting up boundaries, and yep, you know what? So my family is unhealthy, my parents are unhealthy. Guess what? Guess what? Every everybody's parents have some element of unhealthy and some level of toxic. All right, so let's just get that on the table. Yeah, I'm a parent, I know for a fact I have levels of 100%. Laura might have the least amount of anybody in the world.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

No, no, no, no, no. I definitely do. My kids will tell you.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, oh yeah. I'm just like sometimes I do this podcast. I'm like, oh man, if they talk to my kids, you know. But there was pre-pod pre-Brian podcast, but even if they talk about post-podcast, Brian, post still have triggers, still have moments. One of them just happened this weekend with my daughter, and I'm like, uh, I should be past this by now. I shouldn't trigger when they do these things.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

But anyway, but your kids have also experienced the compassion method, so yes, you still triggered. Yes, you should still did or said, or whatever the circumstance was, but you understand yourself more. There's less shame involved, there's less blame involved, there's more understanding, there's more compassion for yourself, even in those moments. And yeah, your children are to some degree connected to the process where they're starting to understand too. So, what could have been, you know, a lot bigger moment, whatever happened, was probably a lot less, or you came back from it quicker in your relationship because you do know what's going on within you. It doesn't mean we're gonna be perfect. Perfect people just because we heal our child self. We're not going to be perfect people just because we understand what how triggers work. We're still going to make mistakes because we still have pain. And that pain is still going to cause us to have reactions that potentially could hurt other people. So perfection is not the goal, but understanding, seeing clearly, being able to know what's happening and be aware of it and be able to see what's really going on behind the behaviors.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Absolutely. Yeah. Um we'll come back to the boundaries, but I'll just piggyback on that one thing. That when you and I were prepping for this, one of the things that I shared that was so powerful about where my family is at in this is our, and when I'm talking about my family, I'm talking about um not so much my parents yet. Yet okay, I'm talking about myself and my children, my four children. Um, the awareness. Yeah, just the other day, my daughter was talking in college. Somebody did something very hurtful to her, but she's like, but I know that's not who she is. Like she's like was able to separate that person's hurtful behavior from who that person was. And I'm like, my daughter's soon to turn 20. I'm like, I like it's it feels like she's learned like some advanced, um, you know, like some very advanced mathematics, you know what I'm saying? That um that I had no clue about, you know, when I was 20. Like I never would have even had a grid for that. So no, so that is that is amazing. You know, that is absolutely amazing because some of these cycles that have existed generationally, this is how you nip those in the bud. This is how you create a new normal exactly dynamics of human behavior, like this is creating a new normal. So if my kids are getting that before they even have children, just think about what they're able gonna be able to talk about with their children and just exactly the different conversations and yeah, um, yeah, just the awareness. So awareness is huge. So, but but back to the boundaries thing. So we understand why people want to have boundaries because they're hurting, definitely, and that person caused the pain, so let's cut them out. So I think especially both of you and I have experienced this, especially in Christianity, where maybe someone grew up in a home where it wasn't as very it wasn't a very faith-based home, and it was very rough, rough around the edges, and there's a lot of that. Someone becomes a Christian, and then all of a sudden, like, oh no, they're that's bad, that's bad environment, that's bad, whatever. So let's just cut them out. And we recognize, and I think sometimes people hear your teaching and they're like, Well, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 25:29

I'm supposed to just become like a doormat for people, or I'm supposed to not have any boundaries and just throw them, like let whatever happened happen.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

No, so you do a really great job explaining this, but I'm gonna tee it up. Explain the difference between a defensive boundary and an offensive boundary, yes, because one of those you're all about, and one of them one of them we want to address. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Yeah, exactly. So to summarize it very simply, a defensive boundary comes from my trigger brain as a reaction to my pain. An offensive boundary comes from my true self, and it comes from caring for myself and deciding that something is hurtful or not okay for me. And so my true self temporarily will say it's too much for us. So we'll put a temporary boundary up until I can become more and more of who I am in this situation through compassion and receiving my needs and connection to true self. And then I like to say this I become my own boundary when I'm connected to my true self. I can prefer not to be with someone. I can say yes or no, depending upon what it looks like to take care of myself. But my boundary is not against that person, not against my parent. That boundary is for me. A true self-boundary will always be for you and not against another. A triggered boundary will always be against another and it doesn't take care of ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

I like what you said about one's coming from a triggered place. Like, yeah, my God, this is the sky is falling. This is I gotta cut them out because I can't survive if they're in my life. Whereas the other one's coming from your true self, where the end result might be the same.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

It could be. This doesn't always mean that we're gonna be in a relationship with them.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

My true self could say, I don't prefer to be in a relationship with them, but I'm not in a wound, or it might really be blaming, or it might really be that unhealthy, like or dangerous, or they're doing criminal activities.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

I could choose not to, but this is the difference. If you make a boundary from your true self, the other person's not a villain. Correct. Their behavior was unhealthy, unsafe, and I chose not to put myself or my family around it, not because of them being a villain, because they're so wrong and so unhealthy and so toxic and bad, but because I want to experience things differently. I don't feel strong enough to know how to have that conversation. I it's always comes back to us. And when it comes back to us, it becomes a choice. Because really, if I'm gonna trigger and I get rid of a person in my life, it's not really a choice. It feels like a choice, but it's not really, because a true choice is I could keep them in my life or not keep them in my life, but I'm choosing and I can be okay either way, exactly. And I'm choosing from a clear mind, from a tender heart, from being at peace. Yeah, and I don't want to be around that behavior, but it's not I'm not mad at that person, I choose it for me. Yeah, and there's a huge difference in that versus they're a villain, they did all these things to me, I'm reacting from my pain, and now I have to get rid of this person because I'm not okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah, I'm gonna look something up real quick. I had that that person, I wanna I can't remember how I exactly shared it, but that the doormat question. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like that I like how you the context for that.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Real quick here. So we had someone write into the podcast recently kind of asking about this. They weren't talking about a parent-child relationship, they were actually talking about a uh like a like a maybe a boyfriend-girlfriend situation, but um they were talking about they kind of took from our episode on the manipulation, gaslighting, and narcissism. There was definitely a misunderstanding where somehow they were leaning towards like, are you telling us to be someone's doormat? Like kind of that type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Being a doormat. And then I kind of also I think I read that email too, also kind of along the lines of um, I just have to have compassion for them, even though they're hurting you.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, right. I'm supposed to have empathy for them and understand them, and that gives them kind of license to walk all over me. And I just got to suck it up because they had a bad childhood or whatever, you know what I'm saying? But but um I said this is very contrary to the compassion method because the compassion method is all about building up one's inner world and their compassionate love for themselves. And then I said, it is impossible for a person who knows and loves their true self to be anyone's doormat. Yeah, their love for themselves simply would not allow it. And that's what you're describing. Yeah, we become our own boundary. Our love for ourselves wouldn't put ourselves in an unhealthy position.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Exactly. Exactly. And that might mean not being in that person's life. Again, it's not because I'm blaming that person, it's not because I'm weak, it's not because I'm a victim, it's not because I'm a doormat, it's because I know who I am and I love myself so much that I'm not gonna put myself in a situation that would harm me, just like I wouldn't want my children to be harmed. I'm gonna take care of myself in the same way.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Yeah. You know, and one thing we talked about, and we can throw out just for people's food for thought, you know. Um, obviously we we share this from a very American lens because that's that was our childhood. That's what we experienced. And family dynamics vary across the world. Um so, but even in America, I think there is a bit of a difference between maybe the rural versus urban.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

So, like in rural areas, I definitely live in more of a rural area. So I would say that there's a lot of pressure to definitely in small towns to maintain family relationship. So it might be the opposite of putting up defensive boundaries where you throw yourself under the bus to stay. Yeah, like oh my god. Sunday afternoon, we gotta go here, we gotta do this. We hate it, we don't want to be there. Every Christmas we go here, whatever, you know. And uh, whereas maybe in an urban setting, people have left some of their family and you know they've done more of the cut off completely type thing. But but either way, it's the same thing, either way, it's the same thing, it's what we're talking about. Like, hey, we're teaching you how you can go to that family Christmas that you traditionally hate. We're teaching you how to go and and be okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yep, I mean, you could actually find good in it because you're not being triggered by the things that used to trigger you, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

And we also talked about in-laws.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Yeah, so we have pain connected to our parents, but how do our in-laws kind of like for for those that are married and have you know in-laws?

SPEAKER_01 32:43

Yeah, how does that always your parents? You can have a great relationship with your parents, but not be able to want to be around or have big boundaries against your in-laws. Well, it's similar to what you just said in in a different context with the cultural differences. So every family has their own family culture, you know, for with their own, you know, pains and their own lack, uh, but also their own things that they do well in. Every single family does. But one of the big things that we get triggered in when we have in-laws is they're different. Because they are, they have a different family culture than us, even if we were raised similarly. We still have differences in our family culture. Differences trigger us. So we end up blaming that person for what they did based on my trigger that they handle things differently, not always wrong or bad, just differently. And that causes reactions and triggers with us that cause makes us feel like they're the villain of the story because we don't understand the differences.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Yeah. Well, I think another big thing why it comes up, and this is gonna be kind of the last thing we hit on in this, is uh codependency.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

For so very often we have a scenario where an in-law has a codependent relationship even well into adulthood with their child.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Mm-hmm. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah, I would I would dare to say that there's probably some element of that always.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Okay, but but um there's levels.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Mm-hmm. You know, similar to the reminder for people listening. Codependency is I'm not okay if you're not okay. I need you to be blank so that I can be okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

So an in-law would maybe see the the spouse as getting in the way of that codependency.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Definitely. So, what are we gonna be? More overprotective, defensive. We can say something that isn't passive aggressive. Yeah, exactly. Passive aggressive. We can have so much energy behind it because it's actually still coming back to our lack and our pain, no matter what the differences are, no matter what the codependency is, it's our lack and pain that's villainizing an in-law because we don't know how to take care of ourselves in that.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

So, in this process of a parent and child, we'll go back to the parent and child. We we see that with the in-law, but let's go back to the parent and child. If you're walking a parent and child through this, you're gonna have to talk about codependency because there's it's most likely there at some levels of some level of unhealthiness. One of my codependencies was, I think back with my mom, was like um, I always felt like I had this pressure, real or perceived, to like take care of everything, like to make sure that I was doing the things that would make her happy, fawning. Yep, fawning. So, um, how would you talk about that with the parent and child together?

SPEAKER_01 35:47

So, first it would be the the child saying, I fawn to make my mom happy. So, fawning is a triggered reaction, just like fight, flight, or freeze. So, we would want to be able to go through the remote control exercise, come back to the lack, be able to get that person feeling full. So, they don't need to fawn in order to have relationship and connection, even as an adult, because we still continue those habits of fawning even as an adult. So, working with a child and a parent can be difficult because the child could start fawning to try to make the parent happy, even in the context of getting help with the relationship. So, you first they might be there, they might be there at a session with you for that reason, exactly, because they're actually fawning because they want that's this will make mom happy if I go do this, exactly very common. And so and then we will also, this is the beauty of it. This is why I want to do this so much. So, okay, so I recognize I'm fawning, I take care of my wound, I take care of my unmet need, I feel more full, I come into the situation, I don't feel a need to fawn as much. But now the parent gets to connect to their childhood of why they needed you to be good, to do the right thing for them to be okay. What was their connection and relationship within themselves?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

What were they feeling?

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

What's soft emotional sad, scared, yes, exactly because the fawning was connected to a trigger in the parent.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

All of our triggers are actually connected to each other. So you fawn to make her happy because I'm just gonna say, like, imagining, like because she was scared that she she didn't want you to not do the things you were supposed to do to turn out the way that she wanted you to turn out. Let's just say that as an example. So she she's ex she's ex has a high expectation because she's scared, because she actually doesn't feel confident in raising you. But you feel this franticness in her that you feel like you want to make okay by fawning. So you fawn to her scared, and her scared triggers your fawning because our triggers are actually working together. But if I can take care of the wound and the pain behind it, now all of a sudden, not only do I get to take care of my fawning and what that meant to me and why I chose to react in that way, but now I get to see no wonder because they were in this trigger and I was in this trigger because of our childhoods and our pain.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

There's more to my story, and there's more to theirs.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

And we because the parent raised the child, and the child, you know, like you guys were raised together. You the child wasn't raised with their parent growing up. Like, you know, we weren't siblings, we were parent and child. So the child doesn't really know what the parent went through.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

And culturally, it wasn't acceptable to go through emotional health processes during that time. So the parent usually doesn't know what's going on with them either.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

They don't know what's going on inside of them. No way.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

So it's this mystery that's being um fueled. Yeah, exactly. That it's this mystery that's been originally fueled by our pain, but now as I take care of my pain, this mystery is going to be fueled by curiosity. I'm curious why they controlled me so much. I wonder what was going on. And it's not to ignore your pain or anything that you went through, it's from a place of fullness and I'm not hungry anymore for love and I'm full. I can look with curiosity to say, I wonder why. And when you start to see their childhood pain behind it, it helps us see things completely different in a way of like, I get it. It wasn't about me. It was about what was going on here. And I believe that it brings even a stronger um closure to our childhood pain when we're able to recognize what was going on in the whole story.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, that's really good. So to kind of wrap ourselves up today, um, Laura, you have a heart. You're gonna be creating resources.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

And and and definitely you can check out laurerduncing.com and find these resources. But you're gonna be creating resources to speak specifically to uh, and you're gonna design resources specifically meant for a you know, a parent and child to grab those resources and go through this process together.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Yes, exactly. That is in the horizon, and this podcast is kind of like the precursor to what we're gonna be doing. Yeah. So listening to this podcast, you're able to connect more with the heart behind the compassion method, which is so important because, like I said before, coming together to heal a relationship between a child and a parent is not a time to referee. It's not about who's right, it's not about who's wrong, it's about who the child is and it's about who the parent is, and coming together in that.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

And going back to both of them's five-year-old selves.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Exactly. And being able to watch that first hand to be able to say, no wonder, I see it. I didn't get it before because I couldn't see it, but now I see it. And it doesn't make it go away and it doesn't excuse things that happen, but with that understanding comes the ability to be able to say, it wasn't about me. Those were triggers.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Yep. Yep, that's awesome. So, yeah, so everyone be looking for those resources. And again, you can check out Laura's website, LauraDuncan.com.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Yep, we'll have all the information on there.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

And if you're not signed up for Laura's emails, you can sign up for all that there. You can get signed up for all of Laura's social media feeds, and you can see everything that Laura has in the works.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

So and you can start that journey now, whether you're the parent or the child listening to this podcast right now, buy the course or listen to the um podcast with a workbook. We have a workbook on Amazon. Do the podcast with the workbook or get the course, start working on you now because you can heal the relationship, even if you're not connected to your child or your parent in the in this moment.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yeah, you can do the self-work, you can take care of your own heart. And it's and the beautiful thing about that is it's not dependent on anybody, but you can't do it. You're the gatekeeper, you're you control it, and you doing that is gonna make the next step so much better. Like exactly if you're the parent, you can help lead your child. If you're the child, you can help lead your parent, and and you'll have some real firsthand experience to share with them. Like, hey, I went through this and this is what came up, and you know, and here's the gift givers I found, and exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

And and real last thing is um, I let me tell you a little secret that's gonna really help you is the fact that it's not about your parent. If you're the child listening right now, and if you're the parent listening, it's not about your child, it's not about them changing or them getting fixed or them getting healthy, it's about you first. And that at first feels very hard to accept, but then it's actually empowering because I can be okay and I can be full and healed regardless of my child or regardless of my parent.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Absolutely. Yeah, great stuff. Well, thank you everyone for listening, and we look forward to uh next time. Bye bye.