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The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Colleen is a student of Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt who created the Imago Theory and have brought this work to over 50 countries around the world. She is profoundly influenced by this belief shared by Dr. Harville Hendrix. He said, "We are born in relationship, wounded in relationship and healed in relationship."
What are you struggling with today? Colleen believes that almost any problem we have began with a broken or unhealed relationship. The anxiety or deep sadness we feel often began with unresolved issues in our relationships with our parents, partner, family or friends. When we have unmet needs we are programed to get those needs met. When we don't get what we need we protest by protecting ourselves. this often looks like defensive, critical, demanding behaviors. these behaviors are most often ineffective. As a result we may develop unhealthy relationship with food, sex, gambling our or a substance.
Colleen invites world renown relationship specialists from all over the world to help her guests explore their own relationships and see their problems through a relational lens. She will help us explore how to create intimacy to deepen our connections. Her listeners will gain insights to create a more joyful life.
Colleen is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of South Carolina, a certified, Advanced Imago Clinical therapist, a clinical instructor for the Imago International Trading Institute while maintaining her clinical practice in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Thank you for joining Colleen today. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. Join her next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Parenting Blueprint: Navigating the Journey with Michele Naude
Michele Naudé, Imago therapist and faculty member from South Africa, shares profound insights about the parenting journey, with special focus on single parenting and the constant balance between struggles and celebrations.
• The concept of being a "good enough parent" rather than striving for perfection
• How showing up consistently, being warm and reliable creates safety for children
• Understanding that every interaction builds our children's "imago" - their blueprint for future relationships
• The unique challenges of single parenting and managing parental exhaustion
• Why validation is crucial when communicating with teenagers
• How our own childhood experiences unconsciously shape our parenting approach
• The importance of giving children choices within boundaries that work for parents
• Setting appropriate boundaries while maintaining connection
• Using the "piece of quiet" strategy when needing self-care moments
• The value of parent communities to combat isolation and share experiences
• Resources including Danny Silk's "Loving Our Kids On Purpose" and Marcia Ferstenfeld's Connected Parents Thriving Kids course as well as our host, Coco Kowal's connected Parents, Thriving Parents
Reach out to Michele Naudé on Facebook to learn about her parent-teen workshop opportunities and discover more resources for your parenting journey.
Thank you for joining me today on the Relationship Blueprint. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. So join me next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
Welcome back everybody to the Relationship Blueprint, where you unlock your power of connection. And with me today I have Michelle Nod. She's from South Africa and she's an imago therapist. She's an imago faculty member and she is so committed to this work, and I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Michelle in person in Cape May, new Jersey, last June and I was so impressed with her. And today she's going to talk with us about the journey of parenting. In particular, she's going to focus on single parenting and also help us with the idea of how do we really make this a time where we share our struggles and we share our celebrations as parents, because Michelle and I agree that it's the hardest job that we've ever had. So, without further ado, I want to introduce Michelle Nod and I'm so happy you're here with us today and all the way from South Africa, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, coco. It's great to be here and yep, I just want to reiterate, to be here and yep, I just want to reiterate the struggle is real. The struggle is real and we get manuals for a lot of things, especially new appliances, but we don't get a manual for how to raise our children. In fact, and the idea, ideas around parenting changed so much over the years, so parenting 40 years ago, 50 years ago, looks very different to parenting nowadays.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was speaking with Marcia Furstenfeld about parenting a couple weeks ago and after the episode I started thinking about using time out. That was so popular when my daughter was little and I can see her sitting alone in that chair now and feel awful about it. We never left. I remember the rule back then was if they're two, it's two minutes, that they stay in timeout, if they're four, it's four minutes. You know the book and when you talked about a manual I thought hell, I hung on to the book and how much I wanted to do everything right. And I see that now I have three grown children with children, and they're such marvelous parents, but how hard they work, you know, just reminds me of those days, yeah absolutely, and just hearing what you're saying, we, and certainly myself as a parent, I wanted to do the best I could.
Speaker 2:I wanted to do things because I believed it was the right thing for my boy, and what I was doing and the way I was parenting was informed by what I knew at that time. And it was limited in that because certainly when my first son was born, who's now 26, I hadn't started working with Imago. In 2002, my second son was born. Yes, I have three sons. God does have a sense of humor. I thought they were all going to be girls and, interestingly enough, the youngest now has just turned 20 and I will say that he is an emago baby, although I was pregnant with him when I went into emago therapy with my now ex-husband. I see my parenting style with him was actually quite different to my parenting with my older two boys Interesting.
Speaker 1:Do the older two boys ever make comments about that, like he gets it easy or you were easier on him, or are there any of those kinds of things that you get as feedback from the older boys?
Speaker 2:I think, being the youngest and I was the youngest of three girls that he very quickly gets the label of the baby and the favorite. He gets away with a lot more and the other two hours are long, stricter.
Speaker 1:I think that that's pretty typical and I would say that it's the first. One is sort of like we're trying everything, we're trying to do everything right and by the time three comes around, you're a little more relaxed because you've had some experience. But you can't have experience that you haven't had right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and our 13 match me. Boys are so different. One really didn't work for the second one and didn't work for the third one, so it's not like one size fits all. No, no, not at all?
Speaker 1:Not at all. So when you, you know, it's so nice for us to be able to take this look back, right, but the parents that are in this struggle right now, and you know what kind of messages would you send to the younger Michelle about parenting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and these are messages I wish I had received. No-transcript. And as you get all right and he definitely was, by the book search was X number of hours that he was fed. So what I would say to the younger Michelle is what's really important is to show up, to be present, to certainly for that early parenting of a young, young baby to be warm and reliable.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And a term that I came across when I was still studying my honors in psychology and I love it is Donald Winnicott's turn of phrase, which is the good enough parent. Just be the good enough parent means that you meet your children's needs most of the time in the best way that you can, so that's good enough.
Speaker 1:Well, the warm and reliable feels like I could feel in my chest this relaxation, as you said those words, because, again, watching my children, with babies and young children, there's all this pressure in Instagram and social media and how to do this, how to do that, and it was the same when I was younger too. It wasn't Instagram, but the same kinds of pressures, but I think there's more of it because there's so much more of this knowledge explosion and they're getting conflicting messages about this and that, and I think that that key. You know, like I always love to have a mindset about something, and what you just brought to us is this if you could have known, all I have to do is show up, be warm and reliable and be a good enough parent the good enough, not the perfect, you know. That's where the anxiety comes from, like I'm going to break this little thing that I created. She's so important to me and I don't want to break her, and so I love that.
Speaker 1:Michelle, do you want to talk any more about the good enough parent? Sounds like you have a lot of experience with that work.
Speaker 2:I have, and I think that also comes from my own experience of being parented.
Speaker 2:All I met was the youngest of two girls, and my experience of being parented was that I had a very warm, reliable and loving father but a mom who was more emotionally absent and older and less reliable.
Speaker 2:So a lot of what I went into my parenting with was that resolve. I want this to be different for my boys. I want them to have a different experience between a mother and a child and then trying to get it right and being focused on what I'm not doing right and being more the critical parent really just wasn't serving me at all. When we do that becomes more about the parent worrying about themselves rather than the parent being focused on what we know. The space between how could I nurture this little person into the best version of who they are? What do I need to create in terms of safety for them to develop their specific and unique identity, rather than me as a parent wanting my child to be perfect and putting all those expectations on so as much as I needed to not be the good enough parent that also gave then my children permission to also just be good enough kids, not the perfect kid.
Speaker 1:Wow, michelle, you've said a number of things. I wish I had written it down. So this first part that you're talking about, about having you were talking about your mom not being warm and reliable but that your dad was, and that this is something we've highlighted before that we often parent in reaction to the parenting we've received out of such good intentions right, I mean such pure intentions I want to give them what I didn't get. I notice I do that Sometimes. I won't bug my children because I know they're busy and I had a smothering mother who never, if I said the house was on fire, she'd keep talking while I had a little one running around, and then I don't reach out as much as I may want to, out of respect for them, but it doesn't feel that way on the other end.
Speaker 1:It feels often I'm imagining that it's unavailability and it's absolutely not coming from that place, but we go back to that intention and impact, right. So I think that's so important for our listeners. Why I love the parenting course that Marcia teaches, is just how little we know about our motivation, where it comes from and its impact, until we really kind of take apart our own story, like you just did and get really clear about where it all comes from, right, exactly. And then you said how much you, if you could have been, just let yourself be the good enough parent, that that message to your kids is that, yeah, you can be just good enough kids. I love that it's so simple but yet so profound.
Speaker 2:And I want to say I didn't get it right all the time because you know I'm imperfect, my parents were imperfect and I'm sure my boys they choose to be parents they're also going to be imperfect. But hey, that's okay, that's good enough, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That goal of being perfect is something we just really need to let go of and know that it's unattainable and probably really unhealthy. Yeah, I think we create more problems.
Speaker 2:I, I think more problems I would have created more problems for myself trying to be what I consider to be the perfect parent. And I think there is, as you were mentioning, today there is so much data overload of how to do it and there's so much on social media on getting it right and we flooded with these picture-perfect mums and babies and toddlers where everyone's in sweet harmony all the time and we do not get to see pictures of unhappiness and temper tantrums and teenagers rebelling. It's kind of romanticized still and then you can do this with your baby and then you can do that, and if you're not doing that, there's something you're really on keeping up and keeping current. So I think oftentimes and I know for myself, oftentimes as a parent, I just felt I wasn't doing enough.
Speaker 1:You're suggesting something really important here is that, if our listeners are listening, that it's less about doing everything right and getting the right book to do the right thing, but developing more of a philosophy of parenting that can help guide them through any of the situations that we encounter in this very challenging and unpredictable job that changes minute by minute with each child individually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's spot on Koto, and I think that's why I love the embargo understanding of relationships. So I did Marsha's course Connected Parents Thriving Kids way back and I think it was 2011, and loved it Back then. It was a 12-week course and it was just very, very helpful and it really did help us, as parents, identify what it is that we bring into our current parenting from our past, but then also gave us tools about how to do that differently, which is great. Um, no, this is what happens. I do need to say that I have words that operate on a carousel. You know the baggage carousel. You miss your bag. I've missed my bag a few times but, um, what did you say? Just before I spoke about the 2011 course with marcia?
Speaker 1:I said you were spot on with about the philosophy, having the mindset around this. It's about the relationship.
Speaker 2:So it's not even so much in, it's not at all creating a mini me, but because your children, the relationship you have your children, is the very first relationship that they are exposed to. If you're able to hold that relationship as sacred and to understand the importance of having a healthy relationship with boundaries, with respect and with the ability to be able to see your child as separate from you, that really is critical for healthy relationships when they enter into the love-seeking stage. So it's a primary relationship that I do. Also just want to say that repair and healing is always possible.
Speaker 2:So there might be some listeners sitting here thinking, oh, you know, I didn't do that. I wish I'd done more of that. I feel like I've missed the boat. Healing and repair is always possible and I'm going to mention it now because I may not get around to it later. There is what is called the parenting workshop, which is a generational workshop, as there is a generational workshop with an adult parent and an adult child, and during those workshops there are really profound and powerful opportunities for conversations to be had with facilitation, in order for your child to be able to share with you some of the hurts, some of the painful experiences, so that they can be repaired.
Speaker 1:You know, michelle, when you were talking about mini me, you know I'm thinking about how parents in unintentionally, you know, they look for ways to connect. So, like she's, she has my color eyes, or she is built like my sister, or, and it's, who does she look like? Who does he look like? And you know, it isn't a big deal. I think we all do it, it's natural. However, those subtle messages about this differentiation of identity like you, child, are you and I'm me and you're wonderful just the way you are and you don't have to be like me for me to love you. But if I'm unconscious about that, then let's talk about kind of messages can happen. So if I'm your child and you really adore me, right, you love me so much and you want me to be this incredible person, you know I can be, but I'm say you know I love sports and that's not your thing, right? What happens with that? With parents? Let's talk about that example?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. And I think one of two things can happen. So on the one hand and I think if we look at parenting, we can have the two extremes, so there can be not enough nurturing or parenting, so that's more on the neglect side of things, and then there's almost over nurturing too much. So I think that could happen here. So it might be that the parent, because they don't value sport, really doesn't put the financial support in the emotional support, in the practical support, in kind of dismisses, it invalidates, it says that really isn't what's important.
Speaker 2:I think you should focus on your academics or whatever it is, or on the creative arts, and can give very, as I said, very invalidating messages. So that's on the one side. The other thing, and on the other side and I've seen this a lot also with my peer group, I've seen this a lot also with my peer group is that a parent who hasn't ever experienced that arena then gets so involved and then starts living out a dream that actually they never had for themselves, but now they're living it through their child and they are the parents who are along the sideline shouting and screaming and wanting their child to be the best, and speaking to the coach, and that overinvestment, and of course then we have everything else in the middle.
Speaker 1:So it really does depend and can go one of two, one of many ways Thinking of a parent situation where the child was going to go out for a play, a musical, and the parent said to the child you know, I don't think you should do it because you're going to be disappointed if you don't make it and, as you said earlier, made it about her issues and her goal was to protect her child.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think she thought her daughter didn't sing well enough or dance well enough or whatever her story was. But that child I watched the child just shrink because if my mom doesn't believe I can do it, then how could I do it? You know, she was not the Tina Turner type who rebelled and said, oh, I'll do it anyway. She was the type who then walked away from something that, whether she was going to be good or not, it was an experiment for her and a passion. So I think we're talking about really getting clear about what part of this is about me and what part, going back to what you first said is how can I be warm, reliable and support this individual? The other thing I wanted to circle back to that I don't think parents think enough about is how we are relating with our child in that space is creating their imago for who they're going to marry someday or be in relationship with. Can you just elaborate a little bit more on that?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm glad we've gone back there, and certainly when I was studying and doing my honours, it was a little bit on object relations and I heard everything that could go wrong in the 18 months. I thought I wonder if children? Yeah, too many things that can go wrong, and now I've lost track again. Okay, so help me get back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were just saying like so this important time that we have, especially these early years, about being reliable, right?
Speaker 2:So the Imago match that all the interactions we have with our children good, bad, ugly and everything in between that forms our children's image of love, their imago. So what love looks like? Is love warm? Is it reliable, Is it supportive, Is it affirming, Does it allow me to be myself, Does it talk over me? Is it smothering, Is it cruel, Is it cold?
Speaker 2:So every single interaction we have with our child goes into the kind of neural mapping and becomes what is familiar and that image of love, that blueprint of love then becomes. They go out into the world to see, to find a loved partner and then they will be attracted to somebody who matches that blueprint of love and that blueprint of love is going to be filled not only with the good things but also with the negative aspects of us. So we are always, we are creating our children's image of love and that is a big responsibility and it's quite a heavy responsibility and sometimes with my couples I remind them of that. I say, please be aware that right now and Marcia often says this that a couple's relationship is the playground of their children. So what playground are you co-creating for your child to play in? Is it a safe playground?
Speaker 1:I really love that. And now I want to change the name of my podcast to the Blueprint of Love. I love that image in my mind of you know I chose Blueprint because we're talking about. What is the structure, the plan for connection? How do we really unlock that power that we have within us and that you have and I have, and if we can nurture that space between? That is the plan, the blueprint for that connection. And how do we build these families and the safe playground that the parents create?
Speaker 1:Because, truthfully, having been divorced and having a blended family myself, never did any of it perfectly, but I would say that times when I have been self-absorbed in my own conflict, whether that conflict be in the relationship or with something else, I acknowledge that it's really hard to be that reliable, warm, present parent because you're tending to something else that feels like in the moment, it feels like it's more important, and parents can easily get lost in their own pain and then the children are sort of in that unhealthy playground. I love the image of that that you've created for us. So what kind of playground are you creating within your relationship for your children to play?
Speaker 2:for your children to play. Yeah, a playground that my ex-husband and I co-created began to get quite toxic and, knowing the work, I was very aware of that and I think that's our task as parents to become as awake and aware and as conscious as we can be of the impact of our behavior, the impact of our words, the impact of our responses, not only to the other parent but also to our children, because I mean, that influences them. There's going to be a response on that side and I was consciously thinking I don't want this to be their malware. I don't want this to be the image of love. It's not a blueprint I want them to take and to add onto it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're bringing up the idea too that when relationships fall apart and you described yours as being toxic, and we don't want that for our children People sometimes say, you know, I'm just going to stay until they're 18 or whatever, that's my plan. And you know, people certainly can make their own choices and what's best for their particular situation, but I think it's a great question to be asking yourself is this the blueprint, is this the playground that I want them to watch? Because the idea of what is familiar that you talked about so brilliantly a little while ago, if people wonder, like people my contemporaries would be, like, I can't believe. She married another guy who drinks too much, like she was with John for 20 years and he never got sober and she suffered this and that, and now she's married to Bill. Well, it's what's familiar, right, and we don't.
Speaker 1:When you said the word awake in our culture I'm not sure if it's in your culture, but we use the word woke many times in our country as it's a disparaging term People, if you're woke, it's. It has a different meaning culturally than I think what you're talking about. It's seen as negative and I think that rebranding that is so important, because to be awake means to be conscious, like, oh, I didn't know this before. Now I understand right. I woke up, I have consciousness. So I think what you're talking about knowing that your relationship was toxic. How did you navigate that time in your life? Because you had teenagers at that point right?
Speaker 2:Yes, actually yes. So, Michael, my oldest was 17. My middle boy was 13. And then my youngest was 10, 10 and a half.
Speaker 2:I think the timing couldn't have been worse in terms of their ages, but I don't think there is ever a good or bad time For me. It was. I wanted to just stop. What I could see was damage, any further damage. Yes, that was. That was really hard.
Speaker 2:I think I had done a lot of single parenting in the relationship anyway, and my ex-husband would often default to me because he said well, you know, you know what to do because I'm a psychologist. But I also think my part in that was that we had very different ideas of parenting and my role in invalidating him was criticizing his idea around parenting and sometimes taking in front of the boys, and that's, I put my hand up. That's not helpful ever. So he felt, I think, sometimes quite disempowered. That that's not helpful ever. So he felt, I think, sometimes quite disempowered. And so towards the end, I think part of what happened is that he kind of just abdicated and he exited not only his emotional relationship and responsibilities with the boys but other responsibilities too.
Speaker 2:So by the time the divorce went through, there wasn't a lot of change, other than now the boys started acting out because there was, you know, that male presence, and he had a strong male presence and he didn't take nonsense. I felt like I had really kind of become bigger and stronger, a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old. There was a whole lot of testosterone in the home and at times it was really really hard to really stand up and to be heard and to be respected and to take charge and have the boys respect. That I really couldn't, yeah, karen.
Speaker 1:No, I think what you're saying, though, is, although you had done a lot of single parenting while you were with your husband, you acknowledge that when he left, that male presence, that something about that especially at the age the boys were it requires whether it's boys or girls really requires so much energy through those teenage years. I'm watching my children again young children and it's so loving, and I know they're exhausted. They're physically exhausted, but the mental exhaustion of teenagers is not to be underestimated. It is ongoing, and every decision you make it does sometimes feel like I give them the car, I don't give them the car. I give them their freedom, I don't give them their. Now we're getting in.
Speaker 1:My mother-in-law used to say bigger kids, bigger problems, the older the kids adults too. When your adult children have problems, they're bigger than they were when they fell down on the playground, so I think you're describing something that we all will go through if we're going to have teenagers, but to do it alone. Can you talk about being a single mom, like for the single moms out there that are doing the best they can? I just feel like there's so much pressure. We've talked about being a good parent or the perfect parent, where we want to be good enough parents, but talk a little bit about that pressure that you went through and how you handled that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be a single parent and I think for me it's like I had to show up as mom and dad. So my ex-husband was continued to be fairly perishable in the children's lives and so there was no such thing as every weekend turnabout. It wasn't as if I had a weekend off, it wasn't as if I had a night off. It was every day, every night, and the boys were with me. So I found that exhausting. I found the mental challenging.
Speaker 1:That wore me down he absolutely wears you down. That's why number three gets away with a lot more. You're just. He wasn't the favorite, I just was exhausted I ran out of energy, yeah.
Speaker 2:and then one of the earlier books that I read was, uh which, the bringing up boys by james dobson, and he intervened only when blood is drawn. So I mean the number of times my boys would chase each other around the house with golf clubs and cricket bats and at times I think there was a knife, but that I really took as advice. I only intervened when blood was drawn, and fortunately there wasn't, but to allow that kind of natural testosterone expression for our boys to and not kind of always step in and, you know, put them apart. That was a challenge too, because am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the wrong thing? So that pressure of getting it right, being a single input, was that much more.
Speaker 1:And I really would imagine that, being a mom of boys. You know, we don't have the experience. We weren't little boys, we weren't teenage boys, we weren't young men. We don't have any of that experience. So there's a mystery, isn't there? I feel like fathers have it with their daughters often and mothers have it with their sons of like. You know, I want to mirror you, I want to be present, I want to support you, but I don't know exactly what that looks like because I haven't experienced it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a family of three girls and having three boys, it's like boys are very different and each boy was different from the other one and it is complete mystery. And they're loud and they fail.
Speaker 1:What do I do with this? And imagine if we could have had conversations like that at that time with our peers, with this huge permission to not have all the answers, that this whole thing is a mystery and, keeping that in mind, what you shared from the very beginning can I be warm and reliable while you're chasing your brother around with a cricket club, like I can't maybe be warm, but I can be reliable. Right, I can say that's enough, you know. Or do that outside, or I can show up and you can know what to expect from me, because that's the other thing is kids not knowing what to expect.
Speaker 1:I grew up in that house where I could be doing something today and it would be adorable, like, say, building a fort in the house I was always building and creating and it would be fine and actually praised. And the next day she'd tear it all up, but it would be how dare you day she'd tear it all up, but it would be how dare you. And so you know that kind of unreliability even though the days that were good were so good, like she'd get in the fort with me to the other days really does damage to kids' nervous systems. I think warm and reliable feel like they're just resonating with me for parents to hold on to when we don't know what else to do, because sometimes we just don't, do we?
Speaker 2:Sometimes we don't Absolutely. So it's that consistency. So if we can show up and be consistent and breathe, you know it's such a it's foreign to the bed where it's such a free thing to say, just breathe, because we all get over being told to breathe. But actually it does calm down our nervous system. So when there's a lot of reactivity out there to actually just, you know, tell yourself it's going to be okay and that should be the anchor in the storm. That's my role here. I've got to be that, that calm anchor that they can keep coming back to that. I'm not going to change my position with that. That does create that safety.
Speaker 2:I think that's the other part of being the best parents we can be is to be safe parents. What does that mean? Well, actually it means withholding a whole little judgment. It means withholding our opinions on things, especially with our teenagers, because they will test every single boundary. It's amazing how they can do that. Part of their developing brain is they're novelty-seeking and they do the most outrageous things and everything inside of me wanted to just say, no, you can't do that stuff.
Speaker 1:When they do break a big rule, say something that puts them in danger, right, and you get that call. I think what I often did was either blame myself for that happening like what did I do to cause that? Or blame my ex-husband for his example or some blame thing would happen for me and what I realize now is that was just what she needed to do to test her boundaries and find her way in the world and to take it all a lot less personally. That would be my message to my younger self. This is not about you Exactly.
Speaker 2:I love that. Yeah, because actually it is developmental and that's why, as a parent, also understanding what stage your child is in and what's normal for that age and stage and, as I mentioned, I've done quite a lot of work with teenagers in kind of a day workshop setting and to understand that the teenage brain is very different.
Speaker 1:I remember you know, I was married to Kevin, my second husband, and when my daughter, when all the kids were teenagers, because we had a blended family and I remember, you know, say, getting into an argument with her about something, and then she'd leave the room and he'd say to me something like well, you kind of picked that one like that fight, you know, and I wouldn't have seen it, but I had that mirror there to reflect for me when I wasn't objective. And I'm thinking about how you did this and how many women and men are out there raising kids by themselves and how important it is to be able to have somebody that you can talk to about it, you know, and did you have someone like that was there for you, or did you pretty much go it alone?
Speaker 2:But fortunately I'm very blessed to have some really good friends and it was really helpful to talk it through and to say it's normal and some practical pointers. At the same time, I still felt very alone, especially later on at night where everyone was tired and tempers were a little bit more raised. So there is that sense of there isn't that support, there isn't somebody who has your back. So it can be a very lonely, lonely period. And also because we only have a certain amount of energy in a day and, as you mentioned earlier, coco, that I was going through my own grieving, so pain can be very self-absorbing. There are times when I would be self-absorbed with my pain and then I would be seeing this acting out behavior, which is also pain, part of my voice, and it's just mean enough, I can't do this. So there are many times it's just, it just felt too much.
Speaker 1:And you know, I guess I wonder when I think, when I hear you share that, I think about how you know that it's okay to tell them, our kids. It's too much for me right now. I'm going through so I don't have to dump my my story on you, but I can say this is too much for me right now and I'm going to take a timeout, I'm going to go put my oxygen mask on before I figure out what to do with you, because I can't help you if I'm not okay. And that's just being human that our reptilian brain, that whole old brain system, takes over and when we're not capable, we're just not capable system takes over and when we're not capable, we're just not capable.
Speaker 2:That team and that's, that's the self-care, that, rather than give our children time out and which was our old thinking it's important to ask for that time out, and it's something that I did, I think, quite early on. So I would say and my youngest latched onto this I'd say, boys, I just need some peace and quiet, please. So my youngest would say to me mom, do you want a piece of quiet? I said, yes, I want a very large piece of quiet. Love that you say it now I'm home, but yeah, if I do bring it up, it's like, yeah, yeah, I remember that I need my large piece of quiet.
Speaker 1:Adorable. I love that. Now there's one more thing I just want to explore with you before we go today, and you talked earlier when, before we started our recording, about validation and teenagers Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so important. And teenagers, can you talk about that? Yeah, yeah, so important. I mean, there were so many points at which there was a part of me that really wanted to shake my boys and say what?
Speaker 1:do you mean you're saying Right?
Speaker 2:Stop it, yeah, yeah, and then other times, and I didn't get it right all the time, but it's that I had to learn to sit my lip.
Speaker 2:I had to hold my own reactivity and I knew that the more I invalidated, the more I disagreed with the perspective there.
Speaker 2:The more reactive my son would get and the more reactive he would get, the chances were good that my reactivity would just rise up. So and I think there's nothing worse than feeling invalidated, that feeling judged, that feeling dismissed, and and the point of, I think, is such a relief, I know I feel so relieved when I feel validated, when I'm told that it makes sense, that I make sense, that it's just my energy goes from here to there and I don't have to agree with what my boys are doing. I don't have to, but I can be safe and withhold my judgment and I can be very curious. And I remember practicing this with my boys and through to form, when I tried this on my first teenager and I in fact validated him and I said you do make sense. He said to me mom, are you being sarcastic? Because he really he didn't understand why I suddenly was saying you know that I understand. It's like no, no, no, I don't get that's you.
Speaker 1:this is a trick, right right, but you're, you're the, the validation piece. When you just said how, when someone validates you and they say it makes so much sense that you know you didn't get the right product in the mail and you were getting it for your birthday present for your husband. I will get it out to you as soon as possible, but you have every right to be angry All of a sudden. There's nothing to fight about. You understand my point of view. We're done, and I think that when I talk to some parents about our parenting mindset, they go into well, you know what. My parents did this with me and I turned out OK.
Speaker 1:And also, I'm not raising my kids where everybody gets a trophy, and I think the part they're missing is that I'm not suggesting we are not suggesting that everybody get a trophy or that we let our children get away with murder. We're just saying, when there's a conflict and we want to deescalate it, that we say it makes sense that you want to go out with your friends till two in the morning. I remember wanting to do that. It makes total sense to me. What happens then? What happens like in our bodies, what happens in their bodies biologically, so that we can actually then have a conversation. So I think there's a quick jump to assume that a mo parenting is saying something. It's not and it's all about boundaries, it's all about limits and understanding and connection right, and that's what validation does. It helps us connect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And just to further that and it's often what happens when I'm working with couples the same thing with parents and children I understand that you want to go out till midnight, so I get that. It makes perfect sense. I mean, it's the best time of your life, Of course. You want to do it and all your friends are doing it. I get that and I can imagine you feel so frustrated and so limited. I get that. So that's the validation, that's the empathy.
Speaker 2:And then the conversation isn't over. It's we co-create a solution. So it's not your way and it's not my way. It's how do we co-create a solution that works for both of us? And there might be a non-negotiable on my side, especially when safety is involved, and we'll draw the line with that safety, safety above, and we'll draw the line with that. How can we come to a choice and a solution that works for both of us? When there are two options, choose a third. When there are two solutions, choose a third. Join with me in this. We respect each other. And I do want to just mention this, this one book. I actually thought it was very imago and was very actually helpful in my parenting, and I've read all of harbour and helen's giving the love that heals. And, yeah, marsh's course connected parents, thriving kids and dan siegel's brainstorm parenting the teenage brain. But this one particularly is about Danny Silk and it's called Loving Our Kids On Purpose who is the author?
Speaker 1:I haven't heard of him. Danny Silk, silk.
Speaker 2:Okay, danny Silk, and it's called just get it loving our kids on purpose, and it's we love them and then we give them choices. But both choices work for us as parents.
Speaker 1:So do you want to wear the blue boots or the red boots? Really, if I give you those two choices, it's because I really don't care, I'm not invested, I just I'm giving you autonomy to pick, but I've given you the two that I can look. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And bath time, so you want a bath at 6 or 6.
Speaker 1:Thirty, having just taken care of my five year old granddaughter last week, I absolutely did a lot of practicing with that, a lot of practicing. You know voices. She's a, she's a dream, but you know it's all about being five. You know remembering. You said something earlier about know their developmental tasks, like know that those teenage years, their developmental task is to pull away from us to those babies that we were so attached to, that wanted to. I used to call my daughter Velcro baby because she didn't want to leave me, always wrapped up in my arms, and then she became this teenager who was not wanting to be a part of me and it was painful. I call it the umbilical cord cutting. It's like every time they go away, there's another cut. They get married and there's another cut, yeah, and we give them away so that they can be and live the big lives that we wanted for them. But it doesn't mean, as a mother or a father, that we always love that right mean as a mother or a father, that we always love that right.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like having I think it said having your heart walk around them, walking around with their heart and outside of your body. That's what parents and we need to live and laugh with an open hand and with our children. We can't hold on to them. We need to say we need to do a successful launch into the world and yeah, you're hooked and all good and everything sort of.
Speaker 1:you know I love to begin with the end in mind. So if you're the parent of a young little baby right now, you know what kind of adult do I want to raise. You know what kind of adult do I want to launch someday do I want to raise? What kind of adult do I want to launch someday? And then we work backwards because I have this feeling that we as a culture are very reactive and so we cope in the moment, but is that really going to help our child become their highest and best self? And so that, beginning with the end in mind, you talked about the teen workshop. Do you do the workshop.
Speaker 2:Yes, so it is something that I also do. Online workshop, because each diet has a facilitator for them. So online there's a breakout room for each generational care and then a facilitator joins them for the particular conversation. Yeah, it really is wonderful. As I say, it's an adaptation of the generational workshop that was created by Sabina and Roland Wurzel in Austria. That's been running for a number of years and with much success, and so out of that, we have done that and out of that, with their permission, we crossed this one. So when do you have your next class? I run it with Caroline Dixon, so it's wonderful. We haven't got a date yet, but we will also think it'd be posted.
Speaker 1:Okay, where would our listeners find it, though? Because I really think that I'm thinking of a number of clients who would really benefit from this and would absolutely sign up with you, so when I tell them about your workshop, where would they look for that?
Speaker 2:but for now, my Facebook page, your Facebook page, okay.
Speaker 1:So they can look at you right now on Facebook and then they'd be able to when it's posted. Then they'll know.
Speaker 2:Yeah so that's Michelle Naudi, a clinical psychologist.
Speaker 1:And that's N-A-U-D-E, and I never knew it was Naudi. I kind of like that.
Speaker 2:Naud nude Naudé In South Africa. It's meant to be Nord-D, so that's the answer. Nord-d is more French.
Speaker 1:Huguenot. Okay, I wanted to ask you one more question because I'm always fascinated. Having the opportunity to work with therapists from all over the world has been one of the best gifts of my lifetime, and I'm just so profoundly continually impacted by how much we share the same human experiences. When you were talking about your years with your teenagers and I was thinking about my years with mine and how culturally it doesn't seem to be very different.
Speaker 2:Is that true? We have the same stories. We are we connected with same human struggles because we go through this young, absolutely. My story is your story, your story is my story. They're points of connection, points of connection.
Speaker 1:I read this quote and I really want to do a whole podcast on this. I was reading an article this morning and it was accumulating. Evidence suggests that happiness comes from with as much as it comes from within, according to Dr Samantha Boardman, and what she was talking about really in the article was there's so much anxiety in our world today and so many people are only connecting through texting, social media, and that the research says, yes, you know, happiness can be an inside job. We have to work on ourselves, but that truly, what they're finding is picking up the phone or meeting a friend for coffee or doing what you and I are doing today. You know that if you're not in a good place, by doing this and I've just had this experience with you, michelle that we automatically shift our nervous system and feel this incredible connection, even though we're thousands of miles apart, but that often in distress, we withdraw, especially in this culture.
Speaker 1:And what I'm hoping our listeners can take away from today is so many of the brilliant points that Michelle has made with us, but also this idea that you don't have to go it alone, that nobody's doing it perfectly and that we have your friends if they're saying that it's easy same thing about their marriage. If they're all talking about how it's just easy, we just never fight, we never have any, then they're really not being honest either with you or with themselves, because they're either not asking for what they want or need, or they are and they're just perpetually like they've given up on asking for more. Remember that we're all going through this together and I love that. The point of connection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, just as you said that, coco, and I hope it makes sense that it's like let's be alone together, let's be alone together, yeah, so we're not alone. And if we know that we're not alone and in our togetherness we can dispel that experience of feeling disconnected and feeling isolated, right In our togetherness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because what you're saying, though, is so true, because you were saying, at night, when you would go to bed, you had this aloneness, but being able to share it with other people for that moment, knowing that you weren't in the struggle alone. But then we all have to go back home and do the work ourselves, with our partner, with our children, with our friend, wherever the rupture has happened. So I like that that we can be alone together. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we close today? I really really enjoyed our discussion about parenting. I really did. It was very rich.
Speaker 2:Thanks, toka, I think. Just my appreciation for you and for guiding us through this discussion. So I already felt your empathy and that connection I really appreciate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all the best yeah, you can do it. Yeah, and just I reach out, michelle naughty n-a-u-d-e on facebook. If you're a parent of a teenager, I would absolutely sign up for that workshop. I think it is a way to really connect with your teenager and perhaps that repair that needs to happen about some of the things that you were unconscious of at an earlier time that, if you're looking for that connection with your child, what a better way to do that. So, thank you so much, michelle. You're welcome. I want to say goodbye to our listeners. Today we're in 25 countries, over 250 cities, and that's because of you sharing the work with your friends. It's because you're commenting on Spotify and Apple that you're giving feedback on YouTube, and I want to thank everybody for helping to spread this word that there is a solution for us not being alone, that we could be alone together, and please come back the next time with the Relationship Blueprint. Unlock your Power of Connection. See you soon.
