(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting hollowness beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle
(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the
(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the
(02:07) [Music] path I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pole dancer or honorary member of the Disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and
(02:44) your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and today I want to offer eight quick but very profound tips on parenting now I am a mother I am currently mothering to
(03:31) teen Twins and some of the deepest Reflections of My Shadow have come through these Divine vessels and not always in the ways that we expect you know so there’s no screaming tantrums and locking of horns it’s like this subtle reveal over time of all of the ways that I am still trapped in the inherited pattern of victim Consciousness that has defined my lineage and I would wager yours as well so let’s start with a question have you ever cried and imagined that if you really let yourself go into the
(04:18) experience of the emotion that you might literally never stop crying have you ever experienced sadness or grief or exasperation or whatever it is as as this fundamentally overwhelming force that you are ill equipped to navigate if so you likely experienced growing up under the care of emotionally immature parents so Lindsay Gibson has a book called adult children of emotionally immature parents and the premise is that by virtue of their own wounding and arrested emotional development these parents could not hold
(05:03) space for your experience of your own upset so that you could learn that emotions are alchemical that crying has an arc and that the energy of feeling comes to its own resolution if it is permitted to do so instead your tears may have been met with one or more of the following stop crying go to your room I’m not talking to you and so you calm down don’t be upset you’re fine or I’ll give you something to cry about and your emotions in this setting actually infringed upon threatened the inner stability of your
(05:44) caregivers so in these types of family Dynamics children experience emotional isolation and it’s often described as loneliness in a crowd they grow up to scan the landscape of their life for justifiable reasons that they are struggling emotionally with feelings of sadness disconnection and Desperation and they reflexively invalidate their own emotional experience saying things like with all that I have why do I feel this way what’s wrong with me and they’re very accustomed to needing a good reason for their feelings to exist
(06:22) so these children grow up to believe that relationships are actually lonely places where they feel abandoned and burdened at the same time so if you have oriented towards your own emotional experience in this way relationships become necessary to navigate through strategy and specifically defensive and self-protective strategy and require Vigilant suppression of vulnerability sometimes even awareness of vulnerability including tender emotions like grief or shame and necessary tactics for control so we essentially
(07:05) learn that love and connection requires control and manipulation and then we hand that down down the generational lines so you may be like me and conceive of yourself as a parent as the one to end the cycles of abuse in your generational lines in my case in my mother line and I was very invested in being the Savior being the heroine of the women of my line being the first one to fully embody being you know the first one to dance and care about sensuality and teach my daughters to own their bodies and to really explore what it is to be
(07:52) an empowered woman and it wasn’t until several instances where I was in a position to confront a narrative that one or both of my daughters had about my mothering specifically that was at odds with this particular you know character I had painted myself as that I entered into the very humble space of learning about myself through my children so there’s an expression called narcissistic extension in Psychology which suggests that sometimes when we don’t have a secure sense of self as adults we require our children to
(08:36) perform in such a way that they validate our sense of self and if they deviate from our expectations there are usually consequences because they are compromising not their experience not their sense of self but ours and so that is one example right like if I need my children to you know appreciate my spiritual work and growth and when they don’t I feel affronted then that means that I am invested in their perspective and their narrative being a certain way to bolster my sense of self and that is a major red flag so in these ways and
(09:12) more children can become an opportunity to actually learn about yourself be with yourself and spiritually mature yourself and there are so many perspectives that suggests that children actually come in more actualized they come in more developed and when we interfere with that when we emotionally impose upon them restrict them and abuse them that there is then an experience that ensues of reclamation required for them to get back to the place that they were to begin with I know this to be true I know my daughters
(09:50) to be more evolved and actualized than I am at this stage in my life at their very young age and of course I have experience to draw from however as I have peeled away all of these reflexive layers conditioned layers of I know best I’m here to keep you safe I’m here to ultimately control the parameters of your reality so that I feel okay as I’ve done that work I’ve really come to see them in quite a different light and this I believe to be the foundation of sovereign love when I can be me and my
(10:29) daughter can be my daughter and I don’t need her to be any particular way in order for me to feel okay so as we smoke out the shadow of codependency in these I’ll speak as a mother in these mother child Dynamics these are the sort of eight tips I would offer and I plan to take a deeper dive into these and more and to share some vulnerable tales in my upcoming event which I’m calling victimless mothering it is a three session boot camp with community and we will explore this because I am certainly
(11:12) no expert however I have gotten very good at recognizing the signature of my own victim Consciousness and exposing it to the light of my awareness and claiming the gifts that are awaiting behind the shame wall so I hope to support you in that and and this is an exploration of some of what I have come to so let’s dig in okay so number one is let go of punishment and reward Alfie Cohen wrote a book called unconditional parenting and this was a GameChanger for me I have summarized it actually it’s in the appendex of my last
(11:53) book on yourself and what he posits is that not only punishment so this is everything from you know Frank abuse withdrawal of love to timeouts right that all of this full spectrum is problematic but actually so is praise so whenever you are in a position of conditioning your children’s Behavior around good and bad you are fundamentally participating in the disconnection of their Consciousness from their inner sense their intuition right so I think he gives this example right so if I am Little Billy and I
(12:35) decide to share my blueberry with Sally just feels like something I want to do and I do that and my mom says Oh Billy that was so nice you’re so generous even that simple Act of Praise now positions Billy to give blueberries away so that he gets his mama’s love and approval and no longer can he directly experience the natural consequence of giving the blueberry which is the Fulfillment of sharing and generosity so the cessation of Praise is actually quite challenging the cessation of punishment is something
(13:14) that I have a lot of experience with I have never punish my children and it is very doable especially when you engage in the dynamic as one of partnership and mutual exploration it’s it’s almost pays immediate dividends for children to recognize that there isn’t punishment on the other end of your frustration of your disapproval of your upset that there is still connection it is still available and that doesn’t mean that you don’t have needs it just means that there is another way that those needs
(13:45) are going to be negotiated and that some sort of mutually satisfying and fulfilling resolution is going to be arrived at so number two is to use the phrase tell me more I have this phrase is always rattling around in my mind when I’m with my children because it is when it is most needed it is least available so it’s it those three words can be the hardest words to say when they would be the most reparative and the most connecting which is whenever your child expresses something that you don’t agree with that is the moment to
(14:23) utter those three magical words tell me more because it suggests that you are Sovereign enough that you have the capacity to stay with yourself and be with your internal experience and still cross the bridge and visit your child’s experience number three is readily apologize I just traveled I don’t know two weeks ago with my girls to Mexico we were gone for four days and I apologized seriously on three separate occasions okay I am a big believer in releasing and relaxing the pressure to get it right the first time around and to just
(15:08) begin over time to collapse the window between reflexive and unconscious utterances or behavior and awareness that you lost your own Sovereign connection and awareness that you could do it differently so sometimes that can be five minutes right and I come back with an apology sometimes it’s years Okay so over time hopefully that time window is collapsing and I often say that there’s no statute of limitations around apologies if your mother or father were to come to you around one of your Cardinal wounds and authentically
(15:45) and sincerely offer an apology decades later would that not mean so much to you some of us have never heard an apology one time ever from our parents right so whenever it becomes available seize the moment so I’m going to pause here to let you know about an event that I have been preparing for for approximately 14 years of motherhood that I am calling victimless mothering it’s a boot camp to end the pain cycles of your motherline and it’ll be three one-hour sessions over three days so May 10th 11th and
(16:21) 12th with a community chat and my goal is to support you in smoking out the reflexive control-based habits of unconscious parenting and to give you my gamechanging tips and tools to level up for everyone’s sake there will also be a Q&A so I hope to see you there number four is to resolve the impulse to offer unsolicited criticism or negative feedback this is a tough one I committed to this quite early in my mothering experience because I don’t know how much this has to do with coming from an Italian family but I was subjected to no
(17:03) small amount of unsolicited constructive feedback and in my experience as a woman with a public profile I have also received no small amount of unsolicited advice and negative feedback from the populace and specifically women so this impulse to correct that which you have not been solicited to correct is a control-based and ultimately a fear-based reflex because of your incapacity to be with your own discomfort around somebody being different from you and that requirement that others share our reality is exactly
(17:47) what we are attempting to unknit here so that we can experience Sovereign Love and the commitment to wait until your child of course this applies more to you know verbal children and teens and TNS and and adult children right to wait until your child asks for your opinion before you offer your feedback on how you know their hair or clothes look you know what you think of their friends and you know what you think of their you know approach to learning or their Hobbies or whatever it is is an extremely powerful discipline to
(18:23) cultivate okay number five I read this somewhere thank very very long ago when my children were little which is talk to your children the way you would talk to a friend there are so many ways that parents speak to children that are absolutely ridiculous ways to relate to another human being right like would you ever say to your friend like snap at your friend like don’t do that your stuff is in my way or like hurry up and finish we have to go or why do I have to keep telling you this right like we speak to our friends with certain social
(19:07) parameters that should also be applied to the way that we speak to our children now I am not really like a kid person okay I don’t know like I always have spoken to my children as if they are adults probably because I had no you know awareness that there was another option and I’m glad for it because I never baby talked them and I never have well I shouldn’t say never I don’t know perhaps I have but I have not commonly not frequently spoken to them in these ways that adults speak to I mean just
(19:42) walk around a supermarket and listen to the average adult speaking to their child there is a disrespect a dehumanization and really it’s it has the the energy of like a prison guard that some of us are speaking to our children and so if you run every utterance through this filter of like would I say this to a friend would I speak to a friend this way odds are there are fewer things that will be said okay all right so next is number six is something I am deeply exploring in my process right now and that I plan to
(20:28) take a deeper dive into in this boot camp which is the shadow of holistic health activism and awareness so when you wake up to how important your choices are around diet around detox around consumerism there is this sense that if you don’t engage in these awakened choices something horrible is going to happen right and this is how we can get you know sometimes it’s even called orthorexic right we can sometimes get so neurotic about the way that we eat we can get so controlling and dogmatic about you know our water
(21:07) filters and our EMF mitigators and our non-toxic beauty products that the energy of mistrust of the body is actually at the same tenor as if you thought your body was a machine that is likely to break down and who cares if you throw all sorts of toxic into it and I speak from experience on this subject so when we have children and when we feel that we know best about you know the gluten dairyfree organic diet and the natural beauty products and the filtered water we can struggle as parents to invite our children into the
(21:47) devotional space of self-care and self-love that is eating buying and behaving this way right we can fail to invite them and instead we can set up a conditional grid of approval that is no different from the emotionally insecure attachment that we experienced around so many other matters related to our Behavior as children so if my children get love from me when they choose the right thing off the menu or you know they have the right you know products that they’re attracted to or called to or when they go to the birthday party
(22:28) and they elect not to eat the cake and they’re you know checking me out to see if I’m watching you know that they’re not going to eat it because it’s not gluten-free and they want to make sure that they get credit and love points from me how is that actually different than the good and bad conditioning that leads to this emotionally insecure mess that so many of us are in so an awareness around navigating how to explore inspiring our children to make these choices is and not using health Consciousness as a means to control and
(23:05) oppress our children I think is one of the greatest challenges that those of us in this Wellness space if you will are are facing okay number seven is to ask two questions of your children as they are growing up and there are different ways to make these questions simpler language for younger children however the sentiment is you know is quite clear so the first is is there anything that I did to upset you that you still feel upset about and the second is is there anything that you need from me that I’m not giving you so I asked my children
(23:46) these questions periodically and the first time that I asked these questions changed my life and I will go into that more in more detail I have shared this publicly if you’ve heard me talk about it but it changed my life because it offered me an opportunity to Simply listen to Simply listen and not to meet her share with my defensive reality right with my version of the story and to actually really convey that I care and that I am invested and that brings me to number eight which is arguably no pun intended the most important which is
(24:28) drop your defenses drop your defenses drop your defensive narrative because if you remember what it was like to be a kid you don’t care kids don’t care what our reason is for doing the things we do they care about how they feel and we compel them to care about how we feel and the truth is that you can cut that dysfunctional cord you can end this cycle of control and power over in this simple way when you want to defend your narrative when you want to tell your side of the story when you want to be right just listen just
(25:10) listen and I can virtually guarantee the immediate connection that becomes available is so extraordinarily predictable because I sense that as children we expect to be in this duel over realities and to need to defend our right to our experience against our parents narrative and when it becomes clear that a parent is not invested in defending their narrative but is capable of supporting and visiting and exploring ours that’s when love and secure emotional attachment becomes available and all this being said there
(25:55) are few things more frustrating and challenging than knowing better and not being able to do better and we know because we were children we know what kind of an experience is wanted longed for even by our children and we ready ourselves to offer that experience when we grow our own capacity to hold and be with our own emotional states when we actually take responsibility for our experience and no longer need our children to behave in a certain way and to provide a certain kind of validation and to collude in a certain kind of
(26:38) narrative in order for us to access the fundamental ESS that is already here for us it’s here for us to claim so I hope that this was at least a little provocative I have walked through all of these so it’s certainly not like I’m speaking from some place of Master and there are a few things more humbling it’s extremely humbling territory and we’re ready for it I truly believe that we’re ready for it and that this is a moment where cycles that have been going on for generations and generations have come up for us to
(27:18) really meet an experience of struggle and suffering with love and presence and that is real Alchemy so I hope this is helpful
