Boundaries: Embrace your role as parent

I have some really wonderful children who constantly outshine anything I have done in my life. I wish I could take credit for it, but I am quite sure it is a blessing straight from the Lord. However, I have been very intentional in my parenting, and I think every once in awhile I think there is something worth sharing with parents who are not feeling confident in their role.

One of my proudest moments as a parent happened in a doctor’s office. I had taken my daughter for her required physical so that she could participate on her school dance team. The PA performing the exam, was unmarried, no children and looked not much older than my daughter. After discussing a vaccination specifically for sexually transmitted diseases, she asked me to leave the room so that she could have a private conversation with my daughter. My daughter looked her straight in the eye and let her know that there wasn’t anything she would confide in her that wouldn’t tell her mother. As it should be.

Parenting is much more than helping a small person become a big person. As parents, we should strive for much more than survival in our young. We have an opportunity, as parents, to instill in our children values and influence that will help them navigate life long after they leave the shelter of our roof.

There is a battle out there right now and popular culture is trying to minimize the influence of parents on their children. As a psychotherapist who also has a Masters in Education, with an emphasis in child development, I want to warn you of some of the dangers in influencing young minds with subjects that can lead to behaviors and mental health that can be very destructive.

There is a movement right now to introduce sexuality to children as young as kindergarten. On a very basic level, what rational human thinks a 5 year old needs to worry about sexuality? Let kids play in the dirt, play with dolls…but there is no need to apply a sexualized meaning to any of these activities. Children are natural explorers and experimenting with forms of play does not have to be an indicator of their adult sexual preference. In fact, when we are too eager to make experimentation a life long decision, we run the risk of sabotaging long term goals.

Data supports that children who are sexualized early in their lives tend to have more promiscuous teenage years and are more likely to experience sexual trauma. Know that if you are facilitating conversations that they are not developmentally ready to handle, you are not promoting mental health, you are sabotaging it.

For those of you who are frothing at the mouth right now, thinking that I am narrow minded and not in touch, I want you to know that I sit with many clients who suffer their entire adult lives because of early sexualization. Healthy sexuality comes not from early sexualization but from protecting the freedom of childhood that allows kids to try any number of activities without making them about sexual preference.

So parents, here is the free counseling: TALK TO YOUR CHILDREN about who they are and what interests they want to pursue, not in the light of sexuality but of personhood. Encourage your children to have individualistic thinking when it comes to the preferences they choose and confidence that comes from within, rather than from the cheering crowds. This will allow them to make choices about faith, lifestyle and even sexual preferences outside of public approval. Don’t we all know that public approval of almost anything should be questioned just a little bit?

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

Baggage: Leave some behind

I travel a lot. Even in the pandemic, I am a Southwest Airlines A-lister. I travel for work, for health and for fun. As a result, I may buy more luggage than the average person. I research brands. I have had soft sided and hard sided. Sometimes I know right away that I bought a lemon, when there is an early scratch or tear. Sometimes I think I have finally found a winner only to have it broken as it emerges onto the roundabout. Oh so frustrating.

Our travel baggage and our emotional baggage share some characteristics. We can invest in ourselves as we do our suitcases and feel confident in our sturdiness, only to find that sometimes circumstances outside our control can trigger, tear and break off parts of us that put us in need of repair.

As we move forward in the journey of life, it is important to know when to ditch the baggage. When we hang on too tight to our hurts from the past, we actually put ourselves at risk of more hurt. Like the time I thought my suitcase had one more trip left in it and it fell apart on vacation so I had to spend precious hours supposed to be spent on relaxation, searching for a new bag for my trip home.

Have you had your heart broken by people or circumstances and no matter how hard you try, the damage done seems to impact your current life situation? Is it time to ditch the old hurts and trauma and start living with renewed thinking? It might be time to reframe some of the messages that can play in your head when past experiences insist on negatively impacting your current job or relationship.

Just today, I was sharing with a client how a past work situation left me very wounded when I felt completely betrayed by a woman I had trusted with my commitment, time and money. When I was finally able to reframe the situation, to highlight that I emerged from that experience with a number of new friends, better boundaries and my current mission agency that treats me very well, I felt the release of the trauma. That baggage doesn’t have to impact me negatively anymore if I don’t allow it to. I refuse to be a person who doesn’t trust or can’t give of myself fully because of past wounding.

What situation in your life needs a little reframing? When we reframe, we allow ourselves to keep the memories in the what-doesn’t-kill-us-makes-us-stronger journal of our life. This helps us to journey on with confidence, wisdom and stronger boundaries. It also helps us to feel accomplishment, instead of defeat, when we look at those stamps in our passport of life and realize how we often grow the most through trials.

Maybe it is time for you to evaluate some of your past hurts and kick some of the lasting ickiness to the curb to focus on the strength you have as a result. As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

Divorce: You aren’t married anymore

If you had told me, when I was getting my degree to be a mental health therapist, how many people I would walk with through divorce, I would have been shocked. Therapists go into the work we do to heal relationships and promote connection, not division. But oftentimes, the decision to end a marriage is an empowered one, when someone has been emotionally, verbally or physically abused. It can also be a decision made by one partner, leaving the other with little choice but to comply. Whether the divorce is somewhat amicable or whether it is one full of hostility, there is a dynamic that often occurs when old marital habits linger well past the moment the divorce is final. This is not healthy for the two people getting the divorce and it can be very confusing for the extended family and friends that get caught up in the drama.

Divorces often occur when one or both spouses have reached the end of their tolerance for whatever issues have come between them. I have heard them all: infidelity, non-existent sex life, verbal or physical abuse, a slow growing-apart over time, terrible communication, conflict over parenting roles….what else??? So many reasons! But even when one or both spouses believe they can’t live another day with that person they sleep next to every night, they often have not thought out what the day to day will look like when they are no longer under the same roof.

In marriage, there are roles we take on because we are in a partnership. We do things like grocery shop, mow the lawn, change the lightbulbs, take the kids to the doctor’s office, do the taxes, write the Christmas cards, not just because we love doing those tasks but because we are a member of a team. There are also things we sacrifice in order to promote long term marriage or family goals. We commit to helping the system run because we have an expectation that at the end of our life, we will have someone to hold our hand and help us navigate the changing seasons, using the trust, love and money we have built together. No one works that hard thinking they are going to hear the words, “I want a divorce.”

Strangely, there are a lot of folks out there that think they can ask for a divorce and also still have some of the benefits of being married to the person they have scorned. There is an assumption that if mom always took the kids to the dentist, she will continue to do so. Or if dad always did the bills and taxes, he will still look out for the interest of the family when it comes to the finances. Nope. When there is a divorce, it is sometimes hard to accept that those roles will change and new normals need to be fashioned so that everyone in the family can move forward. In other words, if you ask someone for a divorce, you no longer have the right to ask them to put you first. They do not have to work around your work schedule, change their plans to accommodate yours, be the only one who is responsible for caring for the house…or caring for the kids… When you reject someone by leaving them, do not expect them to immediately respond to your texts or jump when you need them. Those are responses that you get from a spouse. If you want to earn trust over time to have some of those niceties, you need to do some hard relationship building work…the hard work you didn’t do when you were married. 

There is a cultural badge of honor given to people that can be friends after a divorce but if you think about it, if you can be good friends, what kept you from fighting for your marriage? Is there any chance that you are being somewhat abused or manipulated in the “friendship” as well? I often coach clients to change the face of their ex to someone who is only an acquaintance when they are trying to unwind their long time habits. Would you watch the acquaintance’s cat when they went out of town? Would you answer their midnight call? If the answer is no, you might need some support as you establish new boundaries with someone who is no longer your ride or die.

Divorce is painful. It is messy. It can leave some scars. But be careful not to implement a new system that is just as painful as the system you are trying to end. As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,
Sonia

Shaming: A Form of Cultural Manipulation?

Warning: I am on day 6 of a round of chemo so my inhibitions are down. You can only imagine what this one week on/one week off protocol  is like for the people I live with. But I got some things that my boundary seeking self just can’t let go…

There is a very popular post going around on Social Media that basically says that because you don’t know what is in a McDonald’s hamburger or what is in your deodorant or what was in the vaccines you had as a child, you should blindly accept what is being passed out as the savior of the world: the Rona Vaccine. Honestly, it is not my opinion of the vaccine that feels insulted, it is my intelligence.

Let me publicly state that if you want to get the vaccine, I encourage you to do so. If that alleviates your fears and allows you to interact with your elderly mom or the people you work with, by all means, do what you have to do. But listen up…if you try to SHAME me into your line of thinking or act as if you have some moral pedestal custom made for you, then I have to speak out for myself and my growing list of clients who are literally being traumatized by the smugness out there. 

The fact of the matter is that we will not know for a very long time what the lasting effects of any new drug will be. There may be many good reasons to risk the long term effects for the immediate result of having life get back to normal. People’s lives are being ruined by unemployment, mental distress, lack of human contact and if a vaccine offers a return to normalcy, let’s have an open discussion that evaluates the risks and the benefit of accepting those risks. As a cancer patient, I take straight poison in hopes that  killing cancer cells will outweigh the destruction of the healthy cells happening at the same time. I am not risk adverse, but taking educated risks is healthier than uneducated, naive and I-choose-not-to-think risks. SOMEONE, ANYONE, give me an amen.

Until you have received a diagnosis that changes your life forever because you took Zantac for an ulcer or used talcum powder to freshen yourself up…or watched a child suffer from Guillain-Barre after a flu vaccine, or are living with autism in your family because your child had the reaction that only a small percentage of people have, it may be in your best interest to make a decision that is right for you and not feel that you need to condemn those who may not agree. And please don’t ask those people who trusted once, to blindly trust again because if they don’t, they are hindering others from going to a concert. 

I commented on a few of these posts and the response was basically that because I have cancer, my circumstance is different and maybe I was over-reacting to the post. Ironic that one of those who thought I was overreacting was the Biology teacher that taught me about viruses to begin with. He is the reason I know that we can’t outrun a virus…it will always catch up through mutation. I respect his decision to vaccinate because he is elderly and wants to see his grandkids…but oohhh…anyone who knows me, knows that I advocate for boundaries, freedom and personal empowerment and I hate it when people try to shut me up by suggesting I might be overreacting. Didn’t your mama tell you to never tell a woman to calm down when she is just getting started?

Wanna know something funny? The literature that comes with my chemotherapy says in bold print: DO NOT RECEIVE VACCINATIONS OF ANY KIND WHILE ON THIS TREATMENT. ALSO, REFRAIN FROM CONTACT WITH ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN RECENTLY VACCINATED. I don’t know why this warning on a box of poison makes me crack up. Don’t be near anyone who has recently been vaccinated? Think that one through as it should inform anyone who is wondering about how to protect themself, either with a vaccine or otherwise.

I am fortunate. It turns out that despite being exposed to Covid several times, the most I seem to get is what feels like a bad cold. My health limitations do not seem to be a hinderance but I can’t help but wonder if the fact that I do know what is in my food, shampoo, deodorant and cleaning products is helping me fight from a position of strength. I actually research vaccines before blindly accepting them after I watched my daughter loose the use of her legs for 3 days after a routine flu vaccine and was told we got lucky because the paralysis wasn’t permanent. Maybe this is why I choose to understand my risks and not just follow the crowd out of fear. 

Many of my clients have shared that they are exhausted by the shaming that comes with having a counter cultural thought process, and I am not just talking about vaccines. Are you living life in fear, by letting others coax you into decisions that don’t feel right for your situation or are you making your decisions from a place of confidence, after doing research that matches your life situation? Are there other situations in your life, marriage, job, education and family where you see this pattern? Fear based decisions or choices made because people have made us feel bad, are rarely our best decisions. I encourage you to advocate for yourself in your relationships, your job, and your health by knowing what risks you are taking,  and evaluating whether or not the outcome will be worth it to you.

And when you make a decision that is right for you, I will be the first to cheer you on.

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

Discernment: Use it or lose it

If I had a dollar for every time a client said to me…

“I knew that I shouldn’t have (married that guy, trusted that person, stayed in that job, gone to that party, taken that loan, bought that car, tried that drug….) but I ignored the feeling”…

Well, let’s just say I would have a few dollars.

We all have an inner compass that guides us through life. We refer to it as our gut, intuition, our energy, the Holy Spirit. That internal guide works to convict us, warn us, alert us and protect us. It can also work to confirm decisions, tell us who to trust and push us to do something good. But for some reason, many times when we are getting our strongest messages, we hesitate to listen because it may mean that we have to give up something we want or alter our path to a journey that appears more difficult to navigate and because of that, we ignore it.

Unfortunately, when we fail to trust our gut, listen to our heart, and use our discernment, it all gets a little foggy. That muscle doesn’t increase in strength, it gets weak and confused and maybe even stops working at all, leading to more bad decisions, disappointment and heartbreak.

Ohhhh….if I could back up my own life and walk away earlier from that bad business partner, that terrible church, that boss….right? Can you think of times that you allowed yourself to get beat up because you didn’t listen to that inner voice?

If you feel like you need to strengthen that muscle again, take some steps to build it up by pushing the pause button when it starts to work for you. Here are some questions to ask yourself when you are wondering if you should listen to the warning bell ringing in your head, or pay attention to the red flag waving at you:

Do I have to make this decision RIGHT NOW or can I take some time to get good counsel and think it through?

Am I making this decision just to please other people?

Does this decision benefit me as much in the future as it does in the present?

Is this situation similar to anything in my past? If so, can I use the wisdom gleaned from that situation to inform this one?

Is there anything about my situation that appears too good to be true? Should I examine this a bit more?

Will other people get hurt by this decision? Do I need to consider that before I commit to it?


Discernment is a gift. You may not always like what it is telling you to do. Honestly, that most likely is the time to really listen. Learning to trust the spirit in you is a process that leads to empowerment. Give it a try.

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia

Sex Education: Wanna go there?

Lately, all my ‘magazines for therapists’ that I get, have one thing in common. They are attempting to educate me on how to work with people who have gender identity issues and/or people who have chosen lifestyles other than heterosexual relationships. There is an ever increasing need for therapy for those struggling with sexual addiction as well, including everything from porn addiction to sexual addiction within and outside committed relationships, crossing the lines of gender, age and species. This rampant addiction is ruining marriages and important relationships. An article I read recently was discussing the need for diversity in sex education at the elementary and middle school level so that all children could have an understanding of the issues they may encounter as they discover their personal sexual identity.

I remember when my own children had sex education in our local public school. We had some VERY interesting conversations in our home during that process. To be clear, I am not averse to sex education being offered at school…for goodness sake there are a lot of good reasons that the people spending most days with our kids need to make sure that they know some stuff. But for those of you parenting our impressionable youngsters, you may want to involve yourself in the process no matter how uncomfortable it makes you. Just because there is a curriculum being followed does not mean that the person teaching the curriculum doesn’t bring their own perceptions, opinions and let’s face it, baggage, to the table. For example, 1 in every 6 women has been molested or sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Depending on how she processed that event, she may be struggling with her own thoughts of how to be sexually healthy. This is only one example of something that could influence how sexuality conversations might be impacted within your child’s school setting. There are many more.

I also remember my own 6th grade sex education class and when I make the comparison to what is culturally acceptable today, it makes me laugh that my parents had to sign a waiver back then. What we learned back in the late 70’s/early 80’s was mostly science…there was not much sexuality being discussed. From a developmental stand point, this was very appropriate as what 6th grader is ready to make a commitment to a life long decision such as sexual preference? What adolescent should be making decisions that could impact them for life? And goodness knows that most 11-12 year olds are not going to enter into relationships that have good boundaries and heart protecting communication applications. To drive home the idea of who is teaching your children may impact their thought process, I had a teacher who literally told my class that oral sex is most effectively used when a woman is pregnant and may not want to have intercourse…huh? I can still see my mom’s face when I relayed that little tidbit. Oh goodness…I am laughing out loud as I write this, remembering that moment with my mom.

Is it possible that sex education in our elementary schools and junior highs should be focused more on personal development? Maybe instead of focusing on the sex act, we should be teaching communication skills, ways to communicate deeper level emotions, expectations in reciprocal relationships…I could go on. Let me spell it out for you. Very few couples come to counseling because they are confused about how to have sex. They are struggling because they have unmet expectations in their relationship, they have destructive ways of communicating, and life has been less than perfect so their relationship is suffering and thus, their intimacy isn’t near what they hoped it would be.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that personal identity choices are best made when we are emotionally healthy, when we execute good boundaries and when we have a firm grasp on our non-negotiables in our relationships. Teach your elementary school and junior high kids about how to respect themselves, how to have healthy relationships evidenced by good communication and respect, and they have a better chance of making sexual choices that are healthy for themselves. If you don’t teach them these things, they run the risk of making sexual choices as a result of low self esteem, need for validation and the mistaken expectation that sexual interactions are always an indication of true love.

As always, let me know if I can help.

With love,

Sonia