"I'm Not Living on High Alert Anymore"
Tami is a schoolteacher, fitness enthusiast, wife and the mother of two young adults.
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Q: What was the problem in your relationship with your daughter before we started working together?
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“My daughter was in her first year of college and in a very bad place emotionally. She was panicking and spiraling and calling and texting me 10 times a day. Sometimes we'd have to drive into the city and pick her up.​​​​​
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​Her anxiety was triggering my own anxiety and I was becoming unable to function. I wasn't eating or sleeping well and I wasn't taking care of myself. I was living my life on edge, constantly worrying about what crisis the next phone call would bring and how I was going to handle it. I was exhausted.
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I really wanted to help her, of course, and I tried to think of different things to say, but it was never the right thing. She’d argue, criticize and gaslight me and then I felt so guilty: “Oh no, what did I do wrong?! I should have…” My anxiety was upping her anxiety and it just made everything worse.
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It was affecting my work too. The texts would start coming in before I even got to work. I'd be distracted looking at my phone, answering her texts and trying to calm her down. And then I’d go outside during my break and cry.
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People told me not to answer her but I couldn’t just ignore her. She’s my child and she was really struggling. And she refused to get help from anyone else, so it was all on me to be her lifeline. I was so afraid for her and felt completely helpless as a mother. I was pretty desperate when I found you.”
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Q: How did you find out about me?
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“I remember, one night I was all alone, hoping and praying, ‘I need help.’ Then I googled how to help your anxious college kid and one of your blogs came up. As I read it, I just started crying because it was the first time I felt validated and that there wasn’t something wrong with me and my parenting. I read several more of your articles and I thought, “Oh my gosh, she gets exactly what I'm feeling like.” The first time we talked, I felt calm and a glimmer of hope and I knew that working with you was exactly what I needed.”
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Tami’s Coaching Journey
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At the end of our first session together, Tami expressed her coaching goal in such a heartfelt way: I want to be more self-confident and grounded and hold healthy boundaries so I can communicate lovingly with my daughter, no matter what comes.
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I designed the framework of her coaching program and identified the areas in which she needed to develop more capacity: staying calm amidst big emotions, articulating her needs and boundaries, and tapping into her inner parenting wisdom.
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I created a metaphor to describe her current parenting approach, the way of the Dedicated Apprentice Plumber, who was overloaded and untrained, but jumping in and frantically trying to patch every single leak.
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And then I opened a channel to Tami’s spiritual essence and sensed the qualities that were ready to emerge in her. I felt a big, calm, wise presence and, after some discussion, we named her future parenting metaphor, the way of the Clear-voiced Whale.
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Q: What aspects of your coaching program were most effective for you?
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“The first thing was working with the metaphors. In the beginning, the Dedicated Apprentice Plumber was in full force in me, and I was so stressed and jumpy. And, although I wanted to be like the Clear-voiced Whale and I hoped I would, I didn’t have access to that part of me and I really wondered how I was going to do it.
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And then, several months later, there was a session when it all just clicked. I could feel the differences between these two parts of me. I could stop in a tense moment, realize I was acting in the way of the Plumber and call on the Whale and act in a more solid, steady way. I felt a real change happening in me and I could see that I could become a calm mother of an anxious kid.
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The second thing I really liked was having practices to do every day, which kept me focused and accountable. The exercises were challenging but inviting and I always felt my progress, one small chunk at a time.
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I also liked that, when we met, we were always building from exactly where I’d gotten to in my two weeks (not like a previous therapist whose always set the agenda). You really listened to me and saw me.
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One of the most powerful moments of this whole experience was when we were working on boundaries. You gave me a visualization and I finally got what boundaries are. I could see how far I’d gone into her bubble and I immediately knew the kind of separation I wanted instead.
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The other major turning point was learning to surrender. First, it was surrendering all the weight and guilt and responsibility I was carrying and, then later, surrendering to the fact that I don’t have the answers or skills to fix things for her. That has been such a big relief.
Now I'm surrendering every day, breathing every day and, you know, setting clear boundaries every day. I finally have tools and a tool belt.”
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Q: And how is your life different now compared to when we started?
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“Oh my gosh, it's so different. This has honestly changed my life.
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A good example is that things are harder than ever for her right now and I'm still able to maintain my calm. I'm not getting wrapped up in her angst. Sometimes I go the whole day without worrying about her or feeling like I have to make her feel better. I'm sleeping well, eating well, going to the gym and living my life.
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Before I started working with you, I couldn’t really imagine this but I'm not living on high alert anymore.”
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As Tami nears the end of her coaching program, it’s delightful to see how confident she has become as she parents with the clarity and steadiness that has grown in her. She’s being supportive of her daughter in a very different way: through her steady presence.
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Q: What do you foresee for your relationship with your daughter?
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“I realize that, for years, I really didn't set boundaries with her, so I was always feeling frustrated or resentful. Now, although she might not be able to articulate it, I know she has noticed that I’m responding differently. I’m stating my truth calmly and firmly and she's more accepting of what I have to say.
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I see that she’s changing too and there’s more harmony between us. She's opening up to me more and it feels good. I feel at peace with how I’m parenting and I’m looking forward to doing fun things together and having normal mother-daughter conversations about clothes and boys and life.”
"The Biggest Act of Love I Could Give My Daughter"
Marthe is an international award-winning musician, peace activist and single mom.
When we met, she was feeling guilty about how often she was fighting with her teenage daughter, and she was terrified that she was driving her away.
This is her story about finding steadiness and peace in her parenting and learning how to connect with her daughter in a very different way.
Q. What problems were you experiencing in your relationship with your daughter before we started working together?
I was in a state of despair and overload. My daughter was really angry with me all the time, rejecting me, not listening to me or doing what I asked her to do, not answering my questions and walking away. I would get so angry at her, like I couldn’t breathe, and so angry at myself. I was really panicking because I felt like I was losing her in every way.
I felt so guilty about how our relationship was deteriorating and that I was failing parenting badly. So, I was spending a lot of time and energy trying to fix things and control things. But what I was doing only made it worse, and that scared me even more.
We clashed regularly and, in between, we just avoided each other. The way she pushed me away was painful but I was pushing her away too, like my mother had done to me, and I was terrified of repeating that cycle.
Q. You booked a complimentary coaching session and, after that first conversation, what made you decide to work with me?
It was a feeling of real connection. Even though we live on different sides of the world, I instantly felt your presence and your listening. There's something deeply human that you bring into your work. I was instantly aware of this enormous, warm space that you hold, anyone could feel it when they start talking to you.
It was clear to me right then that, yes, we would do this work together. I wanted to have conversations with my daughter that felt safe, lighthearted and connected. It was time to face this wound from my mother and move beyond it. And the way that you held space, asked such meaningful questions and listened made me feel that there really would be a way through it.
Q. What were you hoping to accomplish?
If I’m really honest with myself, I was looking for instructions. I didn’t get how I was affecting the situation and I wasn't very interested in going deeper into the problem. I was just so frustrated about the way she was acting out and I wanted to know how to fix her.
Also, I was really worried about how other people perceived my daughter and, even more so, what they’d think of me if I didn’t have control of her and wasn’t raising her properly. I was comparing myself to others and couldn’t ever measure up. I couldn’t say it then but I wanted to feel proud of my parenting.
Q. What stands out for you when you reflect on our work together?
The visualizations we used, the Train Driver and the Barefoot Orchardist. They brought these different parts of me out where I could differentiate them and see they didn’t define me, and that made it safe to explore deeper. The practices that you gave me between sessions would never have worked if I hadn’t had those images. I could really feel them in me and they gave me a path to follow. I think that’s the most beautiful thing about how you coach.
The Train Driver part of me believed that there must be an absolute right way to parent and that metaphor made me see how extremely hard I was being on myself. She was constantly scanning for what my daughter was doing wrong and what I was doing wrong. She was busy doing as much as she possibly could, fixing, helping and pushing. Really, just hoping not to be exposed as a failure as a parent.
So, it really helped that you are so nonjudgmental. Whatever I was saying, you were just noticing it and seeing it from different perspectives. I quickly realized that I didn't have to worry about what you were thinking of me. I felt free, safe and less alone.
As I gradually got to know the Orchardist part of me, I particularly remember when I first realized that I had a choice in how I reacted to my daughter (something the Train Driver couldn’t see). When your synapses and neurons are working in a certain way, it's really hard to change them. You have to practice until you really feel the fact that you have a choice, or else it's just theory. The more I did the practices you gave me, the more I felt my ability to just listen - without assuming, blaming myself or fixing.
Over the months, I learned to breathe in a different way, to perceive situations differently and how to feel inward and choose what I say or do according to how I really want to be with my daughter. I began parenting in a different way.
Q. What changes do you see now that 6 months have passed since we finished working together?
Honestly, I was confused in the beginning. I'd never had coaching and I was expecting us to talk more about my daughter and all the things she was doing. I was like, why are we just talking about me? (LOL)
But gradually I realized that this was about healing. When you guided me, patiently and without judgment, to gradually shift my perspective from the Train Driver to the Orchardist, something healed in here. It’s a funny thing about life: you don’t actually notice when the really big things are happening. Somehow, I realized that me and my daughter weren’t me and my mother. It’d had been an obstacle for me for so many years and then, I don't know when it shifted, but it did.
So, this was first and foremost a healing process for me. I learned how to embody my own breath and my own presence. I was transformed. And the change in me has changed a lot between my daughter and me.
Q. What's it like between the two of you now?
It's really beautiful. So beautiful. I don’t mean that it's perfect, because it's not. But we have very, very different conversations now and our connection feels a lot closer.
She's about to move to boarding school and, although I'm worried, I feel a calm presence in me. It's very grounding to be able to say that things are good between us and I feel calm - I couldn't have imagined that last year.
I have no words to describe how grateful I am. The way you’ve been holding this space for me for all this time is such a big act of love. And this is also, I think, the biggest act of love I could have given my daughter.
Not having felt that love as a child, it took a while for me to trust love. It's hard to model love for your child when you carry mother wounds, you doubt yourself. I wondered if the kind of love that I had for my daughter was a good enough kind of love. Or if it could hold everything that was happening. And now I feel it can.
It’s really, really beautiful when you start to actually trust that your child is going to be ok even if you don't hammer in these lessons all the time or lecture on what is right and blah blah blah. And when I loosened my grip a little bit, she started telling me more about what she’s thinking and what’s going on in her life.
Now I can just ask, “Do you want me to listen now or do you want me to say what I think?” And giving her that kind of respect has really opened her up to listen to some of my opinions and life experiences too. We’re actually communicating with each other now.