50. Are You Doing Enough (as an Alienated Parent)?

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 50 stay tuned welcome to be on the high road hey guys recorded this on two different days for a couple reasons one because I ran out of time but two because one of my members had posed this question and requested that I do a an episode on this and I was like yes I'm surprised I haven't even done it yet that's a question I get all the time am I doing enough have I done enough should I be doing more and when I went to answer it for you guys yesterday I found myself sort of talking in circles I came to the conclusion that the reason why this was happening is because this is so

subjective it really depends on what the thought or the idea is behind this question I'm thinking that many of you if you're asking that question am I doing enough really kind of boils down to why isn't anything I'm doing working or what can I do in order to get the response or result that I want that's usually what is behind that and in that case then I think as you know there's going to be very inconsistent results with trying to elicit a specific response out of anybody but especially out of somebody who is being actively alienated and somebody with a disordered personality like the alienator so that's that I just want to make that known from the beginning that there is not really a

secret recipe there are tactics there are strategies there are angles that you can take in in order to possibly get a better response than what you have gotten but that is something that is so personalized that unless you were sitting in front of me and you and I together if you were to explain maybe your history with your kiddo and what your relationship was like what your Dynamic with your ex is was and then what it is now and what has happened up till now what you have been doing all of that then together you and I can come up with a much better idea of what your strategy is going forward but in the general sense for me to answer this question I think what is the most

important is for you to develop a few things because as alienated parents we Outsource all of our answers we don't trust ourselves and so we want somebody else to confirm that what we're doing is either enough or maybe somebody body will be able to give us the magic answer like the missing puzzle piece we Google the same thing a million times over in different ways my kid won't talk to me how to get kid to talk to you how to reconcile with an alienated child you know all of the same questions that tend to come up with ambiguous answers right because of the complexity of this Dynamic but when you learn to look inside for your answers because they're always there when you learn how to pay

attention to your body and Trust what your brain has to offer back to you then you will find much more satisfaction in the answers that you come up with because in the end if you can't access those answers right now because you've sort of blocked yourself from you which is very common this is what I mean I was so blocked for so long that I I really truly didn't I wasn't able to to hear and then trust that the answer that actually was within me was the right answer I'm using air quotes right now was the right answer or the answer that was going to serve me the best right so when I developed these skills I have been so much more satisfied with the result as opposed to continuing to

search outside of me for it so having your own back is a skill that is rise of these other skills that I'm going to share with you today but having your own back is essential because once then you of course when you make the decision this is another thing that I think is going on if you're asking yourself this question am I doing enough is that you're looking for reassurance right makes sense this is a natural human tendency but when you have your own back and you know how to do that on a consistent basis and it becomes like your standard then you don't care so much to have reassurance it's kind of extra because you already know that the answers that you have are valid and true

for you and couldn't possibly be so true for everybody else so I'm going to give you all of the skills that I think that you need and like just do brief overviews on them I recorded that part yesterday and then I'll come back on and give you my thoughts about doing enough like I'll give you a more direct answer to it but like I said even my direct answer isn't really if you're in the place where you don't have these three components these three skills it's not going to be suffice for you do you know what I'm saying until you do this work okay so that's how it's going to go today stay tuned for the meat of the episode and I'll be back around in a little bit if you guys are watching this

just you'll see that I look a little different today because I got a wild hair over this last weekend and just decided to chop it not only the length which is way too short I also decided that I needed to cut bangs I don't know why well I do I was just sick of how it was hanging I cut it and I kept thinking I was like you know you do things periodically throughout your life and women my mom's out there you probably share this with me you think that you're going to look good with bangs or you know vice versa without them if you've always been a bang person and then you go and you do the opposite sit and you're like ooh why did I do that well this is what happened with me and I even

knew like I've tried this several times within adulthood where I'm like yeah they never work for me and I'm always regret the decision afterwards but this time I was like well maybe I didn't like bangs because I didn't commit enough last time so I went and committed and did like bangs like actual things where they are straight down and I started back in the the the crown of the head they're bangs and anyway needless to say hearing my tone I don't love them I think once they grow out once my hair grows out another inch then I think it'll everything will be fine but anyway that's what I did this weekend cut myself some bangs always a good idea so we'll just pretend like those aren't

these are not here me in my Banks I was really excited when one of my members brought it up to to me a couple weeks ago asking that I talk on this I was like oh my gosh why haven't I done this yet this is such a common question that I know a lot of you have on a very regular basis right those of you that are that are wondering like am I doing enough should I be doing more how can I do more all those kinds of questions and so I wrote down what I think is needed in order for a person to really fully know and trust that they are doing enough uh with regard to their situation of alienation and with their children and then when I sat down to talk with you guys about this I found myself

talking in circles because it's actually such a broad broad question not only because hi I'm each one of you is going to have a different story there's different nuances in your history with the ex and what's going on now there are so many possible answers for this it's too broad there's too many different Dynamics within the dynamic of Ali nation in order for me to possibly address this so I found myself like running into my own words even coming up with a way to get it all in in one episode preferably you know in a digestible anyway size episode so I'm going to go about this differently now I think just know that like if I were talking with you personally then it

would be much easier to come up with a game plan for you and to come up with an answer to the question are you doing enough right you and I could go in you could give me the the history of what's been going on the you know your relationship before alienation and then of course after you know as it sits right now and you and I could come up with all of the answers game plan moving forward and the work that you needed to do in order to to feel confident in what we've decided on right for you that easy as pie for me for you would be some work but still work that would be well worth it right but I'm not doing that here I am sharing with you a very general more

General answer so here's what I think is needed I think in order to come to any answer to any question you ask yourself and have resolved to feel at peace with that answer you must trust yourself you must trust in your abilities have self-confidence and you must must have a a sense of worthiness knowing that you are enough just as you are and just because the alienator says and maybe even your children say that you aren't worthy of having a relationship with that doesn't mean that you're not worthy of having a relationship with it means that at this point the alienator doesn't believe that and that is on the person that's alienating your children from you so it doesn't mean anything about you

doesn't mean that you are not worthy it means that they don't value you okay and that says everything about what their preferences are not to mention that we're likely dealing with a disordered personality so I think that it it is helpful to keep into consideration that they don't value their own selves let alone other people and not to encourage you to come from a place of judgment when it comes to them because not because of them not because we're trying to be kind to them but because kindness affect fects how you feel inside and when we shift the attention over to them then you end up not feeling so good about you inside and so that's why I really want to direct our attention

towards us and the work that we can do okay but I do think it is helpful to point out to where that we're not dealing necessarily with the poster child for self-worth right and knowing what constitutes worthiness having said that what constitutes worthiness is the fact that you were living and breathing every single one of us is 100% worthy as we sit worthy since the day that you were brought into this world let's say you're going property shopping okay let's say you came into some money or you worked hard in your life and you had some money to spend on a property and you found this one place that was beachfront like two acres beachfront property the most crystal blue amazing

water it had the perfect trees it was the perfect plot of land for you to build your custom forever dream home on and it was like maybe it was had some barrier natural barrier islands that were off the coast a little bit so as to kind of protect it from any hurricanes coming in so you didn't have to worry about the house being blown away at some point maybe because of the protected Waters like dolphins in your backyard on the daily and sea turtles and you know this property is just off the chain phenomenal right it is worth the cost if you like the beach but let's say you don't like the beach maybe you are a mountains person maybe you hate the sand you don't like salt water maybe you're

scared of sharks if that's you then you are not going to actually appreciate the value of this property on the beach for you it's not worth the price tag it doesn't make sense to you because you don't want to buy it they don't go oh well this person didn't like it so let's lower the price no they just know that you weren't the right buyer for this beautiful property but the price tag Remains the Same you not liking the property says nothing about the property itself it's still on a beach still got the Crystal Blue Water Barrier Islands dolphins in the backyard and a flat already leveled out for a beautiful home to go on it All of That Remains the Same you just don't value it apply this to

your own self when the alienator has said that you're not a good mom or dad that you're a drug addict you are not present not safe all of these things that they say right those judgments those opinions that the alienator or whoever else has maybe even your children they say nothing about you and who you are and what your worth is nothing to appreciate your value just because somebody else thinks or says or because just because I think somebody else is thinking or saying something about me that that's like apples and oranges what somebody else thinks about me and me are two entirely different things they don't even relate right just like with a movie if I like a movie and

you don't like a movie it says nothing about the movie itself the movie is the movie separate entity and then there's our individual thoughts about that movie doesn't make the movie less or more or anything the movie Just is it's the same thing with us your worthiness is your worthiness no matter what somebody's opinion that is truly all it is is sentences in their mind about you so if this is something that you're working on like you can tell that you are basing your your worth on external things or other people's opinions of you are really important to you at the moment then I think it's really helpful to do your own affirmations like date daily self-love practices especially the ones

that are seemingly trivial if you're driving in your car right now look up the rearview mirror Link at yourself hey gorgeous little things like this are the best way that I have found to raise my own esteem bring the fun loving back into your world again I know it seems cheesy and silly but I'm telling you you won't regret doing it you start winking at yourself in the mirror one to three times s a day and some dance parties in the house with some fun music on this is so important okay so the second thing you need to have is of course self trust you have to trust in your own ability to make a decision and it be the quote unquote right one or the one that you

want to stick with self trust I think goes hand in hand with self-discipline discipline to me is deciding on a plan ahead of time no matter whatever it is and sticking to it following through on your own commitments to yourself is something that I think is so underrated we as a society I think in general are conditioned to follow through on commitments we make to other people right following through on commitments to our own self comes last and then add in alienation and the self-worth issues and then we really don't follow through we always come last because we're too busy people pleasing or too busy trying to get out of our own heads right and so we don't follow

through in all the things that pertain to us we think we place less importance on that earning your own trust is so important for you if you treated your friends like you likely treat yourself when it comes to not following through on your own commitments now I'm generalizing here and I'm supposing here but if my hunch is right I would assume that your friends if you treated them the way that you treat yourself would not be your friends anymore like if you didn't show up for an engagement let's say you had lunch planned with a friend if you just decided not to show up and then didn't call didn't text they asked you why you didn't show up and you were like I don't know I just didn't feel

like it or I don't know I had something better to do with somebody else I had this other thing so I just was too tired that friend would be pissed at you right but we do it with ourselves all the time why is that any different and you say oh because it's them you want to be kind you want to be courteous to them but why don't you want to do that to yourself because each time you don't follow through on what you say you're going to follow through on with yourself it's like another notch in your subconscious is like up there I didn't follow through on that again so next time we're not going to trust ourselves enough to follow through do you ever like make a

commitment to yourself to like you know work out for the first of the the year and in the back of your mind is going you're never going to follow through with that you're going to stop at day five you know and then you do you end up stopping either before that or you never start because you've already proven to yourself that you don't follow through so you have to overcome these objections in your mind on a continual basis keep overcoming them keep proving to yourself that you are capable of having your own back and being there for yourself and following through on your own commitments with yourself when you do this watch after you do it twice and then three times and then four times

even that just that small amount of times you'll notice that you start to feel more confident in your own ability to do any task but when you start to earn that trust back with yourself then your subconscious will be like oh yeah actually we we've been coming through for our own selves lately so maybe maybe we can trust what's here to tell us whether we're doing enough or not but when we're not following through on our own commitments to ourselves our subconscious goes why are we going to listen to what you have to say you don't follow through on anything does this make sense so you have to earn your own trust back because as you guys have heard me say before probably above 90%

of the time your subconscious is the one drug driving the bus it's the one moving you throughout all of your life when you get in the car when you brush your teeth in the morning your body just pushes a play button teeth brushing time and it does it you could be thinking a million other things you probably don't even remember whether you brushed your teeth a lot of the times or not right you could drive to work and not even really remember the drive because your subconscious has that done for you your automatic thinking your automatic actions right it has that stuff memorized it's the same when we're talking about bigger things like whether we're doing enough for our children or

not okay throw in all of the chatter around second guessing our own abilities because we're paying mind to what other people have said about our abilities that is why I'm talking right now so much about your self-worth self-confidence self- trust self-discipline okay hopefully now it's coming together because I'm sure you were probably like why is why what do these things have to do with whether I'm doing enough they have everything to do with you coming up with your own answer about whether you're doing enough or not okay once you have that trust with yourself and you know that you are disciplined that you will follow through on your commitments to yourself your

brain will go okay so now whenever we do come up with an answer we can trust that answer and don't need to go Outsource answers from all the other people Google searching whether you're doing enough and what other people are doing and checking on Reddit and asking on Facebook spoken surveying here just to go find the answers that you're not going to believe anyway you know what I'm saying you're going out all over the place just to try to find the answer that's really truly the only answer you're really going to be satisfied with is the one that you come up with that you find results in so have to apply all of these things and the last thing that you need is self-confidence believing in

your ability maybe you don't believe in your ability to do something a specific thing yet like for me I don't know how to repel off of a mountain I have not the first clue how to be a repeller or ghost balun I I've got mountains in my head ever since the beach Mountain thing but I do believe in my capability to learn given an instructor that has all their information and they know how to do it I trust I am confident in my ability to learn how to get get the thing done to go spelunking to skydive to repel off of a mountain fully confident in my ability my capability you don't have to have experience in something to have confidence in yourself you have confidence in yourself and your

capability to tackle to accomplish anything that you set your mind to and that's again set your mind to that's where self- discipline and self trust come in okay so once you have worked on the these four components self trust self-confidence discipline that's three and your self-worth then you're going to have insight and really value your own insights in order to come up with an answer that is suffice for you okay so now that that is all explained and you've got some things that you can work on this is assuming that you are wanting to take care of your mental health and your healing surrounding your situation of alienation okay so if you are asking this question because you truly are not

sure if you are doing enough then could be worth it for you to write down a list on either side of things you are doing things you're not doing here's what I think would be very helpful I didn't I was going to base the whole episode on this next exercise but then I thought by doing this that I would create a sense of urgency in you and unless you got the other skills down pat I didn't want to create this rushed feeling in you but I think that with all of what I've said in mind I like to think about if you had one year left to live what would you care more about what would you care less about what would you do more of what would you do less okay four questions

and the fifth question there's a fifth question to that but I think that I will save that for another time after you've already answered these questions so years left to live okay please just this is just for mindset purposes okay so don't take me literal but a year left to live what would you care more about what would you care less about it's question two question three is what would you do more of question four is what would you do less of okay and so answer those questions and then maybe maybe next week if I fit it in then I can give you the last question to that but anyway that will sort of give you a better a better idea of where you are and whether you

should be doing more with regard to your situation your custody case okay but I would place money on the fact that if you're asking yourself the question is is your brain's way of torturing you that you are sort of trying to drag yourself through you know by the hair through the mud in order to shame yourself basically and it's coming from a place of fear because you're not getting the response or the reaction that you would otherwise desire right like you really you want your kids to be responding to your text and calling and you want them to send you an email and tell you how they see the light and that everything is going to be good from here on out right and if that is the case

then yeah that's that do all these exercises but if you truly truly do want to know ask those four questions of yourself I mean you can ask those four questions of yourself anyway right so anyway hopefully this comes out all right I was all over the board because it was it is such a broad broad topic that honestly I could take each one of these last questions that I just asked you and made separate episodes for each one of those four skills for yourself anyway so hopefully it comes out okay and you guys are able to understand it if not there's always next week anyway so y'all have a wonderful week and I will see you next week all right take care guys oh don't forget to

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