Juanita Lepage MSW, RSW, BHP

Counselling & Energy Healing (289) 812-8089

Psychotherapy and Counselling Articles

Articles related to psychotherapy and counselling.

A Simple Guide On How To Use Sound Healing To Improve Our Health

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For my birthday this year, I asked my husband for a crystal singing bowl.  You can see me playing it in the photo above.  More and more research has been showing the physical and emotional benefits of healing through sound. Benefits can include reduction in stress, better focus, reduction in pain, and so much more.  We can experience the benefits in an indirect way when we attend church or a concert or we can seek out specific types of sound to accelerate healing in targeted areas of our life with a sound healing practitioner.

I hope this article helps you reflect on where sound has been healing for you in your life and gives you ideas to explore sound healing in a deeper way.

Sound Healing With A Group

When I was a kid, I went to church twice every Sunday.  A lot of my experience at church was boring as a child. There was always a congregational prayer listed as an item on the agenda for the service. Before I knew what the word congregational meant, I thought it meant long and boring. As an adult of course I can appreciate that it was a prayer for individuals in our congregation, but as I kid I did not.  So where am I going with this? What I want to highlight is that amidst the boring parts, the thing I loved the most about church was the music and singing. My favourite memory was every Christmas when the congregation sang the song Glory to God with the organ and the piano.  It always moved me to tears when I heard the passion and heart from a group of 200 people.  The congregation sang it in English or in Dutch.  Here is one version below.

Singing with a large group of people can be a very healing experience for both adults and children, especially with a song that everyone loves.  If I were to guess, I would hypothesize that when we sing a song with a large group, our chakras open and our connection strengthens to eachother, the divine, and the earth. Just think of a concert you went to and the feelings evoked as thousands of people sang the lyrics to a song. The first concerts that come to mind for me are with Sarah McLachlan singing Your love is better than Chocolate or the band Radiohead singing Karma Police. I have never seen Coldplay live, but I think it would be a lot of fun to do so. Here’s their hit Paradise at a concert in Paris.

Sound Healing At Home

Beyond listening to great music in our homes, there are things we can listen to in an intentional way to improve mood, decrease stress, decrease pain and vibrationally lift us up as we heal emotional wounds.  Have you ever been in a room and even though no one is in there, you can just feel ickiness or an unfinished argument in the air? Sound can be used to clear a space.

Binaural Beats

Binaural Beats are when two slightly different frequencies of sound are played into each ear creating another sound in your brain. So you put on your earbuds and a different frequency is sent to each ear.  Research has been showing it can improve anxiety, balance mood, decrease pain and more. Here’s an article that includes the science behind binaural beats and 9 different ways they have been helpful for people.

Where Can I Find Binaural Beats?

It’s easy to listen to binaural beats for free.  Simply go to Youtube and search for it and you will find a plethora of options.  Spotify also has binaural beats available in its catalogue and I’m guessing Apple Music would have it too.

Acoustic Brain Research

Tom Kenyon is a psychotherapist and healer (among many other things) who has scientifically studied the impact of sound on healing. Over the years he was a psychotherapist he’d start to encompass sound into some of his sessions.  He started to study the healing benefits of sound. Here is a post to learn more about science of sound healing in general.  Similar to binaural beats, research is showing benefits of reduction of stress, improving relaxation and focus and so much more.

Where Can I Find Tom Kenyon’s Music

You can either get a cd or download his music from Tom Kenyon’s store.

Dreamtime Medicine

I was lucky to meet Callie Whitworth at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing.  Every year our school had an evening of artistic performances. Callie always sang, and I wasn’t the only one wowed during our last year when she found something deep inside her and went to where her music wanted to take her.  I’ve tried playing binaural beats & Tom Kenyon’s music to my kids and by far their favourite is Callie’s voice.

Where Can I Find Callie Whitworth’s Music

To listen to a sample of Callie’s music or buy her cd Vibrations in the Wind, you can visit her website Dreamtime Medicine.

Sound Healing Sessions With A Practitioner

Once you’ve started to explore sound healing, it can be a wonderful experience to see a practitioner who devotes an hour to personalize sound healing to your needs.  Once you open this box, you will find that there any many different types of sound healers available in your geographic area.  Here’s a few to get you started.

Toronto

Lianne Graham

Located on Bloor Street West, my friend Lianne has expanded her Reiki practice to include sessions that include the use of tuning forks.  Different tuning forks are used at different points and chakras on the body. Tuning forks combined with Reiki? Sign me up. You can find her at LianneGraham.com.

Texas

Dreamtime Medicine

So Texas is large, but if you’re close to San Antonio, you can find Callie Whitworth and her beautiful studio.  Callie combines Brennan Energy Healing with the sound of her voice. I was lucky enough to receive a session this past spring that left me wishing I lived closer.  You can find her at DreamtimeMedicine.com.

Ireland

John Reilly

For my European friends, if you want an option that’s closer to you, I’d encourage you to try a sound healing with my friend John Reilly in Dublin, Ireland. John is also a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing.  He always brought his set of Tibetan singing bowls to each week in Florida and gave sound healings to individuals and groups.  He places the bowls at different points and chakras on the body to create an incredibly healing experience. You can find out more about John at OpenSourceHealer.com.

Hamilton

Yoga & Sound Healing at De La Sol Yoga Studios

If you practice yoga, an easy way to experience the benefits of sound can be a session at De La Sol Yoga Studios in Hamilton. Peter Monos leads the group in a gentle Yin Yoga while playing his Tibetan Singing Bowls. I always leave each session feeling both relaxed and re-energized. You can find out the class schedule at De La Sol Yoga Studios.

Sound & Spirituality

Sound can also be used to help us on our spiritual journey using the methods above or in many other ways.  In my next blog post I will share about some of my experiences with sound & spirituality from journeying to Nepal to experiencing a group event with Tom Kenyon this past October.

What types of experience with sound healing have been healing for you? I’d love to hear about what you enjoy the most.

 

 

Controversial Conversations With Family and Friends

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I recently binge-watched Queer Eye on Netflix. This show brings five gay men  who try to improve the lives and confidence of straight men by giving them makeovers and advice.  I think I cried while watching 80% of the episodes. I don’t think I’m seen so many straight men cry so openly on television.  These five men open their hearts and with fierce compassion help men who are often depressed or in a period of self-loathing shift and make big changes in a very short time-frame.

Why am I sharing this?  The show decides to visit men who often hit wounds in the lives of the fab five.  In Season 1 Episode Dega Don’t the men are told they will be helping a white, Trump loving policeman.  All of them are a little wary of this, but especially Karamo Brown, an African-American man whose son is afraid to get his driver’s license because of his fear of policemen.  The conversation between Karamo and the policeman is amazing to watch. I read a post about the show that Karamo and the policeman have become friends and watched the episode together over the phone when it originally aired. Fake news? Maybe, but after watching the episode that seemed believable.

We often tend to spend time with people who share a similar political and religious lens. We don’t often have a reality tv-show to put us in uncomfortable situations, but with the Holidays near people often spend more time with their families. Families are full of individuals with opposing beliefs.  We often try to shame another person into seeing our view point, or try to convince them with facts.  Guess what – neither of those will work.

Vaccines

I recently brought one of my sons to get some of his vaccinations. I have consistently declined the chicken-pox vaccine, but I was speaking to a resident who had a note to try to give me the facts to see if that would convince me.  We had an excellent conversation in which I told her that I have found myself in my life with professionals who are 100% in favour of vaccines and other professionals who are 100% against vaccines.  If I look at my family and my friend group, they have all made different choices as well.  I told her that I appreciated that it was her role to try and convince me to get the chicken pox vaccine, because she was medical doctor.  I also told her that I decided to give vaccines because I was more fearful of serious illnesses and I want my kids to be able to travel to different countries.  My decision about the chicken pox vaccine is not entirely rational, it’s more emotional and about my own feeling of stuckness. I told her that in my experience people make their decision about vaccines by what they fear more – serious illness or mistrust in the medical community.

My blue-sky fantasy is that there would be more dialogue between the medical profession and health practitioners such as naturopathic doctors and chiropractors who often oppose vaccines.  While realizing this unlikely to happen any time soon, it would be of great benefit to have these controversial conversations to build bridges and open dialogue about this difficult topic. I wonder whether this would help many of us make a more informed and less emotional decision about vaccines.

The rest of this article, I wrote a year ago about how to have civil conversations.  I give you some strategies you can start using now to help you build bridges with those you love or those you have to spend time with (e.g. colleagues or clients) who have opposing view points.

Civil Conversations

So – did you vote for Brexit?  What do you think of Trump?  Are you pro-life or pro-choice?  Vaccine or anti-vaccine?  Belief in a God or not at all?  What do you think of Trudeau or Doug Ford?

I don’t know about you, but it seems like there are multiple sources of emotionally charged topics that are causing conflict and rifts between friends and families.  Sometimes it feels like the safest thing to do is to find that group of people who share our views and stay in the safety of that bubble.

We can choose to do that to some degree, but if you want to spend time with friends & family who might not see the world from your perspective, that can make it much more challenging.

Common Strategies

  • Avoid all conflictual topics

Try to pass the holidays without touching on hot topics.  Sometimes this is the easiest and best option – no judgment.

  • Avoid all friends and family that disagree with your viewpoint
  • Try to convince everyone of your viewpoint

Isn’t this the one you wish would work? I certainly do.  Often, we think that reason and logic are needed for persuasion.  Unfortunately, this is unlikely to work with hot topics.  Incredibly, research has shown that you can’t use reason alone with issues around morality (listen to the Jonathan Haidt podcast listed below to learn more). If you’re a family who loves a good argument or debate – carry on. But be curious if this is true for all parties involved and whether this debate brings you closer or further apart.

  • Discuss conflictual topics with those you love in a less argumentative way

This is by far the most challenging option, but if you want to do this, find some courage, and read on.

  1. Self-Reflection First

If you’ve read a few of my blogs, you might see this as a theme.  Whenever conflict arises, this is where we go first.

What are your sensitive areas? Where do your emotions get heated up?  What are your assumptions and biases about the “other side?” What is something you don’t “get” about the other side?

Next – Why do you want to connect more with your family, friends, or others?  How do your personal values give you reason to connect with people who have different opinions?  Is it to have more peace in a relationship, community, country, or world? If you don’t want to connect with people who think differently, why don’t you?

Example

Here is an example of applying this to politics.

I found it incredibly helpful to listen to the interview, “The Psychology of Self-Righteousness” with Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Krista Tippett.  Jonathan Haidt explores reasons to be compassionate and potentially even grateful for those liberal or conservative minded people in your family.

Jonathan identifies as a strong liberal/democrat and talks about his journey from hating republicans or those with a conservative viewpoint to understanding their views, having compassion for them, and using some conservative morals in his own life.  He is a social psychologist and talks about how his research influenced his journey. He also talks about how reason will not work in debating issues of morality.

Some highlights:

  • Liberal and Conservatives share two values Fairness and Compassion
  • Conservatives also have the values of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity
  • Liberals value diversity and variety more and Conservatives value structure and order more – both are important
  • A country with only Liberal or Conservative values will fail – both are needed

  1. Create a Safe Place to have The Conversation

No one likes to be ambushed.  Consider your environment. If you have a way to talk about the heated issue one-to-one, that is always best.  It is better to do it in a safe space where neither of you feel like you will be attacked, shamed or blamed.  Have one person who is pro-choice in a group of people who are pro-life? That’s not the place.  Have one person who voted from Trump in a group of people who voted for Hilary?  Maybe somewhere different.

But what about family dinners?  What if you’re in public and the conversation just happens?

Safety also comes with your intention and words

  • Have you done your own self-reflection? Or do you have an agenda?
  • Do you really want to hear the other person’s point of view or not? Be Honest.

If we’ve done our own self-reflection this can help us ground and stay centered during those surprise conversations.

  1. Ask Curious Questions

Brené Brown’s new book, Braving The Wilderness is great for digging deeper into how to have those potentially divisive conversations with family.  She explores how to have deeper connecting conversations with those we’re struggling to get along with.  She also talks about how to address it when a person is overtly racist, sexist etc.

Want a little bit more detail on what this could look like?  Read Brené Brown’s interview with Dr. Michelle Buck in the chapter four “People are Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In.”

Brené recommends trying these 3 steps:

a) Really listen to hear what the multiple layers of reasons are for this person’s point of view. Is it a moral or a value that is leading them to have an opinion so different than yours?

b) If you start to get into a conversation about the past (who said and did what), try to shift it to the present or look to what the person wants for the future. What do they envision your country looking like for future generations?

c) When you want to make a counter argument, see if you can say, “Tell me more” instead.

It will take some groundwork for you before you can have a conversation about a topic that is very important to you.

  • You can have these conversations with a wish to share your point of view, but you must be able to go into it without expecting that you will get to.
  • Jonathan Haidt talks about how it can be helpful to start a conversation by complimenting a few things that the other side has gotten right in the past
  • Or if that’s too hard, with a few things that your side has gotten wrong historically.

The Art of Asking Meaningful Questions

I remember earlier this year being introduced to Krista Tippett on the Tim Ferriss podcast.  Her own podcasts are often about connecting people across lines.  In the podcast Calming Philosophies for Chaotic Times, she talks about deeper questions that help us connect with one another and be less separate.

  • “Answer this question through the story of your life” (apply to all heated topics e.g. voting for Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump”
  • Give your opinions through your experience, not just to give an opinion

If you want to hear more, you can start listening at 1:22:42 during the podcast.

  1. Set Boundaries Where Needed

Brené Brown also wrote the chapter about how to speak truth to bull-shit (BS).  She describes the nature of BS and how to approach to with others.  These tips are also good if you are the one being ambushed by others points of view.  Her main tips are:

  • Approach it with generosity, by not assuming that the person is being malicious or acting out of hate. If you’re ambushed, you can approach with generosity by being calm and curious. Why do they want your opinion to change?
  • Be civil by owning our “stuff” and having curious conversations. We can be civil while disagreeing or stating our boundaries.  Civil isn’t the same as “nice”.  Civil is firm and grounded.  Notice your body language – are you open or defensive?

Brené doesn’t encourage passivity when she speaks of being civil or being generous.  She talks of courage and disagreeing with grace.  I liked the quote she shared from Elie Wiesel, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Speaking truth to bullshit is very difficult when emotions are high.  The chapter is well-worth a read as she goes into more detail about how to approach this with people in our lives.

The Cheat Sheet

  1. Self-reflection first
  2. Create a safe space to connect with a person
  3. Ask curious questions
  4. Set boundaries where needed

A Funny Story

I will share that after writing all of this, I shared it with my husband.  We then proceeded to have an argument about something extremely stupid (whether or not to buy a black Friday deal) and not even in the realm of big issues.  Later, we couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. Those thoughts of, “If I can’t even do this with something trivial, how can I do this with bigger issues!” can be blocks to trying it with bigger issues.  Upon reflection, we jumped to step 4 without doing steps 1-3.

The Gift of Wisdom and Kindness this Holiday Season

It is a gift to be kind to others and also ourselves. Remember to be compassionate with yourself if you try and fail dramatically.  Be compassionate if you notice a time you could have tried to have a civil conversation and didn’t.  Find courage and then try it another time.

Emotions can get in the way of connecting in a difficult conversation.  Sometimes we can be ready to have a conversation and the other person is not.  Sometimes it’s the other way around. Start small by picking a topic that’s less heated and work your way to the more difficult topics. Finally, speak your opinions from your experiences:  “I experienced this, which is why I think this”.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Stay tuned – interested in how of all of this relates to energy healing and energy fields?  I’ll be writing more on this topic in a future blog.

This blog post was originally published on December 19, 2017. It has been updated with current content.

To Meditate Or Not To Meditate: Easy Ways To Get Started Or Restarted

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I have been an on again-off again meditator for years.  I have always envied those individuals that have made meditation a regular habit in their lives.  When I met my husband, he would meditate daily for 30-minutes to an hour every morning and evening. He would invite me to join him, but at the time I thought it looked pretty boring to sit silently for that long. He too goes through periods of meditating and not meditating.

Over the years I would read about people such as Ram Dass, Yogananda, or Michael Singer who had mystical and transformative experiences meditating, and I thought, “Well of course if you’re having that type of “wow/life-changing” experience, you would continue to meditate”. Or I would think, “Of course if you’ve chosen the spiritual vocation as your life path, these transformative experiences would happen”. And then at the same time I would read about stories of people who meditated for years and never had that “wow” experience while meditating.

So, if I can’t get a Guarantee of that “Wow Factor”, Why Meditate?

So, without having the “wow” factor goal in mind, I wondered why meditation would be so highly recommended for individuals.

  1. Physical, mental, and emotional benefits

Calmness, focus, centeredness, happiness, better health, and self-love are all benefits of meditation.  It seems that as each year goes by, more and more research demonstrates the healing benefits of mindfulness[1]  or meditation for more and more things. Pain, mental illness, stress, and burnout is just a few of the things it can help with.  Just google “research meditation” or “research mindfulness” and you’ll notice a plethora of information at your fingertips.

When I taught Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to teens and adults, mindfulness was a key component to this therapy. The main benefit of mindfulness in DBT is to help a person pause and connect with their thoughts & emotions and how they are using this information to interact with the world. Many other types of psychotherapy involving mindfulness have been created too, with the most famous probably being Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) created by Jon-Kabat Zinn. In other psychotherapies, the word mindfulness is never mentioned, but it is used in practice to help a person connect to their emotions and bring awareness to thoughts.

  1. Spiritual benefits

If you’re on a spiritual path, meditation seems a key part in going deeper into one’s spiritual journey whether it be with a religion or a more general spiritual path.  Meditation allows a person to connect beyond themselves to something on a much grander scale – God, the universe, specific religious individuals such as Jesus or Buddha, and more.

Where Do I Start (or restart)?

 

Books

  1. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Wherever You Go, There You Are, was one of the books that inspired me to start meditation. It’s an easy read with short chapters. This book is especially helpful if you’re interested in the Physical, Mental, & Emotional benefits. If you’re a person who is interested in being mindful but doesn’t want to sit quietly in meditation, this book provides many other options.  You can do anything mindfully. Really.
  2. Want a book that also captures the spiritual benefits? Michael A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul  is succinct and you can tell from the depth and simplicity of this book that he is a seasoned meditator.

YouTube Meditations

There are a lot of guided meditations available on YouTube, it can be a matter of trying a few to find your favourites.

  1. Tara Brach is my favourite person to listen to for a guided meditation. I love her voice and her variety of meditations. You can find many selections on her website or on YouTube.

Apps

There are many apps related to mindfulness and meditation. After not meditating for many months, I tried the 14-day trial with Headspace.  This was a great way to hear if I liked the person’s voice for guided meditation and try out some of their meditations.  When flying on Air Canada earlier this year I found some of their meditations available on the online entertainment system.

After the 14-day trial I decided to buy a subscription for a year (They offer a great discount after you’ve completed the trial).  I really appreciate the options to have a 1 minute or a 30-minute meditation.  Also my screen can be dark and it can keep playing (unlike YouTube). Some days I’m happy if I meditated for 1 minute. Other days I want to meditate for a longer time.  They also have great packages for different topics such as sleep, restlessness, worry and more.

Summary

If you notice in your life that it feels busy, even a few minutes of meditation a day can provide benefits of restoration and calm.  Often between sessions with clients a take a few minutes to connect to myself and shift my energy from the past client to the next one.

I don’t use the word mindfulness in most of my sessions, but often I’m helping clients to connect with themselves in a deeper way to find the solutions that they seek. Many of us like to spend time in our minds, and while we would benefit from connecting with our bodies or our emotions, we are often not practiced at doing so. We are often on the move.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you found something to inspire you to start or restart your journey with meditation!

 

[1] Meditation is a form of mindfulness. There are many ways to be mindful without meditating, but meditation is a popular method of mindfulness.

Polyamory Explored In 3 Books And 2 TV Shows

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I remember years ago my husband told me about a well-known author who had come out as polyamorous.  If you’re new to the term polyamory, one definition from trusty Google is: the philosophy or state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time.  This is a broad definition and can encompass many variations of relationships.

The author was married at the time, but wanted to open up his marriage because “he had so much love to give”.  I remember rolling my eyes and saying that he just wanted to have sex with someone outside his marriage. Indeed months later their marriage did dissolve.

That being said, the dissolution of a marriage is not the same result for every monogamous couple that ventures into polyamory.  Over my career as a therapist i’ve seen people in a variety of styles of marriage and relationships. Like a monogamous marriage, sometimes polyamory works for a couple and sometimes it doesn’t work for them in the long run.

If you talk to any psychotherapist, you’re likely to hear that conversations about polyamory are on the rise with their clients.  Indeed, well-known author and couples therapist Esther Perel documents this change in her experience over the past 20 years in her book State of Affairs.  I’d guess that you’re more likely to come across the term polyamory in television and books than you would 10 years ago, even if you’re not seeking it out.

Many couples know that they are not interested in polyamory or open marriages.  Some individuals know early in their lives that polyamory is the only route for them and marriage may or may not be something they’re seeking.  Then there are monogamous couples who decide to explore new territory for a variety of reasons.

If you’re an avid reader or watch Netflix, you’ve likely come across this topic in one form or another without looking too hard. Here are 3 books and 2 TV shows that i’ve come across and enjoyed.

Television

You, Me, Her (2016)

A polyamorous comedy that is available on Netflix in some countries.  This series explores the life of a suburban married couple who contemplate (inadvertently) adding a third to their relationship and the reactions of those around them.  I enjoyed the first season the most.

She’s Gotta Have It (2017)

Part comedy, part drama, this series by Spike Lee explores the life or Nola Darling in her twenties.  She identifies as a polyamorous pansexual, and this series follows her as she has consciously chooses to go after what she wants in her life with all sorts of learnings and complications.  Nola is bold, daring, and willing to live her life authentically no matter how much drama surfaces because of it.

Books:

Non-fiction:  The State of Affairs – Rethinking Infidelity (2017)

Esther Perel is big deal in the therapy world and she’s written a number of best-sellers.  There is a chapter near the end of this book that explores polyamory in depth.  She explores the rise of polyamory, corrects the misconception that open marriages mitigate affairs, and gives considerations for any couple considering polyamory.

A Memoir: The Art of Vanishing – A Memoir of Wanderlust (2018)

This memoir follows the journey of Laura Smith as she explores the notion of marriage and freedom. She writes candidly about her experience of opening up her marriage and the positive and negative ramifications with her husband, her peer group, and her relationship with herself.

Novel: All Inclusive (2015)

Farzana Doctor’s novel stars Ameera, a woman in her twenties who works at an all-inclusive.  Ameera is interested in sleeping with couples and someone has been spreading rumours about her behavior at the resort.  This is the lightest book of the group.  This book never uses the term polyamory, but explores one potential lived definition of it.

I’ll leave you with two quotes from Esther Perel’s book, The State of Affairs

“It does not follow that consensual nonmonagamy is a safeguard against betrayal, jealousy or heartbreak.  You may think affairs don’t happen in open relationships, but they do” pg. 257 

“Inequality, gender, power, & a solid foundation are all considerations that need to be addressed before branching how to open a relationship” p. 274

The Epidemic Of Parent Shaming

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I’ll admit, when the latest parent shaming article came out, I clicked on it and read it. Have you heard about lawnmower parents who “mow” all the obstacles away for their children?

After reading it part of me basked in the pleasure of, “I wouldn’t drive a water bottle to school for my teen” and part of me judged myself where I may have indulged my children, when I “should” have let my kids figure out their own problems. Later I judged myself for judging that mom who brought the water bottle for her teen.  I thought, “I don’t know the story behind this.  I’m sure that lots of kids who grew up with the opposite of lawnmower parents wish they had a lawnmower mom or dad.”

Do you see what’s happening here?

The good ol’ parent shame factory is in full-tilt with September coming in strong.

I could continue this article by shaming all the people who re-posted the lawnmower parenting article. But I might as well point the finger at myself. It can feel really good when you find a post about some aspect of parenting that preaches what you’re already doing as a parent.  That negative pleasure about feeling smug about one of my parenting choices can feeling really good.

So, I thought it was a good time to re-post my article The Myth of Perfect Parenting. That’s right – the idea that there is a best parenting style is a myth. This truth is ridiculously easy to forget.

From Judgment to Empathy

Unless we see a parent physically or emotionally abusing their child or neglecting them to the point of it being unsafe, I wonder what it would be like to shift to compassionate curiousity when some one’s parenting style hits a nerve inside of us.  Often we are triggered by a parent who is “too soft” or “too strict” or “too wishy-washy”.  What parenting style triggers you?

Judging other Parents is also Judging ourselves

When we judge other parents, we are in a weird way actually judging our own insecurities about parenting.  When we judge other parents, we are inviting an opportunity to judge ourselves when we don’t meet our own standards of parenting.  We can make it harder to forgive ourselves when we don’t “practice what we preach”. Moms are particularly hard on themselves and each other. As parents, we can benefit from giving ourselves an empathic voice when our judging voice kicks in to keep us down.

The Unsaid Pressure placed on our Children

We place a lot of pressure on our kids to “turn out fine” because we did our best at parenting and  having been given so many privileges and opportunities compared to another kid.  As a psychotherapist mother who works with parents I can feel that self-induced pressure on myself and my children.  If we take that pressure off of our children, we may find a way to be more compassionate about our own parenting styles and just be ourselves.

Our parenting style impacts our children and at the same-time, it does not guarantee our children a problem-free future.

If our kids are struggling, then it’s a good time to reflect on whether a change in our parenting style may help them, and at the same time, our kids problems may not be related to our parenting choices.

Humour & Healing

To add a little light & lightness to this topic, here’s a couple of videos to all the lawnmower, helicopter, free-range, zen, competitive, and every other type of parent category out there. Yes, the videos are all women.  If you have a great one about types of fathers, please share!

The first is created by women who clearly aren’t parents.  It can be humbling to have an outside lens.

Cat and Nat, some hilarious moms talking about mom-shaming.

Brené Brown digs deep in this heart-felt Ted Talk about Shame.

The last five minutes she delves into the realities of shame for men and women.

I’ll leave you with Brené Brown’s words, “Empathy is the antidote to shame”.