One of the hardest and most amazing classes I’ve taken helped me discover the benefit of facing my fears.

And during the entirety of the 3 day class, I face so many of my fears.

It helped me discover that it was the way to set me free.

One of the stories they shared helped me comprehend the power and freedom available when facing fears.

It was a story of a lion pride.

This lion pride had a small number of lionesses to hunt and bring back food.

They had a fantastic strategy that worked every time though.

And we can all learn from this play in their playbook.

The star role was given to the grandma lion.

She couldn’t run anymore,

Or hunt anymore,

Or take down prey anymore.

But what she STILL could do was…

ROAR,

And they used that to their advantage to up their numbers.

They placed her in front of the prey, while the rest of the hunters created a trap opposite the old lioness.

When the prey heard the grandma's great roar,

They ran the OTHER WAY,

Straight into the trap...

Are you doing the same things, 

BUT expecting different results?

That’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it?

To get different results, we have to see things differently. 

We have to feel differently to then do differently.

I teach this with The Self Coaching Model awareness tool.

Our different results start with our perspective.

It starts with what we believe about ourselves, 

Ourselves in connection to our different relational partners, 

And our beliefs about relationships.

What are you currently believing in these areas?

Take time to write them down to become aware of them.

Why?

Because they are the key to your current relational results.

The only way to create different results is to understand the source driving those results and being intentional about the process.

What are your current results?

Your current results are the evidence of what you believe.

Write them down and see how your current beliefs and results align.

Your brain is what makes...

We all want healthy, connective relationships.

Sometimes, what stands in our way is FEAR. 

AND as a result we become very much like a scared animal,

Seeing threats in our relationships.

Not feeling safe, 

With quills at the ready, 

Or going into our shell for protection, 

Or insecurity driving us to continuously ask for reassurance,

Or hiding out hoping conflict will solve itself.

What does any scared animal need?

What do YOU need when you feel like a scared animal in your relationships?

Have you ever been around an animal that had been traumatized?

My mother-in-law fosters and rehabilitates dogs and then re-homes them.

Through her, they get to experience what it’s like to feel safe again in a relationship with a person..

She works to create trust and LOVES, LOVES, LOVES on these dogs. 

It takes time, patience, and consistency.

We need the same things.

We need to do things to increase our safety,

Love ourselves hard,

And to be the one person we can...

I do a lot of cognitive behavioral work with my clients, 

To help them to moves you forward in powerful ways.

BUT, for people with trauma, 

BIG TRAUMAS, Small Traumas, or tiny traumas.

Which is pretty much everyone in one way or another,

The MISSING PIECE is befriending your nervous system.

This includes gaining awareness of your own unique nervous system,

And how you have learned to adapt.

These adaptations are how your body has coded the trauma to protect you and keep you safe in the future.

And most if not all of these adaptations may not be serving you.

When our nervous system perceives a threat, 

We either get assigned a state of connection,

Or we get assigned a state of protection.

We can only be in one state at a time.

And a lot of times our nervous system threat detector gets it wrong, 

And we get assigned this state of protection when there is really no actual danger.

We may be stuck in protection yet desperately yearning for connection in our...

As a girl some of my favorite memories were going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house every Sunday to play Hide & Go Seek Base with my cousins.

My grandparents had a huge backyard with a ton of really great hiding places.

On my grandparents back porch, they had a bench which was a backseat taken from an old vehicle.

That bench was HOME BASE.

It meant safety.

In our Hide & Go Seek Base, we would use the back porch bench as the place the seeker or sometimes multiple seekers had to wait and count to allow everyone else to run and hide.

The seekers were “it.”

The only way to become “it” is to get tagged before you reached the safety of home base.

If you reached home base you were secure.

You were safe.

When it was my turn to hide, I would strategize to find the best place and time to make a run for the safety of home base as quickly as possible.

That was a game, but in my real life, I didn’t have a strategy on how to anchor myself to the safety and security I...

Resilience is the ability to bounce back.

Relational Resilience is the ability to bounce back confidently no matter what you face in your relationships.

Many of my relationships connected to the trauma I experienced as a girl, became a source of uncertainty, anxiety, and pain for me.

Years ago, many times after interacting in those relationship, I would leave crying and not be able to function for about the next three days.

I didn't have the tools, skills or practices to help me confidently bounce back and even better prevent this kind of suffering. 

I now have skills that I practice on a regular basis that have bought so much peace, confidence, and joy in my life that I was previously not experiencing.

Today, I am now able to have those same relationship minus the suffering and when I face difficult things within them, I have the skills and practices I rely on to bounce back confidently.

I'm able to move forward in certainty in those relationships.

I lovingly do...

You may find some people difficult to love,

Difficult to deal with,

Difficult to converse with,

And even difficult to think about.

One thing I’ve gotten really good at is loving everyone in my story,

And loving everyone in yours.

ALL of the people in our lives are 100% lovable.

Our ability to love them is our LOVE-ABILITY.

No matter where you are in your ability to love others, you are 100% lovable.

You are right where you need to be to expand your love-ability.

When we find someone we think is difficult to love, it’s an opportunity to stretch ourselves.

To stretch into who I truly am,

A person feeling and driving LOVE.

When this happens, I work to gain awareness of where I am.

I get curious about what’s going on for me and what I need.

I process my emotions. 

I practice love with me, first.

Loving others more fully starts with loving ourselves more fully.

Sacrificing ourselves to more fully love others is the opposite of love.

Once I know what is going on...

Last week my clients and I talked a lot about why my clients were experiencing being on an emotional rollercoaster.

I helped them see that this rollercoaster of emotions is tied to the manuals they have for their relationships and the people in them.

We have these unwritten rules that we’ve decided on in our minds of how the people in our lives should behave for us to feel better and be happy. 

We give the behavior of others so much leverage over our emotions.

It’s like handing them over the remote control of our emotional experience. 

And in so many cases we hand it over to those we’d least like to have that power over us.

Here’s the thing though. 

We can’t really hand over a remote control.

We are the only ones that can engineer our emotions.

We just blame it on others because of our operating manual of rules we expect others to follow.

We believe these things are just common sense and that everyone truly knows how to be a good mom,...

Sometimes, driven by fear we disconnect and isolate from others to protect ourselves.

Relationships can be the most difficult AND the most rewarding.

We may begin to see people and social situations as a threat.

Learning the skills to be the hero of your story will change everything for you.

AND you'll be able to show up more fully in your life as a result.

What if you knew your people were waiting in line and all they need is for you to show up?

Your people ARE waiting for you. 

They want to be there for you and they need you just as much as you need them.

What if that is true?

What if as soon as you start believing it, you discover it’s true.

What we believe, we find the evidence for. 

What you seek, you find.

God and the Universe will be conspiring in your favor.

Your people are on the way.

We are like magnets and the people we want and need will automatically flow into our lives?

The ones that are meant to love you, support you, and the ones you are meant to...

Relationships are both amazing and messy. 

Adding trauma to the equation can make it even more messy, more difficult, and more painful than we imagined it would be. 

Focusing on what’s within your control is the key to creating healthy, resilient relationships. 

It will help you bounce back as the creator, the hero, not the victim of your life. 

If not, we become blinded to our agency and the power within us to create what we want.

You are the ONE needed to pave the way, develop necessary skills, and make the changes you want to see in your relationships. 

Waiting for someone else to change will only leave you feeling powerless and helpless sitting back not making the essential changes within yourself. 

I will help you disrupt your side of unhealthy patterns in your relationship and replace unhealthy coping skills like people pleasing and codependency with new healthy skills like setting boundaries and creating emotional resiliency.

Sometimes...