My Great Big Midlife Unlearning

Do you struggle to say "No"?

Do you wish you could keep your promises to yourself?

Do you know that you should be better at setting boundaries, but you just don't know how?

In this episode:

• I talk about boundaries and the real reason you may not be able to set or keep your boundaries.
• I share the role of nervous system deregulation when trying to say "No".
• I explore common beliefs that many people have that stop them from setting healthy boundaries.
• Find out the real reason that saying "No" feels so hard.

Do you have relationships with other people in your life that emotionally trigger you?

Whether it is a parent, partner, sibling, friend, co-worker or even your child, every time you speak to or interact with this person it just sets you off!

You feel angry, frustrated and tearful after every interaction with them.

Perhaps you think – “Why do I even bother?”, “They are so stubborn!” or “Why are they being like this?”.

• I explore the beliefs and thoughts that may cause you to become triggered by your relationships.
• I share the go-to framework that I use to help me to make sense of and reframe conflict and challenging interactions with others into learning opportunities.
• A recent unlearning that I had to do when someone emotionally triggered me.

Find out how you can use this framework to examine what is going on for you in your relationships so that you can have a more connected relationship with yourself and others.

As a mum, do you feel it is your responsibility to fix all your children's problems and shield them from heartbreak?  

Do you take on all of their worries as if they are your own?

Do you struggle with the need to control them and their lives and find it difficult to let go?

Me too!

In today's episode: 

• I share the story of how my daughter turning 18 stirred up strong feelings and beliefs in me. 
• I explore the unlearning lessons that were highlighted for me through this experience.
• I uncover the Mother Archetype and the shadow of the Mother, the Selfless Mother and her three core beliefs that I find challenging during this season of motherhood.
• Discover if you have any of these common Selfless Mother beliefs!

We all have all told them, innocent-seeming 'white lies'.  

Some of these 'white lies' have originated from us.  And some 'white lies' have been passed to us by our parents and we unthinkingly pass them to our children. 

It seems like such a natural process 'a family tradition' almost, that it doesn't even occur to us that we have a choice in the matter.  These 'lies' seem so innocent that we really don't question whether they are right or wrong or what the long term effects of telling them will be.

Today, I am stirring up a bit of controversy with Easter coming up. 

I am questioning whether or not we should be encouraging our children to believe in mythical holiday characters such as Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. However, this could be applied to any untruth we tell our kids really.

Join me for the discussion where I will be chatting about:

• The Maiden Archetype and who she is.
• My experiences as a mother who did encourage her children to believe in the Easter Bunny.
• How the finding out of my 'white lies' affected my children and how they found out.
• What I would have done differently.

What is your take on this?  Send me a message @tanyavalentinnz (Instagram and Facebook)

Today on the show we chat about You and Your Emotions.  

There are very few things in life more disempowering than overwhelming emotions. 

Throughout our lives, we receive so many confusing messages about ourselves and our emotions and what we are allowed or not allowed to feel.

You may have been told - "you are too sensitive" or "you are so emotional".  And you may have taken this to believe that emotions are something to avoid or fear.  When we view our emotions as 'bad' we make parts of ourselves 'bad' disconnects us further from ourselves.

Here are some of the things we explore in this episode:

• How our early relationships shape how we process our emotions.
• Our meta-emotions philosophy and why you may need to unlearn it.
• How we can use all of our emotions as important information to reconnect with ourselves, and what we need.

One of our first stumbling blocks in our healing journey is to unlearn our fear and beliefs about shadow work.  

For many of us confronting our shadow selves triggers immense pain and discomfort and can feel like a fate worse than death!

In this episode I explore:

• Just what our shadow self and shadow work are.
• I uncover how our shadow self is born and why we associate so much fear and shame with our shadow selves.
• How we can cast loving attention to our shadow and accept and integrate our shadow and our light selves.

In our lives we all make unconscious agreements with ourselves, others and life about who we are and what we are capable of.  

This process of "agreement-making" starts from when we are very young and these agreements become the foundation from which we create our lives. Our agreements determine the actions or inaction that we will take, the relationships we enter into and what we think we are capable of.

Until we make these unconscious agreements conscious, we will continue to repeat the same behaviours over and over again in vain, hoping for a different result.

This can cause us to feel stuck, frustrated, depressed, angry and even bitter with ourselves and how our lives have turned out.

If we want to create positive change in our lives we have to choose positive new actions.

• The first step in creating this change is to become aware of our "shoulds", "musts" and "have to's" - the commitments we made before we had the gift of discernment. 
• We then need to consciously decide which of these we would like to keep and which of these we would like to rewrite for ourselves. 
• The final step is to integrate and maintain our new agreements (which is best done with the help of a mentor to keep us accountable).

In this episode, I talk about my old agreements and the new commitments I have chosen to replace them with.  Perhaps we have some in common?

This is a good opportunity for you to reflect on your unconscious agreements and unlearn alongside me.