Confession Tuesday "He Acts Like My Mom" 10-8-13

Local life coach Rebecca Silence is in studio. Inspired results. Coach.com and today is the eighth, which means we are one, two, three weeks from today is Confession Tuesday live.

Confession Tuesday Live.

I'm very excited. Yeah, it's at, it's at mvcc. And check out either my Facebook page or Rebecca's Facebook page. And the posters on there gives you all the details and links. It's five bucks to get in.

Five bucks. It's free for MVCC students. We would love to have, have you there.

Absolutely. And it's not, it's a, it's an actual show.

Unscripted. Anything can happen.

Oh, don't tell me that.

But it's true and I don't know how to lie.

It is, it is, it is true. It is true. And nothing that happens there will happen on the radio. It's completely, it's all confidential.

Anything that happens there, nobody else gets to see.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's like Vegas except, except on the parkway. So, so that is happening on Tuesday, October 29. It is confess Tuesday live. Here's how we roll here on a, on a Confession Tuesday. You email in and let us know what's going on in your world. Rebecca Silence is a life coach. She's not a therapist. She's not a, you know, psychiatrist. She is a life coach. And that's completely different thing. It's, it's, it's, it's apples and oranges and some people don't really realize that.

Yeah. So what I'm doing is I am diagnosing the patterns, the mental blocks and emotional issues that you've had that keep creating the same experiences over and over again in your life. So we're going to create action, you know, solution, focused plans for you to move forward and whatever area it is that you're struggling. It could be a relationship, family stuff, career, whatever it is, we tackle it.

So email bigpapacnykiss.com B I G P O P P A@cnykiss.com alright, so email right now. Dear Rebecca and Big Papa, I listen to you guys every Tuesday morning. You guys are very inspiring. I've been with my beau for 17 years. He's been a great dad to my 17 year old daughter from a previous marriage. Two years ago he lost his job. He was not able to find work for over a year. Then his mother died last summer. He has shut me out. I tried to be there when he lost his job. We were there when his mother died. The emotional support was there and we loved her. Too and know how much he loved his mother. In the last year, he's kind of turned into his mother. His mannerisms. He treats me like he is my mother. We don't sleep together anymore, yet he still makes my bed. He makes my lunch like I'm a child. He asks every day if I ate and if I liked what he made. It has not helped that my daughter went away to college in August. It was very stressful on me since he would not help with the college stuff. First time clueless. I've had anxiety problems to the point where I could not leave the house. Have gotten better over the past few weeks. Dealing with being alone, not lonely. I tried to get him to move out of my house. But tonight when he came home, I asked him if he would consider counseling. His first response was, quote, depends on how much it costs. But then he said yes. I think I was more upset with the first response.

Thanks for your email. You know, you have lots of layers here. There's grief and loss, there's empty nest, there's anxiety, there's. How do you create new excitement in your relationship after the kids go to college? There's so many things here. There's also a lot of what I'm gonna describe as codependence underneath the surface and everything you're writing. And here's why I'm saying that there seems to be a neediness on both ends. And this happens in so many relationships, not just yours. This is what we're modeled in the relationships that, that we all see in this society. It's where, you know, Jerry Maguire, you complete me. I need you to be a certain way for me to be okay. You need me to start to be a certain way for you to be okay. And it just doesn't have to be that way in my experience. And I think that's where relationships end up blowing up. Because both people lose their identity and codependence and then they get resentful and then they want to start over and find who they are again. Well, what I'm suggesting is that you can find who you are again while staying in the relationship. You don't have to leave and start over to find yourself again. You've come this far with your partner. There are going to be roadblocks and hurdles. Hurdles and issues in any relationship.

Oh, sure.

So expecting to. Alright, this is just too much for me to handle right now. So I'm gonna bag it and now I'm gonna start over with someone new. Well, that's all good and fine. You'll have fresh love in the beginning. But guess what? Now you have the whole past relationship baggage on top of all the baggage you already had in the new relationship. So the problems don't go away if we step over them. Consider the possibility that you know exactly what it is that you need. When I hear anxiety, what I hear is incongruence. That there's incongruence in your life around who you are and what you know you want in the world and what you're doing in the world.

Okay, explain. Say that in a different way because I don't understand. I don't know. I don't know the word incongruence. So help me out here.

Incongruent is where things don't add up.

Okay?

Right. So you're wanting something, but you're doing things that are guaranteed not to get you what you want.

Okay?

Okay.

So in other words, incongruence is like common core math, is what you're saying right now.

I'm saying it doesn't add up at all. And you don't have to be, you know, saying one thing and doing another ever. But that's what happens. When I hear anxiety, when I hear depression, I just hear, okay. You don't have your life set up for you to have the things that you want, and you're sick of it. And you're not using your voice or doing behaviors that will get you closer to what you want. You're doing behaviors and listening to the voices in your head that take you farther away from what you want.

Okay, so with, you know, with this situation, with all the different layers, what is step one for the person who emailed him?

So step one is quit allowing things that you don't want. That's not on your husband. That's on you. If you don't want him to make your bed or make you food, ask him, please let me make my breakfast and please let me make my bed. You have enough to deal with on your own. But if you're constantly allowing the behavior and see, this is where things can get slippery. A lot of times in my couples coaching, somebody will say, well, I'm telling them not to do it. Come on, Rebecca. I'm telling them not to. But then if you say no and you keep going along with it, your actions aren't backing up what you're doing, right? Or what you're saying. They follow what you're actually doing. People don't pay attention to what you're saying. Kids don't pay attention to what you're saying either. Right. We just follow what people are doing. The actions are what speak.

Absolutely.

It's just the way it is. So if you're saying no, but then you go along with it, I'm gonna suggest you're still allowing and tolerating the behaviors that you don't want. So you're sending a mixed message, is what I'm hearing loudest in this email. You're saying, you know, I don't want these things to happen. And then you're quietly allowing it and also saying that you can't leave the house, that you're too anxious. So that just sends a mixed message to your husband because you're. You're representing yourself in a way that maybe he thinks you really do need some support.

Right.

But if you're saying you don't want it, then how are you showing up to make sure that you're representing yourself as an independent person?

Okay, so how do you start to hold your ground, if you will, and prove your point, but yet not start a fight? Because a lot of times when people try to, you know, stand firm on something, it turns into a fight. Is there a way to kind of do that without butting heads?

Absolutely. So, number one hot tip, start paying attention to what's going on with you. Get off of him. It's so much easier for you to look at what you think he's doing wrong than to look at yourself and how you're a part of this situation. You each have 50%. So the first thing is to only focus on you. Quit focusing on him. And then I love to have these difficult conversations in a way that isn't accusatory or blaming. It's just saying, this is what I'm needing that I'm not getting. This is what I'm wanting, that I'm not getting. This is what I'm after in my relationship. Start talking about what you want from your experience instead of an ultimatum. Almost like, you need to do this or else, or what's the matter with you? I need this to change. We wouldn't want people telling us what to do different. So I. Why would your partner respond? Well, yeah, it's all that type of.

Thing with that kind of a thing. It's almost. It's all about how you approach it. Right? You know, how you start the conversation. If you start the conversation a certain way, you know, you know, almost like forcefully, people are going to backtrack and, you know, be defensive rather than open up and actually have a conversation.

So if you can get out of defensive mode and just honestly start saying, I want more emotional intimacy in the relationship. Maybe we need to do dates. I want us to be a partnership. I feel like you're taking care of me, and there's not balance. What I'm really looking for is. Is balance and happiness again. Are you up for that? It's so different than you really have to start changing. I need you to do this. I need you to do that. Go to a therapist. That's probably not going to get you the response that you're looking for. So number one hottest, hottest tip out of all of this is just be in charge of your experience. Get off of him and start identifying. What are you doing that's getting you closer to what you want?

And.

And what are you doing that's getting you farther from what you want?

Because the only thing you can control is you.

Absolutely. And it doesn't justify other people's behavior. It doesn't make other people okay. It's just you don't have control over them. So focus on you. Everyone out there listening. Focus on you and what you want. And I know that can be really difficult, but just flirt with the possibility anyway.

Local life coach Rebecca silence in studio. It is a confession Tuesday. Email bigpapa@cnykiss.com and of course, you can like her on Facebook. You can follow her on Twitter at. Inspired results and more of your emails coming up. It's a confession Tuesday here on Kiss fm.