I Needed To Understand Why I Was Acting The Way I Was
When we first connected, I was struggling both to stay calm and with being kind to my kids and narcissistic mother. I felt like I desperately needed help to understand why I was acting the way I was.
I would frequently yell and snap at them and then feel guilty about it later so I was looking for techniques (beyond breathing – this had been prescribed by my old therapist but wasn’t working) to help me calm down and enable me to act in a less primitive and reactive way.
During our coaching series, I understood that I am the way that I am because of how my narcissist mother raised me - she would always try to make me feel guilty in order to get me to do what she wanted. Now, I no longer feel guilty about what she says to me, no matter how hurtful or mean she is. And I just block her calls when I’ve had enough.
A light bulb turned on for me when I realized that I was driving myself crazy trying to rationalize with my mom when she cannot be rationalized with. Now that I’ve realized that narcissists ignore boundaries, I try to limit my time with her. I’ve also realized that I do in fact, do enough but that this will never be enough for her.
Since finishing my coaching series, I’m more patient and not so reactive with my kids. And when I lose it, I apologize, I let them know that I was wrong and I say sorry. I have also taken up kickboxing to release my physical aggression (which is helping a lot).
In terms of how my relationships have changed, when I started coaching, I was dating someone who couldn’t let go of his bad habits. I realized that he was not right for me and once I’d let him go, I met a wonderful man who can help me to grow because he is understanding and supportive of my self-improvement journey.
What surprised me most about this journey was how long it has taken me to not care about what my mom thinks and says. But Lavinia helped me to understand that I’m making tremendous progress and that I need to keep replacing old habits with new ones.
I still struggle sometimes and healing is a continuous process. But knowing that Lavinia had similar experiences with her kids and her mom made her empathy and understanding of the issues I was dealing with invaluable.
Indeed, I went back to my therapist after my coaching had ended and realized that she doesn’t understand me at all or even close to how Lavinia understood me. It’s hard to find someone who truly experienced what you experienced and was able to get past it.
My biggest learning during coaching was that I am the parent that I am as a result of how I was parented. I know now that I can retrain my inner child to no longer require my mother’s love and validation and to stop reacting to her guilt-tripping me to do things for her.
All I need to do now is to parent my inner child so that she can receive unconditional love and validation and to let her express herself how she wants to.
Coaching helped me get to the root of why I act the way that I do and showed me how to change the way that I interact with my kids and mom – I was able to understand the origin of my behaviors and to learn the tools that I can continue to work with to improve my patience and empathy.
~ Karen Nguyen, pharmaceutical industry executive & mama, USA