Sarah Etman Life Coaching

Before you make all your goals for the year, wake up. Nothing can start without alignment. You are the light. Start with that knowledge. With that knowing, you can’t fail.

Thankful.

First day of school.  First day of school.(Finding Nemo 🎶)

This post is a little late as I hesitated to share this.  I stepped foot on my old college campus for the first time in 25 years.

In 2018 I had to do a background check for a job at a rehab facility. HR came back to me and said that my education came back as “some college.”  I had no idea what that meant. They explained to me that I completed “some college” and did not receive my psychology degree. Strange considering I had walked in the ceremony with my family and fiancée present. I got married and then pregnant and then never looked back. After I got over the denial, shock and anger, I finally decided to apply for college, again.

I share this part of my life because initially I thought it was embarrassing and hard to admit. I turned 47 today and I am sandwiched between students that are younger than my sons.  I thought it would be stranger than it actually is. I’m proud of myself and now that I’m here, I’m happy that I didn’t let my fear stop me from following my, not linear, path.

Kids do well if they can.

Challenging kids are lacking the skills of flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, skills most of us take for grated.

Complying with adult directives requires those skills. Interacting adaptively with other people- parents, siblings, teachers, peers, coaches, and teammates- does too. Handling disagreements requires those skills, so does completing a difficult homework assignments or dealing with a change in plan.

Understanding why your child is challenging is the first step. - The Explosive Child by Dr. Ross W. Greene

Bold reminders:

1. Pause- Breathe. Scan your body. What are you feeling? Breathe again. What are you needing? Breathe again. Do not exhale or blow out in anger. Actually breathing in and out to gain a sense of grounding.

2. He isn’t giving me a hard time, he’s having a hard time.- see him struggling. Struggling with big feelings he cannot process. Struggling with big feelings that he cannot communicate in a better way. It’s not about you at this time.

3. Empathy First- give empathy for the feelings you observed before you give a lecture or teach a better way or share your wisdom.

4. Connection before Direction- before you can ask for something from him, you must be connected. He must feel safe with you. He must feel connected to you. You must have his attention first. Then you can ask for what you need from him.

Children do not know. They do not know their worth. They do not know they are enough. It is our job to teach them. To remind them. To make sure they know we know. To be unwavering in our knowing. To be educated and inquisitive in what outward behaviors and inward worth look like.

Yes, your heart will break for them.

Yes, you will wish you could take away their pain.

You will have to sit with that feeling. You are not the one in need right now. What they need is a reminder of who they are. They can take their time in the pit but need to be certain that they have access to a ladder. Their pain only made it invisible to them. 🪜

How many times has the thought of the past repeating itself paralyzed you?

The past creates fear. The future creates anxiety. The past already happened and the future hasn’t happened yet. Only the feelings of fear and anxiety are manifesting in your physical body. Paralyzing you and making you unable to function. Thinking and processing the thousands of probabilities in your head will not help control the outcome.

Hold on to your chair or your steering wheel. Recognize that you are in the present, the now. Breathe. Know that it is not happening right now. You are a new person, with a new perspective entering a new experience. There is no way for the result to be exactly the same.

Even though your thoughts are very convincing, your body knows best. Listen to the subtle hints your body is giving you.

You begin to sweat
Body: Hey, you are starting to think again.

Your heart starts racing
Body: Wake up ⏰ You are still thinking!

You start to have trouble breathing
Body: Warning ⚠️ Check your thoughts ⚠️

Make your own personal correlations between your body and mind. Be aware and in tune with yourself. It’s still ok if you ignore the first signs. Once you do notice, freeze. Adjust your thinking. It could prevent a panic attack.

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Pause
Test it
Start over

3 easy steps that you can do to adjust how you feel.

⒈ Pause ⏸ Push the pause button on your thinking when you feel terrible.

⒉ Test it. Put your thinking through the test. Who said it? Who is they? What was actually said? Not what you thought you heard through the filter of your wound. Is it true? Do you believe it? Do you still believe it? Or are you just used to believing it?

⒊ Start over. Now that you have new information. Begin the same process but now with a different perspective. The truth. Not the history of all the evidence you have collected to support your old thinking. You can always begin again.

Do these 3 steps whenever you feel bad. It starts with awareness. It may be very frequent at first. But the more you put your thoughts through the test, the less they hold value. Setting you free from old thinking. I can remind you any time you need the assistance in the beginning of your journey or any time you get stuck. We all could use a little help with our blind spots.

Coping mechanisms saved us. They helped us “stay together” when the world was falling apart around us. What if there are healthier coping strategies yet to learn. That you are now ready to replace the thing that you thought helped you, with the thing that will set you free.

There is always an undiscovered association with the trauma and the behavior. Maybe the narrative that we have been repeating for years, is leaving out what really happened. Maybe we can heal and not lose anything. We can evolve into who we want to be, keeping innocence and releasing pain.