Ep #80: Hard Conversation Guide for People Pleasers

[music] Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly wanna be. My name is Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well, get ready and let's dive into today's episode. [music] Welcome back to the podcast. I've got a question for you, do you hate having hard conversations? Does the sheer thought of having those tough conversations and people potentially being unhappy with you or disappointed or downright mad at you, just stop you in your tracks? Does conflict and the idea of it cause so much stress for you that you don't even wanna avoid it, so you find yourself not speaking up? Well, you're not alone. And I wanted to create a little cheat sheet to get you past the fear and into speaking up, because this is one of the keys of co-parenting well. But before we dive into the episode, I wanna invite you to an upcoming workshop that I have on April 24th. It's all about learning how to de-stress your parenting. Listen, stress is inevitable, absolutely, but we can either be proactive or reactive, and this online workshop is going to help all of you stressed out moms learn the simple, effective skills to reduce your stress in co-parenting so that you can feel more confident without needing the other co-parents permission or participation. It is possible to feel less stressed even when your co-parenting partner tries to stress you out. I promise you it's possible, and I want you to get your spot and your ticket to this workshop. So I was on with a client the other day, and we were talking about a conversation that she had to have, and it was going to be a "hard conversation." She'd been avoiding it for quite some time. Even in our sessions, she would step towards it a little bit and then back up. "No, no, no, no, no. I'm not ready, not yet." All of these things I see happen so often with moms that I work with, but what happens is when we don't address things and we keep pushing them down or prolonging them, we inevitably add more, more to the problem, more to the chaos. And so why do we do this? Well, a lot of times we don't know how to have hard conversations. We don't feel like we really know what to say or how to say it so that the other person is gonna be okay with it. Maybe we're a little bit of a people pleaser, and I'm not calling you out because I am a people pleaser. Every day I'm a recovering people pleaser. But that's who I am. I really don't like for people to be unhappy with me or dislike me, so I've had to learn to do a lot of work to be okay with myself and let other people deal with their emotions and that's their responsibility. But let's get back to the task at hand. Because a lot of people pleasers, we just wanna be nice. We just wanna be accommodating. We just wanna go with the flow, aka, giving in, saying yes even when you mean no just to avoid the uncomfortableness that you don't wanna feel. But avoiding the conversation or hoping that it'll just get better doesn't work, especially in co-parenting. And I get it, you don't wanna be the bad guy, and you don't wanna be misunderstood yet again. I feel you, but what we're gonna go through today are all a simple way for you to be able to frame the conversation so that you are confident in what you wanna say, how to say it, and then what to do next. Okay. So just like the vast majority of things that we talk about here, it starts with vision. It starts with your values. Everything begins there, because this is really about building your why. We have to understand in any given situation why we wanna do something, because that's where the magic lies. What is it that you think you will feel or how will you be different if you were able to have this hard conversation, if you were able to move past this conflict, over this hurdle? It's really directing to what it is that you truly want and desire. So we have to start with understanding your why, getting clear on what the issue actually is. Here's why most people avoid the conversation, because it seems like there's so many things that are going wrong or so many issues at hand, it's like you don't even know where to begin, but that's where we have to start untangling things and picking one issue that you wanna address. And it's looking at it from a long-term vision. Again, that vision and values work is always, "What do I want in the future? What do I want my life to look like? How do I wanna be as a co-parent and a mom? What do I want my children and the other co-parent to feel in my presence?" These are all really good questions to ask yourself so that you can start to build your why, start to build your vision for what it is that you desire. Why does all this matter? Because in a hard conversation, you're gonna be uncomfortable, that's just part of the deal. Whenever we're addressing things, being vulnerable, or putting ourselves in a position where there could be an argument back and forth, or even just conversation back and forth, oftentimes we get triggered and we get worried. We get stressed and that's why we avoid it. So instead, we wanna be really clear on why we're doing it, because when we have a compelling why, what it is you truly desire, you're far more willing to go through the uncomfortableness to get to it. And so many times, like my client when I was talking to the other day, she has never been very good at speaking up for herself, and during our sessions, we really traced it back to why. Well, she was raised in a time and in a home where kids were supposed to be seen and not heard, especially girls. She was supposed to be the good girl. Good girls don't have needs. Good girls don't ask for things. Good girls just make everyone else happy. And so she's had a long-standing belief that she should be seen and not heard, that she doesn't really need anything, and that other people's needs come before hers. Well, no. That was a hard no. We had to bust that limiting belief right where it stood. And you know what, I had the same one. And so it takes time, and part of what it also takes is having the courage and the initiative to start moving forward and to start being seen, being heard, allowing you to matter, allowing what's important to you to matter because it does matter. Whatever you are feeling and thinking is valid, it is worthy. Now, it doesn't mean we have to shout from the rooftops every opinion we have or every thought, but when something is really important to you, you deserve to be heard. And that's why this compelling "why" starts with who do you wanna be, what do you wanna believe about yourself, and what is important to you as a mom and a co-parent? Because when we start to look at it from that angle, we're far more willing to be uncomfortable, to be able to push past and reframe those limiting beliefs that hold us back. And listen, here's the thing, if you don't have the hard conversation, that's a choice, but it's also saying something. Every time that we choose not to speak up, that we choose to brush things under the rug, it's inevitably either condoning or agreeing with, because we're not saying no. Silence is loud, and do you want your silence to be speaking for you? So what I wanted to do is create a little bit of a cheat sheet, how to have these conversations so that you can feel more confident going in, during, and after. So I'm gonna walk you through the steps that I walked my client through. So the first thing starts with what I was just talking about, knowing your why. Why is it important? You have to know your why before you go in. So once you have that why, that thing that matters to you most. Well, then we're gonna walk through the steps. So we are going to make a request of the other person, a request for their time to have the conversation. We're not gonna spring it on them 'cause do you like having things like that sprung on you? No. So ask for a time. Say, "I need to speak about this, when is a good time for you?" Now, they may never wanna do it, and I understand, and we can go to plan B later on that, but we're just gonna stick with requesting the time. Then you also make the request of what you need, what you are asking for. So that might be something like, "I have something I wanna talk to you about our co-parenting relationship. I would simply ask that you hear me out, and then when I'm done speaking, I wanna hear what you have to say." So you are welcoming them into the conversation. The next step once you've gotten buy-in on that, is you use one specific example. We're not using all the ways that they've wronged you, all the ways that they're screwing up the co-parenting relationship, all the ways they're letting down the kids. No, we're gonna stay really focused on the one thing that is a problem. So we're gonna go through all the steps and then I'll come back and we can go through an example so that it makes sense in real time. So we're gonna define your why, we're going to request a time to talk, and then we are gonna request what it is that you need. After that you're gonna choose the one specific example. This isn't all the things, it's one thing that you're going to say tangibly. One issue at one time. Once you state that, then you're gonna state how it made you feel, "When this happened, I felt blank." Once you've gotten through the example and how it made you feel, you are going to stop, and that's when you listen to what they have to say. Now, this isn't listening to respond or listening to jump in, it's really listening to understand. Because the next step is you are going to restate what it is that you heard. When we're listening to understand, we're listening in a way that we're trying to really look below the surface, versus when we're having a conversation with someone and we're listening and we're thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna say this next. Oh, I'm gonna say this next. Oh, I'm gonna get him there." That's listening to respond. That's just getting sort of one up on the next person. What I'm talking about is really calming your nervous system, breathing, and listening to understand. So then you are gonna restate what you heard and ask, "Did I understand it correctly?" Then once you've done that, you're going to come back to restating your why, and then make any additional requests that you have. So that's the process. So now I wanna walk you through sort of a client example. So my client has a co-parenting partner who is very unreliable on the days that he will take the kids. Sometimes it works out that he can follow through on the agreement of time that they have, and then there's other times where something will always inevitably come up, his car isn't fixed, he doesn't have this done, he doesn't have that done. And then it puts my client in the position of having to adjust everything to care for the kids. Now, of course, she's happy to do that because they're her children who she loves, but the problem is, is that it's always on his time, and she's finding herself always being at the mercy of whatever sort of state, emotionally or otherwise, that he's in, and it's just not working. And she's been not saying anything, and she's been just trying to drop hints here and there, but they're usually laced with sort of sarcasm and resentment and bitterness, and she's just tired of it. She doesn't like the way that she's showing up. And so we agreed it was time to have a hard conversation. So for her, she had to really figure out what was her why. Well, her why is that she wants to have a co-parenting relationship where they both respect one another and work together. That they can be collaborative and they can be flexible, but they also can build trust and cooperation. So that was her why. So she asked, "Can we please have a sitdown on this date?" and he agreed. So she went in and she told him, "I wanna have a conversation with you about something that's been coming up, because I want to move forward in a collaborative cooperative way. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to tell you what's been going on, and then I wanna hear what you have to say. Can you agree to that? Please let me speak and then you can speak." He agreed. So she told him, "Last Tuesday, when you texted me at 9 o'clock at night to tell me that you couldn't pick up the kids from school the next day and you needed an extra day, I then had to rearrange my entire schedule, and I felt dismissed. I felt like my needs and my schedule don't matter, and I felt like you were walking all over me, and I don't like it." Paused, now he got to respond. So he gave all of the things, the excuses, all of the stuff, and they had a little bit of back-and-forth. What she did very well was she restated what she heard at each back-and-forth. He would say something and she would respond, "I hear you saying that you're not prepared, is that correct?" "Well, yes." "Okay. I hear you saying that you need help, is that correct?" "Yes." She sort of restated it back so that there couldn't be any miscommunication on either of their parts. Then after she felt like she had a good picture of what was going on, she restated her why, "Because I wanna have a cooperative collaborative relationship with you, what I need is for you to let me know by Sunday if you need to make any changes to the parenting time." Now, this still allowed for there to be changes in the parenting time, but it also gave her the space to be able to handle it differently so that it didn't cause as much stress, so that they could figure out is there a way that he could still take them, if she needed to help, or if she needed to bring in help for herself so that it didn't impact her work. Notice she wasn't asking him to stop doing what he was doing and only be perfect from here on out. She heard that he was struggling. She heard that he needed help. And so in the spirit of collaboration and cooperation, she created a little bit more space for both of them to be able to navigate the issue. But all of that was only possible because she got really clear on what was important to her, and she allowed herself to just focus on this one problem, not all the problems, 'cause trust me, there's many, many more that we work through together. But this one problem for her was proving to be something that happened over and over and over and was really becoming a spur on her side. And so instead of letting it really dig in and annoy her, she just decided, "I've got to deal with this," and so we came up with this simple plan for her to be able to move forward and have this conversation. All of us wanna be more confident as co-parents, as moms, in relationship with all the people in our lives, but that confidence comes from taking action. It doesn't come from not speaking up, not saying what we have to say, or shying away from the tough conversations. Confidence comes from being willing to be honest with yourself, first and foremost, and then speak up. It is time to speak up. It is time to tell your truth. You matter. What you want matters. Just because someone else says that that's not true, doesn't make it not true. You get to decide what's true for you. And so what I'd like to offer you is that you have every ability to have these tough conversations, you're actually the exact perfect person to have the conversation, and it's all about supporting yourself so that you know that you are safe and okay no matter what happens, no matter what they say. And so I hope you can use this little cheat sheet to get clarity on how you wanna go in to the conversation, how to structure the conversation, and how to end the conversation, because the better you get at this, the more liberation you have, the more confidence you have, and frankly, this is when co-parenting relationships start to really shift, when one person is willing to be uncomfortable in the effort to make positive progress. And I get it, the other person might not like what you're saying, they might not wanna listen, and they might not wanna be cooperative, but that doesn't mean that you don't get to speak up. And here's the other thing, have a little faith, even if they say, "You're crazy, this isn't gonna happen, blah, blah, blah," they can have a total rant and rave, it doesn't mean that you haven't planted a seed that will grow and bear fruit later. Sometimes we have to be willing to say what we have to say, and then let go. Let go of the outcome. Let go of their reaction. Their reaction is not your business, and it's not within your control. What is, is you speaking up and you telling your truth and you honoring what is true for you, and let your kids witness you do this. Maybe not the hard conversation part with the other co-parent, but let them see you speaking up. Let them see you not hiding and avoiding hard conversations. Speak up in little ways. It could just be in daily life, but so often we don't. We don't wanna say things that will upset anyone, but sometimes you being more honest with yourself and with them will help you be more honest across the board. So I hope this helps you. I hope this helps you give you some ideas and some structure for the next hard conversation that you might have to have. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I'm really grateful that you're here with me each week, friend. And if this has been a conversation that's helped you and you know someone who needs to hear this, please share it with them. Just take a screenshot on your phone and send it to them. And don't forget to subscribe, so you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes. Until next week, take really, really good care of you, friend. [music] Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week. [music]