Ep #112: The Blame Game

[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] So I woke up this morning. I'm out on a very, very cold walk. We had our first snow last night. Halloween was like a little blizzard. I woke up this morning and with a really heavy heart. The last few days of coaching with my clients, and I apologize for the road noise. I hope that we can work through it together 'cause I really wanted to talk to you. The last few days of coaching, and it's not just the three days, it's a consistent theme, so many of my beautiful clients, you beautiful women out there have been in relationship with someone who is an addict, or someone who just doesn't have the ability to be a functioning adult yet, and that puts all the responsibility on your shoulders. Yes, you take on that responsibility, because we do, that's what moms do. But there's a lot that's coming up, for these women, with these men who are either in active addiction or coming and going out of their lives, disappearing, coming back, showing up in really unhealthy ways around the children, and sometimes we can't get our kids out of that situation. The courts are just so jacked up that unless there's something really offensive, really abusive, they let the parent have access to your children. And it's heartbreaking, and it breaks my heart every time we have these conversations. And we can't change the court system, but what I wanted to talk about today is the blame game, because the blame game is one of those things that we do as humans that can really be an insidious disease that consumes us. And what do I mean by that? Well, when I'm talking to with my clients and you guys out there, and you're telling me about the situations you're in, whether it's addiction, whether it's infidelity, whether it's betrayal, it's really easy to look at the other person's behavior and blame them. They're the ones that are clearly doing the things that make you unable to be in relationship with them. They're the ones that are clearly missing the mark as it relates to being a parent and a co-parent. And there's two things about this. Yes, okay, it is true. That is what they're doing. But when we get stuck in the blame game, we do it in a way often that we don't even know we're there. It just feels like truth. It's like, "Well, Mikki, this is just the way it is," and we start to just blame them. Blame them for one thing, blame them for the next thing, and soon we're just blaming them for everything. We are handing over our power and not able to move forward because we had got stuck in this insidious blame. Because the blame keeps us in two places; either self-righteous, where we are better than and looking down on the other person, or it keeps us in a victim place where we are handcuffed, where we are held hostage by their behavior and what they're doing. Neither of those places offer you the ability to move forward. And again, there's often times so many people around us saying, "You don't deserve this. This isn't okay." And all of that is true, and it's what mindset we take on. It's how we start to absorb what's going on, what the reality is, because frankly, you are in charge of your experience of a situation. You are the one that gets to decide what the story is, and you are the one that gets to choose how you show up within it, not the other person, not what they are, or are not doing. But when we get stuck in the blame game, which is so easy to slip into, we just get stuck, and we either get stuck into that self-righteousness or the victim, but neither feel good. Neither allow you the opportunity to move forward. And so part of it is just being willing to take an honest inventory about where you are, especially if you're in a situation where clearly the other person is making really bad, unhealthy choices. What can you do about it? Well, what you can do about it is choose your response to it, how you're gonna show up. And part of that is understanding, if there is addiction going on, that other person, that's not them. They are another version of them, but it's not the person that you are in relationship with. It's not the healthy version of them that you want to be in relationship, and so really being present to what is in front of you and making a choice from there. And it's also really important to have a vision. I've talked a lot about the lighthouse, creating a lighthouse for what you want, who you want to be, how you wanna live your life, the people you wanna surround yourself with, and you start to build that vision in your mind's eye. And this is something that I work with each of my clients on at the very beginning to start to build this vision, because we need a lighthouse to come to, because when we get stuck in the blame game or we get stuck in the feeling sorry for other people, or feeling like we don't have anything to do, we need a direction to move forward. You need to be able to see where you wanna go, how you wanna feel, and then start to backtrack, start to reverse-engineer, well, how am I gonna get there? If I wanna be calm and grounded and strong and capable, what is one thing that I can do right now? Well, one thing would be to make sure that you're out of the blame game. Just stop. It's like giving yourself a mental boundary of when you start to think it's not fair, they did this. Stop and say to yourself, "This happened. Now what?" That question, now what, really starts to shift the power back into your side of the street to say, this happened. Now, what am I gonna do? How do I wanna show up? If I wanna move towards that lighthouse, if I wanna be that calm, grounded, strong, loving mom for my children, what would she do? And asking yourself, what would she do in this situation? She's not gonna sit there and blame anybody. She's not gonna wowez me, and she's not gonna jump and attack and do all of that. She might step one direction towards or away to move forward in a more positive direction. It's just, what's the next step? Now what? And so I wanted to sort of bring this to all of our attention because it's a conversation that I have, again, with so many moms and women, and frankly, there's dads out there dealing with this as well, and it feels really dis-empowering, and we need somebody to remind us that you're not dis- empowered. They aren't in charge of you. They aren't in charge of your experience. Yes, they can make it more difficult. Yes, they can make it really impassive, but you are the only one that gets the final say in your experience of this and how you're gonna move forward. But just a reminder to you, that really you have more power, and when you start to take responsibility, I know I talked about that in Episode 110, when you start to take responsibility, meaning deciding how you are going to respond, you become a more powerful version of you, and that is what your children need to see, especially when they're seeing the opposite, especially when they're dealing with another parent who maybe is not present or making really unhealthy decisions, or putting them in harm's way. Your job isn't to make up for that, your job is to be the strong leader in your home, the example of how you wanna live, to live an aligned healthy life, so that they can be a functioning successful adults. We all say we want our kids to be happy, but actually is that all we want for them? Just happiness? No, we want them to be strong and resilient, and empowered and confident. And they need to watch you do that. You are the example for them of what an adult looks like, of what a mom looks like, of what a woman looks like, and how are you gonna handle adversity because adversity comes for all of us. That's just the human experience. But how are you gonna show up? How are you gonna get up every morning, put your feet on the ground and choose to live in alignment with positivity, with resilience and with love? You can do this, my friend. I know that you can, and I am here to help you. Until next week, take really, really good care of you. Oh, and one more thing, the legal stuff. This podcast is solely intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for any medical advice. Please consult your physician or a qualified medical professional for personalized medical advice. [music] Thanks for listening to Co-parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week. [music]