S04|12 - What Authoritarian Parenting Looks Like 20 Years Later

 

If you were disciplined through more coercive measures- spanking, time-outs, grounding, bribing or threats… you may have felt like you turned out just fine. What does fine actually look like though? How is this affecting your current parenting and your current self? Let’s dig into what FINE looks like and learn about what “inner healing” really means.

In today’s episode:

• How our childhood affects our parenting now
• What the FAWN trauma/alarm response is
• How we internalize our failures and mistakes as parents and people
• Why living an inauthentic life leads to burn-out
• Why we’re so emotionally reactive and what to do about it

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Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, the Parenting Coach. I'm a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children. 

Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. 

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How our childhood affects our parenting now

Hi, and welcome to today's podcast, What Authoritarian Parenting Looks Like 20 Years Later. Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about what authoritarian parenting looks like 20 years later. 

So, what I really want to dig into in the next several episodes is connection; how we actually parent through connection – what that means, what blocks us from parenting through connection. We're going to have some great conversations about connection over the next few weeks. So, I'm excited for it, and I hope you are too.

 

Connection-based Parenting & Attachment-based Parenting Vs. Authoritarian Parenting

But for this first episode, I wanted to dig into the things that can block us from being able to parent in this way. So, that's why I call it what authoritarian parenting looks like 20 years later – because a lot of people you'll see comments on social media or maybe somebody's told you this in real life and are like, "My parents spanked", or "My parents use timeouts", or "They were really strict", or "They grounded us", or, you know, "They used rewards and punishments and we turned out totally fine".

And so, I was thinking about this the other day actually; and it was like, it just like hit me. I was like, 'Yeah, we did turn out fine, but what does fine look like?' 

And as I started to go through all of the things that I see and what 'fine' looks like with the people that I deal with – that were typically parented in this more authoritarian way – I narrowed it down to four, kind of, general areas, FINE… F-I-N-E… and that's the acronym that we're going to go over today is what FINE looks like.

I want to explain a little bit about what parenting through connection can look like, and then we'll dig into what 'fine' looks like. So, a long time ago, you've probably heard my story before, but I was really struggling to parent really at all, in any way.

I was very impatient and very reactive. I yelled a lot, I disconnected, I withdrew a lot; didn't love the kind of parent that I was, didn't really know how to change that… felt impatient and overwhelmed often. 

So, enter connection-based parenting, attachment-based parenting; I'm like, 'This is amazing, I love this approach.' And you would think that it helped – and that I, you know, took the courses and read the books and it really helped shift my parenting… but it didn't. 

I loved it and it resonated and it felt like truth; but then I had this expectation of what kind of a parent I should be, set even higher. I already had a pretty high bar about what I felt like it should be, and now it was like a super high bar of what I felt like it should be.

And honestly, I don't think the courses or the programs or the books really helped that much at that time. It helped to open my mind up to this form of parenting and like, 'Yeah, this is amazing and what's possible' – but I felt like it must not be possible for me; I must be a different kind of human where I just cannot figure this out because it's so hard. 

And I remember talking to another mom friend of mine and we had both gone to a course, a Parenting Course through one of the attachment-based parenting things. And she said the same thing. She was like, 'But how do you do it? Like, actually how, like, can you come to my house and show me how?' 

And that's exactly what I felt like. I just felt like I had even higher expectations, felt even worse about my failures as a parent, felt like I was failing them even more than I had thought before; and I had this glorious unicorn idea of what parenting should look like, and I was like continuously following far and far and far from that goal. 

What connection-based parenting can look like and what I wanted it to look like was; kids who obeyed and listened naturally because they felt an attachment and a connection to me. Us having fun together and connecting, them learning the skills that they need to learn through me. 

Not having to teach them so many things overtly, but having them learn what they needed to learn. You know, emotional resiliency and emotional intelligence and emotional regulation, all of those skills we want our kids to have; empathy, hard work, responsibility that they would learn that through me and learn that through connecting with them. That's what connection-based parenting is all about. 

But I felt like this was not working. I felt like my connection was even worse. In fact, I took my son home after kindergarten and decided to homeschool him just for a year or two because I really wanted to focus on our connection and our attachment. 

And I felt like that next year or two was even harder on our relationship. It was hard to have him home. It was hard to now be his teacher, not just his mom. It was hard when he didn't want to accept the teaching, I was trying to push into him. It just wasn't-- In my mind, it just was not working.

So, my goal with this podcast – not just this podcast episode, but like my entire show… the work that I do with my clients, the work that I do on IG or that you'll see in my emails and my workshops – is teaching this How. I feel like I finally found the golden ticket and was like, 'Oh, okay, now here's the how that I was looking for for years.'

 

What the FAWN trauma/alarm response is

So, I'm going to dig into the How – How-to connection-based parenting, what that looks like, and how we can do it – in the next few episodes. But a lot of the How is blocked because of our own current thinking, our own current beliefs and our own past beliefs that we often got in our own childhood. 

So, that's why this episode is all about that, what FINE looks like and how we can dig through and start our own inner healing. Somebody to me just today was like, 'What does inner healing, like, what does that mean to you?' 

And I was like, 'Good question.' I mean, coaches probably talk about it a lot, but it's probably not something you see just like tossed around a lot and you're like, what does that actually mean? 

So, that's what we're going to talk about today; what does inner healing-- what does fine look like? How is this blocking us from connection-based parenting? And once you start doing this work, then in the next couple of episodes we'll be digging more into connection; how we can-- how we can teach our kids through connection and what that looks like too.

 

The acronym, F-I-N-E

So, fine, we turned out just fine, F-I-N-E.

 

F = FAWN

F = FAWN. You may have heard Fight Flight or Freeze, they’re alarm responses. Our brain goes into alarm when it thinks there's something wrong, right? So, it goes into that Fight or Flight, or you may have heard of Freeze – but there's a fourth trauma response called Fawn. 

Fawn response is this; I'm going to read what I found on the dawnrehab.com, "More recently identified by mental health specialists, a “fawn” response is brought about by the attempt to avoid conflict and trauma by appeasing people." 

Does this sound familiar? You may have listened to my podcast episode called People-Pleasing Mamas. Now people-pleasing is something that a lot of our generation deals with, right? 

This came from the belief that we were in charge of other people's thoughts and feelings, that we were the one responsible for others' emotions and how they were feeling… that discomfort was a problem, that we didn't want them to feel that way – and that like now it was our problem, was our fault, and we had to go above and beyond and do something to make them feel better. 

That's what people pleasing is, that's what appeasing is, right? So, that that fourth alarm response can happen when we feel like we have to go above and beyond, give people even more than what they might be asking… say 'Yes' to people when we really want to say 'No'. Does this sound like you? 

Can you see the FAWN response in how maybe it's working in your life? I can totally see it in my life for so many times. I called myself a 'peacemaker'; I was like, 'Oh, I just like to help people feel better, I don't like conflict – I like avoiding conflict.' 

Almost like it was a badge of honor that I was this way. Instead of being like, 'Oh wait, their conflict is not my problem – their internal conflict that's going on with them or their conflict that's between the few people that are there, it might not even have to do with me.' 

But because I disliked conflict so much, I felt like it was my responsibility to go in, do something, say something, make everybody feel better, right? Over-pleasing, appeasing. And it's that instinctual response that just happens.

So, that’s F = FAWN.

 

I = Internalize

We internalize our mistakes and make them mean something about ourself, our value, our worth.

 

How we internalize our failures and mistakes as parents and people

So, what this could look like is; maybe I yell at my kids, or maybe I stay up really late watching Netflix and I'm super tired in the morning, or maybe I forget to send a giant art project to my kids' school. 

And maybe my brain perceives that as a mistake or a failure and almost immediately goes to, 'Oh, there's something wrong with me', 'I should have been able to figure this out… this is my fault. I shouldn't have done this.' 

And I start to feel really bad. And not just bad about what happened, but bad about myself as a person. Shame is, I am wrong; me as a person – guilt is, that behavior was wrong… what I did there wasn't okay; that's the difference there. 

So, internalization is when we take those mistakes and those failures, and we make them mean something about us and our worth as a person. 

 

N = Inauthentic

Now, N = Inauthentic; I know technically it starts with an 'i', but it's like an nnn sound. So, there you go, inauthentic. I came up with these myself, so maybe they're not perfect. 

Inauthentic is, I kind of put on this mask; I imagine how I think people perceive me or how I want them to perceive me, and that is how I act. It affects what I do, what I say, what I don't do, because I imagine that they have this perception of me and I want to uphold that. 

So, maybe it's even with my parents; maybe I went to a certain school, or chose a certain life path, or married a certain person, or picked a certain career because I really wanted to please them because I knew that that's what they wanted. 

But it was really inauthentic; it wasn't what I actually wanted to do, it wasn't what I was actually interested in, it wasn't the life I really felt like I wanted to be leading – but I felt like that's what I needed to… or even just in your day-to-day interactions, right? 

We start to think about other people's thoughts about us; 'Oh, they might not like this, or 'What do they think about this?' Or 'I don't know about this.' And so, then we start kind of acting into this mask. Being somebody that we're really not, can be really tiring – can be emotionally exhausting to be acting like somebody that you don't feel like you actually are deep inside. 

 

E = Emotionally Reactive

Now, many of you probably can relate to this, as I definitely can. And this means our response to other people's, you know, big emotions when they're really angry or they’re really sad or whatever; we might get really reactive to that, we might kind of match that emotion. 

Typically, this looks like my kid has a meltdown and I have a meltdown at them, right? I have an adult-size meltdown to their toddler meltdown – or to their teenage meltdown; that's what emotionally reactive is… versus responsive, right? I don't pause and calm, and intentionally make a response; it just happens very reactively.

And a lot of times that's going to look like yelling or shouting or calling names or saying things we don't really mean, using empty threats or bribes because we're feeling very reactive. 

Now, this also came from how we were raised because, oftentimes, if you were yelled at or if you were kind of shut down or if you were given a timeout or maybe spanked or grounded… whenever you felt a big emotion, you associated that with like, 'Oh, okay, wait, this emotion must be a problem, there must be something about this feeling that I'm feeling that's like not okay.'

And so, then every time that feeling comes up in our bodies, we're like, 'Oh no, this is a problem, we can't feel this' – or we notice it come up with somebody else, we're like, 'Oh no, that's not okay'. 

And this isn't something we're like working through. I'm not like sitting there and thinking like, 'Oh, this means this, means this,' this all happens pretty instantaneous; it's just like a intrinsic reaction that I have to somebody else's strong emotion. My emotions just get really strong as well. 

 

F = Fawn
I = Internalize
N = Inauthentic
E = Emotionally Reactive

F-I-N-E; and that's what I think of when I think of people that are 'fine'. These came from the ways that we were parented and how we were raised; and not just our own parents, but that's the way that they were raised – and that's even in the parenting books. 

And if you look at media, if you read books from that time or if you look at movies – that's all came, it was all the same. We were all getting all that same message. 

When you think of how, even nowadays we say things like, "You hurt your sister's feelings" or "You are making me mad", or – "Don't do that to her, you're making her sad". 

We're constantly using verbiage that tells our kids that they're in charge of the people around them emotions – like me, right? 'You made me mad; you made your sister mad.' Instead of, 'Oh, I am responsible for my thoughts and my feelings and my actions.' 

If you've been around here for a while, you know, I talk a lot about the self-coaching model, C -T-F-A-R (CTFAR).

C is Circumstance
T is Thought
F is Feeling
A is Action
R is Result 

So, something happens, there's a situation and I have a thought about it; my thoughts create my feelings, my feelings fuel my actions, and my actions create my result… all the results that I see in my life.

So, my thoughts are continuously creating my results. So, if you think of this model, the only thing I'm ever in charge of is my own model, my own brain; how it's interpreting things, how it's perceiving things, what it's thinking, what it's feeling, what I am doing. My reaction to it is, I can't jump in somebody else's model and make them think anything; I think that I can.

 

So, if you think of F-I-N-E (fawn, internalize, inauthentic and emotionally reactive), all of these come from beliefs that we've been passed down… that we've seen that we think are pretty true, that maybe aren't really serving us anymore. 

And so, we can look at the outside world and be like, 'Oh, I'm doing just fine, I'm fine.' Yeah, you probably are fine. But think of a time or a situation where maybe you don't have to be reactive anymore. 

Imagine a life where you didn't feel so reactive, where you felt confident in being able to be who you really were, where you didn't internalize all of your mistakes and failures and make them mean something about you, where you loved yourself and you were compassionate to yourself and to others. 

Or you didn't feel like you had to people-please all the people around you… that you weren't in charge for them and their uncomfortable emotions… that you didn't have to go and, you know, avoid all the conflicts all the time or interrupt somebody else's conflict to try to make them feel better. 

So, you can stay in a fine world, but also there's another life that's possible out there if you're willing, if you're willing to feel the discomfort and do the work.

 

The summary of the acronym, F-I-N-E, and a tool to help in each of these situations

So, I'm going to go through F-I-N-E again, and I'm going to give you a tool to help in each of these situations. 

 

1. F = Fawn response

You are only in charge of your thoughts and feelings; you are not in charge of other people's thoughts and feelings. We get that confused a lot. We really aren't. When I think about my responsibility, I still have a responsibility for the energy or the influence that I'm bringing into that room. 

If I'm bringing into a room like anger and like yelling and like calling people names and like throwing things, I'm going to definitely be influencing people by the energy I'm bringing in that room. 

Yeah, I am not in their heads making them think or feel anything. Likely, they're going to get mad too, or they're going to get a scared, or they're going to get upset at me or whatever. 

But I don't know, they might just be like, 'Oh wow, she's having a hard day, wonder what's going on with her? Okay, she's crazy, right?' They can be thinking anything; we don't know what they're thinking or feeling, but we're not in charge of their thoughts and their feelings. 

We cannot control them; no matter how hard we think that we can, we really can't. So, part of the Fawn response is noticing, what am I in control of? It's not others, but it is myself.

Another part of this is knowing it's okay to feel uncomfortable emotions. Those big emotions like anger, frustration, overwhelm, stress, shame; they're an experience that I'm having. 

They're a feeling that I'm feeling in my body, but it's not a problem. And when I can get comfortable with my own emotions, I'm going to be much more comfortable around other people and their uncomfortable emotions.

So, it's not going to be so much of a problem when my teen is really sad; I'm not going to feel like, 'I have to make them feel better.' Or when my toddler's really mad, I'm not going to feel like I have to go in and somehow solve this because I don't like being around that energy because that uncomfortable emotion isn't a problem, it's just an experience. But I have to first do the work to get comfortable with my own emotions. 

Another thing that helps with this is knowing that my worth is not connected to what others think of me. I might think that it is. We often think that it is. I don't need to go in and like fix them and appease them and people-please them because really, I'm going to take that conflict and I'm going to put it inside me, right? I'm going to do all that people-pleasing and all that appeasing and say all the 'yeses'… when, really, I want to say 'no'. 

And I'm taking that conflict that I don't want outside, I don't want to see that there, and I'm putting it inside of me now. And now the conflict is still here. There's always that conflict, but now I'm having it inside of myself – instead of understanding like conflict isn't actually a problem… that contention might be right.

That anger that-- It has a really different energy about it, but conflict just means I don't necessarily agree with what's going on here, agree with you; and that's okay, we can communicate about it and we can have a conversation about it. 

I don't have to get mad or angry; you can just have a conversation. So, it'll also help me to lean into those tough conversations to really grow and have better relationships, more authentic and more intimate relationships. 

And one final tip I'm going to give with the Fawn response is breathe before you react. 

Typically, we have almost an instantaneous response, right? Something happens, and we almost instantly respond to that something. So, what we want to do instead is create some pause, some space between the input and our reaction to it. 

Because if we can just pause for a minute, if we can just take some deep breaths, if we can just settle from that alarm response… then we're going to show up in a really different way and probably in the way that we want to. We're going to be a lot better prepared to show up in the most successful way for us. 

 

2. I = Internalization

So, let's skip over to I = Internalization. So, when I make a mistake, say; I yell at my kids, my brain's going to start spinning, and that's okay. My brain's going to be like, 'You did a terrible job, you did it again, I can't believe you did, you're never going to figure this out,' right? 

It's probably going to give you, spew you some negative info about yourself. So, do a little bit of thought work; that means pull out a journal, take your piece of paper, write out all the words that are coming to your brain about yourself… dump it all on paper, right? Just like, like verbally vomit all of that. 

I guess it's not verbally because you're writing it out on paper, writing it all on paper… and then you're going to ask yourself, what is true here? There's probably going to be a lot of non-truth in that, right? Is it actually true that I'm a terrible person because I lost my temper and yelled? Probably not. 

What would you say to your friend if they had just verbally vomited all of that to you and they were just like, 'I'm a terrible mom because I just totally lost it on my kids, and I can never figure this out'?

What would you say to them, right? It's probably something like, 'You're actually doing a pretty good job, did you know that?' And like, 'Parenting is a tough gig, hasn’t anybody told you that? And you're putting yourself up to a pretty high standard.' 

Another thing that helps with internalization is knowing when you have a perfectionist ideal. So, a perfectionist ideal would be like, I never want to yell, ever – I never want to lose my temper, I always want to be connected, I always want to be responsive. 

We have this idea of, like, what maybe like a robot parent could do, but we're not actually robot parents and we can't do that. So, it's lowering our own expectations of ourselves also that actually helps us parent better. So, definitely try that.

 

3. N = Inauthentic

Have you heard the quote 'To thine own self be true'? We have to, first of all, figure out who we are; and then just be true to ourselves. Okay. So, that might sound like an oversimplified version of what to do.

But first of all, who are you? What do you like doing? What do you like about yourself? What kind of a person are you? Just start to get to know yourself again. What sounds like fun to you? Start doing more of that. Start doing things that fuel you Start doing things you feel passionate about.

 

Why living an inauthentic life leads to burn-out

Also drop comparison, right? It doesn't matter what so-and-so down the street thinks or what our family thinks – or all the people, right? We don't need to compare ourselves to other people, especially on social media. This is really big, right? 

Social media is really tough sometimes, especially when we get in the compare & despair. So, dropping the comparison about other people and also dropping thinking so much about what I think other people are thinking about me; I think they want me to do this – I think they want me to say this – Oh this might sound weird, I should do this instead… or I shouldn't do that, right? 

Let's just not think about their thoughts. We're not in charge of their thoughts, anyways; and we honestly have no idea what they're thinking, right? Unless they are telling us constantly all the time what they're thinking… even if they are, they might be thinking something different than they're actually saying. 

So, let's worry less about what they're thinking about us, and let's worry more about what we are thinking about us. If I think I'm amazing person, I'm doing a great job, I love myself – I'm going to feel very confident, I'm going to feel like I can show up as my authentic self. 

But if I'm constantly worrying about what other people's thoughts about me are, I'm not going to feel like I can show up; I'm going to be constantly second-guessing myself. 

So, inauthentic. First of all, figure out who you think you even are; what do you like? What do you dislike? What's your personality like? What do you like to do? And then, work on being true to yourself. Stop thinking so much about what we think other people are thinking about us. Okay.

 

4. E = Emotionally Reactive

So, two ways to work on emotional reactivity. One; pause, breath, feel your feelings.

 

Why we’re so emotionally reactive and what to do about it

I have a great episode, I think it's in Season 1 on called Emotions and How to Feel Them. This is helpful for you and for your kids – but, essentially, an emotion is just like a physiological sensation we're having in our body. 

And so, if we can just sit and focus on that bodily sensation and what it feels like in our body; what color is it? Where do I feel like it is? What does it feel like? 

If I was explaining it to somebody who's never felt a feeling before, what would I say to them? We're going to try to just sit with that feeling as much as we can because we don't like to do that; we like to kind of push it away, but we're going to sit with a feeling – we're going to take some deep breaths. 

We're just going to notice the feeling; we're going to pause. The more that we can do that, the more we can get comfortable with those uncomfortable emotions and sit with them and listen to them and be with them, the easier it'll be for us to be around other emotions like that in other people. We won't feel so reactive. 

And the second way to deal with emotional reactivity is to uncover our triggers. So, to figure out; why am I triggered in the first place? What about my kid not listening to me? What about my kid disrespecting me? What about my kid's "misbehavior"? 

Whatever it is that I feel like they're doing that I think is wrong that they shouldn't be doing, what about that is so triggering to me? What am I making it mean about me? What am I making it mean about my parenting or my skills? What am I making it mean about them or our relationship? 

There's always going to be some sort of a trigger whenever I feel triggered by somebody else that I'm going to be really reactive. And whenever there's a trigger that comes up – it can be from anybody, it doesn't even have to be from your kids – all it is, is showing you an unhealed part of you. It's just information. 

It's like, 'Oh okay wait, I was really triggered right then by what that person just said to me in the grocery line, what the heck is going on here?' 

And then, we can just ask ourselves some really powerful questions; what about their words triggered me? What was I feeling, and what was I thinking? Why was it so triggering?

Usually, there's some underlying beliefs there within the triggers. Typically, they're connected to shame. You can go back to the beginning of this season and listen to my episodes on Shame, if you want to hear more about that. 

But uncovering those triggers and then doing the healing necessary can be really helpful; and that's what coaching is all about, that's what we do. When I talk about inner healing, really I'm helping people do that healing process; I'm helping them uncover their triggers, showing them what they might not be able to see from their view. 

But from my kind of bird's-eye, more objective perspective, I can be like; what about this? What do you think about this? And wait, what if we looked at it like this? And it starts to kind of break them up. 

The more questions that I'm asked, the more that we kind of probe into that, the more that I pause and listen, and the more that they start to think about things in a different way – that's the healing that we want to see. Healing those thoughts, those mindsets, that belief, and then also healing those stuck emotions – processing through them, allowing them to be there. That's what we do in coaching. That's what coaching is all about. 

 

So, if you want to figure out what coaching is about, send me an email and we'll chat – or you can book a complimentary session, if you are interested. I have a group program going on right now that is amazing. I'm hoping that we'll be able to do it again in the future. So, if you're interested in that, you can go check it out at the link in the show notes, and then you can get on the wait list for next time because it is going to be so good. 

Thank you for being here. If there's ever a topic that you are super interested in hearing about, I would love to hear from you; and I would love to do something on it, do a podcast episode on it. So, let me know. 

Thanks for listening; and I would really appreciate it if you would rate it, subscribe – but especially, share it with a friend. If you're listening to the episodes and you're finding them helpful and powerful and you're feeling like it's helping you heal your relationship with yourself or with your kids and you're finding them insightful, if you're enjoying them, the best way to get them out there is for you to share with your other mom-friends/dad-friends. 

I also meet with Dads, which you might not know because it says the Freedom Moms Podcast, but I coach all the parents. But send it to a friend of yours, and thank you. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you next week. 

I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode. Don't forget to send me a little note, review it, rate it, share about it on social media, share it with a friend who's struggling – and reach out if you want more support and coaching, scroll down to this show notes to find out about my current program.