The Power of Courage: Transforming Your Family Relationships

#172 The Power of Courage: Transforming Your Relationship with Your Family Relationships

Are you struggling with a difficult relationship with your adult child? Do you feel stuck in frustration, sadness, and confusion, unsure of how to reconnect? In this episode of The Coaching Your Family Relationships Podcast, host Tina Gosney explains why courage is the essential emotion needed to break free from painful relationship patterns and rebuild a meaningful connection.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

How emotions like grief, anger, and frustration keep you stuck in disconnection
 Why courage is the turning point between feeling powerless and stepping into personal agency
 The role of David Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness in transforming your relationships
 How to move forward even when fear and doubt try to hold you back
 Practical strategies to break unhealthy family cycles and create lasting change

Why This Matters:

If you continue operating from fear, blame, or resentment, your relationship with your adult child won’t improve. But when you embrace courage—even when it feels scary—you shift your energy and change the way you show up. This shift can open the door to healing and reconnection.

Join My Upcoming Class: "Heal Your Relationship with Your Adult Child"

Ready to take the first step? In my upcoming class, we’ll dive deeper into these concepts and explore actionable tools to help you communicate with confidence, manage your emotions, and build a stronger bond with your child.

Sign up now - Click Here

You don’t have to stay stuck. Courage is the key, and I’ll show you how to use it.

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Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She helps her clients move past contention in their homes and move into connection. Developing healthy family relationships can change lives.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:03

Tina, welcome to the coaching your family relationships podcast. I'm your host, Tina Gosney, the family conflict coach. This is where we talk about how messy our family relationships can be. And I am so glad that you were here with me today. This episode is a really important one, and this emotion that I'm going to talk about today, of courage is something that we don't give enough credit to, and I'm going to show you why today, it's going to be really a very important emotion to try to develop, to try to capture our energy and our attention from before we get into that. Though, I want to remind you that I have a free class coming up for you, March 13, which is a Thursday, 6pm Mountain Time. This is about healing your relationship with your adult child. In this class, we're going to go deeper into the concepts that I go into in this podcast and that the ones that I've been going into for the last few weeks, we're going to go deeper into exploring those concepts, exploring practical tools to help you reconnect with your adult child in a way that feels authentic to you. You're going to learn how to shift your emotions, communicate with more confidence, and break this cycle of disconnection. Because if you've been in this cycle, you know, it is a cycle, you know, it's very hard to break out of. So if this is you, I want you to go to the website and sign up with that link, go register for that class. Now, even if you can't attend live, there will be a replay that is sent out, but you have to be registered in order to get that replay. Okay, so if you are having problems in your family, if you're in stuck in some difficult, emotional family relationship patterns, then you are probably stuck. You've probably experienced being stuck in some emotions, maybe like grief, maybe really a sadness of maybe you think the relationship is lost to you, frustration in that nothing you do seems to work and make things better, and it feels like you no matter what you do, you can't make any progress. Maybe you're just really sad, sadness over what could have been, what should have been, what you see other people have and you don't. Maybe you feel a lot of judgment for yourself that you are where you are, and you're feeling judgment from other people, or maybe you're feeling judgment for the other person that you're having a really hard time with, and maybe just confusion, like, I don't even know how we ended up here. I thought we were good, and then all of a sudden, it seemed like everything fell apart, and I'm not even sure what I did wrong. I want you to know that we act according to our emotions. Our emotions dictate the actions that we take, and our actions give us the results that we get in our lives. So what kind of things do you see yourself doing when you are feeling things like grief, frustration, sadness, judgment and confusion? Probably each one of those emotions produces different actions, maybe related actions, but different actions. So maybe you withdraw, maybe you shut down, maybe you lash out, maybe you just replay and replay and ruminate on past conversations. Those emotions are not helping you to get what you want, because what you want is more connection in this relationship, more connection, more peace in your own mind, in your own body, just a feeling of connection and love. But when we act from these types of emotions, we are keeping ourselves stuck. No one else is keeping us stuck. We are keeping ourselves stuck. We are replaying the same relationship patterns that caused the disconnection in the first place. So in order to have a different result, we have to be willing to break that pattern and do something different. I'm going to show you why today, that the emotion that you want to focus on, that you want to be cultivating in your mind and in your body, is courage. So a few years ago, I worked with a mother who was just desperately, desperately wanting to reconnect with her adult daughter, she was feeling very disconnected. The relationship was very strained, full of a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of unmet frustration and unmet expectations. Every time they talked, it just didn't go well. The old wounds got brought up. They ended up accusing and blaming each other, and it was just this cycle that they were in, this cycle of frustration and then lashing out, and then being sad and feeling powerless. But they were both stuck in this cycle. So this is where she was, and then we started working together, and she began recognizing how her own emotional state was contributing to that repeating dynamic. And instead of waiting for her daughter to change, which she doesn't have any control over, instead of doing that, she focused on shifting herself and stepping into courage, and that meant she had to make some really powerful changes. These were small changes. They were not giant things. They were small shifts. But small shifts can be very powerful. So she started reaching out without expectations. She started setting boundaries with love for herself and for her daughter, and she started calming herself in her own way that she was emotionally responding to her daughter. And then over time, their relationship improved, and not because suddenly her daughter changed. It was because she changed courage was the key to breaking that cycle. If we get stuck repeating the same things over and over again, which we do all the time, because we don't think outside the box. We don't think of what we already know how to do, and we keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, hoping for a different result. You know what that is? That's the definition of insanity, and that's how you feel when you're in that situation. You feel like you're on this insane roller coaster, this emotional roller coaster that's full of all these difficult emotions, blame frustration and all of that you feel like you can't get off this roller coaster, and it just robs you of the peace that you are longing to feel, and the longer that that goes on, the more out of control you feel, the more hopeless you become, and the more disconnected you become in that relationship. Now, we are all intricately connected in many more ways than we recognize, than our human eyes are capable of recognizing, especially in families. We are intricately connected to each other, and this disconnection and the relationship that you're experiencing, it does not live in a bubble. It does not just affect you and this one relationship, it affects the entire family. It can affect generations and generations that have not even been born yet. I don't want to sound like Doom and dire, but we don't live in a bubble, and we have much more impact on each other than we realize. We are not an island. We cannot just live for ourselves and think that the things that we think and feel and do will only affect us because it doesn't the energy that we put into our thoughts and our feelings and our actions shows up in our lives, and it affects our family and it affects everyone around us, and we need to really be aware that the energy that we are carrying with us in our own lives is affecting everyone around us. Now. I really love Dr David Hawkins map of consciousness. This is something that he developed. He has passed away a few years ago, but he developed this after years and years of working with people, and this map of consciousness explains how we see the world, what emotions we operate from, and what that produces in our lives. He can he categorizes emotions into different levels of human development and human growth, and he shows how they really shape our reality. He also talks about, in his map of consciousness, about how our emotions have energy, and they have vibrational energy that we operate from. Now you have probably been around someone who is full of peace and love, and they're just a calm presence. And it seems like no matter what happens to them, it's really hard to shake them. They just operate from this level all the time. And you know how you feel when you're around them. You've also been around someone. Was full of anxiety, of anger, of blame, and they're complaining all the time. And you know how you feel when you're around them? That feeling that you're having when you're around these two very different types of people is the vibrational energy that that person is giving off, and that is really what he's talking about, even though it's hard to see and put our finger on, we've all felt it. We've all experienced that. So at the lowest levels of consciousness, we have these emotions like shame and fear and guilt and anger. These emotions will keep us trapped in survival mode. It's miserable to be trapped in survival mode because we see ourselves as a victim of our own life, a victim of our circumstances, and we are powerless to do anything about any of that to change. So we see this just this hopeless future, and when we operate from those emotions, we come we become really reactive, we get really defensive, or we start to withdraw and shut down. But as we move up the scale in this map of consciousness, we start getting to emotions like acceptance reason and love and these emotions create this expansion. They don't just create a vision of expansion, but they literally create it feels like more space inside of our own bodies and our own brain. We start seeing the possibilities that we didn't before, solutions that were blocked to us before, and we start to recognize and and really live into our own personal agency. Instead of reacting, we respond with intention. So how do we go from the destructive energy at the lower levels to the agent and creative energy at the higher levels, there's one emotion that bridges the two different sides, and that emotion is courage. Courage bridges those two states of vibration. So courage is the tipping point between being controlled by fear and then stepping into personal power. It's this energy that it just shifts us. We're not a victim of our life anymore. Instead, we're making conscious choices. We live with this courageous heart, and in order to do that, you have to be willing to move forward in the face of fear. You're scared and you're unsure if you're doing this the right way, but you just keep moving forward anyway. You're like, I don't know if I'm doing this right, but I'm just going to trust that if I do something, I'm going to figure it out. That's part of courage, and when you operate from courage, you begin to see that you can take control of your actions. You can take control of your responses. Nobody else controls your responses and your actions, and no one else controls your emotional state. They have influence on it if they show up in a very angry and blaming vibration for sure that's going to influence your emotional state, but they don't get to control your emotional state. So you stop waiting for everyone else to change, and you start creating that change within yourself. Power comes when we realize that our work comes from the inside out, not the outside in, and that shift, you know, it changes everything for you, but our brains are wired to resist change something feels risky, even if it's just emotional. Changing your emotion, it feels really vulnerable to us to try to change that, because our instinct is to stay safe. Our instinct when we're faced with something that seems really fearful or scary, is to move back and to pull back. That's why, when you move forward with courage, it feels so hard because we're going against our natural body's responses. But I'm going to tell you that staying stuck is harder than moving forward with courage, because staying stuck doesn't produce a different result in the future, it just produces more of the same. So if you move forward in courage, there is no guarantee that your this other person, if this is your adult child, there is no guarantee that they're going to respond in the way that you want them to. And that is really hard, because it's super painful to put in the effort and. Not get the response that you want, but I want you to really remember that courage is about what you do, not about what they do. Your job is not to force a relationship. It's to show up in a way that you feel proud of no matter what outcome you get. And relationships take time, even if you don't see an immediate shift, your consistent determination to show up with courage and an emotional strength that creates a safe environment where healing can begin to happen. And if you're worried, which is a valid worry for so many people that if you do something different, that it might backfire. Then I want you to think about this. Staying in the same patterns, doing the same thing that you've always been doing will guarantee you more of the same results. But if you start small, you make intentional changes, that creates a new possibility, and the key is to approaching that situation with steadiness and patience. And sometimes things might temporarily get worse, but that's just a sign that they're adjusting. The system that you're in is adjusting to a new level, a new dynamic. We're always everything in life and in nature is trying to find a balance, a homeostasis, and that includes our relationships. Your relationship is adjusting to a new level, a new balance. So just trust the process and stay consistent. One thing that I hear quite often is this not fair, that I should be the one that has to change. I haven't like they're the ones that are doing all these things, and I've been trying to make things better all this time. And why do I have to be the one that changes? And it feels really unfair. So this is a really tough one to wrap our brain around, why we are the one that needs to break the cycle, because if you want a different outcome, the most powerful thing that you can do is to take the lead in changing how you show up. It doesn't mean that you are excusing past behavior. It does not mean you are taking responsibility for things that are not yours to take responsibility for. It means you are recognizing your power to influence the relational system, the dynamic that you have been working with your change can inspire other people, even if it takes time for them to follow. And I want you to think about if you are in like, this really bad emotional relationship pattern where you're both, like the one that I described with the mother and her daughter, if you're in one of those or similar, you're both stuck in a really low vibrational energy. If you're waiting for the other person to decide to be different and to show up differently, you could be waiting forever. They might not even know that that is possible to them. But because you're listening to this podcast episode, you now know that it's possible for you. So if you are ready to move out of fear, out of frustration and sadness, and you are ready to step into courage. I want to invite you to come to this class that I'm teaching in March. In this class, we're going into these deeper dive into these concepts. I'm going to give you some tools that you can use. You can start using them right away. They're going to help you to reconnect in a way that feels true to you. This class is called heal your relationship with your adult child. Even if you're not in a difficult relationship with your adult child, you're going to find really practical relationship tools. You're going to find some ways to show up with courage and the relationship that you are struggling with. So I want you to come so you can learn how to shift your emotions, so you can learn how to communicate with more confidence, and you can learn how to break the cycles that you've been in. The link is in the show notes. Go sign up for that today. You do not have to stay stuck where you are. You do not have to stay stuck in a low vibrational emotional pattern. Courage is the bridge. Courage is the key. I'm going to show you how to take that first step, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you at that class. So thanks for joining me today on the podcast, and just meet me here next time you.