Break they Cycle and Lead Your Family with Calm, Loving Energy and Personal Integrity

Episode 179 - Break the Cycle and Lead Your Family with Calm, Loving Energy and Personal Integrity

You don’t have to repeat the patterns you were raised with.

Whether you're parenting toddlers, teens, or adult children, this powerful season opener will help you step into a new kind of leadership in your family—one rooted in calm, love, and integrity.

Tina Gosney shares why unprocessed emotions get acted out in parenting, how every family member is living their own version of the story, and what it really means to become the cycle-breaker in your family. This episode will shift the way you see your role—and help you start showing up as the parent your child needs and the person you want to be.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why staying calm as a parent is so hard—and why it matters
• What it means to “act out what you don’t process”
• How every family member experiences the same home differently
• The difference between reacting, fixing, and leading with love
• Why perfectionism blocks connection—and what to do instead
• How intergenerational trauma shows up in parenting
• The first steps to becoming the parent who breaks the cycle

Free Live Training – Save Your Seat Now!
Join Tina for a 2-day immersive experience:

End Family Disconnection and Create Relationships That Last

You’ll learn how to:

• Stay connected to yourself, even when parenting is hard
• Respond calmly and clearly in the most triggering moments
• Regulate your nervous system and stay grounded under pressure
• Build authentic, emotionally anchored relationships with your children
• End the cycle of walking on eggshells and begin creating real, lasting change

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Share this episode with a parent you love.
And if this spoke to you, leave a rating and review—it helps others find the support they need to become the kind of parent who truly leads the family with love.

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tinagosneycoaching

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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

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Tina, welcome to coaching your family relationships, the podcast where we talk about what it takes to really create strong, connected, emotionally healthy families no matter what stage of parenting you're in. I'm your host. Tina Gosney, family conflict coach and family life educator. This season, we're expanding the conversation, because parenting does not stop when your child turns 18, and frankly, it doesn't always start the way that you hoped it would, either whether you're raising toddlers or navigating teen years or just trying to heal things with your adult children, the common thread is this, you are repeating the same patterns that you learned in the home you grew up in, even if you don't like those patterns, and you're doing it in ways that you don't see and that you're not aware of. So unless you have done the internal work to wake up and see how this is happening in your family and in you, you're going to repeat the same thing. If you don't do the work, things will stay the same, and you won't even see that they're the same. You're going to keep repeating that same pattern of disconnection or co-dependency unless you do your own internal work, so you can become the person who breaks the cycle. You can pass on something different to the next generation. Now, if your kids are already grown, it's not too late. It's still important to do your own work so that you can model something different for your grown children as they raise their own children, you have a lot of influence there. You can lead your family, not through fear or control or perfectionism, but with this calm, loving energy that comes from your own grounded integrity. And you can do that even if no one else is doing it, yet, even if your family story is pretty messy, and even if you don't know where to start. So this episode is about helping you see that it can begin with you. Let me start with something that you might recognize. Maybe you just had an argument with your teenager, maybe your toddler melted down for the 10th time today, and then you melted down right there with them, or maybe your adult child just gave you the silent treatment again after you tried to reach out, okay, you could probably relate to one, or maybe all of those things. And you walk away and you're thinking, oh man, how did I get here again? This is not the parent that I thought I was going to be, and I'm just so tired of feeling like the bad guy. Well, that's the moment when you feel disappointed in yourself, disconnected from people you love, and very unsure about what to do next. This is not a sign of failure. This is a moment of awakening, because when you start to question, How did I get here again? You start to question your own patterns. It means something in you is waking up and saying, I don't want to keep doing this. I want to show up differently. And you can think of that moment as a doorway to healing something inside of you that has just been waiting and wanting to be healed. Now I'm going to talk a lot about that this podcast, and here's some if you really want to dive in deeper to the things I'm going to talk about. Here are some books that will help you. Oprah Winfrey and Dr Bruce Perry wrote a book called What happened to you. Mark woolen wrote it didn't start with you. Dr Richard Schwartz wrote, no bad parts. Bessel van der Kolk, the Body Keeps the Score. And then Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell wrote, parenting from the inside out, how a deeper self understanding can help you raise children who thrive. If you want to dive in deeper, these books are a great place to start and just pick one. You know, don't overwhelm yourself with all of the books that I just listed. You can come back to this episode anytime and pick up the next book, but just pick one where it starts. So what makes this shift so difficult? Well, you're already burned out. You're already emotionally stretched thin. So you're not parenting just your child. You are parenting from the patterns that you inherited. We all carry this emotional residue from our childhoods. We learn how to deal with conflict, emotion, disappointment and connection from watching our parents and the other adults in our lives, even if they never explicitly taught us, they were implicitly teaching us. And unless we intentionally process the emotional patterns, they don't disappear. They just leak out. And so we. Knocked out what we don't process. That means when you felt unheard, dismissed, shamed, emotionally overwhelmed as a child and your needs were not met, that became internal, and you shoved it down, and now it is manifesting itself in the way that you're showing up as a parent. So if you have not grieved the way that your own needs were overlooked growing up, you may feel resentful. You may feel triggered when your child seems needy or disrespectful, if you ever felt emotionally unsafe as a child, your nervous system now can become overwhelmed when your child expresses big emotions and you don't know how to handle them, so you might shut down or lash out or try to fix their emotions. What we usually do is try to fix their emotions, but these unprocessed experiences of our own do not vanish. They just show up as overreactions that surprise us, guilt or shame after a conflict avoidance or controlling behavior, and that controlling behavior is trying to fix, just like I just said, and a constant sense that you're failing no matter what you do. When I talk about becoming a calm and steady presence in your home. I'm not talking about techniques. I'm not talking about making sure that you check a list and you're doing certain things. What we're talking about is healing the inner world that's trying to parent through the pain. Even when you don't recognize the pain, it is still there. Many people just shove it down. They shove down their pain, and they're so disconnected from it that they live their lives on autopilot, just saying, Oh, I'm fine. Everything's fine, everything's great, everything's fine. How often do we say that and we just feel numb Family relationships can be really complex, because no one in your family is actually having the same experience, even if you're under the same roof. I like to say everyone in your family grew up in a different home. Think about this, you and your partner are having different experiences of your same child. Your child and all your children are having different experiences of you and your partner and of their siblings. You might even look back at your own childhood and realize that you and your siblings remember completely different things. This is so important to understand, because so many conflicts in our families happen when we are we're just assuming that our version of what happened is the true version of what happened. We think our story is the story. But in reality, everyone is looking through with their own lens, and that lens is shaped by so many things, temperament, role in the family, emotional wiring, the temperature of the home, and what was happening in the home at the time, and so much more. And this means that part of leading your family with love and integrity is learning how to hold space for different experiences, for everyone's different experiences, without needing everyone to agree on a common reality. Let's just say you're trying to explain to someone why you're feeling hurt by something, and that person in your family says to you, well, that's didn't happen. That's not how I remember it, and you're feeling so unheard and so misunderstood and confused, because that's exactly how you saw it, and they're saying no, that never happened. Let's just say a family member might bring up something that to you doesn't even register as important. You never, even it never even entered your radar. Yet they're saying it changed the way that they saw themselves. So instead of defending your version, what if you just stayed curious? What about, instead of making it about who's right and who's wrong, you made it just about being real and making space for everyone to have a different experience. That's how emotional safety is created. That's how we start shifting generations of defensiveness and disconnection, because you're going to want them to agree with you. You're going to want them to see things the way you see it, and say, No, this is true. You're wrong and I'm right. That's totally natural, because your brain has told you that the right way is the way you're seeing it and their way is wrong. But you know what their brain is telling them the exact same thing - that they are right and that you're wrong, because you both are looking through different lenses, and you both have different temperaments and different experiences, even in the same circumstance. Now to begin to become that kind of parent, the one who brings healing into the family system, we need to make some inner shifts. Three foundational shifts I'll be talking a lot about this season are, number one, switching from reacting to responding. Number two, going from trying to fix things to being present. And number three, going from a fear based control into value based leadership. I'm going to be teaching you how to make these shifts step by step. These are not for sure, one and done changes. These are practices. These are muscles that you build with repeated practice over time, and when you consistently show up trying to build them, you can become the person who begins to shift the entire family system, even without everybody else being on board or them even realizing what you're doing. I want to make something really clear. You do not need to be a perfect parent to raise emotionally healthy kids or to heal your relationship with your adult children. You do not need to be perfect to raise emotionally healthy kids or to heal your relationship with your adult children. That was so important I wanted to say it twice. What you need is a growth mindset. Way too many of us are rooted in fixed mindsets, and that is perfectionism, that is rooted in shame, and that perfectionism says, If I can just get it right, then I'll be enough, or if I don't make any mistakes, then my child won't suffer. But that fixed mindset keeps you stuck. It's not growth oriented. It makes you defensive. It makes you afraid to be vulnerable or to admit when you've messed up. But a growth mindset says I can learn from this mistake. Every mistake is this opportunity to learn, or I can repair this. I can go back and repair every hard moment can be a moment that is an opportunity to repair, or you might say every day is a chance for me to show up and be more aware of myself and try to listen better to other people. Now, this kind of parenting take creates a space for your family members to grow to not just you. So you don't have to be flawless. You just need to be real. You need to own your own impact. You need to be willing to look inward, first, to apologize where you need to, and to keep showing up. Whether you realize it or not, you are carrying way more than just your own story, you are carrying inter generational patterns. These are emotional legacies that have been passed down quietly through behaviors, reactions and beliefs. Maybe in your family, emotions were never talked about maybe conflict meant yelling or even silence and shutting down. Maybe love came with strings attached, and maybe now you see the patterns of those in the way that you're showing up, and maybe you see them starting to take root in your own children. But here is something that is incredibly true. You can be the one that stops that cycle. You can interrupt the automatic reactions. You can teach a new emotional language, and you can model a new way to lead in your family. Here's an example. Let's just say you were raised in a home where mistakes were met with criticism, you learned very early on to hide your mistakes, hide that you're struggling, or lie so that you could avoid being punished. And now your own child makes a mistake, and your instinct is to scold them, to panic, to lecture them, or maybe something else. But instead of doing those things, this time you pause, you take a deep breath, and you say, I know this is hard. I've made mistakes too. Let's talk about what happened. This comes from knowing your own body. Yeah, and knowing how your uncomfortable emotions that are creeping up and so automatic, automatic, they just want to control you, but this is you being able to be present with those uncomfortable emotions without letting them be in control. This moment of regulation, of emotional presence of connection over control. This is how we start to break cycles. If this episode is speaking to something deeper in you, and if you're ready to start leading your family with this calm, loving energy and your own personal integrity, but you don't really know how, I want to invite you to join me for something special I have coming up later this month. It's called end family disconnection and create relationships that last. This is a free two day immersive training. This is not surface level parenting advice. This is actually where we're going to get into doing some work. This is the deeper work I teach my pain clients, but it's going to be brought to you in this supportive, actionable, transformational, two day training. In this training, you're going to learn how to stay connected to yourself so you don't lose your identity or your integrity in your relationship with anyone. You're going to learn how to manage your emotions so that you can respond calmly and clearly even in the most triggering moments. I'll teach you the latest strategies on regulating your nervous system so that you can stay grounded and centered no matter what's happening. You're going to learn why it feels like you have to choose between keeping the peace and being honest, and how to finally show up as your true, whole self. You'll get some tools for emotionally anchored, authentic connection. So you can stop walking on eggshells and start rebuilding real relationships, and you're going to learn my proven method to lasting change in your family, no matter how long things have been hard. So if you're ready to stop repeating these same painful patterns and you're ready to become that healing presence in your family. This training is for you, and I've got a link in the show notes. You can go there and click that. I can't wait to see you there. It's going to be a great training. Seats are very limited, so you'll need to get registered quickly. So go, click that link now, and I can't wait to see you there. This season is all about becoming the kind of parent who brings light and calm energy into your family story, and not through control, not through perfection. We're dish. We're just like discarding those things. You're going to bring it out through your own courage to grow to feel, to lead and to love. Thank you for being here. I'll see you in the next episode.