Deborah Meints-Pierson, LMFT

Deborah is a master therapist (licensed for over 35 years), spiritual teacher, television host, author and 3rd generation intuitive. She has helped transform the lives of thousands of people around the world. Her pioneering approach bridges Psychology, Spirituality and the Mystic Tools. Deborah is a sought out authority in the field of psychology and has served as a Palm Springs psychological expert for TV, radio & print. She wrote and Co-Hosted the popular television program "It's A Family Affair" on Time Warner Television for over a decade. Deborah has been featured in numerous shows, radio programs and publications including NBC, ABC, K-News Voice of The Valley, Desert Sun Newspaper, Desert Woman magazine and Health & Spirituality magazine.

When Deborah is not transforming lives you can find her hiking in the beautiful desert, music jamming with friends, dancing, practicing yoga, reading, & writing poetry. For more: https://soulpathsessions.com

Brenda Littleton, MA

As an educator & counselor based in social justice, personal literacy, eco & depth psychology, Brenda has worked with thousands of students and clients in their wholeness journey. She holds a graduate degree in education, post-graduate studies in counseling, and depth psychology at the doctoral level and is certified in coaching, trauma and psycho-biotics. Blending modalities of attachment theory, somatic healing, active imagination, dream work, restorative education, & place-based learning, she empahsizes the link between the mind-body-spirit-earth relationship for the healing.

Brenda's has served as a university program director of graduate studies, a clinical counselor for domestic violence & trauma recovery, a behavioral specialist in schools, & is a successful coach of executives, creatives and entrepreneurs. She is a reiki master, writer, speaker & continues in a lineage of Druidic animistic prayer circles. For more: https://www.brendalittleton.com

Acknowledgments:

Original Music composed by Zach Meints

The Soul Path Sessions Podcast is produced by Homeless Betty Productions

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP TO LISTEN TO FUTURE EPISODES. THANK YOU...AND REMEMBER TO FOLLOW YOUR SOUL, IT KNOWS THE WAY!

Episode 7 Description

Deborah and Brenda discuss the topic of adolescence and how we deal with it, in our children and in ourselves, has a lot to do with where we are on our soul journey. The conversation shifts from an awareness that we tend to treat adolescents the same way we were treated as adolescents to the question about how adolescence live in our life no matter what age we are. There is an adolescent within each of us and it can happen at any age as we move from an ego-centric life where it's all about creating our own strength, power and perspective to learning how to be in a system and then moving into spirit where we learn to connect and have a greater ability to develop with a more eco-soulcentric life.

Chapters & Links

00:08:12 - From Trauma to Transcendence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8-QPHxWJws

00:14:08 - E.S.S.E.N.C.E.

https://www.christchurch.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Siegel-ESSENCE-Adolescence-Gladesville.pdf

00:21:25 - Eco-Soulcentric Development

https://www.animas.org/wp-content/uploads/Intro-to-ESDW-for-Animas-website.pdf

00:30:02 - It's All Related: The Systems Approach

https://positivepsychology.com/systems-therapy/

00:33:54 - Relationship Matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjfpGGOGDCo

00:39:13 - The Medals of Olympic Apologies

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parents-happy-kids/201706/how-and-when-apologize-your-child/

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Original music by Zach Meints

The Soul Path Sessions podcast is produced by Homeless Betty Productions

Announcer: (00:08)

Welcome to the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Meints-Pierson and Brenda Littleton. Brenda is an educator and counselor rooted in Jungian and Eco psychology. She helps her clients understand the importance of the mind, body, spirit, and earth relationship for healing. Deborah is a licensed psychotherapist and has been trained in traditional and sacred psychology, exploring from the ground up what makes our human experience meaningful, wholesome, and enlightening, Deborah and Brenda invite you to a company then on a soul path journey to explore the possibilities of living a more soulful life, as therapists, seekers, and lovers of fate.

Brenda: (00:50)

And welcome back to Soul Path Sessions with Deborah Meints-Pierson, and this is Brenda Littleton. We're both mental health practitioners talking about soul, living more ensouled and not a place to be, but more of a practice to live with. So welcome.

Deborah: (01:10)

Thank you.

Brenda: (01:11)

Good to see you.

Deborah: (01:12)

It's wonderful to see you.

Brenda: (01:13)

Today we're going to be discussing adolescence. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not so much the, um, well, we're gonna talk about all parts of adolescence.

Deborah: (01:24)

I wanna sing that song, by Allen Sherman, hello mudda, hello fadda here I am in camp Grenada. It is very entertaining. And the guys we will have fun when it stops raining.

Brenda: (01:36)

So we have adolescents here. and that's part of the love, the, the laughter of it too, is, um, we're safe to say we are mature women. We're we're past, uh, we're we're in our last third of our phase of life and we are still experiencing our own adolescence. And I wanted to bring the topic of adolescence in I've been working with another, uh, mental health practitioner, Dr. Robin Bahr on her practice with adolescents. And she, uh, not only worked with adolescents for last three decades, but is now teaching teachers, therapists and parents on validation of adolescence. And the, one of the main takeaways that has stuck with me that I am working on myself is that when, um, whether I'm I'm a teacher or a therapist, uh, a neighbor of children, there is this propensity to watch adults kind of dismiss away the issues or the, the configurations of adolescents in either ourselves as adults or dealing with the actual young person, the adolescents and Robin's, uh, point of view is that we tend to treat those in adolescence the same way that we were treated in when we were in our own adolescence.

Brenda: (02:56)

And there's a large part of us that is repressed and that we grew up very fast, um, or trying to please, or be in the right place or get the right result, um, behave in a way that was non adolescence. And, um, so it, it opens up this great discussion of how does adolescence live in our life, regardless of what age we are. Mm-hmm and what is our approach to adolescence? Like what do we really believe adolescence is about? And we have a couple of resources, different, uh, points of view and perspectives that we're gonna unpack today. And you as our, our audience, I, I ask you to take this to heart and figure out where are you with your adolescence?

Deborah: (03:42)

Some would say that our generation shadow bloomers born nineteen fifty four, two nineteen sixty four or something. Well, what that means is that we have a different, um, model of adolescent. Like when I came of age, I was watching the age of Aquarius bloom.

Brenda: (04:06)

I was there at the play

Deborah: (04:07)

we had more liberal parents and I,

Brenda: (04:10)

I just a flu. I was, uh, opening night of hair. Yeah, yeah,

Deborah: (04:14)

Yeah. Cray. Cray. I couldn't go. Wasn't old enough parents. Mm. Not ready yet, but really wanted to, but it was all naked, you know, it

Brenda: (04:22)

Was all naked,

Deborah: (04:22)

Naked.

Brenda: (04:23)

I was in the front row. I was 13. Yeah. Yeah.

Deborah: (04:27)

Yeah. So you got into the system a little quicker, although I was dating, cause my mother thought older boys would take better care of me. sort of hearken back to her, uh, arrested adolescence, ACE. Yeah. And, uh,

Brenda: (04:39)

And that's a good point is that our parents treated us when we were in adolescence, the way that they were probably treated too. Yeah. It was very similar to all the other stuff. Like the multi-generational domestic violence and whatever, you know, the, the habits it's like, we got, we were treated the way our parents were treated. Yeah. Because there wasn't any real conscious parenting going on.

Deborah: (04:58)

Yeah. My mom was like sex, no dirty, bad.

Brenda: (05:02)

Like don't come home pregnant.

Deborah: (05:03)

Yeah. But don't take birth control. Just don't have it. Yeah. Nancy Reagan just don't have it. And that was so stupid because she got married and she's 16 and

Brenda: (05:15)

Nancy Reagan or your mother? No,

Deborah: (05:16)

I don't know about Nancy. I don't really, but my mom, she was sort of like a little war bride, you know? And, and my dad came home and he was like four years older and he proposed her and my, she, he asked my grandpa before he asked her and he goes, oh yeah. Okay. And then he went off to war and she didn't see him for four years. So she was growing up and, uh, she didn't have, she had arrested development cuz she, when he got home, she got pregnant right away. But the baby shouldn't really wanna have because she was too young. I mean, she loved him when she had him, but I didn't know all that. So when I was a teenager was like, burn your bra and saw movies like, oh, what was it called? Candace Burkin I can't remember the name of it, come together, something like that. And I was like really influenced, like people are having sex all the time in the movies. And it was like, oh, that's how you do it. That's what it looks like. Okay. You know? So it was, it was like the era of love. Yeah. And I looked very adult when I was 14. I mean, I was like fully present as a woman, like we know physiologically and with the instructions of don't do it. And so that becomes a secret.

Brenda: (06:29)

So adolescence is this proving ground of trying on the, the, the portent of adulthood or the playground kind of like making it less important because we are kids, but yet there's still this transition from playing, you know, on the beach and, and being sports oriented maybe and academically based. And yet still looking at the, the advent of becoming an adult. Yeah. To, you know, the hormones, it

Deborah: (06:56)

Shifted. Yeah. It shifted. Yeah. It, it, I mean the revolution, the sexual revolution, it shifted the conversation. Mm-hmm

Brenda: (07:05)

How do you think it works today? Um, we both work with families. We both work with people coming in and maybe they don't bring in their child or their adolescent, but we're dealing with parents.

Deborah: (07:15)

I see kids. Oh yeah. I see kids. It largely in the population I work with. There's a lot of overprotection, which, um, it's a mixed bag here because parents need to be present and their kids need to be connected to their kids in ways that are meaningful to their age. But they tend to carry over the practices they had for earlier childhood when children are very compliant. And so what happens is, um, the teenagers don't know how to establish a conversation with their parents. Mm-hmm because their hormones are kicking in. They're wanting to, and I'm older. I've had four kids go through adolescence. I mean, I've got the bear clan scars to prove it. Yes. I had to go to school. I had to go to therapy to deal with it. So, because I didn't understand it changed again. It shifted again, you know, my kids said, you.

Deborah: (08:12)

Yeah. Well, at least my sons did. And you know, I wasn't ready for that. I would never have said that to my parents. Are you kidding? Yeah. So when I'm working with today's kids to get back to your question, um, Keith Witt talks about this really brilliantly. He wrote a book from trauma to transcendence. He was featured on Jeff Salman's daily Evolver and I found it fascinating because he was saying, you know, today's kids, some of them they're probably privileged. Kids are over parented they're helicopter. So a lot of the kids I see today are like really academically engineered to follow into university hypertensive, freaked out, you know, um, overworked,

Brenda: (08:58)

Curated. I call that curated.

Deborah: (09:00)

Yes. Very,

Brenda: (09:02)

Yes. They're curated for a specific show.

Deborah: (09:06)

Yeah. And so all this disowned stuff turns into drug use, uh, marijuana, uh, as a numbing agent, uh, or dropping out rebellious, dropping out

Brenda: (09:18)

Somatic. I mean the whole idea of somatic, the IRRI, when someone tells me I'm 16 and I have irritable bowel syndrome and I'm, I'm picking up my hair and I'm picking my skin and like, and I can't sleep. It's like, yeah.

Deborah: (09:30)

Yeah. And they don't have resilience. Yeah. They they're basically saying you it's a, it's an attachment wound. They're saying to me, like, if I don't do that, my parent will disowned me. They won't use those words, but like I have to be good and I have to know the trauma In my household and the way I survive, my protector self is just getting a 4.5 to get into UCLA. And I write all the essays and I ignore my body and my own trauma. My parents ignore their body and their trauma and everybody's in this cloud.

Brenda: (10:04)

And then they grow into being 18 and 20 and 30. And the same compensations that they used as an adolescence now is still functioning as the operating system. And it's not enough.

Deborah: (10:15)

Totally. I see doctors. Yeah. Who are 40 going on 14. Yeah. They, they never experienced adolescents because to get into medical school, you're essentially a robot. It's, it's a robotic kind of process. You know,

Brenda: (10:34)

I, I do see this squeezing out, um, when I'm working with, um, my mature clients, um, who have lived a life of doing whatever they believed they needed to do, and now it's like their time. Yeah. And so it's their time for creativity. Um, they, they have a particular calling that has always been waiting very politely in the, off to the side or repressed, or they've been nurturing it in a very quiet way. And now it's time to make it louder and more prevalent in their life and the same. Um, it's not so much developing the creative skill as it is working through those compensations and behavioral mechanisms that prevented them from living it when they were and developing it when they were 15, 16, 17. Exactly. And it's, it's not just about learning how to be a good painter writer, filmmaker, musician, dancer, um, new person it's it really requires going back and unpacking mining, just sitting with accepting all of the, the repression that they really believe if they, if they allowed into their life, that they would actually die.

Deborah: (11:51)

Yeah. Yeah. They didn't get to follow their bliss. Yeah. Like Joseph Campbell spoke of yeah. Which was on my daughter's wall.

Speaker 4: (12:01)

I was really influenced by Joseph Campbell. You know, the real journey. You

Deborah: (12:05)

Gotta leave your parents and you gotta go into your world and you gotta go your own way. Fleetwood Mac.

Brenda: (12:11)

I was just gonna say, I could hear, I, I just heard that in the back of my echo. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So how can we bring in, how can we honor our adolescence? Like if, no matter what age we are, you know, we can't go back and blame our parents for everything, even though we try, but let's just say we're trying to be more, we're balancing ego with soul. Yeah. We're allowing in the unconscious to the conscious world, we're working with the imaginal ego and no matter what age we are, whether we have children or not, there's an adolescent within us.

Deborah: (12:45)

Yes. There's a portal. Mm-hmm, , there's a portal. So some of my really traumatized, um, patients, if they're, I don't know, 60, I don't care what'll do. And all thisone material starts come up in terms of symptomology. I dunno how to play. I mean, really severely forwarded. Um, I tend to ask, tell me about being 13, 14, 15. Yeah. Is there anything that brought you alive and we do parts work, like finding out, um, was there a conversation you had to thwart? Was there an interest little portal you could just be a tiny crack. They might say something like, you know, I would, I would lay in bed and I would, um, listen the radio and I just loved music. Jazz. Dr. Demento,

Speaker 4: (13:45)

Brenda: (13:46)

KC E T

Speaker 4: (13:48)

We know exact moon.

Brenda: (13:53)

The Dr. Demento show

Speaker 4: (13:56)

That's so funny. Cheech & Chong.

Brenda: (13:58)

2:00 AM coming down off of some peyote.

Deborah: (14:03)

Yeah. Your coyote

Deborah: (14:08)

So sometimes there's, there's very little there's like this frozenness but there'll be, even if it's a tiny crack in the cosmic egg, right? Yeah. So we start with that and if they say something like my dog, I love my dog. I really love my dog. So we just find that little portal, we explore it like, uh, we do a little, uh, uh, regression work. Like, let's go back there. Let's close your eyes. Let's feel like you being in that age and what you wanted to do, then that didn't get explored. You can do now. Mm-hmm . And we worked towards that. So one of the things that Dan Siegel adds to the conversation, a neuropsychiatrist, um, there's this thing called essence, which I think is a really good acronym for the development of the adolescent, which is, uh, adolescence that typically takes place around 13 to 18.

Deborah: (15:05)

Is this word that spells out extra spark. Our brain is changing. We get this extra spark and we get, uh, this, this extra boost. Our brain is changing and we wanna explore new things. And, uh, Keith Witt talks about it as, uh, almost a reli. It is a religious experience. Children become very curious about the spiritual realm, which was a surprise to me, but then not really, because I was like that, we write sad poetry. Mm-hmm some of us, we, we think modeling thoughts like, oh, you know, really feel sorry for ourselves. We, we die when somebody rejects us. So we have this extra spark and it lights us up. We're growing, we're little animals we're growing. Our brains are changing. Um, and then the se stands for social engagement. We have this desire to engage with our own people. um, in whatever way.

Deborah: (16:08)

Yeah. We have our own choice. Yeah. If you're more scientific or you're more rock and roll or whatever you might be at this age, um, in your own or in this generation, whatever that is in whatever attracts you, you wanna engage. So kids go into the internet, they wanna explore, they want, might sends terrible things. So as the internet was just coming of age and they just did things that I won't, I won't, I won't out them for that. They'd be canceled. Then the other part is creative expression. That's the CE. So it's really important for kids to have creative outlets and not to over push the academics. Now I'm gonna pu go back to another thing. Dan Siegel says, do your work folks, mom and dad, are you listening? Mom and dad, and you have children. And you're feeling like you have to breathe hot fire down their neck so they can get in university.

Deborah: (17:03)

And that's not what they want. I mean, you can, that's not conversation with them, but if you can't have that conversation to stay connected to them with compassion and respect, respect, then get there therapy and find out what your hangups are. Therapy is not expensive. These days to get a good therapist who does developmental work with you? What do you believe? You know, where do you come from? It's really hard to be a present parent. And I did not get any awards for parenting, but I believe I was a good enough parent, which means that my kids, I said, yeah, if you don't wanna go to college, you don't have to go to college. What do you want? And then I'd waffle on that. My oldest son was like, he used to sit in arm and wrestle with me. Why do I need to go to college? I can learn on my own. And I'd have to sit there in respectful conversation. Yeah. And really think about why I believed that was a thing. And that he would come back, face the nation and question it and we'd go for hours. And how

Brenda: (18:08)

Old was

Deborah: (18:08)

He? Oh, God, I

Brenda: (18:10)

Dunno. Like 16, 17,

Deborah: (18:13)

Probably. I think we started these conversations really young as you know, he was gifted. So I, they said he was gifted. Everybody's gifted, but they said he was gifted. So like he's supposed to go to Harvard and all that stuff. But as he got older, he's like, I'm gonna try everything once anything he did. Yeah. You know, so this is really hard curriculum for parents because they've been inculturated by the culture. It's not just your parents to do it. It's a culture itself. The graduate, you remember that movie? Mm-hmm Dustin Hoffman. He's questioning all the schema of the industrial revolution and postmodern society.

Brenda: (18:51)

And so was Mrs. Robinson.

Deborah: (18:52)

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They were the same age. Did you know that Dustin Hoffman was actually older

Brenda: (18:58)

Then Anne Bancroft?

Deborah: (19:03)

Yeah. fun fact. so here's to you Mrs. Robinson.

Brenda: (19:12)

Well, I remember hanging out in the stairwell at my parents' house over here. I was east dropping. Um, my mother's, my parents' insurance agent saying how he was, um, amazed at how well my parents were handling the fact that I was asking them to. And they were acquiescing in cashing in some insurance plan policy to give me money that I had requested to go live on a commune in Vancouver island at 19. And this money in this insurance policy was my, uh, college fund. And they had that conversation with me. He was like, are you sure you don't wanna go to college? Are you sure? Are you really sure we have this money for you? And I was adamant that I wanted out of school. Mm-hmm and um, so I took my $10,000 back in 1972 and I went and lived like that off really well for several years and bought a piece of property and built a home.

Brenda: (20:15)

And I didn't, I didn't get to school. I always wanted to go to school. But when I was teaching in graduate program at, at Cal state, um, I would opening class would be like, who are you? I, all my students were teachers coming in to get the master's. And it was usually a range of I'm here because I want the next pay grade to, I really wanna learn this material and become a better teacher and maybe become an administrator, blah, blah, blah. And, um, and I would feel that I should reciprocate and tell them my story and say, you know, I didn't go back. I didn't start school. I didn't get my first AA until after 30. And I, once I got my BA, um, I was close to 40 and then I just kept going and getting three masters in a quasi PhD. And I was in school up until like a few years ago and I was a late student, but I always call myself a chronic student because, but the first, you know, until I was 30, I was, and I had amazing positions in, uh, corporate and did a lot of business development and entertainment.

Brenda: (21:25)

But I understand that quest for having some breathing space, uh, from going from a, a highly, uh, competitive private school to, uh, rebelling, like just years of rebelling about, I don't wanna take an S a T I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna, I want out, and this, I found, found a home when I was reading bill Plotkin chapter on. Um, and I refer to his work often in this podcast, uh, uh, at, at what he's deemed adolescent can happen at any age is not the developmental age that we're, that we're usually familiar with. But the adolescent lasts is that gestation period of moving from an ego-centric life where it's all about creating our strength, our power or perspective, being in, you know, be learning how to be in a system. Um, but then moving into spirit and being connected and, and having the greater ability to develop through an ecocentric life.

Brenda: (22:33)

And then moving into an ecocentric phase of life all the way, how you define that ecocentric is, um, and I'm paraphrasing, uh Plotkin but it's moving away from the self, the ego, and moving more into the soul of the earth in allowing the development of, um, the relationship between the individual and where we are in the, in the universe, in the worth, and, and having much more awareness of how we move through our life and accomplish who we are based on our relationship with the environment. Now, the environment is just not the beautiful babbling brick and the mountains and the ocean. It's the place that we live. And so our community, the people that people, the community, how we care, intend for the community, it's having a responsibility of outside, of just taking care of paying our bills. Mm-hmm and it, he says, until we really move into an ecocentric life, we will always maintain the sense of unfused UN liberated adolescence and undeveloped. Yeah. Yeah. And we will, and often, and he's very clear that the, the adolescence is still running the show it's 60 and 70. So it's not a developmental phase. Yeah. It's, it's, it's more of a, a psychic soul ego phase. Oh

Deborah: (24:05)

Yeah. My inner teenager. I know when I've been depriving her, because she's like. Mm. She shows up as I call her my little red Corvette and she goes faster and faster and she will burn those down emotionally. And I'm like, oh, she's here. She's back. She's like, this job and this. She swears a lot. Yeah. My entertain swears a lot. And I go, oh, okay. And it takes a long while for me to listen to my inner teenager, cuz she's rebellious. She has that rebellious. And I, I associate that with the adolescent. Okay. It's like the way I, I was inculturated, you know, you don't take it. I mean, I didn't do it with my parents so much. I just was sneaky as hell. And my kids were sneaky too. And I let them be sneaky. And I said, don't be foolish enough to be caught. Yeah. You know, if you're foolish enough to be caught, then I'm gonna impose rules on you. But that did not mean that I wanted them to go out and get hurt.

Brenda: (25:10)

Just devious.

Deborah: (25:12)

Well, you

Brenda: (25:13)

Know, straight smart.

Deborah: (25:14)

They were straight smart. Yeah. And uh, I thought that was a good thing to be. I thought that was a good thing to be like, if I don't catch you, I'll tell you what the, what I want for you. I didn't say well, I think I kind of did say if you bring it to my attention, you obviously aren't ready for the freedom. So there's just like, you know, you're looking at a balancing act, you've got this freedom and you've got discipline and the fulcrum is in the middle. The parent is the fulcrum. So I said, if you want more freedom, you get more discipline. Cuz I'm teaching you to be an adult, not a better caterpillar so, so it wasn't always pleasant, but I go like, oh, so you chose to, I found the bedroom. I found the window open. You escaped. But you weren't, you, you made it obvious for me to find that out.

Brenda: (26:08)

Do you think they wanted you to find out based on not covering their

Deborah: (26:12)

Tracks? I think my eldest son was a wild thing. I, I remember we lived in the, we lived in the wilds, uh, and he, and he would've to escape to go down, get out and our house was big. It was like a castle. So we were like three stories away from him and I wasn't helicoptering and I didn't know fact, some of these things I find out at Christmas time, I'm like, oh good. I'm glad. I didn't know it. I did not know that you took the and you drink it all and you bared all over your room. And then you said you had the stomach flu and I believed you it's my daughter. it's funny later at the time I would've been like, huh, you had a good cover story. My daughter had the best cover stories. So she hardly ever got in trouble. She just did what she wanted do. And then she learned her lessons on her own.

Brenda: (27:10)

So what do we tell parents? Like what insight besides, uh, if there's a sense of frustration and judgment, deep judgment, how do we, how do we bring in validation? Not only for them being parent being the good enough parent Mary Ainsworth. Um, and uh,

Brenda: (27:30)

Like I was trying to think of the things that I, the situations that I've been sitting with with my own clients and mm-hmm , um, and nothing really popped as far as, um, what my go-to is except working with Dr. Robin bear and just watching her create these programs for validation. And it's not just validation. She said that there's always something to validate and it's not about, uh, accepting the behavior, but accepting the there's something within the conversation that can be validated that can build on, even if there's deep, deep judgment and resistance and, and anger and

Deborah: (28:08)

That's that's right. That's what we facilitate. Yeah. That's what we facilitate. You're absolutely right on. It's all about as a therapist, deep listening, not getting out ahead of the moment. Many times, it'll be the parent who says, I'm gonna give you my kid, fix my kid face. So I listen to the child and we hang out and we get along 99, 9 0.9% of the time we get along great. Because I'm like, what, what, where you at? And once the parents are making assumptions, so we all make assumptions. It's called projection. But the point of the story is, um, the kid tells me where they're at and I listen, I'm a trustworthy adult, cuz I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna really understand, which is really hard to do when you're a parent, because you wanna protect, you wanna protect. I get that too. So somewhere in the course of therapy, when the child is getting to the place where they're like, um, you know, they, they kind of are just stuck cuz they're living in this stall, you know, prison like environment or they're living in a, in some kind of unhealthy place.

Deborah: (29:23)

And I'll say at some point, would you be comfortable having a conversation with your parent facilitated? I, I don't name the timeline and the child will go 90% of the time. Yes. Would you be in the room as the umpire so to speak advocate? And so then I find out their interaction. I watch it when you watch you learn mm-hmm so I can watch if the parent cuts the child off, I can watch if the parent is harsh, whatever they do drunk, I can tell the style or trying really hard with the, with the model they grew up with

Brenda: (30:01)

Sarcasm.

Deborah: (30:02)

Yeah. And it's like compassion for all compassion for all mm-hmm . So that goes like that. And then I will, um, weigh in on that. And then if I think the parent needs some therapy, I will say to the child, you know, how would you feel? Uh, sometimes this is after the session. How do you feel if your parent talked to me without you so they could unload some of their stuff. And most of the time it it's always permission from the kid cuz that's my patient and they'll yeah. Maybe later or please, because I'm a systems therapist. I mean, you know, we don't

Brenda: (30:44)

Family

Deborah: (30:45)

Systems. Yeah. It's like loving captivity. Right? So Esther Perl so when I get to do that and the child gives me permission, I'm like, okay, you know, let me do a session or so, and see what happens. And then I, that becomes very organic. The parent starts to under unloads, their psychic load, their pain, their, their frustration, their fear, cuz I'm compassionate to them. And they start to understand the dynamic of their own terror of what's gonna happen, which I completely get. I'm a mom for God's sake. I get it. You're precious little babies, you know, doing drugs or whatever they're doing. And uh, and then when the time is right, we bring 'em together and start healthy dialogue.

Brenda: (31:35)

What do you think? What would you say is the first or second defense mechanism that the parent trusts themselves to let go of sense of vulnerability or a sense of trust or

Deborah: (31:49)

Protection Protection,

Brenda: (31:53)

Projection. So they give up a little control.

Deborah: (31:56)

Absolutely. Because with each stage of a child's life, you give up more and more control because they are more capable. Like if you look in nature, you see a mother horse with a cult or in my case, like a deer, the baby can stand. Yeah. After a certain period of time, usually I'm there in wa in Washington, by the end of the summer, the baby's on its own. It's fine. It refers to the mother, but it's becoming its own being. Yeah. So with human development, it's different and you've taken to account multitudinous, um, influences. But we all project Fred was right. We project what we learned onto our children and want them to follow. And sometimes we don't have, like, there can be a very long historical periods of stabilization, but with modern technology, the post, most modern world, the Internet's informing kids, they're getting a lot of influencing TikTok videos.

Deborah: (32:57)

They're like, what the hell do you know? You know, I'm more bonded to my peer group on TikTok than I am to you. So parents aren't aware of that and they discount the significance of this developmental piece, which I teach essence, your child needs to become their own person. Does it mean you don't have to care? You can give 'em the rules of the house and you can impose sanctions. It's fine. But if you are full of rage, that's a therapeutic issue for you. So a lot of times it becomes rage and that's second, most, um, important thing. I, I, that wall of rage because under fear, my projection that my child's gonna be killed or something comes a rage. Mm-hmm like, how dare you? How dare you destroy yourself. Yeah. And under rage is just tremendous amounts of terror. Yeah. And vulnerability. And self-righteousness

Brenda: (33:54)

Newfield talks about that in, in the, in the circle of, uh, expression that rage is UN unre, um, is repressed anger, which is re unaddressed fear, which is, um, repressed hurt. And so yeah, that ultimately, no matter where you are in that, in that spectrum. Yeah. Um, that it, it comes from the parent's own wounding.

Deborah: (34:22)

It does. It's disowned. The material means the stuff that the parent had to compartmentalize in order to live, succeed in their own model, time of life. Like my son said to me, when he was young, he goes like, you know, mom, you don't live in the same time period as I do. You can never live in the future. Which reminds me, me of a poem. I'm gonna read if I can find it here. I think I can. This is comes from collo bra. Um, and on children and a woman who held a baby against her Boso said speak to us of children. And he said, your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you yet. They belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies, but not their souls for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit. Not even in your dreams.

Deborah: (35:35)

You may be strive. You may to be like them, but seek not to make them like you for life goes not backward nor Terry's with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth worth. I love that. That's beautiful. And the Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite and he bends you with his might, that his arrows may go swift and far let your bending in the Archer's hand, be for gladness for even as he loves the arrow, that flies. So he lo also loves the bow. That is stable. This is written in somewhere in the early 19 hundreds.

Brenda: (36:23)

Things haven't changed much

Deborah: (36:24)

Yet. Not it's

Brenda: (36:26)

Pretty consistent. Yeah.

Deborah: (36:27)

Pretty consistent. I found it enormously helpful. Yeah. As a mother to think they're the living arrows. Yeah. And when my son said that to me, I went, you know, he's right. I'm learning from him. I can't be him. I can't live in the nineties. you know, back then I can't do that.

Brenda: (36:46)

So this is a real practical application of not being a better caterpillar of those imaginal cells. Does a caterpillar have the capability of imagining what it's like to be the butterfly? No. Yeah.

Deborah: (37:00)

I can tell in my standards, but I think the most important thing is the conversation. And I, I messed up a lot, but the one thing I tell parents a lot, if parents are listening today, learn to apologize to your kid, please, you know, I've been in practice 35 years and I always ask my patients, does any, did anyone, your family did your mother or father ever apologize to you? And they're like majority seriously count on the fingers of two hands. Maybe how many of my clients say my parents apologized heartfelt apology or witness to the harm they did or humble. See the model they had. Their parents are always right. Kids have to be scared of them or today's generation. The hovering parent is, um, I'll do whatever you say. I'll do whatever you say. So whatever you want, whatever you want, there's a secret, hidden agenda. You have to be perfect, but I'm not gonna so, so, so, so, so we have these little kids that don't become butterflies because, and the parents like you're so fragile. You're so fragile. You're so fragile. You're so fragile. You're so fragile. So what, they don't develop the resilience. They can't get out of the cocoon. Yeah. They can't even get in it.

Brenda: (38:14)

And those molecules are of development as far as soul. Yeah. Are waiting until 50 or 60 or 70. Yeah. When the ego says I am so tired.

Deborah: (38:26)

I see a lot of college dropouts. Yeah. So these kids that got into, you know, Georgetown or whatever, they went and then they're like, they get what they, we call in our business. The buckets.

Brenda: (38:36)

Yeah. The bucket list now.

Deborah: (38:38)

Yeah. It's the, yeah.

Brenda: (38:39)

It's not the bucket list. It's the bucket list.

Deborah: (38:41)

The rebel comes out. Yeah. It's like, um, I'm here and I'm drinking and I'm not thinking, and I'd be stinking and ain't blinking and they call me like, parents are like, would you help? 'em get back and get that floor playing five for me plane. I'm like kids. Like, I don't want it. Yeah. I wanna be like, Brenda I wanna go live on a hippie farm and I I'm killing myself. Yeah. And I don't want it anymore. Yeah.

Brenda: (39:13)

I like the idea of apologizing. Mm-hmm um, Even as a parent writing down waves of apologizing, what to apologize for, um, having those conversations of outside of control. Mm-hmm

Deborah: (39:33)

Brenda: (39:33)

Having those conversations of validation. Yeah. Learning, uh, from their child, uh, what they were never offered when the parent was a child.

Deborah: (39:46)

Yeah.

Brenda: (39:46)

And breaking, breaking that cycle. Yeah. I think those are modalities that are reachable and accessible and so difficult to start on their own without being conscious of

Deborah: (40:00)

It. Compassion. Yeah.

Brenda: (40:03)

And I, I do believe from my own experience and with clients and students, um, it's you don't know what you don't know until you do that. And then all of a sudden you realize how much further you can actually go both wide or higher and deeper mm-hmm and it's not about healing as about being whole and um, with the aspect of healing. But, um, so adolescence

Deborah: (40:32)

And yeah. And I on the subject of apology, because people are such have such a tough time. I, I developed a model years ago and it's like, I was watching the Olympics years ago and it came to me. You gotta teach apology in more granular way. So, okay. I started off with, um, if you're beginning at something, it takes practice. So how do you do it? So a bronze apology is just, I'm sorry. Okay. You get a bronze medal for doing, having the courage to tell your child. You're sorry. I'm sorry. No explanation. No defending shut your mouth. I'm sorry. Then when you get to the silver medal, you say, I'm sorry, this is what I did to you little inside that had to hurt. Yeah. So if you get good at that, then you get to move to the gold medal. And it sounds like this, I'm sorry, this is what I did to you. This is what I wish I would've done. Instead. I'm gonna work on this. Say that. Beautiful. Yeah.

Announcer: (41:48)

And that concludes this week's episode of the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Meints-Pierson and Brenda Littleton. If you'd like to hear more about living a more soulful life, please subscribe to our channel on your favorite podcast app and be sure to check out the show notes and links below. For more information from Deborah visit soulpathsessions.com and for Brenda, brendalittleton.com. Thank you for listening and remember to follow your soul, it knows the way.