Moment 001: Peaceful Co-Parenting w. Veronika Archer

[00:00:00] Welcome to today's episode of AwakenHer. I'm your host, Corissa Stepp, and I couldn't be more excited to share this conversation with Veronica Archer. In our discussion we cover the complexities of co-parenting, the impact of our internal energies on our children,

[00:00:15] and how we navigate the emotional landscape of post-separation life. Veronica shares her insights on the importance of aligning her energies and offers practical tools for shifting from a place of guilt and resentment to one of acceptance and positive influence.

[00:00:32] Whether you're navigating co-parenting or looking to improve your relationship with your children, this snippet of our episode together is filled with wisdom and actionable strategies you won't want to mess. Let's dive in.

[00:00:45] One example that you mentioned that I wanted to address was putting the kids in the middle, right? So that's one of the things that's really harmful to the kids. So the strategy might be, okay I'm not going to talk about the X,

[00:00:59] I'm going to communicate with the X and make sure that we are quote-unquote co-parenting or making decisions together and you're like, I'm doing everything I can, but my kids still feel put in the middle.

[00:01:10] And what I had discovered for myself is that even though I was saying and doing the right, wouldn't put right things within myself, I knew that my X was talking about me, it was damaging my relationship.

[00:01:25] And I wanted more than anything from my kids to come live with me full time. You know, I didn't pursue that, I didn't go to court for that, but I definitely wanted it in my being.

[00:01:35] And I wanted them to have the last relationship with their dad and those kinds of things. And I had a lot of emotion inside myself, you know, anger, resentment towards him and the desire for them to be with me.

[00:01:50] And what I believe is that they consent sent sent. Human beings are very intuitive even if we don't recognize it. Kids have not yet been conditioned to not be intuitive. And so they pick up on even more than we know or believe that they are.

[00:02:09] And so that's why I talk about shifting your energy because if you can be at a place, I talk about holding the vision, right? So holding the vision of the relationship that you want with your child, if your X were not sabotaging it.

[00:02:26] Holding the vision of the trajectory that you want for your child, the future you want for your child. Now, I'm not necessarily talking about like, oh, my child to be a doctor.

[00:02:35] I'm talking about like, I want my child to be healthy and happy and have a positive relationship with both of their parents or something like that, right? You hold that vision and then you shift your own internal energy to match the vibration of that vision.

[00:02:50] So if you're feeling guilt or resentment towards your X, that's not matching the frequency of I want my child to be healthy and have the positive relationship with their parents, right?

[00:03:01] So this is what the whole process is, right? Then you're like, okay, why do I feel guilt and resentment? You use tools like what you share, Chris, that to work on that, right?

[00:03:08] How do I heal my own guilt and resentment shift it? This is not about fake positive thinking, right? We don't want to deny how we're feeling. What we do want to recognize how we're feeling and shift it so that our energy shifts.

[00:03:23] And I want to give two examples. One of why I know this to be true and two of how this works.

[00:03:28] So one, how do I know this to be true? Well my kids are now young adults and so I have the freedom to have more conversations with them when they were younger.

[00:03:37] And my middle son who's now 20 said to me sometime in this past year about how he and his younger brother really felt put in the middle between me and their dad.

[00:03:47] And I asked him, I asked him, I was like, well, why is that? Because I never pressured you to choose.

[00:03:53] I always supported your relationship with your dad. I didn't say this to him but I was like, I did all the things I was supposed to in terms of making sure that dad had equal time, all the things.

[00:04:05] And he couldn't really think of a specific example other than things his dad was doing. So there were things his dad was doing that was making him and his brother feel put in the middle.

[00:04:14] But that's when I really sat with it and that's when I was like the epiphany of, oh my goodness. I never said anything to the kids but I felt it and then you it. Yeah.

[00:04:30] I love this because from a human design perspective, I don't know if you're into human design some of my listeners are, I'm just thinking even about anyone who has an undefined root center or an undefined head center right those are the two pressure centers in the chart.

[00:04:46] You're going to this is how it's going to make sense to you. People will implicitly feel you putting pressure on them if you are defined in either of those centers when they are undefined and it's not that you're doing anything it is literally down to like you just said the energetics of it.

[00:05:03] Exactly. To your point that person that they they will perceive and pick up on the things you're not saying right that's the intuition part of it.

[00:05:12] Yeah, and then so then the second part is that I had seen some amazing shifts my relationship with my boys becoming go you know as I was about or sometimes they're more strained and you know so there are ups and downs even now.

[00:05:25] But without fail whenever I shift into a space of like grief or guilt or things like that I no longer feel resound mentors my act is that true.

[00:05:34] Not sure that that's true. Any time those emotions come up my relationships with my kids seem to take a turn for the worse and every time I shift back into holding the vision keeping my own energy centered and clear.

[00:05:48] My relationship with my kids will enhance and expand and this is from you know right now two of my kids living in another state.

[00:05:57] So one of the even in the same house I don't even see them regularly or that frequently but even geographically removed I can be where I am and I can shift my energy and also like get a message from my son or will have a really beautiful conversation or something like that.

[00:06:12] So I know this to be true because I have observed it with an experience within myself and then of course doing it with my teaching my clients this and seeing the shifts that happen.

[00:06:23] One of the things about energy is you know maybe your audience people listening maybe they're already connected with sort of the woe I don't know but I think a lot of people think of like this energy kind of work and shifting your energy is being woo and like I don't know maybe it's true, maybe it's not.

[00:06:39] I worked as a biologist for 20 years and so it's really important to me to you know I know something to be true when there's a consistent outcome that can be repeated.

[00:06:50] And so I've taught this now to many clients and I've practiced it myself many times and the outcome is consistently the same so that's why I can confidently say like number one thing is shift your own energy at assembly.

[00:07:02] I love that and thank you for bringing up your background as a scientist because that was a very important point I think that people should know because this isn't just coming out of nowhere there's evidence right.

[00:07:11] All that experiments like pyramids and all my kids, but so sorry but I do I am parents right the parenting is just one guy and experiment.

[00:07:21] Honestly like what you're sharing is so helpful so I you've definitely given us so much value already so I'd love for you to kind of keep going if you have gotten more that you want to share in terms of like.

[00:07:31] The tools because now it's like okay so how do I go about shifting my energy aside from like holding the vision and what else can we do because like for me like.

[00:07:41] As an EFT practitioner like that's one ways in which I use to help shift people's energy right to help them release the stagnancies.

[00:07:48] There's a lot of somatic work right so we're working constantly with the body and we're constantly working on understanding our nervous system how to address our emotional triggers.

[00:07:59] How to release all of that because then we can get to a place I hope because this is kind of where I feel like I have done this work on myself and where I see that I'm had it.

[00:08:10] Which is that acceptance piece that you touched on before it's like you come into this acceptance of the other person but it's also an acceptance of yourself and where you're at so that you can be true to how.

[00:08:24] You're feeling acknowledging what you're feeling but then also allowing yourself to process and move through it so that you're not stuck in that energy of it right so like you mentioned that guilt.

[00:08:35] That a lot of parents feel especially when they only have their kids half the time and if they were the ones who made the decision to get out of the relationship because they recognize that it wasn't healthy.

[00:08:44] Then it can impact the time that they spend with their kids because then they're making parenting decisions based upon that guilt. As opposed to doing it from this place of love and this understanding that okay I know this was my choice.

[00:09:00] Yes, there's a part of me that feels bad for it but I can feel that and I can release it so that when I'm with my kids I'm still providing them with the structure and the discipline that they need but also the compassion and the empathy.

[00:09:13] 100% I think there's so many things I can touch on there but I want to give those of you listening some tools to walk away with if you don't already have them.

[00:09:23] So first of all I just want to touch on what you were talking about because you mentioned somatic and emotional and things like that.

[00:09:28] I talk about healing on seven energy layers what I've noticed is where people get stuck because they've only focused on one or two layers and it's what you were just talking about right it's the emotions it's the body, it's the energy, it's the knowledge.

[00:09:41] I'm not going to go into that too much right now but I just wanted to say yep you just highlight what you just said about healing on all these different ways it's so important.

[00:09:50] And if you are somebody if you are parent and you have partial custody or like shared custody so you have time alone.

[00:09:57] It is so important when your kids are not with you as you just increase it to focus on your own healing I mean that's the biggest benefit you can give to your kids but okay I'll try to get you some few tools so here's one of them if you are somebody who's spending your quote unquote free time.

[00:10:14] I'm writing rewriting the perfect email or text message to your ex because you're trying to resolve something. If you are in court and you are spending hours and hours and hours collecting information for court those are some signs that there's something not going correctly or well.

[00:10:33] I'm going to say you interact with your ex and I want to really encourage people listening if this is you what I just described. To get help from someone like her so or myself that other resources out there. To get out of the fight.

[00:10:47] But if it's been more than a year since you've left your ex and you're in court frequently and you're spending a lot of your time dealing with court matters.

[00:10:56] You want to get yourself out of the fight the courts are set up not intentionally but the way the court's function favors the toxic person. And the toxic person logs to fight with you and they will fight with you forever.

[00:11:11] I get so proud of about this because I have clients going through this where like when I get into this court decision then I can work on healing then I can work on parenting I need the courts to make this decision whenever it is custody money etc.

[00:11:25] I promise you that decision is not going to give you the result that you're hoping for in terms of now I'm free to do my next step.

[00:11:32] It's not going to happen you're going to stay fighting forever and you have the ability to get the result you want right now even if there is something that needs to be settled in court there aren't things that need to be settled in court.

[00:11:43] I'm not saying never go to court right custody you need a custody agreement you need a divorce you know a divorce settlement all those things are important.

[00:11:53] Whatever you should be spending like very small amounts of time and the questions you have that you believe need to get resolved are not going to get resolved in court they're going to get resolved through the work and strategies that Chris and I are talking about here so that's first if you're fighting with your ex and important spending lots and lots of time.

[00:12:13] Dealing with your ex then you help and please get help because you will be there I have another person I spoke with his been in court for 12 years. Like please don't do that if you're listening please don't do that get help.

[00:12:27] Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode.

[00:12:31] I just wanted to share that if you listen to this episode or this little snipp of this episode and recognize that perhaps you are constantly engaging in a fight with your narcissistic ex so every time you get a text message.

[00:12:44] Every time they're trying to take you to court or every email becomes a battle with your narcissistic ex then I want to highly encourage you to start to do the work on your nervous system to get you out of that fight or flight that Veronica highlighted in this conversation.

[00:12:59] If you're constantly engaging in the battle if you're always returning back a text message or you're responding to a text message or an email with as much them and vigor as they're throwing at you then you're just continuing to escalate the conflict in the relationship.

[00:13:18] What you want to do is you want to learn to pause.

[00:13:22] Take some deep breaths use some somatic tools to ground yourself back into your ventral vagal nervous system state meaning that you want to get out of the emotional reactionary limbic system of your brain and bring your prefrontal cortex back online which is the center of the brain that is responsible for rational reasonable and logical thinking.

[00:13:47] When you're able to do that, you can then respond in a way that is non-emotional in a way that is productive and effective where you are clearly getting across your point without fanning the flames of the fire.

[00:14:04] This is a lot of the work that we do in stronger my narcissistic trauma recovery group.

[00:14:10] And if you're interested in learning how to regulate your nervous system, then please reach out to me with the word regulate and I'm happy to share with you how you can gain access to module one of our trauma recovery program which is all about the nervous system.

[00:14:25] I promise you it will create more peace and more calm in your interactions and it's going to help you to stop engaging in the battle.

[00:14:35] To stop fanning the flames of chaos that your narcissistic acts is constantly trying to keep you engaged in because remember if they keep you engaged in the battle to them that means you still care.

[00:14:48] And so they're still getting some sense of narcissistic supply from you when you continue to respond in an emotional way. It highlights for them that they still have some sort of control because they're getting you riled up because they're getting an emotional reaction from you.

[00:15:06] My other quick trick that I want to share with you is if you are getting very incited by the emails and text messages that you're receiving from your acts right out everything that you would like to say put it into chat GPT.

[00:15:19] And ask it to rewrite your response without any emotion and highlighting the main key points you can then review that response that chat GPT spits out to you.

[00:15:31] Maybe make some final edits to make sure that it's removed all the emotion and that it has actually highlighted an emphasized the key points of your response.

[00:15:41] And then copy paste it and use that to send back to your acts until you learn how to work with your nervous system to downregulate it and to get out of that fight or flight and to get out of that emotional reactive part of your brain.

[00:15:53] I really hope that helps any questions you know where to find me until next week everyone be well. Thank you for tuning in to Awakenher.

[00:16:03] This conversation may have ended but your journey towards healing and empowerment is ongoing. Remember every challenge you face is an opportunity to grow stronger and more resilient. If our stories today inspired you consider sharing this episode with someone who needs these empowering messages.

[00:16:20] I'm Chris ASTEP, cheering you on as you take the steps to heal, grow and transform your life. Keep believing in yourself and until next time stay empowered.