#58 - How to Deal With Difficult Parents: Holiday Edition

11/24/14 • 54 min

Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

The holidays are upon us! Time for turkey, presents, and LOTS of time with your family. The counseling and coaching sessions I'm having with my Denver clients recently have focused on how to handle "family time."

The truth is that everyone wants to have a happy holiday with their family. It's also true that many people look forward to time with their parents with a mixture of excitement... and apprehension. Particularly during the holidays, with all the forced together-time, it's easy for tensions to flare and wreck a nice day pretty fast.

So today I'm re-issuing the "How to Deal With Difficult Parents" edition of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast, in order to remind you of the mindset to cultivate in order to genuinely appreciate your parents for who they are, and have a good time together.

I hope these ideas help you have a happy holiday. And Happy Thanksgiving! xo, Lisa

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Do your parents make you crazy? You're not alone! Even as adults, our parents can have a unique ability to trigger familiar old frustrations, hurts and resentments. Or maybe they're just annoying. Maybe, as in my own case, you're still a little upset with your mother for not being Hillary Clinton.

On this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I talk about how to deal with your parents, as an adult. Listen, and learn why you get so triggered by your parents, and the steps to create a healthy, peaceful and reality-based relationship with the parents you have.

We'll talk about the stages that we all move through on the path of "individuation" including disillusionment, distance, healing / growing, and reclaiming. You'll learn how to shift from being a child in relation to your parents, to an adult. Finally, you'll learn how to appreciate your parents for who they are, forgive past mistakes, set healthy boundaries, and start actually enjoying your relationship with them. Listen now....

I hope these ideas help you have a happy holiday. And Happy Thanksgiving! xo, Lisa

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Previous Episode

#57 - When to NOT Follow Your Feelings

"Follow your feelings" is the punchline of countless self-help books, and the focus of many therapy sessions. We can spend years in therapy or counseling learning how to respect and obey our emotional guidance system, which will often lead you in the right direction. But the truth is that not all feelings are the same. Sometimes, listening to your emotions will absolutely wreck your life. How do you tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy feelings?

Healthy emotions are like your sense of smell. They provide you with information about the world, about yourselves, and other peoeple. Your feelings help you make decisions, and know when to move closer to something (or protect yourself).

At the same time, we're all vulnerable to unhealthy feelings: Feelings that are rooted in depression, anxiety, low self esteem, trauma or impulsivity. And if we listen to those feelings we will almost invariably experience negative consequences.

But the big problem is that our feelings always feel true, no matter if they are "healthy" or "unhealthy." It's therefore very difficult to differentiate between feelings that we should respect and obey, or feelings that we should over-ride.

On today's episode of The Love, Happiness and Success Podcast we're talking all about feelings - and how you can determine which ones to listen to and which ones to let go of.

Next Episode

#59 - Everyday Mindfulness, with Dr. Peggy Sheehan

Mindfulness: The ability to stay grounded in the current moment, and simply be present with whatever is happening. So simple, yet so hard. What's easy? Getting swept away by distractions, thoughts, feelings, daydreams, and worries about things that might happen. When we live in our heads, which most of us do most of the time, we're not really here. And that's too bad, because the world is a beautiful place.

Our ambient stress and future-focus is even more pronounced in the weeks leading up to the holiday season, so I thought that this would be a good time to revisit some simple mindfulness skills that will help you be able to slow down, breathe, and enjoy this special time of year.

My guest on the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast today is Dr. Peggy Sheehan. She's a Denver-based physician who teaches John Kabat Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program through Kaiser Permanente, as well as a spiritual director of the Zen Center of Denver. She knows a lot about mindfulness: The benefits of the practice, and everyday practices that will help you to slow down, and be more peaceful and present with your life. Today, she's sharing her wisdom with you.