S5 Bonus 6 | How I Navigate A Difficult Relationship With My Parents
If you follow Carla on instagram (@carlaarges) then it’s no surprise that she has a challenging relationship with her parents, coming out of a toxic environment marked with scars of childhood trauma.
She often gets questions - how do you have a relationship with your parents today? How do you navigate the challenges when apologies were never made and many behaviours un changed?
Today she shares the things that, empowered by the Holy Spirit, allows her to maintain a relationship - with boundaries - and heal at the same time.
Choosing Forgiveness:
Choose forgiveness over holding onto anger and bitterness. It's not about their actions but about your relationship with God.
Rooted in Identity in Christ:
Affirm and rehearse your identity in Christ daily. Your worth and value are secure in the Lord, making you unshakeable.
Establishing Boundaries:
Set fair and firm boundaries. Communicate them clearly, and be prepared to enforce consequences if they are crossed.
Managing Expectations:
Adjust your expectations. Accept people for who they are, not who you wish them to be. Manage your expectations realistically.
Seek Healing:
Actively pursue healing. Attend therapy, practice coping mechanisms, and regularly lay down your burdens to Jesus.
Community and Conversation:
Join the Affirming Truth Facebook group. Engage in open and honest conversations about your struggles, seeking advice and guidance.
God's Design for Relationships:
Surrender to God's plan for your relationships. Pray for guidance on how to show up in challenging relationships in a way that brings glory and honor to Him.
Connect With Carla:
Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> carlaagreswellness@gmail.com
Join In His Image Wellness Collective ---> carlaargeswellness@gmail.com
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Carla: Do you constantly battle feeling like you're not enough? Maybe it feels like this heavy weight is tied around your neck. You're stuck comparing yourself to others, alternating between jealousy and resentment. Did you know that changing your thought life, renewing your mind, as we're called to do in Romans, can free you from living like this and set you on a path of joy filled living?
[00:00:31] Carla: Don't know where to start. That's where I come in. Book a one on one mindset renewal session with me. Just send me an email at KarlaArgesWellness at gmail. com to get more info. In these sessions, we break down beliefs that are holding you back and set you on a course of living a less overwhelmed, more joyful and purposeful life.
[00:00:55] Carla: You'll leave with the tools you need to rewrite the script in your head and [00:01:00] take control over your life. Again, email me at CarlaArgesWellness at gmail. com and I will send you all the information. I can't wait to hear from you.
[00:01:19] Carla: Hey friends, welcome to Affirming Truth. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, Grow in faith and root our identity in Christ. My hope is that you will leave each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review.
[00:01:42] Carla: I am so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hey friends, welcome to this week's bonus episode. So we're gonna talk about some questions I've been getting. I don't know if you guys follow me on [00:02:00] Instagram, at Carla Arges, but I was sharing on Friday of last week how my parents came over, and it was really triggering for me, um.
[00:02:14] Carla: There's lots of things that are complicated in our relationship. The relationship is not an easy one, um, at least on my end. And I get a lot of questions that say, you know, if there is all this trauma from the past that happened in large part at the hands of my parents, Why do I have a relationship with them today and how do I navigate that because the truth is they have never fully acknowledged their role in my trauma, they've never accepted responsibility for my trauma, they've never apologized for my trauma, um, and it basically [00:03:00] just is, well, did the best that I could do and move on, and it may very well be true that they did the best that they could do given their own mental health, but there's no acknowledgement to the damage that they've done to me that I still am working through in therapy, right?
[00:03:22] Carla: Even all these many decades later. And so, because they have not acknowledged their behavior, and because they don't acknowledge their behavior, there is no real change to the behavior, um, in, in that way. What has changed is me. And the questions I get are, how do you have a relationship with your parents if there's been no attempt on their side for apologies, if there's been no attempt on their side to sort of make up for it, if they [00:04:00] still exhibit some of the same behavioral patterns, how do you do it?
[00:04:05] Carla: And so I just wanted to have a real frank, real raw conversation with you guys today, um, because maybe you have people in your life that have caused you deep pain and hurt and they're still in your life and it's tough to navigate and I see you and I get that. Um, the first thing I would say For me is that I chose in my twenties, there came sort of a, a fork in the road.
[00:04:36] Carla: Would you say there is two paths I could have gone down one where I broke off relationship with my parents and one where I continued to have it while working on myself to protect myself from them. And I chose to take the path of relationship. Now, part of that. Is [00:05:00] only by the grace of God in doing that and having to be in a constant posture of forgiveness, even if they are not asking for it, right?
[00:05:12] Carla: See forgiveness is about what we're doing, not about what they're doing. It's not about whether or not they apologize. It's not about whether or not they take responsibility. It's about me and my relationship with God, even more so than it is about my relationship with them. You know, in the Bible, we're told to forgive.
[00:05:33] Carla: We're told that if we withhold forgiveness from others, God can withhold forgiveness from us. We're told in the Bible to forgive, you know, 70 times, 70 times, meaning infinitely. So, I have to be in a posture of forgiveness, and being in a posture of forgiveness is not something that just happens once and it's done, right?
[00:05:56] Carla: I am constantly having to choose [00:06:00] forgiveness, not only over the new hurts, but over the old hurts. I've decided to forgive for the old hurts. But they still hurt, there's scars, there's wounds that are still healing. And sometimes that pain makes me get resentful, angry, want justice, want vindication. And I have to lay that down to Jesus and choose to pick up forgiveness again and again.
[00:06:30] Carla: And again, and again, so it's this ongoing posture of forgiveness. Now, let me be clear, forgiving does not mean giving access, right? You can forgive people that have caused you pain and refuse to be injured ongoing. I can forgive you and release you from my life. So I don't want any of [00:07:00] you to confuse the need for forgiveness with the need to have people in your life.
[00:07:06] Carla: Now, I have chosen to have these people in my life. And so how do I navigate that? How do I navigate that when they still come? With their same abuses and they would not like that. I'm using the word abuse, but My mom can be abusive and she doesn't recognize that and she doesn't own it and she doesn't believe it And this is just the blinders that she has on Herself and my dad has blinders on on too My mom's actions pierce a little bit deeper and a little bit harder and are much more blatant.
[00:07:48] Carla: But I have learned that I have to have thick skin. I have to not take things personally. I have to understand that her behavior [00:08:00] is a reflection on her and not me. And so how do I get strong in that position? Well, it's Rehearsing and affirming who I am in Christ. I am not what my mom says I am, which sometimes is quite lovely.
[00:08:19] Carla: But other times, not so much. I am not who my mom sees me to be. I am not the Carla through the lens of my mom. I am Carla, daughter of the King. I am Carla, the beloved of my Savior. And so I rehearse and I affirm who I am in Christ. See, if I know who I am in Christ, if my identity is secure in Christ, no one can rattle me.
[00:08:46] Carla: No one can make me doubt who I am. No one can make me doubt my value and my worth when I know my value and my worth is secure in the Lord. So I am daily guys, daily, [00:09:00] even now, daily rehearsing and affirming who I am in Christ. It has to be a daily practice. You can't, you can't just work out once a year and expect to be physically fit.
[00:09:13] Carla: You have to keep working out day in and day out. You can't eat a salad just one time and expect to be neutrally balance. You have to keep choosing good foods for your body and your mental health, right? The same with affirming who you are in Christ. You can't just do it once, set it and forget it. No, it's, it's not a set and forget.
[00:09:36] Carla: It's a rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Do it over and over and over again, because You have other messages constantly bombarding you. So you need to constantly be affirming who you are in Christ, knowing who God is and knowing who he's created you to be and what he says about you. So I [00:10:00] operate from a posture of forgiveness.
[00:10:03] Carla: I get firm and rooted and just unshaken in who I am in Christ. And I set boundaries. I set boundaries, um, a couple months ago, just before Christmas, my mom crossed a boundary that I had set with her. And there are consequences. There are relational consequences. When you treat people like garbage, when you treat people poorly.
[00:10:35] Carla: There are relational consequences and my mom crossed a boundary and she had a relational consequence. Did she like it? No. Did she turn it back around on me? Yes. Did she gaslight me and tell me that I was punishing her and that I was being sensitive and that I was in the wrong and all that? Yeah, she did.
[00:10:58] Carla: Because that's all she knows, [00:11:00] but I know better. I know the truth. So I held that boundary and Keeping that boundary is actually gonna make her think twice before crossing it again, right? Because I held firm I wasn't always good at holding the boundaries I wouldn't hold them and I would be triggered and I would suffer mentally for weeks I refuse to do that now.
[00:11:27] Carla: I refuse to suffer at the hand of my parents now. I forgive you I know who I am in Christ. I have this boundary and if you cross it, there are relational consequences, meaning you are not in my life or my family's life for a period of time until you can reset your behavior. And that's just how it goes.
[00:11:54] Carla: Now, why do I choose to go through that? It's work, right? It's work to constantly [00:12:00] forgive, which honestly, whether or not they were in my life, the pain and the hurt and the scars and the wounds are still there. I would still have to constantly forgive, right? I would still have to constantly do that.
[00:12:12] Carla: Regardless of whether or not they were in my life, I would still constantly need to rehearse and affirm who I am in Christ, right? So those two activities. would be ongoing whether they were in my life or not. What's different is the boundaries that I have and staying true to the boundaries, clearly communicating them that you don't get to treat me like this.
[00:12:38] Carla: And when I say don't treat me like this, I'm not going to go into details of what the abusive tactics are, but it has to do You know, it doesn't have to do with disagreement, right? We can disagree with each other, respectfully. We can be angry at each other, for sure, [00:13:00] respectfully. We can need a time out and say, listen, I'm really upset.
[00:13:06] Carla: I need some time to process this and work through it. I need a couple of days. For sure, that is healthy relationship, that is a healthy way to get through conflict. Conflict is going to arise. I'm not looking for a conflict free relationship, that, that doesn't exist. That would be a perfect relationship.
[00:13:26] Carla: And you can't have a perfect relationship with two imperfect people. But how you treat me matters, how you speak to me matters, whether you abuse me matters. I have a line now. Didn't have a line when I was younger. It took me a long time to realize I wasn't the problem, right? That's what childhood trauma does to you, makes you think you're the problem.
[00:13:58] Carla: Took me a long time to realize I [00:14:00] wasn't the problem, that I was a child, wasn't my fault. But now, I know I'm not the problem. And I refuse to be treated poorly. So forgive, rehearse and affirm your identity in Christ. Have boundaries that you're prepared to follow through on. Right? That's important. Don't have some crazy boundary that if you do this, this is the crazy consequence if you're not able to, to follow through with that.
[00:14:31] Carla: It's like, When you discipline your child, you don't give them a crazy consequence to scare them into right behavior with a consequence you'll never actually, you know, follow through with. If you do that, you're grounded for life. Well, come on, you're not really going to ground your child for life. So don't make that a consequence.
[00:14:50] Carla: You're not going to follow through. And the message is then my consequences don't matter. Make it a realistic consequence. Like if you treat me like [00:15:00] this. we are going to have a two week timeout of no talking and if by chance we had plans over those two weeks, those plans are cancelled. If by chance, you know, Caleb was, I was supposed to drive Caleb over for a sleepover, that plan is cancelled because I'm not going out of my way there.
[00:15:19] Carla: It's not about withholding my son, it's about if you do this, my boundary is, There's a two week freeze out, not, not silent treatment, not whatever. But if you treat me like this, there are two weeks then that you are not going to be in my life. And if you continue over and over and over again, then it may get to the point where that consequence has to be more severe.
[00:15:46] Carla: We haven't gotten there. Thankfully. But that's how I let them in my life. And sometimes I'm real and sometimes it's not perfect. They were over here Friday. As soon as my mom came in, she came in saying [00:16:00]something that was really triggering for me. And really hurtful. And then I had to go through the whole afternoon helping them.
[00:16:09] Carla: They came over to get my help. I had to help them through their attitude towards me, which was like, why are you giving me attitude? I'm taking my day to help you with something. I had to lay that down, but I didn't do it well. I had to go off to the bathroom and cry. I cried. I cried an ugly cry. And then at one point I couldn't even hold it in while they were there and I started crying.
[00:16:39] Carla: Like, it was what it was. It was messy and it was painful. And did I get past it? I did because I went back to forgiveness. I went back to what is my identity in Christ. I went back to what is my boundary. Right? [00:17:00]This is how I have people in my life that have hurt me and scarred me and have no self awareness.
[00:17:09] Carla: And frankly, at 82 and 76 are not going to suddenly change. So we are entering the last years of my parents life. They're not going to change. And the reality is, however, they act towards me and my sister. They don't act like that to the grandchildren. They are completely different people to the grandchildren.
[00:17:33] Carla: And I don't want to rob Caleb of what is a meaningful and impactful relationship in his life. My parents love my son and they treat him so well. Well, there is no sign of their toxic behavior towards him, there is no sign of abusive behavior towards him, because I can tell you I would shut that down in a heartbeat.
[00:17:57] Carla: So I don't want to rob him of [00:18:00] people that love him, right? The more love I can bring into his life, the better. I don't want to rob him of those relationships that he finds quite meaningful. So I'm back to, I want to give my son an enriched relationship with my parents who treat him well, right? That's the caveat.
[00:18:21] Carla: If they were doing to him what they did to me, I would choose differently about their impact and role in my life, but they don't, I don't know why. I don't know why it's reserved for my sister and I, but um, but I forgive, I remind myself who I am in Christ, I have boundaries, and then I move on. I allow myself to cry when I need to, I allow myself to grieve when I need to, I go to therapy to work through this, right?
[00:18:55] Carla: Trauma healing is a long process. I go to therapy, I work [00:19:00] it out with my therapist. And I don't have an expectation of them. You see, when I was younger, I just kept having this expectation. I expected them to change. I expected them to pay for what they did. I expected remorse. I expected different behavior.
[00:19:20] Carla: And because I constantly expected something that they are not capable of doing, I was constantly let down and sad and angry and all the feelings, all the feelings. I have let those expectations go. I don't expect of them things that are just not possible of them for whatever reason. Whether they choose for it to not to be possible or not, I don't know.
[00:19:49] Carla: But I have changed my expectations. I expect them to be exactly who they are. And so I'm not cut off guard. I'm not disappointed. They [00:20:00] are who they are. And I don't expect anything more or less than that. So I think when we have to deal with challenging relationships that we choose to keep in our life, remember, you don't have to choose to keep a challenging relationship in your life.
[00:20:16] Carla: When we choose to keep them in our life, we have to really, really manage our expectations. Manage our expectations. And again, all of this is rooted in God. I believe God's heart for my family is a reconciled family. I believe God's heart for my son is to have his grandparents. I believe God's heart for us is to function as a family according to his design.
[00:20:45] Carla: Are we going to do that on this side of heaven? Function according to his design? No, we're not. We're not. That is just the reality I've come to, to accept of my family unit. We're not. My sister's dysfunctional. [00:21:00] I probably, well, I'm the only one that actively gets therapy and works on it, so I would like to think that I have moved from dysfunction to function.
[00:21:10] Carla: Um, I'm the only one that works on it. I'm the only one that has drawn a line in the sand to say generational trauma ends with me. It's not going to be passed down through the generations. And I'm so proud of my decision to do that. And I'm so proud of the hard work I do to maintain that and to heal and to show up differently for my son.
[00:21:29] Carla: Um, But I don't expect anyone else to do that. I'm not expecting anyone else to change. I'm expecting them to be who they've always been, unless divine intervention happens. But Christ is enabling this in me because I lay it down and surrender. Lord, how can I show up in this difficult relationship today in a way that brings you glory and honor?
[00:21:55] Carla: And again, that's not being a doormat. I have boundaries, but [00:22:00] how can I show up in this relationship giving you glory and honor? That's how I manage through the messiness of Navigating this relationship with my parents, that does not come easy to me. That's how I do it. Lord, enable me to do it. Lord, help me to forgive.
[00:22:21] Carla: Lord, remind me of who I am. Lord, give me the strength to enact and stand firm on my boundaries. Lord, help me to manage my expectations. It's not in my own strength. It's not of my own doing. It is a choice that I made that I seek, uh, constantly seek the Lord's support and empowerment to walk out. So if you have a challenging relationship in your life, let me ask you this.
[00:22:53] Carla: Have you chosen forgiveness or are you still hanging on to anger and bitterness? [00:23:00] Let me ask you this. Are you firmly rooted in who you are in Christ so you cannot be shaken by their words and actions? Let me ask you this. Have you put up fair and firm boundaries that you are willing and able to enforce?
[00:23:20] Carla: Let me ask you this. Do you have the right expectations of that relationship? Those are the four things that I'd really encourage you to reflect and, and look at and ask God to reveal to you how you can show up in those ways. If it's in your heart to maintain relationship, or if it's in God's call on you to maintain relationship, right?
[00:23:48] Carla: Sometimes God calls us to something that we don't necessarily want to do. So I want to encourage you to pray through those things, think about those things, really [00:24:00] journal and reflect on those things in your life. And if you can't do those four things right now because you're not healed enough, then my question to you is what are you doing to get healed?
[00:24:13] Carla: Are you going to therapy? Are you doing your DBT and CBT skills? What coping mechanisms do you have? Are you laying this down to Jesus regularly? Right? You have to be a whole healed person. And not perfectly, my healing is a process, it is a journey, but I'm actively involved in it. Right? Like you have to take ownership for you in the relationship.
[00:24:50] Carla: What can you do to be healed? What can you do to be whole? What can you do to show up as your best and not repeat? [00:25:00] The patterns of trauma or abuse or toxicity. I would love to have this conversation with you further. Come join the Affirming Truth Facebook group. Let's talk about this. If you're struggling right now with relationships and you want advice or you want guidance, come into the group.
[00:25:21] Carla: Pop a question into the group. Send me a DM. Let's have conversation. I think so many times we stop ourselves from these conversations. We don't want to share where we're struggling. We don't want to share that we don't have it all together. We don't want to share that we're less than perfect or our relationships are less than perfect and all that does is keep us isolated and alone and basically living a lie.
[00:25:48] Carla: So I invite you into community with me. I invite you to get out of isolation and have some real raw, honest conversation with me. So come join me in the group. [00:26:00] Let's talk. Send me a DM and just know, friend, that God loves you. He sees you and he wants to work with you. I'm being God's best, right? Not what the world said is the best, but fully working in your potential.
[00:26:18] Carla: And that includes in how you show up and how you navigate difficult relationships. Okay. God bless you guys.
[00:26:32] Carla: Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram at Carla Arges or at Affirming Truth. Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye friends.