Sven Erlandson's Blog, page 2

Sven-isms a.k.a. Badass Counseling Wisdom

Badass Counseling represents the cumulative wisdom Sven Erlandson has built over years of ministry, coaching, and counseling. That wisdom translates into ‘Sven-isms’ that you’ll find documented here.

If you’ve done soul counseling with Sven, spent time on this website absorbing the content Sven has written, listened to the Badass Counseling podcast, and/or followed him closely on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, you will certainly have heard some of these Sven-isms. They can sometimes be mantras. Regardless, they are powerful and stick with you.

Here follows a list of Sven-ism expressions grouped into categories. We’ll continue to add to the page and invite you to submit ones that have struck you as particularly valuable to your own soul as you’ve listened to Sven. We’ll add them here, too.

Sven-isms About Self-Discovery

The path to discovering who you are requires discovering who you’re not.

Which is easier for you: to say ‘yes’ to things you hate doing or to say ‘no’ to things you love doing?

Life is fair, very fair…in one big thing: pain. No one escapes life without pain.

The more you dare to be, say, do, and become on the outside who you really are on the inside, the more you start to lose (or walk away from) people who are married to who you used to be, and the more you start to effortlessly attract people who love who you are becoming; and the more sh*t – amazing sh*t! – starts to fall out of the sky.

Is it possible that your parents’ values are different from your values?

I must constantly remind myself I’m part of the problem I’m trying to solve.

If a person can’t control you, they’ll attempt to control the story about you.

“F*ck it!”

Once you cross the ‘F*ck-it point’, you have the courage to do what, just yesterday, you didn’t have the courage to do; and the clarity to see what you must do, when just yesterday, it was confusing and murky. It’s the point after which you no longer give a sh*t.

There’s no success in any venture in life without the capacity to focus your mind.

Inside of anger is the word ‘no.’ Inside of ‘no’ is the word ‘I.’ “No, I don’t like how you’re treating me.” “No, this doesn’t feel good to me.” “No, I don’t want to do that.” “No, that’s not fair to me.” If you were never allowed to express anger, you were fundamentally robbed of your ‘I.’

My vanity exceeds my gluttony.

In the movement from childhood perceptions of people to adulthood perceptions, the day often comes when villains become heroes and heroes become villains.

Sven-isms About Change

Change will not occur ‘til the pain gets bad enough

Creation is invariably preceded by destruction. Things must die for things to live.

The grand blessing of going through hell is it’s not as scary the second time, and definitely not as scary the third time

Life is constantly whispering two questions in your ear. 1. Who the f*ck are you, really? 2. Do you have the courage to be who the f*ck you really are?

Naming the beast is half the problem

Transformation can be immediate if you go deep enough

You gotta face it, feel it, flush it. And each step requires courage and the willingness to put it into WORDS. Words wound, words heal.

There is no external reality that can make the internal reality permanently go away

Your life; your choice

Knowing it and living it are two completely different things

creation is invariably preceded by destruction

Who owns you?

>> See How To Do An Effective Soul Detox

Statements About Soul Counseling

It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.

If you could choose between your adult-child healing, but you never getting to have a relationship with them, or you getting a relationship with your adult-child, but them never healing, which would you choose?

The soul is more powerful than the will.

We’re called (by the soul) to actions, not results.

At the deepest, soul level, the voice of God/Universe is indistinguishable from the voice of self.

Until you have the stillness and solitude necessary to hear the voice of the soul, until you have the courage to heed that voice, and until you can let go of needing specific results, there be no true joy, no lasting peace, no inimitable power, and no sense of purpose.

If it doesn’t scare the holy hell out of you, it’s not your soul’s call for your life. If it’s safe, comfortable, or easy, long-term, it’s not your soul’s calling. Fact!

The precursor to, and the ongoing most important element of the spiritual life is courage.

No man is truly free until he can live as though his father is dead

At the deepest level, the voice of the Universe/God is indistinguishable from the voice of your own soul

Inspiring Your Motivation

Vince Lombardi was wrong when he said, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” What is Michael Jordan’s Major League Baseball batting average from his years trying to be a professional baseball player after already becoming the greatest basketball player of all time? He didn’t have one. He never made it out of double-A ball. He quit before he reached the majors.

Lacking motivation? It’s 1 of 3 reasons.

Either there are fears blocking your path;

There are core beliefs you were taught about yourself that are dragging you down, unseen, below the surface of who you are; or

What you say you want isn’t what you really want – i.e., it isn’t what your most authentic self truly feels called to.

>> See Lombardi Was Wrong: The Positive Power of Quitting to Succeed

Sven-isms About Healing & Pain

Healing and coping are two completely different things. If you’re still coping, you ain’t healed.

Anything that is experienced as positive attention, even if it’s provided by self, is experienced as filling the Love Cup.

Pain is life’s greatest teacher.

Until the pain is out of you, it’s still in you.

Your pain will increase. This shit doesn’t magically heal itself.

Triggers are good because they reveal to us where we still have healing work to do.

The single greatest fear in life is the fear of the known. Nothing short-circuits more pursuits of happiness than the fear that comes from knowing exactly how they’ll respond when you reveal your real self.

Spite is a powerful motivator and a life-sucking mistress.

>> See Is the Greatest Fear in Life the Fear of the Unknown?

Badass Counseling Wisdom About Love

Love is vulnerability – a constant opening and opening to another person

It’s easy to always speak truth and be harsh. It’s easy to always be cuddly and speak love. It’s infinitely more difficult to speak truth and love simultaneously – to set occasional hard truths within a greater, ongoing context of appreciation and positive attention.

The most powerful expression of love is to show another person who you really, really, really are… to the point where it scares you to do so. The sheer terror of doing so is a testament to the sacredness of the act.

The single surest way to let go (of them) is to hold on as tightly as you can. Eventually, the grip gets tired. Go to your favorite restaurant and the places you loved to go together. Wear their favorite sweatshirt. Welcome the feelings, then flush them out with journaling. Eventually, the longing will empty from you.

>> See The Ups, Downs of Love and Healthy Loving Relationships

Sven-isms About Relationships

All relationships end for the same reason they begin: One person doesn’t feeeeel it anymore.  It’s not about reasons, logic, or ‘You did this’ or ‘You didn’t do this and that.’ It’s about the simple fact that, after all the reasons and circumstances are taken into consideration, ‘I just don’t feel it (for you), anymore.’

Unhealthy people come in twos. Healthy people, by definition, don’t get into, or stay in, relationships with unhealthy people.

Relationship impasses occur and grow because one person (or two) is withholding some truth that they know, if they speak it, would blow up the relationship.

The really ugly and extremely difficult part of life in relationships is having hard conversations before the blowout happens.

Brutal honesty is telling someone else what’s wrong with them. Radical honesty is telling someone else what’s wrong with you or what you’re most afraid of them knowing about you. One is an act of exposing; the other is an act of revealing. Great relationships are built on the latter – radical honesty. Defective and destructive relationships  (lover-lover, parent-child) are constructed on some derivative of the former.

Every shared experience is a cord binding two people together, making breaking up tricky

Don’t reward bad behavior.

Red flags always start small.

Extreme Taker = Narcissist

Extreme Giver = someone conditioned to attempt to get love by giving excessive amounts of love

Love Camel = someone who can go a long distance in a relationship on a little bit of love

If you’re ever going into a presentation or, perhaps, a conversation with someone who talks over you or runs circles around you, write down in advance your one-sentence takeaway – the one sentence which, if you get lost in what’s ahead, you can always come back to.

>> See Fear vs. Trust in LDRs (Long Distance Relationships)

Badass Counseling Wisdom About Children and Parenting

Children want to be heard, not fixed. Most adults too, much of the time.

Children shout loudest when feeling heard least. Adults, too. Peoples/nations, too.

Children do not exist for parents; parents exist for children.

Children love parents more than parents love children

Bad parenting says, “You’re a bad boy!” Good parenting says, “You’re not a bad person. You just did a bad thing.” Good parenting divorces the action from the identity of the child.

If a child cannot get positive attention, they’ll settle for negative attention, such as what comes from doing bad things. Why? Because negative attention, such as getting yelled at or put down, is better than no attention. No attention means that You don’t exist. “You’re bad” is a value statement. “You don’t exist” is an existential statement and, thus, far more powerful.

Even good parents can seriously harm a child’s soul

Suggestive selling sells. If you give children mostly positive input, they’ll believe they are good and that they matter. And that one belief changes everything for the rest of their lives.

“The opposite of my parents” is not a smart parenting strategy. Very often, the opposite of sh*t is still sh*t.

What’s the single biggest crime your parent committed against you? What does it all boil down to, in one sentence or less?

The notion that an adult-child is obligated to ‘honor thy father and mother’ when the parent breached that contract, decades prior, by not honoring the child is ludicrous.

>> See How To Be Successful At Parenting

What Sven Says About Happiness

We only enjoy something to the degree we’re in it.

The single biggest mistake people make in trying to get happy is they do more things that make them happy. Until you get out the raw sewage undermining the happy, ain’t no amount of happy things gonna stick.

Happiness and fear are inversely correlated.

The difference between happy people and unhappy people is how they define strength.

Until you have the stillness and solitude necessary to hear the voice of the world, until you have the courage to heed that voice, and until you can let go of needing specific results, there will be no true joy, no lasting peace, no inimitable power, and no sense of purpose

Closed doors are greater blessings than open doors

Everyone’s different.

Have a Kickass Day!

>> See The 10 REAL Reasons You're Not Happy & Your Business Isn't Successful: Diamonds and Raw Sewage

Sharing Wise Badass Counseling Sven-isms

Which of these statements do you find more thought-provoking?

I hope at least one motivates you to find your true you.

Thanks for reading.

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-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.com 

Fathers and Sons: Creating and Teaching Beauty… In So Many Fatherly Forms

What kind of relationship did you have with your father? Was it about creating and teaching beauty for lifelong appreciation between father and son? Or was it something very different?

The Maligned Relationships of Fathers and Sons

 If there’s any relationship in human experience in Western society more seemingly doomed to fail, it could seem like it’s the one between fathers and sons. Men have been socialized for so long to live in old tropes of toughness, few words, and just work, work, work. And thinking that’s what a man should always be, or simply not knowing any better, men have carried that thinking into the parenting of their children, often most especially their sons.

Now, many fathers in the last 60 years have broken those stereotypes, choosing fatherhood roles that were deliberately not ones their own fathers had executed. These new fathers realize(d) how ineffective and empty their fathers’ efforts often were (or felt). Yet, still, despite these changes, there’s still uncertainty within the breast of any father, or any honest one, about how to be loving but also be strong, how to teach resilience and responsibility, but also teach the importance of that male taboo word, ‘feelings’ and emotional connection.

And that’s really it, isn’t it? Deep in the heart of the son is the absolute longing for connection with his father in ways that almost no words can explain, at least at a young age. It is that sheer admiration for the man that drives a desire to get closer to him, to have him see you and smile in pride at his little guy, to have him ask how your day went, to have him speak well of you to others and you, to have him genuinely care, but also to have him, in teen years, step out of the way and not try to control your steps.

And maybe this is where it has gone wrong, our execution of fatherhood. Fathers err so often to the extremes of completely checking out, teaching nothing, and non-involvement or being up your ass, constantly riding you, criticizing, questioning, belittling, and never letting go of control. It’s like the males never learned from or somehow lost the wisdom of those primitive societies and their initiation ritual process, which were constructed to both teach the son and graduate him to adulthood, setting him free to be his own man within the context of the society.

Plus, too often, the male ego gets involved. Fathers have often gotten so butt hurt if their advice was not taken, their idea not used, their child not executing his role to make the father proud, all leading to the father’s ego being bruised somehow. It’s such a cliché nowadays, but the male inability to understand the power of feelings inhibits the growth of the son into maturity and the potential for a life-giving relationship between father and son. And, on the flipside, the potential to over-indulge the feeling side, at the expense of teaching work, grit, and responsibility, can lead to sons who never engage the fire spirit that burns in the belly of a young man.

So many frickin’ questions and issues in this father thing, especially when it comes to sons.

The Relationship Between Fathers and Sons: So Many Questions

Here are comments from several of male clients about their fathers, or about their single mothers, when the father was less present:

We lived in the same house and he was there, but he wasn’t ever really present. He was seldom engaged.

He never taught me anything, communicated with me, or gave me guidance. Now, I’m a 40-year-old man and I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.

My dad made me into his best friend, told me everything, and expected me to always listen. It was always about him. What a burden!

Mom gave me so much praise and compliments, even when I had barely done anything, that I stopped believing her and saw her as just blowing smoke up my ass.

He was always criticizing.

He never had time for me.

I feel like he spent so much time working and it was to get away from us.

He provided but there was zero emotional connection.

Would it have killed him to say he was proud of me, or to say, ‘I love you?’ I say it all the time, now, to my kids.

When I graduated from basic training, it was the first time my father ever said he was proud, and I could see it in his face. I ain’t gonna lie, it felt really good, and things changed between us, after that.

I was 36 and had far surpassed my dad’s career accomplishments when my dad finally and for the first time said he was proud of me. It didn’t feel good. All I could think was, “Shove it up your ass! Where was that pride 30 years ago when I needed it?”

It’s like mom was trying to be both a mom and a dad, but she couldn’t be.

A boy just needs his dad.

He never communicated; just work and TV, and maybe time with his friends.

He beat the shit out of my brother and me. When he got home, Mom would wind him up and point him in our direction. He was the hammer…that mom wielded.

He was a horrible listener. He just never got me.

I hated the sonofabitch. But here I am at 50 still paying money each month to help him out and hoping for his approval, or at least acknowledgment of all the shit he did.

My dad was a coward, despite all his bravado bullcrap. And it broke my heart, the day I realized it.

I just vowed to raise my kids the opposite of my dad.

My Own Father’s Funeral

 My dad died at 92, in 2020, right at the beginning of Covid, though not because of Covid.

As such, we couldn’t have a funeral in the church, which was a travesty, because he had been a Lutheran pastor for nearly 70 years and the church was his home. Well, the farm was the home of his heart, but his father pushed him off the farm to become a pastor, just as he had done with the older brother as well. I have the letter wherein Grandpa wrote that to Dad. I believe this led to Dad’s lifelong deep lament, which, because he was WWII Generation, he never showed. He was a farmer never allowed to be the farmer he wanted to be, at least ‘til his 60s-80s, when he would go nearly every year, just for sheer fun, up to Mahnomen, MN, to drive 12-hour shifts during sugar beet harvest.

 >> Read Parents have been talking kids out of their passion for a long time?

So, per his wishes, we cremated him, intending to save his ashes for a joint funeral with Mom when the day came that she would pass. In lieu of a church service, we had a Covid-hampered memorial ritual by Zoom, all six of us siblings and our spouses, the nieces/nephews, and mom. We told stories of Dad, prayed together (as he would’ve led us), and Dad and Mom’s pastor came in on the call to offer some words and prayer.

Other than the sheer beauty of that late-April day, the one thing that I remember most clearly was my one brother, least prone to showing feelings, the brother I had been closest to, growing up, who had built his own, self-made-man fortune of tens, if not hundreds of millions. He didn’t say much, except, “Dad was an honest man,” at which point he started visibly breaking out into tears, his voice cracking. I think for that brother that was the highest, most respected praise he could possibly give another man, having likely encountered many a dishonest one in his own life.

 >> Read "He Told The Story" -- Eulogy of an American

For me, it’s all of Dad’s infernal stories that stick most. He would tell so many stories, then tell them over again, and repeat, over decades, to the point where even the grandkids were respectfully impatient with grandpa’s stories, over their first decades. But those f*ckin’ stories stuck, man. I mean, I feel so connected to the past precisely because of those stories. Mom, on the other hand, didn’t tell a lot of them. She listened. Dad talked.

Those stories taught… about life, humanity, patterns, character, Erlandson family values, and not in a heavy-handed way, just a boring way; or maybe it lulled us into a sort of trance that caused those stories to imprint deeper. And, I think, coupled with teaching us how to garden, work a table saw, fell a tree, turn a wrench, create with wood and nail, replace a damaged shingle, drain/replace the oil, rise early in the morning for family paper routes (we each had one, and he and mom ran support at 4 am), and always check your tires before getting in the car, on top of Greek and Hebrew roots of words and German catch-phrases, it was those damn incessant stories that shaped and informed my own life story, particularly when mixed with the Biblical stories they read to us at bedtime. Their incessance was outdone only by the never-ending classical music playing on public radio on the living room stereo, dawn to dusk as if the soundtrack to Dad’s stories.

My father taught me, and I absolutely believe that was deliberate. He taught all six of us. And, I think I always knew I was being taught. At times, I chafed hard. I just wanted him to shut up and listen. Of course, it didn’t help that Mom was a brilliant, deep listener. I wanted him to be more like her. But, he was him.

It is only in the last 10 years of my counseling that I’ve come to learn from the many men I’ve had the pleasure to be trusted by how valuable being taught is. So many men long for the father they never had, the one that taught them, just f*cking taught them. So many fellas would’ve killed to have had my father, one who guided them, taught them about life, taught them the difference between quack grass and crabgrass, or just plain talked to them. The silent dads, disconnected dads, and distant dads have caused so much damage for sons just longing to be taught, longing for a bond with something bigger than themselves, longing to be seen and loved and have their butt kicked, now and then.

The Needed Father for Logic and Feelings

In attempting to simplify parenting, at times, for clients and families, I’ve oft said, “Parenting is about two things – giving the child a happy childhood and preparing the child for adulthood, not either/or.” Without being too cemented about it, I really believe that for so many teens and young men, the father is necessary for that latter role of preparing the son to function handily in the world.

It's no small coincidence that the very initiation rituals of primitive societies, mentioned previously, were conducted in the early teen/pre-teen years and almost exclusively by men, which often included a ritualized ‘stealing’ of the young fella from the mother. There was a natural progression from childhood to adulthood, from the female energy to the male energy. Now, I personally don’t go much further in the overlay of past societies onto those of today, in no small part because I believe the preparation process by the father of the son starts long before the pre-teen years.

You get the point, I hope – the father is needed to prepare the boy in whatever ways that father (and mother) in the context of society deem important.

But, where I, as the voice of Badass Counseling, take that preparation (and the love and caring implicit in it) is not solely to the sector of operational functionality. In other words, I don’t believe that a father preparing a son for life is just teaching him how to do shit like sweep out and keep a clean garage, buy quality tools, and value education. It’s far bigger than that. The high-caliber father teaches his son that shit and how to understand and operate from the importance of feelings in self and others. It’s not either/or. It’s like, is a kid better off knowing when to use a band saw versus when to use a hack saw, or should they just use a Sawzall for everything.

Well, to me it makes more sense to be fluent in as many tools as possible. Logic and feelings, because you’re gonna suck with animals, women, children, employees, and customers if you don’t fully grasp the import of feelings and how great a driver they are in human interactions and choices. More importantly, you’re going to bear your own deep misery that’ll grate on you, over time, if you’re never taught proper use, care, and storage of the tools of feelings.

It's starting to sound like this article is a winded sales pitch for feelings. And, well, it is precisely that, because feelings, or lack of them, or lack of understanding of them and teaching of them, is the crown jewel of things that will f*ck up a man, a man’s career, a man’s relationships, and a man’s son.

It’s that kind word. It’s the scruffing of the son’s hair (or, in my father’s case, the whetting of his comb with his spit to comb my bangs and push down my rooster top, as we would be walking into a social or church function). It’s the massaging of the son’s shoulders in between matches at a wrestling tournament. It’s the stepping back and letting the boy drive the nails, apply the seed, or take the customer. It’s the ‘Good job’ and the smile of approval that goes with it. It’s patiently listening to the boy or teen’s girl stories or buddy stories that the father knows matter next-to-nothing in the long arc of life, but matter everything in the heart of the boy and thus warrant a silent tongue from the father, rather than a controlling or critical one.

All of these are about feelings and the importance of them.

All of these convey importance of both the boy/young man and what’s going on inside him.

All of these do more than teach mere confidence.

They are teaching the boy to trust himself, trust his intuition, and trust his voice in the world. That’s power that comes from a deeper place.

The master-level father actually asks his son not just what he thinks, but what feels right to him, the son, then lets the son own his feelings and insights. This father doesn’t try to correct or steer much. He lets the boy learn and helps him find the learning without scolding, unless absolutely necessary. By trial and error in a supportive laboratory of a home, the boy more and more connects to his inner voice, learns how to read it, and how to master its usage, just like any other tool.

Did Your Father Criticize You?

 In all the decades in all the sports, orchestras, choirs, theater productions, and church sh*t that I was involved in and loved, I always was aware of the fathers who were dicks to their sons. I knew it even by fourth grade when I started Pony League football, if not earlier in T-ball and church. It was ugly, even then, and I was conscious of how ugly it was. I expected coaches to be hard on players. It’s part of drawing out excellence. But it was clear, those fathers who gave extra special dickery to their own sons.

Here's the weird part that has only occurred to me in my 50s. Not long ago, I had the rather startling realization that, sure, I was spanked probably 20 times in my life, by both Dad and Mom, cumulatively; scolded for doing something bad or breaking the rules; and disappointment was expressed in a furrowed brow or a shaken head for showing poor manners or lack of graciousness. But, here’s the nuance, I was never actually criticized by my father. Never. Literally, not even one time in my entire life. He never said stupid shit or hurtful shit. Never. Amid the unending river of words flowing out of my father’s mouth, I was never criticized, as a person, or even much my actions, if at all. My life was my life.

Now, I can’t speak about my four older brothers (and sister) and their relations and learnings from Dad. I can’t speak to the messages they received. Maybe it was different for me, because they’d had five kids before me, or because they were just about to kiss 40 years old when I was born, so they had relaxed and slowed down. I don’t know. But I was never criticized.

And ya know what it taught me? It taught me that a child, a teen, or an adult has enough f*cking questioning of self going on inside that it’s not necessary to lather on the critiques of the peanut gallery. Support and encouragement, as well as positive analysis go a helluva lot further than tearing down the kid or his actions. I succeeded on my own path in life (and failed a million times too, yet kept learning and growing and going), precisely because I was allowed to discover my voice without his voice overwhelming my own, inside me.

Maybe that’s it. Dad’s incessant words, stories, and wisdom woven into them, even if woven in nearly indistinguishable ways, were always optional. That’s it. My Dad’s voice was always on, but it was never mandatory in my life, except when it came to chores and helping out around the house, yard, and gardens; oh, and going to church on Sundays, ‘til I hit high school, which is not unreasonable, as he was a pastor. But, that’s it. Dad never forced his sh*t on me – his criticisms, his values, his expectations, his wants, his anything.

But, because he was this dominatingly good, kind man – a simple farmer and machinist, at heart, who was educated in and valued the Classics, theology, and languages – he didn’t have to say a f*cking thing. I knew, even young, my father was a good man and I was lucky to have him.

And, I also knew I’d never be him.

That was never clearer than in my parenting. He was an infinitely better parent than me. He might’ve kidded me with, “Sven, I’m so sorry, but good looks skip a generation” (or substitute ‘brains’ for ‘looks,’ all with tongue firmly implanted in cheek), but he would’ve never said that about his or my parenting. I don’t think he saw himself as a great parent, maybe because he lived in Mom’s shadow, or maybe because he so venerated his own father. I know he knew he was a good provider and teacher, but he would squirm, I’m sure, if asked if he was a good father.

Yet, I can honestly say, in the thousands of people I’ve counseled, tens of thousands I’ve spoken to or lectured, and many more that I’ve just conversed with, I’ve never met a more adept and loving father than my own. He couldn’t listen for shit, at least not ‘til his later years. But he nailed everything else. He was that good.

He co-signed my college loans, even when I quit three colleges before settling on the fourth. Even though he admittedly didn’t understand his youngest son, he’d still slip a ten spot in my pocket, now and then, back when ten bucks was a lot of money. (Imagine that, a father who doesn’t understand his son but still does what he can to show support financially.) He would gently tease a lot, and wrestle with me physically, even into his 80s, always a physically powerful man. And, I think that was his way of showing affection, beyond the regular hugs.

Y’know, this article was supposed to be…

…a primer on navigating this or that latest hot issue in fathering sons.

But, honestly, I don’t give a f*ck about that, this year, or at least in the week of prepping/writing this article.

A Father Who Taught His Son About Beauty

Instead, I look beyond my bouquet of spring peonies cut yesterday, out my kitchen window as I sit in the early morning at the table, where Dad and Mom daily would have their own morning devotions/prayer/readings. I look out at my hostas, which I’ve always hated as boring; my rhubarb, which I’ve always loved, especially a fresh stalk paired with a bowl of sugar; and my low lily of the valley and tall foxgloves. And, I reflect on my Dad. I never liked gardening as much as he (and Mom) did, not even close. But, damn, if he didn’t nonetheless teach me how to make a pretty one that my girlfriend can now enjoy, as can the hummingbirds, bees, and dragonflies we find so beautiful.

It's quiet, this morning.

Gently, as I write, my ‘Classic Classical’ playlist cycles through Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe, Mozart’s Exultate, Jubilate, Webber’s Hosanna/Requiem, and Yo Yo Ma’s rendering of Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem…and, finally, Dad’s favorite in his later years, Ave Verum Corpus.

 I reflect on a Dad who:

at 8 and 10, in the 1930s, teamed up horses in 40-below weather of northern Minnesota to pull the sleigh over unplowed roads to church in the dark to stoke the furnace with grandpa and my uncles, so that the church would be warm when others arrived;

tried to sneak into WWII at age 17;

wrestled at the University of Minnesota, while in Ag School;

got his undergraduate degree in Greek and knew five languages;

grew his own vegetables and fruit;

was a skilled baritone;

had a farmer’s vice-grip handshake, even in his 90s, and

as I sit here, I realize I had a father who, perhaps more than anything else, taught me the power… of beauty.

Beautiful words. Beautiful sentences. Gorgeous flower beds of marigolds, dad’s favorite. Beautiful kindnesses and generosity of spirit. Beautiful hugs and rasslin’. Beautiful things made with tools that held their own beauty of function. The beauty of a wife; and the beautiful service of her that goes with it. Deep, moving, flowing beautiful classical music. Your damn beautiful stories, Dad, grounding me in a beautiful past that you walked and played in, long before I came around. And finally, beautiful laughter, kidding, teasing, and wit.

 Dad, you lived amid beauty and taught me the power, importance, and need for beauty and how to be an instrument of its creation in the world. And it’s for this reason that I sometimes think you well-surpassed your own father in parenting, even though I never knew Grandpa, despite the wonderful stories you told of him. My favorite story you told of Grandpa is the one that makes me glad I got you as my Dad. You would recall for us with a smile the story of your family in the car in the 40s and your mother remarking to you kids, “Look at the pretty scenery,” to which your Dad responded, “You can’t eat scenery.”

Yeah, my Dad created and taught beauty, and I love him for it.

The marigolds are blooming, Dad.

Happy Father’s Day.

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.com 

The Relationship Between Mothers, Daughters, and Granddaughters

Would you agree that mothers, daughters, and granddaughters have unique relationships? That’s what I’ve noticed and will focus on in this article.

The Relationship Between Mothers and Daughters is Complicated.

I have had a counseling practice for 30 years in Minnesota, California, and Ohio, including the last 10 in and around Manhattan, NYC. And, for all of the interesting perspectives those places and people have given me, I’ve learned there’s so much I don’t know. So, I thought I would start at home.

I asked my girlfriend of ten years and my sister what memories, thoughts, and feelings they have of their deceased mothers and their relationships with them. (Note: I would’ve asked my daughter, as well, but didn’t want to put her in the potentially uncomfortable position of, as my own mother used to say, ‘telling tales out of school,’ about my ex-wife.) I also asked a few friends.

What stuck out to me was the fondness several showed for their mothers, admitting that they each came from what they’d term a ‘good home.’

One recalled with a wistful look, “I remember playing and napping under mommy’s sewing machine at her bridal shop. I remember my mother’s tenderness,” then with a visible break in her countenance, “except when she was beating me with a Christmas tree.” She started to laugh, explaining that only twice in her life had her mother ever hit her or even raised her voice at her daughter – one of those was when her mother chased her up the stairs with their 4-foot tall Christmas tree, replete with lights and tinsel, and was swatting her with it hard. My friend couldn’t stop laughing at the memory.

Complicated, much?

Maybe that’s the word to begin to pull apart the goings-on between mothers and daughters. And yet, is that so much different from any other relationship a person might have? Still, it feels there is something distinctly different about that connection.

The Earlier Mom-Daughter Connection

As fraught as that mom-daughter connection is, there’s one even more complicated and powerful. It’s the precursor relationship to the mom-daughter: the mother’s relationship with herself.

Nothing impacts that mother-daughter relationship more than this, which is precisely why I tell clients and followers all the time that there’s not one single thing that will impact your parenting more than having the courage to go back and heal your own childhood. That past of the mother infuses or outright drives every decision she makes in life, most especially her parenting of her children.

How, you ask?

Recurring Mother-Daughter Themes

Over those 30 years of counseling women, spouses, daughters, moms, granddaughters, and grandmothers, I’ve seen many recurring themes. None of them is an absolute in every mother-daughter relationship, to be sure. But, to deny the repetitiveness of these themes would be negligent. To name a few:

The impact of a mother’s own self-talk – out loud – on her daughter’s body image;

The jealousy of some mothers when they witness their daughter seemingly stealing their husband’s attention and affection from her, the mom;

The worship – the absolute adoration! – of so many daughters for their mothers, adoration so powerful as to be able to bend reality from beatings and abuse to beauty and warm memories;

The modeling of behavior that says a woman’s job and worth are found in taking care of… others, everything, men, animals, responsibilities, money, food, laundry, emotional needs, dusting, and on and on. Or sometimes, also, not only the modeling of ‘taking care of,’ but also the explicit, repetitive message to do so, and the shame that is delivered when the daughter doesn’t do so;

The cross-talk between mothers and their sisters or friends, and how those conversations shape a girl’s image of women, of self, of body, of heart, and of purpose;

The anxieties modeled by moms, though words might never be said, by their distribution of time, energy, money, and attention to two things: weight and hair. It’s fascinating that how a mom spends her time, energy, and attention on those two things alone can convey such a powerful punch to a little girl, teen, young adult, and grown woman, to the point where many women spend their lives crafting their weight and hair as a desire for approval, desire for disapproval, or an outright ‘Screw you!’ to a mother, who is sometimes long-deceased. The child still answers to the mother, even if only in rebellion belying longing;

The cringy, debilitating turning of daughter into mommy’s mini-me or, far worse, mommy’s little therapist to whom she tells her adult-size problem or even womanly secrets, all far too much for a child to bear, thereby filling the child’s love cup with pain and crippling concern for others at far too young an age;

The cross-talk between mother and father, or mother and men. Oh boy, the messages a girl learns about her ‘place’ in the world, let alone her worth, from just listening to these conversations so dense with implied meanings;

The watching – the ceaselessly assiduous watching, collating, and internalizing of mom data – and how it, perhaps more than anything else, shapes the girl, even more than the listening;

The longing – the pulsing…pulsing…throbbing longing – deep in the breast of a grown mother for her own mother and that mother’s soft touch, approving gaze, and gentle word – that through some feminine osmosis gets passed onto and never retreats from the corresponding place in her own daughter. Oh, the longing…

The enduring, driven by that very longing, the enduring of snubs, slights, rejections, and harsh looks; the enduring of hurtful or even mean touch, and the enduring of the words, those brutal, soul-shattering words from mothers to daughters, those words that etch deeply into the wet cement of the little girl’s soul, concretizing the girl’s worth and very identity for decades to come, perhaps even permanently. All that a woman learns to endure, often against her own best interests, because she so often first learned to endure at the hands and words, or abject neglect, of her mother;

Then there is the absolutely brutal deep-seated loathing of some mothers for their daughters because the little child is seen as somehow stealing the mother’s own life. Perhaps, it was at the moment of pregnancy when the mother realized that her own life she had dreamed and planned was now gone. Perhaps, it was when the baby was born and all eyes, particularly those of the baby’s grandmother, shifted off the pregnant mother and onto the baby, forever dashing the mother’s chances of finally getting mom’s attention. The resentment, born in those moments, festered into full-blown loathing for the rest of the child and, later, the woman’s life, though she never really knew why;

This, of course, bespeaks that other lurking reality, the eyes of others. The monstrous truth of so many mothers teaching their own daughters, often against their own best efforts, to forever see themselves and gauge their worth through the eyes of others, thereby forever giving their lives to find approval in those eyes, not the least of which are the eyes of the mother, herself;

There is the sort of reverse education that unexpectedly happens when a woman sees her mother through new eyes upon the birth of her own child, let alone her own daughter; multiply that by ten when that child becomes a teenager and later a grown woman.

And can we ever miss the looming twin shadows of mom’s own mother and, of course, men?

Yeah, ‘complicated’ doesn’t even begin to describe the deep interplay of the lives of daughters and mothers.

On top of that, I deliberately omitted one item from the list and its impact on the mother-daughter connection because I, quite frankly, know nothing about it and have no idea if anyone, scientist or old woman (or both), actually knows. There’s been so little research on this subject and absolutely zero, to my knowledge, on its impact on mothers and daughters. I’m talking about the dreaded menopause. How does that affect the middle-aged woman’s relationship with her, often-deceased, mother?

Are you beginning to see how silly it is that a man is even pretending to write this article?

The Joy of Connecting with Mom Through Silliness

And yet, it is silliness, in some ways that the daughter seeks, in one way or another.

I had a very serious mother, born in 1928, just before the Great Depression and its impact on her small family farm, and WWII. Hers was a serious, gritty generation. Thus, nothing was more prized in our home than when mom gently teased, had a wry grin creep quietly across her mouth, or outright laughed.

That playfulness implies relaxedness. It is mother calm, even if just for a moment. It is perhaps the little girl in her coming out to play, and the daughter loves it. For just that flashing moment little girl is meeting little girl, corresponding spirits in each are connecting. And that second little girl will spend the rest of her life chasing that exact moment, that exact experience, again and again, enduring the most vicious of life storms to reclaim that.

The glow of that moment with her mother was gold like no other.

Why Are Mother-Daughter Relationships So Blessedly Difficult?

My mother might, somewhat tritely, yet generationally consistent, say it’s because there is no good without toil.

While I’d be a damn fool to disagree with that sage who was my mother, I’d add that the difficulty between mothers and daughters finds root in the fact that they’re both searching for the same thing: identity and worth. And, the latter is seeking it from the former, while the former is often still seeking it from her mother.

Too often the mother of a daughter is still trying to get her own needs met – i.e., the filling of her own love cup – whether through work, men, money, or the daughter, herself. So, she doesn’t have as much love as is necessary to be a source, rather than a siphon of love for that child.

>> Read my article on emotional incest: 9 Badass Questions About Emotional Incest 

This is where it can get nasty and ugly. I was with a woman, back in my twenties, who stated quite adamantly, more than once, “Sven, I want to have children, so that I will have someone who will love me forever.” Somehow, even to my early-twenties brain, that registered as hardcore messed-up. This woman not only had a few children of her own, but when those children hit their teen years, she adopted a few more. Eeeeyikes!

The problem is that mothers (and it is no less true of many fathers) often will use the child to get their own love needs met. The child exists, therein, to meet the love needs of the adult, the daughter is expected to pour love into the mother’s love cup, not vice-versa. Or, the vice-versa only thinly veils the adamantly clear expectation that the little girl feels and knows, somewhere in her, that her job is to make mom happy. And there it is! There is the little girl’s new and forever identity – making others like her so that she might get a dash of approval or acceptance when she does. Thanks, Mom!

Perhaps the mother is still trying to get her own mother’s acceptance or approval. Or, perhaps mom is using her own mothering skills to prove she’s not her mom or that she’s better than her mom, and all because mom never confirmed that child’s worth, decades ago. And the little girl gets caught up in the chess match going on between mom and grandma, even if only in mom’s head. The fallout stunts that girl for decades because she then exerts all energies and focuses on culling whatever bits of approval and acceptance she can from her little friends, the mean girls, boys, daddy, daddies, work, accomplishments, or from that bitter, old, life-sucking crone that is excessive serving of others.

Women Need To Be Accepted Before They Perform

A dear friend of mine, Dr. Michael Navarre, did his PhD work in the field of sports psychology, interviewing the 50, or so, collegiate coaches that coached, or had coached, both women’s and men’s sports teams. What his research revealed was a profoundly fascinating pattern. As he pithily stated in his oral defense,

“Female athletes need to feel accepted before they perform. Male athletes need to perform before they feel accepted.”

This has become a helpful insight in my work with couples, particularly when it comes to emotional intimacy and sex.

The daughter is forever seeking that acceptance as a person and a woman from the one person most able to confer it, her mother.

So powerful is that ache for the conferring of acceptance from that one person that the daughter believes that only the mother can give it. This cements a distribution of power that posits all of it in the mother. Therefore, the daughter becomes a woman who forever keys into all of the mother’s wants and expectations, hoping to meet them and gain the pot of gold.

It rarely, if ever, occurs to the adult daughter that she has all of the power because the mother is now so addicted to the child’s fealty and servanthood that the daughter walking away would gut the mother. More treacherously, the daughter has the power to explode the family myth that protects the mother as good. Mother’s very identity is deeply rooted in the family myth that she was and is a good mom. But the daughter’s experiences and memories tell a very different story. So, the mom must exert all energies and power to keep the child either afraid or forever misdirected toward grasping the mom’s approval (or avoiding her criticism), or both. If the truth got out, Mom’s image and sense of self would be shattered.

Longing For Your Mother’s Approval

So powerful is that longing for mother’s approval that it serves as the very infrastructure, post, and beam, of the family myth system protecting mom. So fragile is often the mother’s ego that she will even engage her power over siblings, spouses, and extended family to silence the recalcitrant daughter, lest she reveal the family secrets.

At the root of so many mother-daughter difficulties is the very human longing to be liked. It really is that simple. The daughter needs it – so vital to her very existence and development – the mother wants it; and each is, in one way or another, seeking it from the other. The only problem, of course, is that one has every right to seek it from the other, and the other has no right to seek it.

If the love cup is not filled in the mother before the child is born, this longing for approval in the mom (and her not giving it to the daughter) can devolve into any manner of a sort of ‘inmates running the asylum.’ For example:

1 - The Parent Forever Needs To Be Liked By Her Child

I have seen far too many homes where the parent is forever needing to be liked by the child. Liked! As if the child’s job is to fill the child’s need for love. Back when I was an NCAA Head Coach for Strength, part of my de facto duties was to get to know and tend to, quietly, the inner lives of some of the coaches of the sports teams. One of the questions I used to ask each coach, on the promise of anonymity, was, “What percentage do you want your athletes to respect you and what percentage do you want them to like you? Is it 60-40? 20-80?” What started as a playful little opening to discuss their leadership focus and abilities became, for me, a fascinating mini-study in winning, not to mention human needs. Shockingly, the percentage that a coach wanted to be respected (over-liked) directly correlated to that coach’s winning percentage. We had a coach who 40% wanted to be respected and 60% wanted to be liked. Her winning percentage was .400. There was another 70% who wanted to be respected and her teams consistently won ¾ of their games. Quite interestingly, one of the coaches won several national championships over the course of two decades. Wanna guess the percent he wanted to be liked by his players? 5%. And, he said, “Sven the only reason I need to be liked, at all, is because I have to go into the homes of new recruits and I can’t be totally unbearable.” I would go on to tell these coaches, particularly those who registered high on the wanting-to-be-liked percentage, that their athletes don’t exist to meet the coach’s need to be liked and approved of, or to be their friend. That’s what the coach’s friends, spouse, colleagues, and family exist for. The coach exists to draw the greatness out of the players. Now, this is not to say that parenting is about coaching and winning. Instead, I raise this snippet to shine light on the extraordinary human longing to be liked, and its ability to undermine effective relationships. A parent using a child to get her own needs to be liked met is a parent misappropriating her power. This can manifest in seeking the child’s attention, stealing the child’s affection, commandeering the teen’s time, disallowing any boundaries between the daughter and mother, and too often co-opting or appropriating the daughter’s successes for the mother’s glory.

2 - Daughter as Therapist to Her Mother

I have even counseled families wherein the mother goes to the preteen daughter for advice on life matters, such as relationships, careers, and family. This is child-as-therapist taken to an even new low, placing too much weight on a child’s shoulders. A role reversal, rooted in profound parental insecurities, has happened that turns the child into the parent. This has the effect of squelching that child’s own voice, feelings, passions, interests, and sense of self as mattering for more than just serving the needs of others.

3 - Checking Out of Her Daughter’s Life

3.     And then there’s that other way that the mothers sometimes seek to get their own love cup filled after the daughter is born. She checks out of the daughter’s life to seek her own approval through career, religion, men, ministering to her own parents, endless busyness and volunteering, or simply escape it all with booze, pills, or the year of checking out to her bed behind a closed door.

From any of these, the generational curses continue – another little girl doesn’t get her love cup filled. Thus begins the collision course of this little girl with her own daughter, one day.

Will she heal in time, or will the dread cycle continue one more revolution?

The Biggest Communication Issues Between Mothers and Daughters

 One of the net effects of the deepest needs for love not being met in the soul of the child is that the personality of that little child begins to adapt.

As a survival tool, the child bends away from its natural course to avoid pain and to gain the life-giving love it needs. Like an oak tree that defies nature by contorting away from a power line but still, somehow, growing upward toward the sun, the child becomes whatever is necessary to gain not only the mother’s approval but the acceptance and approval of anyone – ANYONE!

This is where maladaptive traits are born. This is the advent of that girl later giving away her worth to be accepted by other girls who hurt her or giving away her sexuality to boys while seeking that same acceptance. She will seek attention from teachers, siblings, and other parents, and become whatever gets her that prized, if too often rare, positive attention from them.

But still, that longing for acceptance by her mother eats at her. And, very often in teen years or young adulthood, stretching well into middle age, the daughter develops a just-below-the-surface snotty, pissy, bitchy, orneriness. Seemingly, no matter what the mother says or does, the daughter responds with attitude.

Hurts That Mothers and Daughters Never Discuss

Why? Because the deepest hurts in the daughter are either never discussed or, more often, never even known by that daughter. So, she is perpetually cranky, but she doesn’t even know why. And so, this sort of half-impasse between mom and daughter becomes the norm.

The daughter is not angry enough to leave the relationship, plus she still has a deep-seated longing for acceptance, so that the deepest wound can finally be healed. But, because that same wound is forever pus-ing, she is not able or wanting to have an amiable connection with Mom. And mom lives in a state of bewilderment, either real or put on, at why her daughter doesn’t like her.

The Distribution of Power in the Mother-Daughter Relationship

The other element that always impacts mother-daughter relations is the, previously mentioned, distribution of power in the relationship.

Mom starts the relationship with 100% of the power. The quality of decades-later interactions with the daughter are fundamentally determined by the mother’s willing and deliberate giving back of that power to the child. It is the letting go of the grip over the child so that the child no longer feels obligated to meet the mother’s needs. That includes letting go of the mother’s needs to be mothering, thus releasing the daughter to become the full-grown oak she was encoded to become in her little acorn self.

The releasing of power to the child enables the mother to be present – fully present – to the daughter without agenda or anxieties of her own. To methodically entrust self-power back to the child, and to teach her how to use it, means the parent is present to teen and young adult woman without the presence of the third entity that used to be in the relationship – the mother’s own inner dialogue as driven by mom’s feelings, needs and wants. In other words, mom and her own sh*t aren’t primary players in the drama. Instead, mom can give attention, affection, acceptance, approval, acknowledgment of past pains mom has caused, and apology for said pains.

Mothers Need to Heal Themselves

And nothing – not one single thing – will positively jack up and forever change communication between mommy and daughter, well into old age and death, like mom healing her own sh*t and pulling herself out of the center of her own universe, and eagerly putting daughter there when daughter needs it.

If mom has done her job of giving back power, bit by bit, when young, that same daughter leans on mom, less and less, as she ages. She has been taught she matters and that her decisions, pursuits, and soul are good. Words become unnecessary because the message has already been delivered, year in and year out,

“Trust yourself, my dear girl. For you are good. I believe in you. You’re doing just fine. You’re wonderful just the way you are!”

Healing the Mother-Daughter Divide

I regularly ask parents who’ve experienced a breach in their relationship with their adult child, which is, of course, generally the result of wounds done by the parent,

 

If you could have your relationship with your adult-child restored but them not be healed,

OR

You could have your adult child healed, but never get to have a relationship with that child,

Which would you choose?

 

Generally (hopefully!), the response is to have the child healed, even if it means losing the child.

This is the orientation that is necessary in the breast of the parent. It is to understand the adult-child’s need for healing and regaining of self as primary. This, itself, means letting go of the child as existing to meet my needs, in one way or another. This only happens when the mother dives into her healing of the breached, broken, or bone-bruised relationship with her own mother, even if her mom is long dead.

Both mother and daughter have the power to heal themselves without ever receiving anything from their own mothers.

@badasscounseling Go to BadassCounseling.com. Read the counseling page. If it all looks good, reach back out thru the contact page there. Also, Get the book there, Theres a Hole in my love cup. It’s 80% of my counseling method in one book, and is required reading for every new client. It is available in audiobook, e-book, and paperback on the website. I require all clients be reading it (or have read it) during our work, as that enables us to move much faster. I also have a brand new book, BADASS WISDOM, a 366-day daily inspirational book to challenge you each day. Get the DIY vid courses there, if you prefer interactive videos. Download the FREE podcast, The BadassCounseling Show, as one more way to learn. I counsel ppl on the show. We learn by seeing how others sort thru their stuff and are comforted by seeing we’re not alone in our struggles. I’ve made 800+ FREE videos here on social, all designed to help you heal. Use them as journaling prompts in your self-care work. Every week, I do 1-4 FREE hours of taking questions LIVE on FB, YT, & IG. Tune into the LIVE and ask your questions. And even if you don’t counsel with me, I do recommend the book & podcast. Life-changers! Peace. #ceoofcounseling #foryou #fyp ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

Healing the Relationship Between Mothers and Daughters 

To heal the soul and begin the long overdue filling of the love cup is to start to flush out the pain, fear, and BS beliefs each daughter was taught by her own mother (and other parent or parents) about herself. It is only by jackhammering those false core beliefs that got pressed into the wet cement of her soul, decades prior, that each daughter finally heals herself.

To effect this outcome, I’ve created all of the tools on this website:

>> DIY video courses,

>> Free articles,

>> A free podcast - The Badass Counseling Show,

>> Most importantly the books: There’s a Hole in My Love Cup and BADASS WISDOM

>> Additionally, I have created 900+ free videos covering all manner of problems, solutions, and healing on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and X.

Engaged with your courage and commitment, these tools become the very conduit to mother and daughter each healing themselves. Then, and only then, is the possibility real for a new relationship, IFF both parties actually want that, at this point. But to engage in a relationship before the healing of both parties is to ensure that power imbalances and deep wounds just get carried forward, forever infecting even the best of intentions.

Unresolved issues only do damage, both to each other and to those they interact with.

To remove these unresolved issues, at least if mom and daughter are going to have a real relationship, means, as my mom used to say, “eating crow,” or, as you’ve heard me say, owning your sh*t. The only real necessity that opens the door to mom-daughter intimacy is the mom humbling herself, or being humbled.

It is only when she is willing to concede faults, admit to the damage she caused, apologize, and begin the work of changing her actions toward the daughter that an authentic relationship is possible.

>> See How To Be Successful At Parenting

Without that humility and contrition that go with it, unresolved issues get papered over, and the relationship gets settled-for that is not the best it can be if mom were to get her own ego out of the way.

Daughters Transforming into Their Mother’s Caregiver

As daughters get older, they can transform into their mom’s caregiver. How can you navigate that especially if you have unresolved issues with your mother?

If there’s one thing I’ve seen in many of my middle-aged and older clients that is most befuddling to them, it’s how to heal from the past and all the pains and anger that go with it when they now have a decent relationship with their parent. Or, more pointedly, how can they be angry at mom for all she did and didn’t do when now:

She’s an old woman and they feel bad for her and/or

They have a good relationship now and/or

The daughter has to take care of her because she’s all alone.

Aaaaacckkk!!!

It’s one thing to have a parent who was a sh*t and still is a sh*t. But to basically have one you’re mad at and one you’re not, for whatever reason, is a sticky wicket. Talk about caught in the middle between the mom I hate and the mom who’s now nice or now needing me. Whaddya do???

That is precisely the distinction I draw with all of my clients in this situation.

I encourage them to reframe their life as having ‘childhood mom’ and ‘now-mom.’ And, for lack of a better term, what they have to do is slay the mother of their childhood if there is ever any hope of existing in any sort of functional relationship with now-mom.

That requires unlocking the vault that holds all their stories, memories, feeeeelings, and emotional charges attached to those memories, and everything else from childhood. It is to name them and name all the implications of what went with them.

Again, this is what I wrote There’s a Hole in My Love Cup for – to walk you through this exact process. But, if you’re not willing to honestly see and assess that childhood without kindness or quarter for childhood mom that would in any way undermine the compassion, extreme sensitivity to, and liberation of childhood you, you will not fully heal. Childhood mom must be put to death so that childhood you can be finally set free.

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

How To Deal with a Mother Who Refuses to Heal Herself?

If your mom isn’t interested in healing and remains entrenched in her own rightness and determination not to change for you or anyone, you have a tough situation. That’s bad news especially if you’re trying to set boundaries without hurting her.

If someone is used to you having no boundaries, especially if they’re the ones who stripped you of those boundaries and/or they’re the ones benefiting from your lack of boundaries, there’s pretty much no way you can erect and hold fast to boundaries without them being butt hurt, as the kids like to say.

In fact, the very question is part of the problem. The orientation to not hurting others is often part of the implicit BS beliefs you’re taught about yourself, growing up.

You were taught, whether by things spoken or unspoken, that you don’t matter enough to justify standing up for yourself even if it will infringe on any tiny thing in any other person, let alone hurt them. In being taught that you don’t matter, you learned how to make your life about everyone else’s feelings. So if they’re even one half-teaspoonful unhappy for even one-tenth of one milli-second, it means you’re a bad person. And you feel the weight of the badness deep in your soul. So, you become an extreme giver, because that’s the only way you think you can get even an ounce of love. And, what do extreme givers tend to attract? Extreme takers, or what everyone right down to middle school children knows to be ‘narcissists.’

Welcome to a match made in hell.

The flaw in the question is that hurting others is bad. And, as a general rule, it is. But, when you’ve become conditioned to believe that your feelings and you don’t matter, you can’t distinguish between actual pain inflicted on another and the other just being selfish, or the natural ouches and dings that come with living in a human community and relationships. So, you completely sacrifice yourself and your natural right to have your needs met, all so that you won’t hurt someone else, because when you do that you feel they won’t like you and you also feel your own seemingly innate badness.

So, setting boundaries comes well into the healing process. And the healing process requires getting out all the messages that say you don’t matter. Only then will you matter enough to actually set a boundary, let alone enforce one.

Without the belief that you actually matter, you’ll never possess the strength to maintain any boundary.

So, how do you get that power?

The Healing Power of Pain

In a twisted inversion of outcomes, the one thing I’ve seen drive more people to the precipice of real healing more than any other is just sheer pain. Push someone to their breaking point, and everything changes. Nothing will cause you to erect and maintain boundaries with a parent more than the pain getting so bad that here you stand; you can do no other.

@badasscounseling Has pain gotten bad enuf? #business #motivation #relationship #happiness #selfhelp #fitness #inspiration #passion #career #women #fyp #4u #gym ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

Once you’ve endured so much over so long a time, there bellows up from the soul a word so foreign, so unusual on the tongue, yet so powerfully spine-erecting that it changes you, immediately, in that exact instant. Though there are a thousand more miles to travel in healing after it, this one word is the very sine qua non of healing, the most indispensable piece. When your very being has reached the very maximum of all of its limits, up from the soul ejects the mighty word you’ve never spoken, “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”

For the first time in your life one true, real ‘no’ comes from the depths of your mattering. That no is the statement of your realizing you are important. It is your own soul saying,

“This is NOT who we are. This life lived this way, and all the sh*t I’ve eaten, is not me. It ends today!”

In that moment comes the willingness to endure the butt-hurts and complaints of others as you begin a life of mattering and boundaries. It all starts there.

Strong Adult Relationships Between Mothers and Daughters

So, do you have any actual happy advice, today, Sven? What thoughts do you have for having a strong, positive adult relationship between a mom and daughter?

Hahahaha. Yes, to happy. I think you’ve already gotten the point in this article and from my work that a real relationship with mom, daughter, or anyone, demands the brass balls to go inside yourself and face the dragons of all the messages and pains from your past that need to be slayed. That’s ugly-ass work.

>> See How To Do An Effective Soul Detox

But, but, but, it does NOT have to take forever. (If your healing is taking forever, please get a new therapist and/or other new tools. You’re wasting too much life waiting for that earth-shakin’, bread-breakin’ day.) Absent that deepest work, you’re just phoning it in; the results will reflect that.

But yes, the happy part.

Ensuring You Have the Best Mother-Daughter-Granddaughter Relationship

The happy part…..

Nah, hahahah. I gotta say, there ain’t no happy without the damned grit to do the hard work. That’s it. That’s just facts. If you ain’t willing to do the ugly, scary work of healing your soul all of your relationships will reflect the ugly, scary unhealed inside.

And, if you choose to not go inside to heal the ugly and scary, please don’t have children, at least not yet.

It’s not enough to say you love your child. The question is, does your love reflect in actions that are best for that adult-child or just mostly best for you?

Lastly, if you’re the daughter of the mom who did have the child, it’s never too late to heal. It is not only possible, it doesn’t have to take forever. You can have the life, fullness of the soul, and peace – the god-blessed peace you’ve yearned for all your days. You can have that peace and filling of the hole in your soul. I have seen it done every day of my adult life that I’ve been doing this work. Please find inside you the courage to heal, even if you do it completely on your own.

The world needs you to heal. Every little girl you encounter or give life to needs a healed you. By that one act, you become a life-changer. You make right the trajectory of every young acorn you encounter. Please heal.

Happy Mother’s Day!

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.com 

Religious Trauma and How To Deal With It

Have you experienced religious trauma? 

By religious trauma, I mean the pain caused by or in the name of religion, religious leaders, or those bearing religious doctrines (maligned as they may or may not be) in their hands and breast. It can be as devasting to the soul and spirit as other forms of trauma such as covert incest or emotional incest.

An Example of Religious Trauma

My first brush with religious trauma happened early in my life.

We were living in suburban Minneapolis, at the time. Dad was the Associate Pastor at the large Lutheran church across the street. We had been members there for eight years and enjoyed the parish and people very much, when one evening Dad and Mom sat the six of us kids down in the living room where we had spent many Christmases and countless other family events, most of which somehow tied into the life and times of that church across the street, as is the case in most parsonages. This evening would be no different.

 While I don’t recall much of the specific conversation, the main point was clear.

The Senior Pastor, whom everyone knew to have a hefty ego and grand ambitions, but was, to this point, a rather jolly, likable fellow, had announced to the Church Council that my father was being asked to resign, as soon as possible. Though he (my father) had engaged in no bad actions and stepped afoul of no one, as he was a simple man from farm stock, who was committed only to serving his flock and being a kindly man, he just didn’t fit in with this new Senior Pastor, who had been there but a few years. He didn’t fit the grand plan.

There was much griping among the five brothers and sister; one struggling to discern whether the Senior Pastor’s house should be met with a hail of eggs or dog excrement. But, in the end, we ate it. Dad ate it, his pride understandably wounded, and now forced to live across the street from this church that had turned its back on him. (Mom and Dad had purchased the parsonage from the church, years prior, and would go on to live there another 25 years, or so.)

The shock of that night, as well as all of us having to subsequently witness Dad’s barely hidden wound, for several years after, and his struggle to find a new place in life, as he had become disenchanted with the very work of parish ministry that he had done for roughly 30 years, at that point, impacted all of us.

In short, the healthy skepticism Mom and Dad had already bred into us (yes, even the pastor taught his kids to question religion, church, God, and the whole shmear), had now turned to bitterness and animus. Dad would never return to parish ministry, instead taking a few years to dabble, before landing for his final 15 years as a chaplain at the Veteran’s Hospital in Minneapolis, where he was very happy, as his primary responsibility was simply to talk and pray with, and offer counsel to, veterans.

Today, my parents have been deceased for years. Four of us siblings attend church regularly. Two do not. I was a pastor, in different capacities, in five different parishes, for over 15 years, but have not been in religious ministry for roughly the same amount of time.

Religious Trauma: No Religion Is Exempt

 As a pastor and soul counselor for 30 years, I have heard many stories of religious trauma, first-hand, from clients, friends, parishioners, family, and acquaintances:

A friend, growing up with absent parents, upon the invitation of her older sister walked down to a small church, one Sunday, as an eight-year-old. Feeling welcome, they stayed, not long later become trapped sex slaves, for years;

A father overseas reached out to me, recently, seeking just a conversation, because, in the last year, his son had been killed in the Hamas-Israel conflict, and he feels as though his God does not hear his entreaties;

I, personally, was squeezed out of two parish ministry positions for my published stance supporting gay rights, specifically the rights of gay clergy, in one case a full decade before our religious denomination took an official stance of support. I also got thrown out of the ordained ministry pipeline three times by superiors in my denomination for my stance on gay rights, and, perhaps more significantly, my groundbreaking, radical book, at the time, Spiritual But Not Religious, having been the first author to both name and delineate what would decades later become the largest spiritual-religious movement in US history, and have been cited by Wikipedia and other sources as such;

A client, decades ago, had been very poorly treated by her husband, and it always came from him in the name of their religion and God; she has been an atheist since;

A friend told me of growing up in the US South, in the 1950s and 60s, and remembering her African-American church being set ablaze, and the profound hatred it stirred in her, as well as a gnawing fear of going to church;

Another very dear friend, told me recently of his fear of going to synagogue in the US, after all that is going on overseas;

An imam tells me of mistreatment by his superiors and the effect of souring him to both his religion and, at times, his God;

An Indian-American client told me stories of being expected by his parents to practice their religion, even though he suffered teasing at school and later abandoned religion because of it;

Don’t even begin to ask me the number of clients I get every year, to this day, even in the 2020s in America, Canada, and the supposed civilized world, who live in a house where all manner of vile sh*t is perpetrated in the name of religion or some God, whether by a spouse, a parent or by their own hand. Don’t even begin to ask me the number of conversations I still have – TODAY! – about the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ clip from Judeo-Christian Scripture. (As an aside, the confirmation students my Dad used to teach in the 1950s through 1980s would often hear him say, “You can get the Bible to say just about anything if you take a small enough amount of it.” ….God bless that man!)

Lastly, there’s the good ol’ fashioned religious hypocrite person(s) we’ve all experienced in life who put on a good show of their religion and are forever talking religious jargon and highfalutin ideas, but who are mean as a snake or two-faced beyond belief behind closed doors, leaving you with both a bad taste and a distrust for anyone religious or anything having to do with religion.

There is no shortage of stories in the world of abuse, atrocities, and abhorrent behavior all done in the name of one religion or another. History is littered with them.

Yet, history is also gilded with many great and good acts, as well as virtuous and kind people from these same religions. Thus, the conversation is never a simple one. But, there can be no dispute that the prevalence of religious trauma is everywhere and that the long, dark shadow it throws can last years, even decades for an individual, family, or group. 

My Quick Take on Religious Ills: Two Words

I have been asked many times, while appearing on TV or radio, speaking on podcasts or to groups, as well as magazine interviews and dinner parties,

“Sven, if you could change one thing in the world, cure one ill, what would it be?”

I’ve thought about this, as I suppose we all have, for decades. My answer is always the same, “Two words. I would change (or add, as it were) two words to every religion or belief system in the world. Somewhere in their creed, I would insert the two words, ‘… for me.’”

“My religion is the best religion in the whole world… for me.”

“We are the one true people, of the one true book, of the one true God… for me.”

“My God can beat up your God, but he won’t, because he’s just perfect… for me.”

I believe that it is the pompous absolutizing of religion and religious experience that has done more hardcore effed-up damage in the world and continues to do so, than any other force in human existence.

And yes, I believe it has done even more damage than avarice, even creating the very infrastructure for said avarice, not to mention patriarchy, wars, genocide, misogyny, slavery, and all manner of sexual predation.

 We as humans get sooo full of ourselves when it comes to religion, because too many people and too many sacred books claim to have been gifted to humanity by the gods themselves, and therefore have every right to force themselves on others in both a metaphorical and none-too-literal spiritual rape.

 How much suffering would be solved if we could get out of the arrogance too often stirred into the cocktail of religion and its doctrines?

So, What is Religious Trauma? And, Who Carries it?

 It’s not a tricky thing to understand, really.

As I mentioned at the top of this article, religious trauma is pain caused by or in the name of religion, religious leaders, or those bearing religious doctrines (maligned as they may or may not be) in their hands and breast.

Or, in terms a bit more crass, “It’s the sh*t that gets left inside someone when some religious f**ker does some sh*t they shouldn’t be doing and like their own religion likely condemns, oddly enough.” I mean, it takes no small amount of theological gymnastics to assert violence when your God and his spokesman son claim, “Love, love, love.”

 It could be argued we all carry religious trauma, to some greater or lesser degree, dependent upon the degrees of separation from the trauma-inducing event.

Do/did I carry religious trauma (now healed) from what was done to my father, and the aftermath?

Yes. And I had to heal that in the years subsequent.

Do my children carry religious trauma from that event, as well as from my numerous time of being ousted from pastoral ministry?

I think so, because I stopped going to church, and neither of them presently do.

Will their children carry their grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s religious trauma?

Well, at the very least, it’s unlikely the children will go to church, if their own parents don’t, right? Is not that the residue of religious trauma in its mildest form?

Perhaps your religious trauma, or that of someone you know or love, gets triggered upon passing a religious building or seeing religion depicted or discussed on TV. Then all sorts of emotions get stirred up inside, almost as if you can’t shake the event.

It persists until we have the courage to go inside, into the pain and assorted feelings, and pull them out to discuss them, even if only with our journal. It’s to begin to no longer carry the emotional charges associated with that trauma but to flush those charges out.

Pain that gets passed from one person to the next

Religious trauma is the pain that gets passed from one person to the next, and the belief system that both delivers that pain and the new belief system that takes root in the gut of the receiver. For inflicted pain always sows seeds of strange fruits, such as, “I’m dirty,” “I’m worthless,” “I don’t matter,” “Nobody really loves me,” “There is no god, not if he can allow that,” etc. And again, until those messages and the pain that drive them are walked into and addressed, they will continue to generate hurt inside and potentially onto others. For, hurt people hurt people.

How Does Religious Trauma Manifest?

Religious trauma can manifest in forms of lost sleep, ongoing anxiety, depression, difficulty interacting with others, bitterness, and extreme sarcasm (particularly towards religion and religious people), and other forms of hurting others, hurting self, pulling away from others, or disconnecting from engagement in life.

It becomes so easy, when we’ve been hurt, to turn an angry eye and acerbic tongue against others, against humanity, and against life itself. But then the trauma wins, then the pain wins, and then your lowest self wins.

To live in a world that we strive to make better and be a presence of love and support in, to live a life that you not only feel proud of but actually enjoy means to have the courage to not let the pain drive you, but to go into the pain, fears, and BS beliefs you’ve come by that cause you to be bitter and hurting, and to drive them out of you by discussing, detailing, and deliberately bringing up and out of you all that hurts.

To change the world in the biggest ways

Requires changing who I am and how I walk in this world.

It is to have the brass balls to go into my own pains inside,

Heal them, flush them incessantly, until I am a clearer and kinder vessel

And instrument of love, support, and kindness in the world.

To come back to the spirit of love that has always dwelt inside you

At the bedrock of your soul

Is what it means to live from your Source, from centeredness…

To live life from your soul.

Are you there, yet? 

A Shockingly Frequent Trauma

The thing about religious trauma is that it’s the forgotten stepchild of traumas. We all know about it, but it always seems to take a back seat to sexual trauma, childhood trauma, emergency trauma, medical trauma, bullying, and all the other painful crud life can bring. For, on one hand, we often think,

“Well, I wasn’t molested by some priest and I don’t send those TV evangelist crooks my money. So, I don’t really have religious trauma. Doesn’t apply to me.”

While that may be true, what you might be missing are the subtle ways you are experiencing even mild religious trauma. Because it’s not always the biggest stuff that impacts us most.

Sometimes, it’s the slow drip of repeated interactions with small situations or certain people that burnishes an image or feeling deep into us. And, because of the commonality of religions, no matter what country you live in, it’s very common to have interactions with religious people and religions themselves.

In fact, the four first books I wrote (Spiritual but not religious; Rescuing God from Christianity; The 7 Evangelical Myths; and Badass Jesus), while I’m really trying to get the reader to deeper places of personal spirituality, the books are also a rebuke of the myriad ways religion, specifically Christianity in America, has hurt people and how people can heal from that and have highly productive and enjoyable lives.

Even Religious Trauma Requires Healing

And, it’s important to remember that while religious trauma comes with its own nuances and forms, depending on the type of trauma, it’s still necessary to do the work to heal from it.

And healing from trauma, of any sort, still requires the courage and tenacity to go into the pain and begin to look at it, feel it, and deliberately and actively put it into words about the experience and the feelings that accompany it, until the pain has fully been purged from you.

So, whether you are daily following the events transpiring in the Middle East with carnage on both sides, struggling with the seemingly forever intractable and endlessly labyrinthine religious wars, or are galled by non-spiritual actions of religious people in your own town, you may be getting peppered with, or soaked in, traumatizing experiences as a direct or indirect result of religion.

This means there’s work to do – on yourself! – if you’re going to live a happy life from a place of soul, love, and inspiration.

>> How To Do An Effective Soul Detox

>> Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child

>> The Soul Disciplines and Keeping Your Spirit on Track

Burned But Still Spiritual Despite Religious Trauma

 Is it possible to still be spiritual if you’ve gotten pain inflicted onto you by religion or some religious person?

Well, obviously, that partly depends upon your definition of spiritual, or what I call a soulful life. See, I very much believe that a soulful life is very possible, regardless of whether you are religious, or not.

Whether you believe in a god or not, to live from your soul is to have removed the pains, fears, and BS beliefs that you were taught about yourself, way back in childhood, and to then live in and from a place of deep connection to your most authentic self.

It is to live life from a centered sense of knowing self and knowing when things feel right to you and when they don’t.

It is to live in a state of love and kindness, but also intensity, fire for those things that fire your spirit, and deep calm inside, amid it all.

It is live with a sense of ALIVENESS that is more than mere put-on-a-happy-face.

It is to have full control of the throttle of your life, such that you have more than two speeds (fully on and fully shut down); your energy and speed are not just binary but can be dialed up or dialed way up, or dialed back to full idle, or to any number of speeds and intensity level, in between.

It is to feel what you feel, in each moment, and to allow yourself that, trust the truths inside what you feel, and act faithfully from that inner certainty, fully willing to make mistakes, fully willing to admit fault, and fully enjoying the ride, come what may.

Religion and Your Love Cup

To live from a place of soul is to continually clean out the vessel that is your Love Cup from new and old pains, tired and encrusted beliefs that no longer serve you or others, and to seek to live with clarity and a sense of a clean heart. And, none of this requires religion.

Religion, done well, can actually enhance this, if that religion has beliefs that align with the dignity and truths of who you are. But, if your religion, past or present, does not breathe life into you, it is not your religion. And, you are allowing someone else’s belief system to tear you down and suck your life energy out of you. Truth be told, you can still choose to stick with that religion, even if it continues to rob you of life. But, why would you?

At what point do you no longer carry around the pains and bitterness, or beliefs and actions of religions or religious people who hurt you or maybe causing you to hurt others and your own doggone self? When do you finally dive in and begin the deliberate healing process to be rid of your own religious trauma?

Your greatest happiness and peace stand on the other side of your trauma, waiting for you to move toward them and soon embrace them!

Peace.

Don't Forget to Explore the Book Section

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com

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Your Questions About Therapy and Counseling Answered

As you might guess, the beginning of a new year is a busy time of year for therapy and counseling.

A lot of people are either coming off of the Holidays depressed, faced with family sh*t once again, or really shook up. Similarly, many other people are diving into the new year and wanting a fresh start or are just sick of the old ways of thinking, feeling, and being.

Whatever the case, this is a time when many people want to reach out to a therapist for change and have questions. In this article, you’ll find answers to your questions about therapy and counseling so you can start healing your soul.

Why do therapy?

Naturally, as with any new venture, this desire for counseling brings a whole lot of questions along with it. Very often, the first question regarding counseling is ‘Why do therapy, at all?’ And this is a legit question. Here’s a quick vid to answer that!

@badasscounseling Badass Counseling Show podcast (now w/ 1 MILLION+ downloads) will kick ur a** & change ur life! Subscribe now! “There’s a hole in my love cup”: is my life-changing int’l bestseller that’ll take u to the scary ugly places uv been stuck in or running from ur whole lifetime , and finally bring healing! Get my latest book, BADASS WISDOM! It’s a great daily, motivational book, At BadassCounseling,com. The audiobook version is ONLY available on the website. And the DIY vid courses there! Counseling is also available. #ceoofcounseling #foryou #mentalhealth #counseling #badass #therapy #healing #soul #happiness #fyp ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

I personally believe that one of the other first questions for a lot of people, nowadays, particularly men, is just, What do I do about my own perception of counseling?

I get a lot of people coming to me who’ve either:

Never been in counseling (often because they see it as weak, stupid, or just plain weird),

Always saw themselves as someone who wouldn’t be caught dead in counseling (precisely for the reasons just mentioned, or perhaps because they never saw themselves as ever having any problems,) or

Have had such bad, blah, or ineffective experiences with counseling in the past that they’ve become jaded against therapy every working.

So often, the first stumbling block is just reaching the point where past perceptions of therapy are now outweighed by the desire or even need for change. And, as you might guess, this hunger for change is always, always, always driven by pain of one sort or another – emotional, relationship, familial, financial, career, medical, loss/death, etc.

Change will not occur until the pain gets bad enough.

-Sven

And, until that pain has gotten bad enough over a long enough period of time, such that you know you can’t do it on your own and you’re really broken down by it all, you won’t open up enough in therapy to truly accomplish anything significant.

The Value of Pain for Effective Therapy

Great pain brings great opportunity (for growth).

This is partly why I am very hesitant when taking on young clients, say under 25. Very often, though certainly not always, while they have experienced much pain in their young lives, often at the hands of family, they still often have spirits that are quite strong and able to carry the pain of the load. While that may sound like a good thing, it’s often counter-productive to the counseling process, because it can mean they have not been broken down enough and frustrated enough with nothing working to be truly open to being led in counseling.

But, pack that same load of pain onto that young person and let them carry it for another 15 or 20 years with no relenting from life, and by 35 or 40 they are so worn down that they are open to anything, particularly new ways of thinking and living.

A 40-year-old in pain is often very different from a 20-year-old with a similar past. There’s a malleability that comes. We become stripped of the strength that in our 20s might’ve caused us to dabble in counseling or consider new ideas, but never really buy in fully.

It’s the old economic theory of compounded interest. If a 20-year-old takes on $100,000 of debt to start a business, she has a $100,000 debt. But if she never makes a payment on that loan, that same loan 20 years later has become so swollen with interest that the note will suffocate and crush her.

All this to say, if you aren’t broken down by life enough, you aren’t truly ready for counseling, growth, and the radical changes in your life that are likely necessary. And, pain alone will shatter, or push you through, past perceptions of counseling.

The ego, like the egg, is of no use,

until it is broken.

-Unknown

@badasscounseling “There’s a hole in my love cup”: The life-changing int’l bestseller that’ll take u to the scary ugly places uv been stuck in or running from ur whole life, and finally bring healing! At BadassCounseling, com. And the DIY vid courses there! “The Badass Counseling Show” podcast (now w/ 1/4 MILLION downloads in just 5 months!! And ranked in the TOP 5% of ALL podcasts for 2022!) will kick ur a** & change ur life! Subscribe now! #ceoofcounseling #mentalhealth #selfcare #relationship #therapy #therapytiktoks #friends #love ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

What are some specific reasons for considering therapy?

In a way, this question has already been answered.

Counseling is always driven by either past pain, present pain, and/or fear of future pain. Breaking it down further, as briefly mentioned above, the need for pain alleviation can come in any sector of life, from relationships to careers. But, what it always turns into is emotional pain.

The struggles outside of us or from our past create such powerful feelings inside of us that we simply become unable to bear them any longer. And, in my experience, that internal emotional pain generally manifests in one or two ways – depression and/or anxiety – or is some derivative of these two. Carry anxiety or depression long enough, and it will wear down even the most willful and strongest of individuals.

>> See Healing From Depression And Avoiding Suicide

The soul is more powerful than the will.

-Sven

And so, there grows a longing in the soul to make the pain stop. But, too often, a lot of energy gets expended merely by coping with the pain, handling it, and bearing it further as best you’re able. You’ll find a million therapists who will teach coping strategies. And, there are times and places when coping is needed in the moment. But coping ain’t healing. It’s managing the pain, rather than making it go away.

And, I just so happen to believe, born of three decades of counseling others and ample amounts of my own personal pain and that of those close to me, that most emotional pain can be eliminated. Yes, there will be new pains that come; that’s part of life. But the difference between carrying around all that past pain and not doing so is that when the new pains come you deal with just the new pain, not the old and the new, at the same time.

The accrual of new pains on top of the accretion of old pains is the interest compounding on that loan and load. The past has become so heavy as it has acquired more pains that new pains, however slight, become unbearable.

This is why many people run – in relationships, in career, in parenting, in life – from anything that bears even a whiff of bringing any sort of discomfort, pain, frustration, blame, or even responsibility.

Their love cup is already chock full of so much manure, maggots, rocks, crud, and devilishly awful stuff that they cannot bear even one more drop. Not one.

@badasscounseling “There’s a hole in my love cup”: The life-changing int’l bestseller that’ll take u to the scary ugly places inside and step you thru the healing process. Now available at BadassCounseling,com. Download the podcast, The BadassCounseling Show (now with nearly 1Million downloads in less than a year on the air). At Spotify, Audible, Apple Music and other podcast sites. Life-changers! #ceoofcounseling #foryou #mentalhealth #therapy #therapy ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

And so, this person, or anyone who has been carrying that past pain long enough, either chooses to begin (or continue) a life of escape from the pain – booze, pills, gambling, over-working, over-parenting, busyness, food addiction, cheating, over-exercising, excessive shopping, excessive gaming, excessive TV, excessive swiping/scrolling, and on and on – which is really just a version of coping.

Or, they are tired of coping and the inevitable crash after the high, or the inevitable return to reality that always comes with it. And so, they turn finally to healing, to making the pain finally stop.

Enter counseling and therapy.

What should I look for in a therapist?

I’ve done several videos on different aspects of finding/picking a therapist.

The bottom line is that it can be damn hard. Sure, a simple Google search will disclose plenty of sites that catalog therapists. But going through the process of discerning what someone is really like, whether they’ll be a good fit for you, and whether they’re any good and can lead you through a transformation to healing and a new you, well, that’s a trickier thing. And, because everyone’s needs, wants, and personalities are different, there simply are no hard and fast rules that work for everyone. There just aren’t.

When I was in my 12-year suicidal depression, I saw several therapists, some on recommendation from friends, some because they were in-network, and some just random. Not a dang one helped me significantly. Not one made me feel they actually knew what they were doing and were leading me, and certainly not faster, deeper, and more powerfully than my own journaling and self-work were.

In the end, I had to find and create ways to heal myself, which is why, in part, it took me so long. I had to reinvent the wheel. And, I made a pretty damn fine wheel, one that has powered the engine of transforming a whole lot of people since then. I mean, I was a good counselor and pastor before that. But, if you find your own way out of the dark forest, you become a damn expert at your sectors of the forest.

So, if you’re not having success in therapy, go to the books page on the Badass Counseling website and start with my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup. It will take you deep and well down the road of transformation. Then follow it up with BADASS WISDOM there, as well, and some of the books by other authors recommended in Love Cup.

I am a big fan of getting referrals from friends or trusted sources, as well as reading testimonials. A therapist who doesn’t make those available is either very new to the work or simply lacks them.

Beyond that, here’s a quickie vid to give you things to think about in the hunting.

@badasscounseling Badass Counseling Show podcast (now w/ 1 MILLION+ downloads) will kick ur a** & change ur life! Subscribe now! “There’s a hole in my love cup”: is my life-changing int’l bestseller that’ll take u to the scary ugly places uv been stuck in or running from ur whole lifetime , and finally bring healing! Get my latest book, BADASS WISDOM! It’s a great daily, motivational book, At BadassCounseling,com. The audiobook version is ONLY available on the website. And the DIY vid courses there! #ceoofcounseling #fyp #foryou #therapy #therapist #counseling #women #mentalhealth #badass ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

Do I need to have tried other methods, approaches, or resources before doing therapy?

No.

Heck, a decent percentage of my own clientele have never had therapy in their lives, in no small part because I tend to attract the real tough nuts – people who wouldn’t be caught dead in therapy, have always sworn therapy is a scam or doesn’t do anything, as well as folks who’ve been through all types of therapy and never really gotten the success and transformation they’ve been seeking.

So, no, you don’t need any counseling experience. However, I tell folks you do need to come with two things.

Courage

The first is courage. Courage is the very fulcrum on which all transformation of self turns. If you do not have courage to push through fears, you’ll never go into the ugliest, scariest parts of healing the soul. You’ll pull back when it starts to get uncomfortable. And, to be honest, if you are not experiencing discomfort in therapy, you ain’t doing therapy, you’re coasting, or your therapist sucks, lacks courage, isn’t leading you, or is just milking the clock. Usually, the pain of life is what brings the courage to finally face all the stuff you’re going to go through in good therapy, which is all the stuff you’ve been running from your whole life.

Open Up

Courage is what makes the second piece happen, and this piece is the one thing every therapist needs.

You have to bring a willingness to keep opening. I tell my clients, in advance, that if they don’t open up, I can’t help them; no therapist can help them.

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What type of therapy should I do?

This is a trickier question for me to answer, if I’m honest.

See, as you’ve heard me say a hundred times, I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any sort of medical therapist. I’m a soul counselor. That’s it. Nothing more. I don’t deal with mental illness. I have plenty of people who come to me who have mental illnesses, and I tell them I am NOT a mental health professional and will not address any diagnoses they have received. But, often they choose to work with me anyway, because they want soul healing. Well, that I can do!

So, when it comes to this question of what sort of therapy you should do, I come up with a big, fat goose egg – zero! I got nothin’ for you. In fact, I don’t even recommend soul counselors or spiritual counseling, because I’ve never met one that I felt kicks ass. I’m sure there are a few out there, but I’ve not met them.

Similarly, I generally do not recommend religious counseling, if you’re wanting to do soul healing, odd as that may sound.

As a former clergyman and son of a clergyman, I can quite emphatically say that it is extraordinarily rare that you will get counseling from a cleric that comes from anything other than a measure of dogmatism. There are a few out there who can counsel without the dogma, but don’t hold your breath.

And, since I’m not a medical professional, I am in no position to recommend any sort of psychological counseling. I definitely prefer to just stay in my lane.

All of that said, there is one variety of psychological counseling that I have been counseled in, decades ago, and that I knew some practitioners of.

Depth Psychology

It’s this semi-obscure little field of psychology known as ‘depth psychology.’ I’ve always been a big fan of the writings of Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, and, of course, thence Carl Jung (he a fellow preacher’s kid). Depth Psychology grows out of that strain and speaks to my own personal sensibilities.

But, it is not everyone’s cup of tea. My fondness for Depth psychology is a personal preference, not some statement of absolute truth.

@badasscounseling #happiness #success are you erratic in your therapy? Or are you committed regular and doing the work? Or perhaps you shy away from your therapy because you are terrified of who you really are and what you really want and the implications of where it is going? #relationships #selflove #mentalhealth #foryou #yoga #spirituality #therapy #psychology #selfcare #divorce #women #husband #children #friends #love #like #music #sports #fitness #work #passion #dream #gym #fyp #heart #strength #childhood ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

What are worthy goals and expectations for therapy?

Well, I’m a bit of a realist in the department of expectations.

Realistically, if I genuinely want to change my life and finally be happy, and I’m paying someone to do that, and I’m willing to keep opening up through the scary parts, then I damn well expect to get transformation from therapy.

Realistically, a therapist should be delivering what is promised or implied.

So, am I saying that a therapist should guarantee their work? Yes. I do. I simply tell people that if they do the work I bring to their feet and they’re not satisfied with the changes inside themselves and in their lives, I’ll happily refund their money. Happily. Why would I want to take money for something I didn’t do? That’s just shitty. It’s dishonest.

But, here’s the truth. I’ve never heard of a therapist, psychologist, counselor, or anyone else in this field who does that. So, you’re left with not just uncertainty but also risk – financially, in particular. You’re very much at the mercy of the therapist’s abilities or lack thereof.

But, that’s not the question. The question was, What are worthy goals?

Transformation of your life, both internal and external. That’s always the goal.

Actual healing, not just incessant coping. Yes, learning coping skills is necessary for certain situations. But, coping is not healing. And, I happen to believe that pretty much anything can be healed…..again, if the client brings the courage to keep opening up.

If your therapist doesn’t push forever in that direction and if you feel you aren’t making progress in that direction, you gotta speak up and say you want more from them.

Or, you need to find a new therapist.

How frequently do I need to meet with a therapist, and how long will it take?

Transformation can be immediate,

If you go deep enough.

-Unknown

I am an absolute believer that therapy does not, NOT, NOT have to take forever. Can I heal someone fully and completely in one session? Nope. And I never claim I can.

But, if you go deep enough – if they are open to my taking them deep – they can experience massive transformation in weeks and be prepared to move forward without my aid in a few months.

Yes, healing of the soul, unleashing the authentic self and the new directions it brings, and feeling massively lighter and healed can happen in months. I tell potential clients all the time, do you want healing in a few years, or do you want it now? If you’re hungry to finally change and get it done, you’re motivated, and I want to work with you. If you’re largely unsure, I’m not the therapist for you.

Now, I work differently than most therapists.

Mandatory 10-page Autobiography

I require a 10-page (or less) autobiography from every client, at least one week before we ever meet.

I put in 2-3 hours studying that, marking it up with my notes, highlighting, and compiling the questions I want to come armed with. So, I’ve just made a 2-3 hour investment in a client, at no charge. I don’t know of any other therapist who does that.

Now, I charge a very high rate, even for the Manhattan/New York City area where I’m based. So, one could argue that I can afford to give all that free time to my clients. Fair point. Except rent in NYC for a therapist’s office can be $55/square foot or higher. But that’s not the point.

The autobiography requirement and my taking hours to study it has been something I have been doing for three decades, since back when I was charging $100/hour and even when I was counseling people for free. I do this because it enables us to hit the ground running. We’re not wasting 6-10 sessions learning story and background.

First Session: 4 Hours Minimum - 6 Hours Maximum

Secondly, all first sessions with all clients, unless I’m working with children, are 6 hours maximum and 4 hours minimum. And, most folks go with the 6-hour option, because they’re motivated to heal faster.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “SIX HOURS?! That’s insane! I can’t even sit still for six hours.” What clients discover, almost without exception, is that the four or six hours fly by extremely quickly.

Why? Because for the very first time in their lives, they’re going deep into their problems with someone who is helping them unearth truths and new insights they’ve never seen before. It’s powerful.

(Btw, follow-up sessions are a minimum of two hours and a maximum of four hours. Again, because I don’t believe in one-hour sessions.)

Why? To Accomplish More For You

Why do I do it? Because, for me personally in the work I do with clients, I know I can accomplish infinitely more in one 6-hour session than in six 1-hour sessions. I mean, how much does it suck to be in therapy and 50 minutes go by (does any therapist do a full hour, anymore?), and then those frustrating words ring from your psychologist’s mouth, “I’m afraid it’s time to stop.”

F—K THAT! I hate that. I hate that people have to go through that. I hate that insurance wrenches healing professions into working that way. And I hate that more therapists who don’t even take insurance aren’t giving longer sessions.

I’m just a huge believer in going long. And, some other professionals do extended sessions. (Though, I don’t know of any that do four and six-hour sessions.) You can just keep a client in the zone longer. Whereas, many people feel like they’re just starting to make progress and see things, when “Times up!” happens. In extended sessions, the client’s trust begins to grow quickly. Having done long sessions for decades, I also know that I can go longer than clients can, which means I can wear down their conditioned defenses and their fears.

Extended Sessions Imply Going Deeper for Therapy

Not a lot of therapists do extended sessions. If you can find one who does, I take that as a hopeful indicator. It’s a basic sign of someone who not only feels comfortable thinking outside the box but someone who likely knows how to take you deeper because they know that extra time is a valuable tool. One implies the other.

If you’re going with a more conventional therapist doing the 50-minute thing, you can still get results. You can. It’s just going to take longer. And, as with all therapy, it depends on the skills of the therapist and your willingness to open up to their lead.

Standard Therapy Frequency: Weekly

So then, how often should you meet with your therapist?

Well, the standard is once per week. I think if you’re motivated to get results sooner rather than later, once per week is the bare minimum unless your pocketbook does not allow that, which is a fair and reasonable consideration. But again, you can accelerate the velocity of your growth and transformation by how much work you do outside of the session.

And yes, a therapist who assigns homework is a huge plus. I always do and it’s always optional; for those who want to run faster.

Trust Your Own Inner Voice

While I recommend regular sessions, the most important thing is that clients begin to trust their own inner voice, to the degree that they can hear it yet. If they can’t trust and act on their voice with me – the very person teaching them to hear and act on it! – they sure as heck won’t be able to do it with someone else.

I had a client a decade, or so, ago, who was a mental health professional, himself. Before he darkened my door, he had been seeing his psychologist for 12 years, three times per week! I was shocked and angered, particularly when I heard what the issues were that he said he initially went for and later stayed for. He, too, realized that he had been stuck in a comfort zone of just discussing daily/weekly feelings and traumas, but was never pushed to go down to root causes and do the work of deep healing.

He had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that work. He even stated that during those 12 years, the person he most feared dying was not his wife, children, or parents, but his therapist! Yow!

We worked together for five months. He said to me after two months,

“Sven, you’ve done more in about 20 hours, than my previous psychologist did in 12 years!”

After five months, he was a completely changed man.

So, how long or how often should you be in therapy? As long as it takes.

And how frequently? How motivated are you and how much can you afford, is my response. And are you doing the work outside of the session?

Sven, I hate therapy because it gets so uncomfortable!

I don’t mean to be rude, but yeah, no shit! That’s kinda the point.

As mentioned previously, if you ain’t feeling discomfort in your therapist’s office, your therapist ain’t doing their job, or you’re resisting them, to the detriment of you making any progress.

I’ve seen sooooo many people walk away from therapy because they don’t want to touch the real issues. As I talk about in my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, you’ve been running from that stuff your whole life. So, to finally turn and face it is fear-inducing. And, some people just can’t handle it, don’t want to touch it, or just aren’t ready. And, that’s okay. Nothin’ wrong with that. However, those issues ain’t going away just because you ain’t lookin’ at em. You can self-medicate all you want and engage in all manner of addictive actions, but it’s this stuff that you’re running from, and it ain’t going anywhere. It doesn’t just magically disappear.

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

I had a fella come to me, a while back. Came for about 3 sessions. At the end of the third, he said, “Sven, I gotta be honest with you. I’ve come to you now for 11 hours and I haven’t seen any change.”

I laughed and responded,

“That’s 100% true. But let’s be honest. You’ve come to me for 11 hours and you haven’t opened up, at all. You don’t want to touch the real shit. You’ve stayed locked down on the deaths of your mother and your 32-year-old brother when you were 29. You’ve got soooo much pain inside of you that you don’t want to touch, let alone grieve fully.”

“You’re full of shit! When my brother died, I cried all night. Then, in the morning, I went back to work. Whaddya mean, I haven’t grieved?”

I couldn’t resist; I laughed again.

“Dude, that’s not grieving. That’s a good cry, but that ain’t grief. Grieving the loss of your dear brother who was your best friend, and then grieving the loss of your beloved mother in the same year is a process that lasts literally years. And you can’t bear to touch it. You’re so terrified of that pain. And, I don’t blame you. It’s soul-crushing shit. But that’s the reason you’ve had x, y, and z addictions. You’ve been running from all of that pain. And, there’ll be no joy in Mudville ‘til you face that stuff. Zip. Zero.”

“Yeah, dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snorted.

“Well, I’m more than happy to refund your money,” I replied. And we went our separate ways.

The bottom line is that at some point in life, if you truly want to be happy, you gotta be willing to embrace the suck, as the young folk like to say. You gotta be willing to face the pain that you’ve been trying to escape that you just can’t shake. You gotta be willing to go into the discomfort.

You ready?

How will I know that therapy is helping me?

That’s an easy one, you start feeling better, not just a bit better at the end of a session, but cumulatively, overall.

If you are not experiencing a feeling of lightness, relief, and more energy, you’re not healing yet. The healing of the soul absolutely brings physical change. You will experience a change in the amount of energy you have.

Additionally, and in some ways even sweeter than the increased energy and lightness, you will grow in clarity.

Part of what drives people to therapy is feeling like their lives and brains are just awash in so many thoughts and feelings and never-ending worries and messages. It’s brain fog to the max. And, what happens in really good therapy is that the fog begins to, more and more, clear. I’ve had so many clients report that the best part is that finally see the truths of their past, the vividness of who they are today, and the obviousness of where they feel called to go with their lives. Clarity!

If your clarity is not increasing, you’re not progressing. Either you’re not doing your job or your therapist isn’t doing theirs.

It’s a bit of a statement of the obvious, but the whole point of therapy is to feel better, just as the whole thing that drove you to therapy was, in one way or another, that you feel awful inside.

So, if you ain’t feeling better, your therapy isn’t helping you.

How do I know when it’s time to stop? And how do I keep the momentum going?

I tell every single one of my clients,

“I’m happy to work with you as long as you feel the need. But, that said, my goal is to get you off my tit, as fast as possible, to get you to the point where you can stand on your own two feet, strong, and ready to attack the world, as quickly as possible.

Because I know you don’t want healing in three years. You want healing now.”

I know when it’s time to encourage the client to start looking at leaving the nest. I can feel it.

The major pain, fears, and BS beliefs they’ve been taught about themselves have been fully addressed and purged. Any work beyond that is stuff they can be doing on their own, in no small part because, by now, I have taught them tools and they’ve sufficiently practiced them, to heal themselves of new stuff that comes up.

Also, there are obvious changes in their energy, their speech patterns, their countenance and carriage, and how they talk about life and their problems. You can just feel the relief, the new enthusiasm, the increased calm, and the physical vigor coming off of them. These are the results of true transformation and soul healing.

So, if they feel ready, they take a few weeks or months to be on their own. We schedule a check-up/check-in for a month out or so. Then they come back and we address the issues from that foray into the bold new world they’ve begun to build.

It's time to stop when you feel a massive difference and you feel well-schooled in tools necessary to engage life’s issues on your own. I mean, isn’t that kinda the point?

And, of course, sometimes they come back and they’ve crashed. I get a frantic email stating they need to see me ASAP because they’re now lower than they ever felt before working with me. Once I get them into session, I explain that they feel lower now than before because they had been operating at a higher level after our work, thus making the fall back to their old state seem like a much greater fall. The pain feels far worse when you’ve known the high and the ‘new normal’ of healing.

Quite fascinatingly, every single time, the reason for the fall is the same: they stopped the disciplines.

>> See The Soul Disciplines and Keeping Your Spirit on Track

All those tools I taught them and they became good at employing in their daily/weekly life they aborted.

Or, those disciplines gradually trickled off.

And some of that old stuff or some new stuff came in and took them over.

It’s like the person who sees a trainer at the gym for a while and begins to see weight loss and increased strength and muscle tone but then strikes out on their own, only to soon trail off in the fitness disciplines. They end up gaining the weight right back.

Soul health ain’t once and for all. Yes, you can fully heal past pains. Absolutely. But the disciplines that keep that ‘love cup’ empty of crud and clean and filling with love are a never-ending lifestyle, just like saving money, prioritizing fitness, and deliberate parenting. It’s an ongoing thing, not a one-and-done.

What resources do you recommend so that therapy goes really well?

In my Love Cup book, I give a list of nine other books by other authors that are terrific resources for people who take self-care/self-help seriously, people who want to heal more, do more, and keep scouring that Love Cup of anything that might cause a drain on the clarity, lightness, enthusiasm, and calm they’ve come to know and love inside them.

There are plenty of other self-help resources out there. Just go where your natural curiosity takes you.

When I was on my own self-help journey’s most intense times, I used to go to the bookstore and sit for hours just reading whichever self-help books jumped out at me, or books from other sections that might offer new insights and challenges on my journey.

The exploration, itself, was part of the work/fun.

What questions do you wish clients asked before coming to you?

Hahaha. Honestly? I wish people would ask me,

“Will you please both love me and kick my ass?”

I think most people imply that when they come to me. And, that is certainly how I approach my work with every client. But, yeah, that’s fun when I hear that or some derivative of that.

I think what I want most from a new or potential client is not a question but just a willingness to open up to my lead, even if that openness is tentative. I’ll win their trust, further enhancing their willingness to open up. I need them to at least be willing to open up. And, again, that comes from courage, which itself is born of pain.

So, has your pain gotten bad enough, yet? Are you ready to finally open yourself to a therapist, trust the process, and do the work?

If so, it’s time to get after it.

Here’s a 20-minute video to give you a few more thoughts.

Have We Answered Your Questions About Therapy and Counseling?

If yes, do you feel differently about doing therapy?

If not, let us know what other questions you have in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Click Here to Learn More About Counseling With Sven

——————-

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com

Healing From Depression And Avoiding Suicide

It’s that time of year when everything seems to come together to drive a whole lot of people into depression or exacerbate existing down feelings, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. More specifically,

It’s winter/darker;

Shorter days – less sunlight;

The holiday season, which means pressures on the finances, time with family (which, as stated in this article, can bring stress and sadness in so many ways), time away from family, and remembrances of losses in the past;

Many people exercise less, creating lethargy and down feelings;

Eating patterns often grow undisciplined and out of control, thus decreasing feelings of self-worth; and so much more.

For so many people, it’s when the hardness of life seems to increase. For some, this increases negative self-talk, self-loathing, withdrawal from others, and increased loneliness and hopelessness. Is this you? Are your negative feelings pulling you down? Does it get worse this time of year, or is it pretty much bad all year?

Whatever the case for you, there can be little dispute that depression and its kissing-cousin anxiety are a beast and can suck the very life out of life.

And so, what we’re stuck with in life is the grand question of what the heck to do with it? Is there even anything that can be done with it or to it? Or is it simply a burden that must be shouldered but never escaped?

***So, I’ll begin by reminding you that I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, licensed mental health counselor, social worker, or anything relating to the medical field.

It is critical that you understand this. I do not approach depression, anxiety, or any other life problem from the perspective of medicine, which I have profound respect for. I have been a soul counselor for 30 years. That means I simply approach everything, even depression/anxiety, from a soul perspective , a deeper perspective, with often upside-down, counter-intuitive answers in simple, layperson language.

If you believe you need medical help, please reach out to your medical professional or these resources for addressing your mental health problem:

Call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline What is Depression?

I was in a suicidal depression for 12 years.

It went from roughly my early-/mid-twenties to mid-thirties. It swallowed me whole. It was as if life, itself, was sitting its fat ass right on my head, and I couldn’t breathe. I had happy moments, I won’t lie. But it’s as if everything I tried led to dead ends, roadblocks, angry or resistant people, or just egregious amounts of labor for even the smallest gains. And I just assumed this is what life was. No matter what professionals I saw, no one really had any answers. Plenty of guesses, but nothing that rang true or helped. I had a lover or two fully convinced they knew exactly what was wrong with me, and they were more than happy to tell me so (better to keep the focus off their own failures and indiscretions).

For me, the depression was a lot of time in bed, a lot of time alone, reading and walking, and a lot of deep thought. But the biggest aspect for me was the lack of clarity.

So many things seemed simultaneously true.

So many voices of so many people got inside me and caused so much self-questioning and doubt. As the years of depression rolled on, the sense of no way out only increased, and the feelings of just wanting it all to be over with only intensified.

For at least a decade, I had semi-regular thoughts, increasing in intensity and frequency, of killing myself, how I’d do it, etc.

For me, it was razor blades to the wrists. It just made the most sense. I could do it anywhere. Having grown up in sports and around brothers, the idea of cuts and bruises was not anything intimidating. And, it was an exit medium that was completely under the radar, as long as I had a few bucks and access to a Walgreens or CVS. Thoughts of suicide were one of the few things – at times the only thing – that could offer me the relief of clarity of thinking and the relief of all of the heaviness of life being done. Nowadays, it’s easy to forget how intense those years were, but I know the thoughts of suicide became daily, even multiple times per day.

So, what was depression for me?

It was really no different for me than for every depressed client I’ve ever worked with.

It’s always some derivative of lack of energy, sadness, often heightened anxiety, the utter fog or lack of clarity, no desire to move and/or constant movement to avoid the feelings of lethargy/down, the feeling of so much pain of so many flavors, and self-loathing, in one way or another.

There are other indicators. And every person experiences these things in different ways and degrees, and each deals, or doesn’t deal, with it differently.

But, the overwhelming nature of depression is common, as is the fact that it largely increases over time. It doesn’t magically heal itself.

@badasscounseling #happiness #pain #sad if you are struggling with deep depression pain sadness and the ugly stuff of life, I’m trying to help you out of that.#depression #mentalhealth #success #parents #kids #school #gamer #sports #gaming #art #pressure #dance #foryou #fyp #selflove #selfcare #relationships #love #gf #bf #hate #anxiety #wow #cod #athlete #yoga #women #military #guys #intense #cool #happy #trending #passion #dad #mom #soccer #grades ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

Where Does Depression Come From?

This is the point in the conversation where I, as a soul counselor, deviate from the established or common conversation on depression.

All Life Including Pain is a Gift

See, I believe that all life is gift. All. That doesn’t mean it’s without pain just that everything, including pain, is gift. Even that which thrashes us and destroys us inside is, in the end, a gift, if we allow it to be. It holds in its terrible claws wisdom, depth of insight, healing, life-changing metaphor, and evolution into higher consciousness, compassion, and vigor.

I have counseled people who have lost a child (or two), killed others (whether in war or civilian life and are now in prison), attempted suicide, lost fortunes and families, lived through the Holocaust or other horrors, been abused in every manner possible, and experienced every aspect of pain life could possibly throw at them. And, whether you believe it or not, I have seen them courageously go into all their inner pain and, through the brutal work, come out the other side not just changed but deepened, strengthened, healed, and calm in a way they never were before. And yes, a great, great many of them reach the startling, painful, yet very real conclusion that in its own ugly ways, it was an upside-down blessing for them in their own personal relationship with their own soul (quite apart from how the events might be perceived by others or humanity, as a whole).

They’d never want to do it again, but in the end, it was a profound gift to their life.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Every pain is the soul calling us down, in the words of James Hillman. Depression is the soul calling us into ourselves, proclaiming that this life as we are living it presently is not who we are (/I am).

Depression is the call down into the destruction of old-self because old-self wasn’t working and held no hope of ever working. Old-self was driven by external voices and expectations, not to mention ego and all its wants and fears.

But old-self was inconsistent with, even anathema to, the authentic self written on the depths of who you really are. Depression is simultaneously the call to the destruction-solution and the red alert that what we’re longing for, and living isn’t our truest self. It’s that place inside where the true voice of the soul rising up inside meets the voices and pressures that have been stuffed down your throat from the beginning.

That conflict between two voices, external and internal, is at the heart of depression, not to mention anxiety. That incessant grinding of one voice on the other is the origin of all internal unrest. It is the great tectonic plates shifting and grinding against each other inside, and then all the surface-level earthquakes that deep grinding causes.

Depression is the Solution, Not the Disease

Seen as such, depression is then the solution, not the disease. Running from it and the pain implicit in it is, thus, running from the very resolution and relief you seek.

See, what you’re really struggling with, at the root, is the tug-of-war between who you really are and who they want you to be. And, the price of authentic self is the losing of them, the disappointing of them, the wrath of them. For many, that is too high a price to pay. So, they attempt to persist in making those external voices/pressures/people happy. However, the price of that is the rejection of self, the self-neglect, the abject misery, the incessant busyness, or drugs of one sort or another to numb yourself to how freakin’ miserable you are inside.

A Choice between outer pain and inner pain

So, what you’re really choosing between is outer pain and inner pain – them hating on you or you hating on your authentic self. And, for far too long, you’ve chosen to assuage your own pain by just incessantly pleasing them – maybe it’s your parents, your siblings, auntie/uncles, spouse, society’s definitions of manhood (or womanhood), your mentor, or even your own children.

But, it doesn’t work, does it? I mean, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t be reading an article on depression and all this depressing sh*t like suicide, unless it resonated with your own experience. So, by that theory, if you dig deep enough, you’ll see and feel the very thing you’ve been (self-)medicating yourself from.

You’re f**king miserable because you’re not self-authoring.

Someone else(s) has been authoring your life, using all the leverage they have for doing so, likely leverage and power they took from you at a young or vulnerable time and never gave back.

“Real power cannot be given.

It must be taken.”

-Gloria Steinem and Godfather III

Give yourself permission to Seize What is Rightfully Yours

The part that makes depression so damn intimidating is that the solution demands seizing, however you need to do it, that which is rightfully yours – your own power to self-govern, which was your god-given right from the beginning.

And, the seizing is preceded by something even more important – permission. You keep waiting for someone in life to give you permission to be your authentic self when the ugly-ass part of life is that there ain’t no knight coming along to give you what your soul needs at its deepest level. You have to give yourself the permission to seize your life.

Tragically, yet grotesquely beautifully, permission pretty much invariably only comes from pain, extreme pain. The pain of inauthentic living, the pain of being told what to do, the pain of being minimized and eating the sh*t of others eventually, eventually and long down the road eventually leads to the f*ck it point where you no longer care what they think; you no longer are unclear in what you want; you no longer wait for or even think you need their permission.

You self-permit.

You choose to seize your life back.

You’re no longer even afraid of the backlash, the anger, the disappointment, the levers of their former power over you. You simply know that your own permission is enough and all you’ve ever needed.

And, maybe later, you kick yourself for not doing it sooner, but in the now you know that it is time and you are ready.

Permission!

@badasscounseling Has pain gotten bad enuf? #business #motivation #relationship #happiness #selfhelp #fitness #inspiration #passion #career #women #fyp #4u #gym ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

Is Depression a Mental Illness?

Sure. Why not. Pretty much anything can be perceived as a mental illness.

And, lord knows, it sure feels like an illness of the mind. That’s indisputable. But, is it mental illness? A whole lot of people – a whole lot of really, really smart people – say so. So there you have it. And again, I ain’t a mental health professional. So, it’s probably best not to listen to me.

I’m not saying it is or is not a mental illness. I have no idea, and I don’t really care.

For, to me, it’s a symptom of a greater disease of the soul. Thus, the healing is at the soul level. And, if you don’t believe that, that’s okay.

Go the mental illness route and work with the very smart medical folk. They have powerful medicines. My medicine is for the soul.

How Do I Know If I’m Depressed?

In layman’s terms, you’re likely depressed if:

Life sucks, and it sucks for a long time, even when things on the outside seem to be going well;

Do you sleep, or just lie in bed, far more than you ever have before?

Has your level of busyness or chaos-seeking increased, or perhaps that busyness is your addiction because you know you’re running from ever slowing down and having to sit in the sh*t that instantly rises up from within when you do?

Do you repeatedly use different means to escape from your existence, such as pot, over-working, over-parenting, pills, booze, incessant shopping, ceaseless swiping/scrolling/gaming, extreme experiences (extreme sports, high-risk investments/gambling, war/killing), over-parenting?

Do you hate yourself to varying degrees at different times?

Is self-criticism your default mode when anything happens?

Do you tend to absolve others of responsibility but constantly self-flagellate?

Are you forever taking from others – time, attention, money, power?

Are you forever giving to others – listening more than talking, fawning over them at the expense of self?

Overly aggressive?

Overly passive and self-minimizing?

There are a million possible indicators, but very often the simplest answer is simply that you either know you’re miserable inside or you know you’re running from sh*t, because you know that if you were to stop and allow yourself to feel it, you’d be overcome with misery in about two seconds, flat.

That’s how you know if you’re depressed.

Or, reverse engineer the question.

Start with the solution. Are you living your path, purpose, principles, or the way you know would make you most come alive? If not, I guarantee you’re depressed af deep inside. Guaranteed. Whether you see it or not.

>> Here’s a Patient Health Questionnaire about depression

@badasscounseling “There’s a Hole in My Love Cup” is the international beatselling book that’ll totally kick ur a** and radically change ur life! At BadassCounseling, com. And/or the DIY vid courses there! #ceoofcounseling #ceoofbadass #parenting #parents #kids #fyp #foryou #duet #cool #mentalhealth #college #school #mom #dad #children #therapy #happiness #gamer #gamng #wow #ps2 #sports #eating #smoke ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

So, How Can I Cope With Depression?

Cope with it?

Honestly? Don’t. Don’t cope with depression. I mean, sure, there are those brief spells where we just have to power through stuff, and a good coping mechanism, or two, can be helpful. But, if you’re still coping, you ain’t healing.

Coping is accepting something and just trying to live with it as best you can.

Healing is going to the root to solve the equation, specifically so that you don’t have to live with it anymore.

Okay, Then, How Do I Heal From It?

You follow where the depression is leading you.

You go down deep into it with the right tools to work your way out of it. Sure, you can get a therapist. But finding one who actually knows how to do deep soul work is a bit of a sketchy enterprise because how the hell can you really know?

So, I’ve made tools to do it yourself, because I had to do it myself and create my own tools. And, I’ve been using and refining these tools for decades with countless clients.

800+ Free Badass Counseling Videos

Your starting tools are my 800+ free videos on FB, IG, TT, X, and YT.

Use them as journaling prompts. Start writing (yes, physically writing or typing, not just voice-to-texting) your thoughts, your memories, and especially the feelings that go with it.

Ask the ‘why’ about a million times, as well as ‘what was really going on underneath that,’ and such questions that cause you to dive even deeper inside.

Download the Badass Counseling Show Podcast

Second, download my free podcast, The Badass Counseling Show, and the roughly 150 past episodes in which I’m either counseling people with problems very similar to yours or directly answering listener questions.

Again, all of this should be serving as journaling prompts. Additionally, you should be writing letters you do not send to people whom you have strongly feelings for/against.

YOU MUST PUT WORDS TO YOUR FEELINGS!

The healing comes from naming the beast, not just thinking about it, not just feeling the feelings.

It’s like when you find yourself suffering from your gums swelling up, a rash on your ass, and your ankles are hurting, all at the same time, over the course of a few weeks and then a month or more. Eventually, it doesn’t go away, and your level of concern increases considerably.

Finally, you make an appointment and see the doctor. She examines you then says, “Oh, it’s just such-and-such malady. Here’s the prescription. That’ll be 400 bucks. See the receptionist on the way out.”

That ‘such-and-such’ changes everything.

By naming the beast, she defangs it. It no longer is a cluster of anxiety-inducing symptoms and feelings. Now, it is a thing that has a name, which means it has been understood and tamed, to some greater or lesser degree, at one point or another.

Naming it is taming it. And, it's no different in our inner life. In fact, it’s infinitely more true when it comes to soul work. Drilling down to origins, true feelings, and implications of those origins and truths is extraordinarily powerful and life-changing.

Two Books to Step You Through Depression Healing

Most importantly, I’ve created two books to hold your hand and step you through the depression healing.

First, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup. (Available soon in Spanish)

Second, BADASS WISDOM: A Killer Daily Meditational to Take You to the Ugly Places and Kick Your Ass.

(Both are available at badasscounseling.com)

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

So, my point is that even if you are getting professional help for your depression, you can accelerate your healing and growth by doing the out-of-session work on your own.

And, because of the somewhat limited nature of counseling (50-minute bites at a time), doing deep work on your own can often vault you past what you’re accomplishing in session.

@badasscounseling “There’s a hole in my love cup”: The life-changing int’l bestseller that’ll take u to the scary ugly places you’ve been stuck in or running from ur whole lifetime , and finally bring healing! At BadassCounseling, com. The audiobook version is ONLY available on the website. And the DIY vid courses there! “The Badass Counseling Show” podcast (now w/ 3/4 MILLION downloads in just 10 months!! Ranked in the TOP 5% of ALL podcasts for 2022!) will kick ur a** & change ur life! Subscribe now! #ceoofcounseling #mentalhealth #trauma #traumatok #ptsd #fyp #foryou #selfcare #happiness #healing #childhood #women ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

How Long Does It Take To See Improvements?

Honestly?

I am an absolute believer that change can be immediate if you go deep enough. Absolutely and unequivocally.

Does that mean the depression can be gone in one day or one week? No. Not at all. But, you can see movement, change, and new light and relief in a day in a week. Absolutely.

The problem is that most people and a whole lot of therapy just never go anywhere near deep enough into that sh*t from the past that is the origin of all that crud inside you that is not your authentic self. It’s so easy to get absorbed into the immediacy of relationship struggles, financial problems, career or family stuff that we never even touch the past stuff. So, that’s like forever taking cough syrup thinking the real problems are being solved, even though the virus or infection is never being touched.

Symptoms and causes are two completely different things.

You get down to those real origins, and stuff can change today, literally today. But that requires the courage and the tools to go down there, to know what to look for, to know what to do when you’re down there, to know what questions to ask, to not run when it gets scary.

And, parenthetically, if it ain’t scary, you ain’t gone deep enough yet. You’re skimming. You’re pretending to go deep then wondering why the change ain’t coming. You’re terrified to go to the real sh*t. For, the truths are too painful, and the potential implications/ramifications are harrowing.

So, if you’re not experiencing greater lightness, greater calm, and greater clarity in your life, either you or your therapist isn’t going deep enough. And you need to find yourself new tools and/or a new counselor because you’re just skimming and symptom-solving. You’re not anywhere near healing.

What Can You Do To Keep Depression At Bay After You’ve Suffered From It?

Well, in truth, if you’re having to ‘keep it at bay,’ then you never really solved it. You never got down to the real issues. You never began the work of living authentically and rejecting/ejecting the voices inside you that were never yours, to begin with, the ones that you’ve been living by, at the expense of your own original voice, feelings, wants, needs, and drives.

The key to a depression-free and anxiety-free life is to live authentically, damn the price. You’ll not be immune to life’s vicissitudes, pains, losses, and let-downs. No one is. But, you will no longer be solving the present and the past, at the same time. You’ll no longer be bogged down by past crap and the expectations, pressures, and criticisms of people who used to have power over you. Once you’ve healed that stuff, you’ve removed sooooo much crud from inside your love cup that you are now able to easily handle any new losses or challenges, not just because you’ve healed yourself before and now know how, but because you have so much more room to handle it; you’re not jammed up inside with all the past sh*t.

If you’re having to keep depression at bay, you never went deep enough to begin with, and you’re not living your authentic life. Because, once you have, depression is no longer part of the conversation.

It’s just gone, particularly if you are staying in your regular ‘spiritual disciplines,’ as I call them: journaling, time alone, regular exercise, good rest, sleep, healthy diet, and solitude with the soul pursuits.

So, all of this leads us back to where we started – suicide…

What’s The Link, or Relationship, Between Depression and Suicide?

Suicide is when the self/soul has been fully overwhelmed by the voices, wants, needs, expectations, pressures, powers, and pains of others. It’s when self has been extinguished – the divine flame inside drowned by the flood of otherness.

Suicide isn’t as simple as the depression getting bad enough.

At the deepest levels, it’s the complete belief that the soul of self doesn’t matter, will never matter, is bad, and is completely unwanted by others and self. So, it’s not enough to say that suicide is untreated depression.

Suicide is the absence of permission and courage to be oneself.

People kill themselves because they’ve been conditioned to believe they suck, the real them isn’t wanted/allowed, and they exist for others, solely. And no amount of drugs, of any sort, can make those untrue truths go away.

Again, if you’re experiencing depression or thinking about suicide, whether you admit it to others or not, it’s time to go deep. There are no two ways about it. That IS the solution, and it demands courage.

I’m all for resources such as suicide hotlines, suicide therapy, and even medications, as necessary. But, in the end, you gotta go deep into the soul and the origins of belief in your not-mattering.

Here are two resources:

>> Suicide Risk Assessment Questionnaire

>> The Columbia protocol: Simple Questions Can Prevent Suicide

But what if I think someone else might be suicidal?

I’ll be real honest with you, if another person even so much as remotely mentions the word suicide publicly or to another person, it’s a GIANT RED FLAG!!!!

Bringing Up Suicide is a Red Flag. Get Help Now!

It doesn’t matter if you think they’re serious, or not. To even bring that word into the open is huge.

Why? Because it is such a taboo topic in Western society and most people fear some giant fuss being made (even if that very help is precisely what they’re needing/craving inside), but also because someone who is suicidal likely fears their deepest pain and talks of suicide being mishandled, minimized or hurt even further.

I mean, let’s be honest if the root of suicide-depression is soul pain caused by the voices and expectations of others being rammed down your throat at the expense of your own soul/self, then it’s reasonable to assume that if you bring those pains up to the people closest to you, you’re bringing it up to the people who likely caused the pain/problems, in the first place, which means there’s an extraordinarily high likelihood they’ll muff the ball on this one, too, potentially blowing it even worse.

Suicide is not optional insofar as getting a potentially suicidal person to someone who can help them is not up for debate. It’s mandatory.

The mere mention of it is a desire to have you hear their pain and take some action to actually help them. This is not the time to trust them to their own devices.

It’s time to get them help, as in NOW.

>>Call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline<<

@badasscounseling Who profits from the family narrative? Is it possible it’s partly a cover-up? Are u really looking at the full picture, or just what uv been told & always believed? #parents #happiness #foryou #mentalhealth #trending #healing #dad #mom #kids #children #family #fyp #teen #therapy #abuse #trauma #pain #selflove #selfcare #psychology #spirituality #peace #art #viral #music #dance #gaming #sports #cheater #injury #passion #work #military #school #love #like #cool ♬ original sound - Badass Counseling

What If I’m Part of the Problem?

What do you do if you think you might be one of the voices and pain sources inside the person you think might be suicidal?

You need to start going into your own sh*t to determine and disgorge all of your own pain and messages you were taught about yourself from your own past. Because, it is your own trauma and sh*t that caused you to control, manipulate, hurt, or use this person who is now suicidal.

To truly help them solve themselves, you need to solve yourself, which includes going to them and beginning to TRULY OWN all you did to bring such egregious pain and suffering to their lives.

And it is precisely here that you are being forced by life to choose between you and them – your ego, your conviction that you were/are a great parent, your own demands, etc.

Would you admit grievous fault and failure, if it meant keeping alive someone you claim to love? Would you?

Or is your ego so frail that you have to protect yourself at the expense of them?

If you choose the frail ego option, you’ve basically implicated yourself as the likely person who drove them to suicide in the first place.

Healing From Depression & Avoiding Suicide

If this holiday season finds you depressed, don’t just cope. Give yourself permission to seize your life back. Avoid sinking further into thoughts of suicide.

Thanks for reading.

Learn more About Badass Wisdom and There's a Hole in My Love Cup

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com

How To Be Successful At Parenting

Have you wondered how to be good at parenting?

After all, that little magical land known as parenting is the destination, whether intended or not, of a great many relationships. And, a great many writers and other parents will then go on to tell that couple in a relationship that parenting is not some magical land. It’s sweat, tears, frustrations, aches, and on and on. And that juxtaposition where magical meets ugly-hard is the simplest way to understand parenting, particularly in those early years. It’s no different from anything else in life that you might endeavor that you wish to be a great experience – a relationship, career, travels, or anything else. There’s ugly and there’s beauty; hard and smooth.

For many would-be parents, the glorious land is not that time when the child is young, but when it is finally a teen and able to communicate more as an adult. Other to-be parents dream of their child’s actual adulthood when they can have a more equitable, adult-adult relationship. Still others have children who will care for them in old age.

Reverse-Engineering Parenting With the Erlandson Family

And it’s precisely there that I want to start in a sort of reverse-engineering of parenting, as a means to shed light on and offer guidance in those early, incredibly formative years of parenting. If you are even remotely familiar with my work, you’ve heard me discuss my own mother and father, and their parenting of their six children.

>> See Thanksgiving Thought: Don't Wear Out Your Welcome

>> See Grandma Charlotte's Parenting Wisdom: Heard Not Fixed

>> See "He Told The Story" -- Eulogy of an American

So, the facts are these:

My mom died in 2021 at the age of 93. Dad died in 2020, at the beginning of Covid, at age 92.

In her final year of life, as she knew her own energy was winding down, Mom, for the third time in our lives, went to each of her now adult children, now in their 50s and 60s, to once again seek to “reclaim her rocks,” as I like to call it. As she and Dad had done when each of us was in our 20s, then again in the 10 years before her death, she came to us now and said, to paraphrase,

“I want my rocks back.

In your childhood and in your life, I’ve put rocks in that bag on your back with the pains I have caused you, the harm I’ve done, the ways I’ve hurt you, and the messages I’ve sent you. And, if those rocks don’t come out, you’ll be weighted down in your life. I won’t have that.

Anything – ANYTHING! – I’ve done, please tell me; talk to me; give me my rocks back.”

Furthermore,

Approximately 5 years before my father died, my sister, who had lived in Texas for decades for her work and had built a good life there, moved back to Minnesota to be near my aging parents and to help them. She, who had been the Administrative Assistant to the president of a very large corporation, effectively came home to apply her skills in service of my parents.

At the same time, I already had three other siblings there with their spouses.

One sibling a 30-year military veteran specializing in finance tended my parents’ finances.

One sibling was in surgery every day administering anesthesia, and faithfully covered all of my parents’ medical appointments, questions, and direction, along with another sibling who had been an oncology hospice social worker for decades, literally specializing in tending all - literally all - facets of the aging and dying.

Additionally, one in-law had a PhD in physical therapy and was on top of my parents’ upkeep in that vein.

Two other in-laws brought massive emotional support and logistical help.

In other words, my parents existed within a cocoon of adult kids tending to their every need, despite the fact that mom and dad were quite independent and lived by the mantra, among others, of “Don’t be a burden.” While my parents did give themselves permission to ask for help, they were okay with hearing ‘no’ and they never put their burdens onto their kids, particularly their emotional struggles.

Parenting Your Own Parents

But do you see the interplay between those two concepts? At the end of life, my parents had kids/in-laws moving across the country and moving mountains to serve them in whatever small ways they could, relative to the giant love those same kids felt they had always gotten from their parents. For the kids, it was a labor of love.

But do you see how that was largely created by the very ethos of my mother (and father) of owning their own shit, so has to have as little enduring negative impact on their kids (and, thus, their kids’ kids) as possible.

It’s that spirit of contrition and atonement, particularly when it came to emotional wounds, and that humble willingness to admit wrongs and own their failures that unblocked the love to flow freely from their children. My parents knew that pain blocks love. And, they knew they had the power to remove the pain, for they had caused it when we were children and teens, very often unwittingly.

As they always had, Mom knew in the end that it cost her nothing to take back the rocks, to own where she had caused pain. As long as she could get her own ego out of the way – the ego that every parent has that wants to believe “I’m a great parent and made no/few mistakes” and can’t bear to admit fault – she could bring perhaps the greatest gift to her children, which is the release of the rocks of pain and negative messaging.

Great Parenting Begins With Humility And Strength to Admit Failings

We see, right there in the end-of-life snapshot, where great parenting begins: in the humility and strength to admit her own brokenness and failings, rather than gratify her own ego needs.

Sven’s Family Background

Rewind the tape a very long way, back to 1967.

I was born into a very loving, loud, boisterous family. Four brothers and one sister, who by her own reckoning was definitely one of the boys. I recall, even from my very oldest memories, my mother being quieter, and kind but strong and firm. Dad, over the years, was never unkind but laughed, and taught us things like how to fix our own bikes, use the table saw, and to trim or fell trees.

I chalk most of their parenting deliberateness up to the fact that they were just kissing their 40th birthdays when they had me, the youngest. I can’t speak to what they were like as 28-year-old parents when my eldest sib was born. But I loved that I got parents who were almost never in a hurry, except on Sunday mornings when trying to get six kids to church on time. They were deliberate, methodical, and yet left room for relaxed improvisation. And, in an unpopular thing to bring up nowadays, I was spanked, now and then. Though, decades later, my mother would confess, “Sven, by the time you were four, I couldn’t handle you.”

Longing for More Attention

I was the last of six, but was also a physically large child and, whether it grew out of some innate spirit or the very fact that she couldn’t control me, I had a large personality. Also, whether because of that sort of pulling back implied in the inability to handle/control me or not, the other thing I can see so clearly in my childhood was the longing for more attention.

I was told every day of my life by both parents that I was loved; was hugged every day; and was bathed in supportive words. But, I also lived in a home with five other kids needing attention. Mom and Dad had their own attention needs, too, particularly Dad. So, there was just a lot of competition for the attention, if not the love.

Counter-messaging between Mom and Dad

Perhaps most significantly, what I recall being modeled for us was a willingness, particularly in my mom who was the full-time parent until I was in junior high, to listen. I always felt heard with Mom. Therefore, there was always an immediate off-loading of burdens, pains, hurts, and anxieties as they naturally arose in my childhood. Dad was so self-effacing in his own way that the only harm he ever really caused was he was another mouth to be fed when it came to needing attention, usually acquired by incessant talking or telling the same stories, over and again.

Thus, the modeling was this stark counter-messaging between mom and dad: feeling heard by mom, feeling so very unheard by dad. The latter enabled me, in adulthood, to greatly understand and appreciate the power of the former. Except for that one thing, dad was great – a strong farm kid who tried to sneak into WWII at age 17, wrestled at the University of Minnesota in the 1940s, and went on to be a gentle, talkative Lutheran pastor, who came to all of my orchestra concerts, theater productions, and choir concerts, as well as a few sporting events in my younger years.

Appreciation for Having the Room to Be Me

What’s my point?

My childhood was not without flaws, but I was given attention, felt heard, wished I had gotten more attention, and felt terrifically unheard. And, at this stage of the game, as a 56-year-old Gen-Xer, I begrudge them nothing. In fact, I feel so profoundly blessed to have gotten the exact parents I got. I needed to experience viscerally the frustration of not feeling heard, as well as being taught by my mom when I was 13 to journal out of me all of my thoughts, pains, frustrations, anger, and the like.

I love the room they gave me to be this loud, odd duck, wildly free spirit, who quit college three times, got thrown out of Lutheran ministry three times, was always the (obnoxiously) loudest in the family, and went and lived on the streets with the homeless for 2.5 years well into middle age as my own kids were in their late teens/early-20s.

Can You Be a Good Parent if You've Had a Bad Experience as a Child?

Yes, if you can let go of ego and heal your own shit. I absolutely believe that what corrupts the parenting process more than anything is frail egos and unhealed childhood trauma.

I failed my own children and missed out on years of their lives because I didn’t have the strength to stand up to their mother and her own ego needs that proclaimed when we were first dating, “I want to have children so that I’ll have someone who’ll love me forever.”

I was young and didn’t know who I, myself, really was. I had not healed my own shit from my past, and had not found my own centering internal voice. I was still in the process of burning through all of the not-mes, in quest of authenticity. And so, my own children grew up receiving messages of feeling unimportant and unloved, at times.

This was stuff that required times of reckoning in their 20s and will continue to be plumbed in their 30s and beyond. The last ten years have been lovely, as they’ve more and more opened up and released to me the ways I’ve hurt and disappointed them, as I’ve strived to be the more consistent parent I wasn’t.

What Parenting Lessons Did You Learn?

Go to f*king therapy!

Do it now, before the kids.

Go into your shit from your childhood. No matter how terrific your childhood was, your parents made mistakes. EVERY PARENT MAKES MISTAKES, and those mistakes cause damage, often long-lasting.

>> See Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child

And you can tough-guy/tough-gal your way through it, at least for a few decades, but it will – I repeat, WILL – either directly impact or insidiously, negatively influence your own children. It always does.

Food, shelter, and clothing are not enough. The emotional needs of your kids need to be tended to, as much as anything else, by both parents, which requires both parents to get their own pains and problems out of the way, which means some form of therapy or serious self-help.

THIS is how you prevent yourself from making the same mistakes your parents made and it reduces the pain you inflict on your children.

And, just for the record, just doing the opposite of what your parents did really is no different from doing the same as what your parents did. Read that again.

Insofar as you’re still taking your cues from your parents (and not doing actual research into good parenting), doing their opposite or doing the same parenting is really not different.

For example, I’ve had clients who grew up in homes where there was extreme touch and uber focus on the kids, to the point where by the time the kids reached middle school they felt suffocated by the over-weaning parents. The parents were so trying to just do the opposite of the bone-dry, unemotional, non-affectionate they were themselves raised in that they created toxicity of a completely different flavor. Resultingly, somewhere inside them, their kids innately sensed that the excessive attention was more about the parent’s needs than those of the kid, almost like the parent was trying to prove him- or herself.

So, again, the “just do the opposite” strategy is not an example of deliberate parenting.

How Can Parents With Anxiety or Depression Be Good Parents?

As mentioned, I made some major mistakes with my own children. I hurt them. And I was definitely dealing with my own depression, largely influenced by my own past.

I was unable to find a therapist who could really take me down into all of it and heal it. So, I had to do it on my own, which is why it took longer for me. But the real work was about getting my own shit out of the way so that I could be fully present to my children.

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

What Are Signs That You Need to Take a Break to Regroup or Refocus Yourself?

And this is the biggest indicator that you need to regroup, refocus, and get help in parenting or, really, in anything.

It’s when my own feelings inside have become so swollen and overwhelming that I’m not fully present to this person I claim to love, or where my own inner emotional charges are spilling out onto my children. Those charges can include feeling overwhelmed, fatigued, angry, sad, fearful, alone, invaded, depressed, and more.

It is for this reason that, especially when it comes to parenting, deliberate self-work, be it daily or weekly, is so critical not just to success, but to sanity. The more you willfully flush out all of the powerful or overwhelming thoughts, fears, and feelings, the more you are able to be truly present to your children.

There has to be active engagement, regularly, with the shit going on inside you, NOT just from today or this week, but from your past. It is that past stuff that is using up most of the memory in your hard drive, so to speak, thus depressing the system’s capacity to execute even basic functions in the day-to-day work of parenting.

What Are the Biggest Parenting Concerns You Should Pay Attention To?

Emotional fluctuations in your children, in yourself, and in your parenting partner, if you have one.

It is when a person becomes pregnant with emotion that they become unable to handle the tasks at hand and often do the most damage.

If you feel your own shit rising up in you, not just in a day but let’s say over the course of a year, there are big problems ahead, many of which you are about to create. Get professional help, now!

>> Why Have a Badass Life Coach?

If you see deviations or fluctuations in your child’s emotional responses, engagement in life, or seemingly inexplicable physical problems, something is going on inside that child. And if you lack the ability to extract or suss out the emotional stuff affecting your child (and don’t feel bad if you can’t, not every parent can), get professional help for that child, now!

If you see swelling of your partner’s emotions, such that they’re taking it out on or checking out from the kids or you, encourage them to get help now, or even talk it out with you (up to a point, after which they will need pro help) or start their own journaling and self-care.

If you begin to see a degeneration in the marriage, if there is one, this too is an indicator of crud going on inside one or both partners. The decay of that fundamental parent relationship will adversely affect those children, both in the present and down the road. Get help now, not just as a couple but individually for each person. Or mix professional help with hardcore self-help work.

That inability to be present to the child, to the spouse, and to one’s self are the very things that are indicators of existing problems and future problems. It is for this reason that building a life and raising children requires such discipline of self, deliberateness, and teamwork, where possible. Willy-nilly/just-wing-it parenting creates a lot of pain for children, which invariably protracts into adulthood.

What About Parental Transitions?

One of the most pivotal moments in a child’s life is preceded by one of the most pivotal moments in the parent’s life. It’s when the parent begins the deliberate process of taking half a step out of the child’s life. It begins with just that, a measured stepping back. For some parents, this happens when the child is 3; for some 13; for some 23; for some never. It is the moment when the parent begins to transfer power back to the child.

From Navigating the Basics to Becoming Your Authentic Self

I like to think of it this way.

When the child is born, it’s as if they have been implanted with a computer chip on which is written everything about who that child is, will become, won’t become, what the child will like, hate, want, aspire to, and more. Now, in the beginning, the child needs help navigating the basics of life. To some degree, the wires that connect the child to his/her own inner chip deep in their soul needed to be wired into the parent’s chip. The values of the parent do get wired into. For example, “Be nice to old people,” “Look both ways before crossing,” “Work hard but enjoy play,” etc.

But, in order for that child to ever become their authentic self – ie to become what was written on that chip – they have to begin the process of de-wiring from the parent’s chip. This is taking half a step backward. Some parents do this when the child naturally wants to do this, roughly around puberty. Some parents start much earlier, and some only defiantly do it when the young adult really doesn’t want to be around the parent anymore, if for no other reason than the parent clings too hard.

It can be a very painful moment for the parent. It can be hard to let go of the controls, hard to risk the child embarrassing you, hard to not be able to prove your worth through your kids, or hard to watch your kids struggle and even fail, at times. But all of this is necessary in the process of that child growing into an authentic person. Transitions are always the hardest. These parenting transitions are no different.

And, they can be as painful or more for the child, teen, young adult, or grown-ass human, made worse when the parent fights the process or seeks to retain control, when the parent makes it more about their own agenda than setting the child free to begin to learn to trust their own wings.

The Importance of Deliberate Parental Self-Work

Again, the necessary precursor to effectively navigating transitions is the parent engaging in deliberate self-work, addressing his/her own inner feelings and fears. Yet again, what is going on inside the parent will govern the day and the whole transition…until the young adult, or so, becomes so powerful that they command the driver’s seat of the relationship.

Unfortunately, there are some parent-child relationships where the child is grown and is now having to go through the oft-painful process of teaching the parent how they wish to be parented or what the new relationship is going to look like. Rather than the parent pre-emptively leading the process into full adulthood for the child, the adult-child has to strip the reins from the parent, often with fierce penalties to the parent for obstructing the natural evolution into adulthood.

I’ve seen this process extend into the 40s, 50s, and 60s of clients who still have a dominating, petty, or controlling parent. The natural transition into adulthood, in some ways, never happened for my client, despite a successful career and family of his/her own. The now-adult is still not possessed of his own inner guidance system. Rather, there is still an external power source (mom, dad, or whoever raised them) driving the equation of his/her life. And, that shit will destroy marriages, careers, and the next generation.

How Can You Support Your Children As They Evolve?

The short answer to being a parent who supports your children through life, you continue to take half-steps out of their lives, while surrounding them with love, listening, and positive encouragement.

Children need boundaries, chores, expectations, and repercussions, as much for their own growth as for learning how life works. But they are going to fall down, screw up, evolve, take 20 steps back at times, and go sideways in all manner of possibilities. If you lack flexibility and a willingness to encourage, those strange movements will drive you bonkers, which will in turn roll downhill onto the child, thus compounding that child or teen’s confusion, inner struggles, and frustrations.

The best way you can support your child is to both manage and extract all that is going on inside you that is causing you to be inflexible, controlling, negative, ego-driven, and consumed by your own crap.

I’m a big believer in most human interactions in replacing the over-worked term “love” with “positive attention.” I’m as big a fan of love as anyone, but that is not always the most directive term when it comes to choosing a course of action. But, positive attention is. And, it’s never more true than with children.

Are you giving each of your children alone time, focused on them, with encouragement? If not, start!

Is your spouse doing so, if not, help to make that happen. When my girlfriend and I started dating, my kids were in their 20s and living in different cities. She had one daughter living away, but she had a 14-year-old living at home. Slowly, I sought to build trust with her daughter. But, far more importantly, I insisted that my gf every week took an evening for just her daughter and her. It ended up becoming the Wednesday night ritual that they would go out for sushi and then go, on my random recommendation, to the basement of one of the local Catholic churches to play Bingo with the old ladies. Neither had ever much played Bingo, at all, but they LOVED it. It was their thing. Their relationship not only weathered the transition of us now living together but greatly improved to pave the way for her daughter’s transition into adulthood. My gf was also very deliberate about flying to visit her other daughter, just the two of them.

Children of all ages need time alone with each parent. They need to feel special. They need to feel rooted. They need to have an avenue for expression of self wherein they are accepted and loved by the two most powerful people in their lives. Acceptance, approval, affection, attention, acknowledgment of mistakes, and apologies are sooooo very crucial to the healthy development of young people, but never more so than in the intimate relationship between individual parent and individual child.

Does this require time? Yes.

Does this require effort and deliberateness? Yes.

But welcome to the NFL! This is what it means to play in the big leagues, and there ain’t no big leagues like parenting. The stakes are never greater. The potential negative outcomes are never more long-lasting.

But also, the result of focused effort is that you’re changing the world, one child at a time.

What If Your Spouse Has Parenting Issues? What If You Separate? How Can You Raise a Child Without Burdening Him/Her With Emotional Baggage?

Half of marriages end in divorce. So, it’s reasonable to assume that if you have kids in that marriage, you might run into having to co-parent with an ex. Talk about a sticky wicket.

The biggest issues in co-parenting with an ex? The exact same as I’ve been saying throughout this article: Ego and past shit. If one or both parents aren’t actively working on flushing out their own emotions and negative programming from their own past, the kids are in for a shitty ride. Fact.

Y’know what, let me make it clear, based on my own parenting mistakes and experiences. DON’T DISPARAGE THE OTHER PARENT! JUST DON’T. Just shut the f**k up. Wanna know why? Because IT HURTS A CHILD to hear their parent (either parent, or both parents) disparaged. It hurts a child, even a teen, so badly. So, you may think you’re soooooo justified in whatever vomits out of your mouth, but the person you’re hurting most is that child, not your ex. You may be hurting your ex, too, but you’re hurting the children more. Do you feel good about that?

When my first wife and I were divorcing, the therapist gave us research to read on this topic. I read it all. One of the main points was not to speak ill of the other parent to or around the children. So, I strived to do exactly that – keep my mouth shut. I wrote out all of my anger and sadness, both my own and those I felt for my children. I held out for the day I would be able to share it all with my adult kids, even if that wasn’t until they were 35. But I got it out of my system, daily. I was determined to not let my antipathy toward their mother become a cloud over and inside my kids. Now, I have no doubt I failed in that endeavor, at times, but I strived to just shut my piehole on that one subject.

Unfortunately, their mother did not. As a result, the effect was poison being poured into the ears of my children, not to mention her family and even mine. The price of her doing that was extremely high. I lost over a decade of my children’s lives. It was horrible, not just for me, but for them. They had every right to have a relationship with their father and needed it.

But, in the end, the fault was my own. And, on this notion of parenting with an ex, I teach this to my clients. When they are dealing with an ex who is actively engaged in undermining their relationship with their own children, or engaged in openly disparaging them to the kids, they have a few options:

Be silent and do nothing but keep trying to love the kids. This was the approach I took, and the price was high, in terms of years and connection lost.

Go nuclear. Real ‘War of the Roses’ shit. Engage in the same destruction of the ex’s relationship with the kids as they’re doing to you. Or,

Don’t disparage the other parent, but as necessary stand up for yourself in dispelling lies or mischaracterizations. I wish I had done more of that. And I would not have needed to disparage their mother to do so. I would have only needed to present a brief counter-argument, as necessary, without dragging the children into the full-blown swamp of heaviness. See, if the child is not getting a counter-message to whatever is being leveled against a parent, they will believe what they are being told, especially if it’s backed up by other family members, who may be in on the slander. If you can defend your position without willfully hurting the other parent, your relationship with the children needs you to do so.

I’ll be honest, I hate that this even has to be part of the divorce discussion, but it is. The hateful poisoning of children or using them to get adult needs met is too common and too painful.

So, How DO You Co-Parent With an Ex?

Respectfully. You co-parent respectfully.

Unfortunately, within the boundaries of the laws in your state or country, there is often not a lot you can do to control how the other parent raises your shared children on their own time. You don’t get to control how they parent. And if you’re convinced you know what’s best and the other parent doesn’t, this can be excruciatingly hard for some parents. So, that respectfulness may not be reciprocated.

If the other parent is outright abusive, then obviously that needs to be continually reported to the law. Short of that, if the other parent is negative, controlling, or in some way not parenting in a way you approve of, you have to provide significant counter-messaging to the child about their worth. And, you’d be wise to get that child/teen into therapy, so that there can be active work in flushing the pains out of that child.

Ultimately, both need to strive to at least somewhat get on the same page in your co-parenting. To some degree, you do have to learn to work together. My ex-wife and I did not always see eye-to-eye, but we both tacitly acknowledged that I was better at the macro and she at the micro. She was great on the day-to-day meals, school, toothbrushing, do-your-chores stuff. And I was better at charting the values, bigger parenting decisions, and deeper needs of the children, and so forth. So, in a way, despite the animus between us, there was some acceptance of each other’s ways. There just has to be that in the parenting, again assuming there is no abuse.

How Can Moms Support Dads While Caring For a Child? How Can Dads Support Moms?

I had a military guy reach out to me, this week. Young guy, with three kids. He said,

“Sven, whenever I was not deployed, I was always the one who got up in the night to give my baby a bottle or to comfort a kid after a nightmare. I worked my ass off, during the day. But she was the one doing all the parenting during the day, so getting up at night was the least I could do.

And y’know, even though I was tired as f**k, those night times of being alone with my baby or kid, there in the quiet of the night, bonded me to my kids more than almost anything. I never felt so close to them.”

We support the ones we love by busting ass for them. That’s how we support them. It’s never more true than in parenting.

An old girlfriend of mine reached out to me for counseling, recently. She was really struggling with the fact that her boyfriend of 7 years has a mentally ill twenty-something, who is wreaking havoc on their lives and finances. I asked her, amid her anguish, “You don’t have to do it, but what do you WANT to do?”

Her response was, “Sometimes, I want to punch his kid in the face. But I don’t. I want to keep loving my bf. He’s just a really great man who is so good to me and my adult kids. I do genuinely want to be there for him and for his really difficult kid. But damn, it is soooooo hard. And I resent him, at times, for it, too, not just the kid.”

“So,” I queried, “what do you need to do to execute what you want to do?”

“I guess I gotta just keep flushing out my feelings and crud like you always say.”

“True,” I said, “but you also have every right to stand up for yourself when things have gone too far or when you feel taken advantage of.”

There has to be an arrangement that gets reached in any parenting relationship, a division of labor, if you will, where responsibilities are fairly assigned/chosen, and where each parent feels they are not shouldering an undue portion of the parenting responsibilities and life responsibilities. Why? Because if you do not sort that sh*t out in advance, it will undermine the health of the parent’s relationship with each other, as well as the parenting itself.

But, simultaneously, there have to be allowances made for changing circumstances.

Flexibility is key, even inside a generally clear division of labor. And, again, it is not a wise idea for there to be long-term imbalanced responsibilities.

Short term, there are going to be times when I carry you or you carry me in parenting. But that is not an effective long-term strategy. An old, or new, balance must be struck, wherein both partners feel heard and honored.

What is Parenting Counseling?

Parenting counseling is done differently by different therapists.

That said, I am a firm believer that problems in parenting are seldom problems in parenting. That’s the battleground of a bigger war, or two. The bigger war(s) is the one going on inside each parent – the war of the parent with him-/herself and the past. It’s almost invariably that stuff that is doing the damage in the parenting and in the parents’ relationship with each other.

Address What’s Getting in the Way of Your Parenting

So, again recognizing that different counselors do things differently, I take parents individually and just do a deep dive into the real stuff that is going on inside them – unearthing and naming real feelings, finding origins of those feelings, unpacking sequences of events, identifying messages from the past that are also down there in the soul doing damage.

Is this work that a person can do on their own and not pay a therapist? Absolutely.

In fact, so many of my resources, many of them free, are designed to help you do precisely this on your own. You can heal yourself with the right tools. And, as stated above, nothing will more positively impact your parenting and simultaneously reduce the likelihood of you perpetuating generational trauma than you flushing out all of your feelings, pains, frustrations, and disappointments; AND going into your childhood to find and excise the core beliefs you were taught to believe about yourself.

>> See The Soul Disciplines and Keeping Your Spirit on Track

But some people prefer to work with a therapist. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stuck, depressed, or anxiety-ridden in your parenting, seek counseling.

Read Parenting Books

Also, whether you have kids or are considering doing so, start reading parenting books. There are so many good ones out there. I’m a fan of ‘Scream-free Parenting,’ by Hal Runkel.

There are lots of good ones. Start reading them. Start being deliberate about the formation of your own parenting strategy.

Be flexible but firm in your parenting. Your children need your strength, your compassion, your kindness, your play, your rules, and they need you to be the adult in the room. Please do your own self-work, so that you’re not using them to get your own emotional needs met.

>> See 9 Badass Questions About Emotional Incest

Successful Parenting Means Just Loving Them

Be willing to accept that you’ve made mistakes and will make many more. Apologize. Take the rocks back. Give your kid your good listening abilities, so they have a person to flush out their pains with. Heal your own past.

And, in the words of my mother, “Just love ‘em.”

You’re going to do great!

Check Out Badass Counseling Courses

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com

The Soul Disciplines and Keeping Your Spirit on Track

What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘disciplines’? Do you consider the term negative and the equivalent of punishment, or rather, a positive that can help keep your body and soul on track?

From a Badass Counseling perspective, disciplines are intensely positive and play a critical role in helping you keep your soul and spirit in the best condition possible.

The Origin of the Word ‘Discipline’

The word 'discipline' comes from the word 'disciple,' which in Latin simply means 'to learn,' 'learner', or 'follower.'

Therefore, disciplines are those things that you've taught yourself and you comply with as a way to train your life into what you want it to be.

In athletics, music, and sales, for example, the notion of being disciplined means to get after the work each day, of practicing and staying focused on the task you are trying to improve. That’s whether it's your hockey stickhandling, your cello fingering, or your sales closing. It's about training your body, mind, soul, or what have you to respond at optimum performance when called upon.

The soul disciplines, or spiritual disciplines, then, at least as I see them, are those things in your life, unique to you, that enable you to stay on top of life rather than feeling like life is sitting its fat ass right on your head (and not in a good way).

The soul disciplines are all of those things in your life that you know you want to make and keep part of life because they make you feel something that nothing else does, either in the moment or, more importantly, as they accumulate over time.Putting ‘Discipline’ Into Context

The hardest part about disciplines is getting started and sticking with them. Once you embrace them and fully commit to them regularly and consistently over time, you reach a point where your body and soul memorize them. So that, when later in your life you aren’t as consistent with your disciplines they are still there, ready to keep both body and spirit on track.

Here’s an example.

I generally work out once or twice per week. In my workout, I lift extremely heavy weights for 3-5 hours. I get all jacked up on caffeine then bang hard on all lifts concerned with anything above my waist. From my chest to my abs, triceps to my sternocleidomastoids, serrati anterior to my teres major, and on and on. And, I kill it. Hard.

Even at my age, 56, I hit it very hard because it's what I've always done since my very first workout in 1978, at the age of 11. And, I only do it once every 5-6 days (and do no other gym work in between) because I'm largely sick of gyms, having been working out for 45 years and having been a D-1 college athlete and a former NCAA strength coach.

I’m able to do that and even skip workouts because of my workout disciplines.

What’s the Payoff of Years of Discipline? Focusing the Mind.

Listen, I could tell you some shit about how it keeps me healthy and so forth.

And, for the record, the fitness community and medical community are only recently catching up to what the lifting community has always known that lifting (or 'resistance training' as all the kids call it nowadays) is one of the single best things any person can do for long term health.

While I enjoy having a spring in my step and a healthy heart, I lift primarily for vanity's sake. How others perceive me matters to me. It impacts the work I'm trying to accomplish in life. It impacts my vigor to attack the work I do. It impacts how my girlfriend looks at me, even though she seems to love me, no matter what. It impacts how tall I stand and feel when I look in the mirror.

So, one of the 'disciplines' I keep semi-religiously in my life is working out with heavy weights, not because each workout feels good or is fun or because I can see it in my body after I finish and feel 'pumped up.' No, because I know that pump will fade by evening.

I do it because the accumulation of heavy-ass workouts creates a body that I can look at after skipping three workout days in a row and still be proud of. I can skip months of workouts and still know not only that my body is still looking great but, infinitely more importantly, that I have done this shit for so damn long that even if I put on 25 unwanted pounds and fall out of workouts I can go back into the gym 25 pounds later and climb right back into the saddle and get to work of tearing that weight off me.

In other words, the accumulation of all those workouts means that I know how to re-focus my mind.

I know the focus necessary to get the work done. And as my athletes always used to hear me bellowing across the weight room,

“There is no success in any venture in life without the capacity to focus your mind.”

So, what my lifting discipline has provided me for 45 years is the mental toughness to know I can get my ass in there and do the work when I've reached the point where the work really needs to be done.

What my lifting discipline has provided me for 45 years is also just plain energy. I have a lot of energy in life, always have. But it's not strictly because of the medical payoff of physical health, but because I like how I look, even as I age through my 50s. I've built something I'm proud of, and that alone gives me literal physical energy.

Other Important Soul Disciplines: Time Alone, Journaling, and Regeneration

But this physical energy is also the result of my other, far more important disciplines.

I'm talking about massive time alone, semi-frequent journaling or other releasing techniques, time on my bicycle, occasional physical labor, time to play with my friends, hot baths, special times with my adult children and their partners, writing, eating healthy but also eating fun, and long drives.

Every single one of these things isn't just fun for me; actually, each is regenerative.

Going out for a hard night of boozing occasionally with my closest friend/friends is fun. Watching great TV is fun. But those aren't regenerative, per se. I could live without booze and TV but not without the other things I mentioned. The other things make me feel something that nothing in life does.

Writing, long drives, physical labor, hot baths, journaling, and the like give me a sense of fulfillment, deep joy, ALIVENESS, and just plain energy.

And THAT is what I live for, in no small part because the more energy I get from filling my own love cup – i.e., loving myself, as it were – the more energy I have to be an instrument of love, generosity, graciousness, and help for others in the world.

Thus, the grand joy for me is filling my own love cup in ways that excite me and bring me soul peace AND then pouring out my love cup (or letting it flow through me, like a funnel) into the love cups of others who are in need, especially those who can benefit me in no possible way.

But it's not one or the other. It's not self-love vs. love and care for others. It's both, simultaneously, constantly, every f**king day. So, even right now, as I have skipped my work out, I am massively enjoying at 6:45am the opportunity to write, express my passions and thoughts in words while simultaneously helping others with those same expressed thoughts.

Soul Disciplines Keep You Alive and On Track

Thus, the purpose of the disciplines, really, is the same – to create a lasting feeeeeel in me that I then get off on helping others feeeeeel, too. But, it starts with that feeling in me. When I maximize the joy, peace, sheer vigor, laughter, spontaneous energy, and ALIVENESS in me, I naturally want to give that to others.

I mean, let's be honest, what sucks about depression and anxiety is that they feeeeeel shitty. They really, really do. Your mind is working overtime. Your body feels crappy or heavy, or you're completely disconnected from it. Your relationships often become unpleasant. A career can become yuck, too. Or, maybe one of these things feels good, but the rest stinks.

The point is that they don't feel good. How stuff feels matters. What we're really trying to change when we engage in self-care, spirituality, or even a Springsteen concert is how we feeeeel, even if only for a few minutes or hours. Everything in life is about trying to create a feeling that feels good.

I, personally, aim for ALIVENESS. And I believe that is what most people are shooting for, in one way or another. It is to come out of a state of deadness.

But, the purpose of disciplines isn't just to come OUT of deadness, but to sustain, daily, that feeling of ALIVENESS with, if I'm honest, as little effort as possible.

I don't know about you, but I want to experience maximum ALIVENESS with minimum effort. That way, the rest of my time can be spent giving to others or just playing in the sandbox of life. I've been around the block enough times in my teens, 20s, and 30s to know that life can't be all playing in the sandbox.

That shit gets old really fast because it drains our spirit because we know our life ain't going anywhere. We're not actually building anything, not building a life that I am proud of (regardless of whether anyone else thinks it's pride-worthy).

I don't want to booze every day, for instance, or skip workouts every day, or just watch lots and lots of TV. Because that's when I feel like I'm wasting my life, and my own body feels crappy and feels heavy inside.

Disciplines = Small, Daily Self-Investments

So, the purpose of disciplines is to invest a little bit each day or each week which is like a small deposit into a self-bank account, because I've learned in the past that I feeeel best when I'm making these small deposits.

Further, I've learned that a long time of making deposits means I can occasionally make big withdrawals if I so choose. So, watching my food intake during the week or for weeks on end means I can blow my brains out with too much pizza and dessert at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night when out with my girlfriend. I can't eat that way every day, nor would I even want to, in no small part because that pizza doesn't taste nearly as good the 4th night of that. (Google: Law of Diminishing Returns)

To a very large degree, disciplines are about not just what some experience makes me feel right now, but how the accretion of an experience can make me feel over an extended period of time.

Y'know, it's the difference between training for a marathon every morning at 5 a.m. vs. crossing the finish line and the hours afterward. It's the difference between building a business over years vs. having a lot of money at 60 because you built a business. It's the difference between foreplay and climax/post-orgasm.

In one, you're building something, and the real joy is in the building, even if every moment of the work of building doesn't feel good or fun.

In the other, it's the happiness of reaching the mountaintop and savoring the view. The joy of building lasts longer than the fleeting happiness of achievement.

Disciplines are the building of something, even on days it doesn't feel good. Soul Disciplines Help You Purge Accumulated Crap

If you've followed me at all you know that I'm a big believer in the cleansing, purging, or flushing of the soul of all the accumulated crap from a lifetime of pain and people putting their BS messages into you.

>> See How To Do An Effective Soul Detox

I happen to believe that journaling, letter-writing, and writing poetry/lyrics are extraordinarily powerful in doing so. Hell, I think they're even better than most therapy because they don't cost anything, except for pen and paper. (Though, I've journaled on plenty of napkins in restaurants, paper towels at the gym, cardboard boxes, and even on the back of my hand when I had nothing else.)

Not only that, you can stay in the crap longer. The hour doesn't expire. I would spend hours upon hours fiercely journaling out a lifetime of heavy crap, for years. And, I loved it, because I could see the effects of the work, not just when I was done that day, but accumulated over time. I could feel myself getting lighter, having more inner calm, more strength in interactions with family and lovers where in the past I would have caved or been a nervous wreck wondering what they'd think.

In fact, after a decade and a half of journaling and also just living life in my early 30s, I had the very distinct and recognizable experience of slowing down inside. I just began to calm down inside. The motor wasn't always running. Maybe you know that experience of having the inner motor always on and draining the f**k out of you.

I knew that my just slowing down inside (in a good way, while still having plenty of physical energy, if not more) was the direct result of the inner work I had been doing in purging so much life pain, inner mental wrangling, and BS messages from people I loved who had meant well but whose messages did not jibe with the life that felt great for me to live. The journaling was working in massive, recognizable ways.

The Value of Intense Journaling and Letter Writing

Back then, I was journaling and writing constant letters every day, sometimes for hours, each day. I, foolishly, made the mistake of actually sending most of those letters, which is why I tell people to write the letters but don't send 'em. Why?

The goal isn't them knowing what I feel is going on, but purging out all of my thoughts and shitty feelings, and the loving feelings. I can do the flushing out of all that without ever having to send it to them. And, I just found it's not better to send them because rarely does something good come out of it, except I feel good getting it off my chest (which, again, can be accomplished by not sending it).

Instead, often they got sick of reading my crap and I felt heavy to them and pushed me away further. Or, I'd embarrass myself later when they rejected me for the very letters I thought would help. (Though, in honesty, my feeling embarrassed or rejected was a huge blessing because it made me very adroit on the subject of telling you to definitely not send letters.)

Flush Your Feelings About People

The purpose of letters is to flush out EVERY DAMN THING you're feeling toward this person, living or dead. Everything.

This is also why you NEVER give it to the person or hit 'send.' If you know you might give it to the person, you're going to edit it. You're going to think, “Oh, they would never like that. So, I'll keep that out” or “She'd get sooooo mad at me if I brought that up” or “They hate it when I talk about how I was hurt by them.”

If you're worried, even one ounce, about how it's going to be received, you'll never let it all come out. And the goal is 100% to get it all out because all that crap still staying inside you is the precise problem that letter-writing and journaling are there to solve.

I recommend a cup of coffee or a glass of wine if that lubes the releasing, and just let 'er fly! Write out the anger, pain, love, loss, longing, passion, rage, hate, betrayal, and every other doggone feeling you feel.

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT hold back on language.

The fiercer, more vile and intense the language, the more powerful the release. Why? Because if you're checking your language, you're holding back from the rawness of the experience now and thereby robbing past you of the feelings they actually felt, whether they were allowed to give it strong words or not.

To fully scrub the frying pan of your soul, you gotta get in there and scour the f**k out of it with every tool at your disposal, especially the choicest language to express the fullness of every feeling you have toward this person, group, god, or memory.

How to Get Started on the Soul Disciplines?Start with a question.

I learned over time that the surest way to get my mind and feelings going for journaling was to put a question at the top of the paper, often centered around how I'm feeling or what I was pissed about that day, or what was vexing me; something such as, “What am I feeling, right now” or “What has my mind been running about most, lately?”

Then it was off to the races.

I believe that the mind responds to questions. It naturally engages, never more so than when it is asked about itself or oneself. Now, whether you like to actually talk about, with others, all that you are thinking and feeling is a different story. I believe everybody spends their whole damn life thinking about all the crap they're thinking and feeling. They may not want to think about the deep stuff, at first, but they spend all their time and energy obsessing over every other damn thing in their lives.

So, to ask yourself the question, any question, is to get it marching in one direction, and the mind and feelings are happy to oblige you with plenty of content, even if it's just about how your boss pissed you off, yesterday, or about how your leg has been hurting since you turned your ankle last week. Whatever comes up, start there.

Then, when it takes a hard turn in a new direction and your brain is now thinking about, or your feelings are feeling, something completely different about that other thing that happened, whether last week or 24 years ago, write about that.

Just keep flushing. Let the natural impulses and feelings/thoughts in you lead you, at first. Just keep writing everything.

It doesn't matter if your spelling sucks or your grammar sucks. No one is ever going to read them or judge them. This is just for you. And, to that end, journaling really isn't about capturing thoughts, or capturing anything, it's about purging/letting go of feelings (and thoughts).

A Cluttered, Overthinking Mind Needs to Be Emptied.

So, you start flushing on a subject. But then your natural curiosity has to kick in, wanting to know more. And nothing – NOTHING! – will better extract a greater understanding of your feelings and thoughts in this moment or on this subject than the question, Why?

A million times, I would get into a deep dive in my journaling because I kept wanting to know what was driving this feeling or these thoughts.

Why? Why? Why? Deeper I'd go.

One answer would instantly breed another 'Why?' And that is where the real magic happens in healing the soul because we begin to understand our lives, people's reactions and actions, our feelings, and so much more in more complete ways.

If I didn't/don't know a 'why,' I speculate. I use my brain to ask myself what makes sense or what likely reasons are for these feelings or that person's actions.

I never, ever let the words “I don't know” rest on my page, unanswered.

I always give my permission, even forcing myself, to speculate a guess, knowing I can change my mind tomorrow or next week. That way, my mind is constantly digging deeper; there are no roadblocks.

How Often Should You Journal?

I’m a fan of daily journaling, and I always ask people, Well, how badly do you want healing?

I constantly give exercises or journaling/letter-writing prompts to clients for when they're outside of session. I tell them there's no pressure to ever do the exercises. I couldn't give two shits if they do the exercises or not. I just put them out there, because I know they work and I want the people who want to run faster in their healing to have tools for doing so.

So, how often should you journal? As often as you want to.

If it feels good and you see it healing your soul, you'd think you'd want to do it more. But if you don't, then don't do it. But, then you can't complain if you're not getting the results you want, because you're not doing the work.

Again, your life is your choice. Heal, don't heal; who cares? It's your life; live it however you want. But you cannot simultaneously claim to want to heal and grow, but then not do the work to do so.

So, yeah, I'm a fan of daily journaling and letter-writing.

I'm a fan of getting the books:

The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, which was an international bestseller and is still a wonderful tool to prompt your journaling practice;

There's a Hole in My Love Cup, which is for the really deep work;

Make Miracles in 40 Days, by Melodie Beattie, won't change your entire life in 40 days, but it will give you some great tools.

And there are other lovely journaling books out there to guide and push you. But in the end, again, all you need is pen and paper; or type your journals into your computer. I do that, sometimes, because my typing fingers can move faster than they can with a pen. Or, thumb-type into your phone.

I am not a fan of voice-journaling into your phone unless you're going back later and either putting those to text for you to print and read or going back later and listening to it. There is just something more interactive and hard about staying in the thoughts and feelings long enough that you have to really experience them while flushing them out.

For more on “There’s a Hole in My Love Cup” see What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?.

Journaling Is NOT About Judging Yourself

If you're judging yourself or your writing, or trying to make it perfect for fear that it won't be perfect, then you're missing the point.

The point is to flush your feelings, thoughts, and beliefs about yourself and life. The point is to have safety in one place in your life where you can just be yourself without judgment. But if you edit as you write and judge every thought or feeling, you're only creating one more place in life where you are not safe.

Nothing is off-limits in your journaling. Let it all out.

Soul Disciplines Include Exercise and Good Eating!

Don't stop with just writing. As I've already talked about, exercise and good eating are important, too. They are just as much spiritual/soul disciplines as anything else. These are the tending of the body and the mind, as well, because they so directly impact the functioning of everything else.

Some people take their eating/exercising to intense or extreme degrees. And, I'm all for that, if that's what rocks your shit. For me, it did crank me up, when I was younger. For some people, that stuff cranks them up well into old age. That's fantastic. I just personally found other stuff that really feeds my soul more.

And that's really the point.

It's not about what others say your spiritual disciplines you “should” have. I couldn't care less what anyone else says my disciplines should be. My life; my choice. X, Y, and Z are the things that really breathe life into my soul, not just feel good in the moment.

And for me, what I eat does matter. I have more energy when I eat less, even though I'm 6'4” and around 250lbs. I often don't even eat dinner. Over decades, I've found my own body's rhythm and sweet spot.

Disciplines Are Personal and Unique to You

But I tell you what, there are two things I monitor more closely than anything else: sleep and water.

Sleep

If I'm not sleeping generally well, my creativity sucks, my energy dives, and I'm just enjoying life far less. I don't strive to get a good night's sleep, every night. Nah, but I do strive to keep the number of good nights of sleep to at least four per week. And, when I have a shitty night of sleep, I always allow myself to lie down midday, if time allows, and just close my eyes in a quiet room.

Even if I don't sleep, my body and mind have a chance to slow down and reset.

Sleep and rest are non-negotiables in my life. They are absolutely integrated into my happiness, peace, high-octane energy, creativity, and enjoyment of life. As I said, naps or eye-closings are weekly occurrences. Time just sitting on my butt doing nothing is so important to me, which is in part why I like long drives.

My soul needs all of this downtime, whether with sleep or without.

Water

The other is water.

In my 40s, I remember telling my 80-something mother that my thumb joints and a few finger joints were hurting. She, who had had lifelong arthritis, said,

“Sven, it's water. Deep plunge on your water intake, and give it a week and a half.”

I did it. Boom. The joint pain went away.

For me, in my life, 90% of my shit is solved with more water. My appetite decreases. My muscles don't tighten up as much. I have more physical energy. My joints don't hurt. My body functions smoothly. I'm a hardcore water believer.

Again, all of these elements are spiritual disciplines as much as they are physical ones because the systems are integrated.

Each depends on the other. All systems functioning well create greater energy, fulfillment, better decision-making, and all the other things I've described here.

The Role of Music as a Soul Discipline

Okay, so now we're on to one that is another universal life-giver, along with water, food, and rest. I'm sure there's good strong science on why music rejuvenates the soul, releases pain, and transforms how we feel life. But, I also don't think it requires much science to know that music is powerfully life-changing. We all know it. We all have music that lights us up, soothes us, makes us happy, gives us permission to be sad, and more. We all do.

That is precisely why I included music recommendations in my book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup.

Music transforms.

Music can drive a point infinitely deeper than any crap I can write because music opens us up. It's fucking magical.

And, when it has the right message for the right moment, it transforms the soul from all that it was to all that it can be.

You don't need me to tell you to listen to more of what works for you. That would get a resounding, “Yeah, no shit!” from anyone. Just give yourself permission to let your music speak your truth.

And, if you're really smart, you'll use your music as a tool to open up your journaling, too, and to unlock yourself inside to aid other spiritual disciplines, such as your exercise, too.

As I write this article, I'm listening to classical music, specifically right now it is 'Vivaldi Variation (arr. For piano from Concerto for strings in G minor).'

In fact, a lot of my writing is done to classical music.

Yet, if I were in the gym, it'd be a harsh mix of metal, hip-hop, classic rock, and inspirational Broadway hits, because that's the stuff that fires me when I'm lifting. And, sometimes I journal with music, or sometimes in silence.

Integrate Your Spiritual Disciplines

Integrate your spiritual disciplines, as with music.

Often, I have a pad of paper (or two) next to me as I close my eyes in the afternoon, or when I wake up in the middle of the night to a racing mind. In the quiet, I start flushing out the thoughts that keep my mind from resting. And I go as long as it takes. (The second pad of paper is to make a note or two that pops up that will need attention later, such as “Pick up dry cleaning” or “Buy dog food TODAY!”)

Often, the purging of those random, persistent thoughts slips me back into relaxation or I'll fall asleep, only to wake up a bit later with the light still on, pen in hand, and a small puddle of drool on my pillow.

Integrate your disciplines.

Hacks For Purging the Soul and Keeping It Clean

Here are some hacks as you move forward with your soul disciplines journey.

Letter-writing is a journaling hack because anyone can write a letter and it makes it easier.

There's a hack, or two, for both of those, even. I didn't find them, until about 15 years ago. You will still need pen and paper to help you find the roots of your feelings, and my book will help that at a deeper level.

The Sedona Method

When it comes to the actual process of releasing big feelings or lots of emotion, there is nothing that works faster that I've ever found than the Sedona Method, as created by Lester Levenson. The book by that name was written by his disciple, Hale Dwoskin.

Don't buy that book, however, until you're into beginning to identify your feelings. Because, if you can't identify feelings and name them, that tool will be useless.

Once you can start to feel your feelings and name them, then Sedona can be a highly effective tool if it is done regularly.

Again, like journaling, it's not a one-off. You have to do it daily to reap maximum benefit. And it's soooo simple, requiring no pen or paper. I do it in my car when driving, when in a line at the store when lying in bed at 3 a.m., and every other odd place.

I literally use it every single day, because it releases momentary and stored feelings quickly. It can and should be used on every single memory from your past that has any emotional charge attached to it. It's fast and effective in de-charging memories, which is what journaling is ultimately for, as well.

Accepting Technique

There's another tool that does so, as well. It's the 'accepting technique' as taught by Doreen Banaszak in her book, “Excuse me, your life is now.” It's not as detailed a book as Sedona, but the tool is effective, too.

What About Meditating or Prayer?

A lot of people swear by meditation and/or prayer. My mother and father based their lives on an hour or two of prayer and meditational reading, every single day of their lives. They would say their very strength and joy came from these more than anything else. So, natch, I'm a staunch supporter of them.

But, for me personally, all of the other things I've listed here are my meditation.

My life, really, is one big meditation composed of a million small meditations.

The solitude: meditation time with the still pools of water deep in my soul.

The ferocious workouts: meditation with my warrior spirit, who must always be ready to do battle with the pain in others it is called to help slay.

The time with friends: meditation with the life-giving spirit of laughter.

Writing and counseling others: meditation with the gods of flow and the Muses of creativity that keep me connected to all life forms.

For me, everything is meditation, especially just plain rest.

Should You Continue Your Soul Disciplines For the Rest of Your Life?

Yes.

As I said, I'm in my mid-50s and I've been doing all of this stuff for decades. These are absolutely instrumental to my happiness. Even if I had unlimited money, I wouldn't stop any of these, because these are the real joy-producers and peace-bringers in my life.

Even in the years when I was poor and living on the street among the homeless, ministering to them, these same disciplines brought joy to my life, infusing me with strength, fulfillment, and ALIVENESS.

And, just like missing workouts for days or months, if you fall out of practice in any of these, who gives a shit? Just go back in and start over. No need to spend the BS time and energy beating yourself up. God, why does everything have to be an opportunity to kick our own ass, all the time? That self-flagellation is usually some other person's or society's voice telling you you suck, in one way or another. So, why not journal also on those condemning voices, so that eventually they are no longer in you? If you've missed workouts, journaling, good sleep, or time alone, restart.

One of the benefits of doing your spiritual disciplines, more and more, is that when you fall off the bike for a while, you can get right back up on it and start pedaling again.

Letter-Writing Advice

Oh, and one more thing, if in any way you feel that your journals or letters might not be safe, might be used against you, or it just weirds you out having them existing in the world...burn 'em! Flush 'em down the toilet. Shred 'em. I've done all of these things at different times.

In fact, now it's quite routine for me to do my journaling between sets at the gym. It helps me unleash any pent-up rage to be working out, and the journaling gives me words for it. Then, when I'm done journaling, I tear it up and flush it down the toilet in the locker room. Boom! Done.

I had my journals used against me in court, once. So, I tell clients to journal with a pen in one hand and a lighter in the other. Boom! Done. Yeah, you won't be able to go back and read them. But, for me, I discovered that the real healing is in getting the pain out. I stopped going back to re-read journals, decades ago. But some people love to go back, and that's great. Do it, as long as it's safe for you to keep them.

What Disciplines Feed Your Soul?

So, whether it's journaling, going for walks, time in nature, releasing using Sedona, listening to moving music, working out intensely, or eating strictly a plant-based diet, whatever it may be for you that feeds your soul, do that!

Whether it's lots of solitude or walking in a bustling city, do that! Good rest or long swims, do that! Time in the studio or hands in the soil, do that!

You must begin to both read your soul for what it is telling you will give it life, and also then having the courage to do it... your way.

The goal is, as always, greater ALIVENESS!

Thank you for reading!

Check Out Badass Counseling Courses P.S.: About Not Working Out Legs at the Gym

Nah, I don't skip legs. I just never write it into the workout calendar. I stopped doing leg day decades ago.

Yeah, as a former competitive powerlifter, I just got sick of expending soooo much mental energy to do squats and deads. It wasn't the physical. It was the mental. It demands so much mental energy and focus to do that shit; and what's the payoff? Seriously, what do I get out of it?

“You get big, strong legs, Sven! Duh!”

Yeah, and what am I gonna do with that? Men's fashion since the late 1980s has put all men's shorts to roughly knee-length. So, no one is ever going to see those giant hams, tight butt, or chiseled quads unless I'm naked. And, I'm generally only naked with one person, my girlfriend. So, seriously, what's the point?

Lifting legs is a massive outlay of physical and mental energy that I'd rather direct in about a million different directions that yield far greater profits for me in terms of ALIVENESS. So, I couldn't give a shit what the young twats say about guys who skip leg day. Yawn. I distribute my time, energy, and focus into avenues that generate the most life for me.

Plus, I enjoy riding my bike. I have a 12-mile loop I do in my city, and I often rent a bike at midday in Manhattan, NYC, between clients, and bike down into the financial district. Nothing heightens the senses and will get you high like biking in Manhattan at midday amid the taxis, pedestrians, and noise. Now that is a rush.

So, nah, leg day can suck it. Massive cost, and little profit. Not a good investment in my soul disciplines. But we're each different.

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com

Fear vs. Trust in LDRs (Long Distance Relationships)

There’s something about long distance relationships (LDRs) that brings out agony, ecstasy, and fear. Agony and ecstasy are hard to remove from an LDR. However, when it comes to fear, the solution is trust.

How do you develop trust? How do you nurture it so it keeps the fear at bay?

Here’s Badass Counseling's perspective so you can prepare yourself and protect your relationship.

Sven Erlandson Describes His Long Distance Relationship

We had half-met at a bar in Minneapolis.

I had gotten off work and gone across to Mackenzie's Pub. There I bumped into a woman whom I'd chatted with while waiting tables. Now, we got a chance to talk more. We walked and talked into the night. That night, I fell in love with this dancer, who was traveling with the first national touring company of a Broadway show.

The next year and a half was spent on long phone calls in the middle of the night, after her evening performances and my work day, and trips across the country to spend a few days with her in Dallas, Boston, Miami, or San Francisco. It was both glorious and it sucked. I cried every time we said goodbye, and my heart leaped every time I got a call from her (this was before texting had become mainstream; hell, before I even had a cell phone).

The fear of whether she was cheating with other men, whom she daily encountered as an itinerant performer on stage. The fear of whether she was even talking to other men, which I knew she obviously was. The fear of whether she'd leave me. All of these fears were part of my daily existence. Admittedly, these same concerns were part of her long-distance relationship (LDR) life with me.

Fear.

How Fear Corrupts LDR Relationships 

I know of nothing that has greater power to corrupt an LDR than this. But it doesn't just infect LDRs.

Fear can seep into relationships where one person travels a lot for work, works very long hours, or even where responsibilities – such as a dying family member or a heavy child-rearing load – create a severe shortage of time together. Fear can creep in anywhere, as can the discontent that fear fears (in a partner), as well.

Thus, I know of no greater inoculation against fear and LDR decay than trust. Nothing. Everything long-distance rises and falls on this one thing.

Trust. 

Why is Distance so Difficult on Relationships?

The short answer is that when a lover is not physically immediate, there begins a dearth of reassurances. When a partner is near, there are small touches, looks, hugs, intimacies, and banal conversations that often get lost amid the distance. But also, there is the loss of just plain presence.

Even when we're not touching or interacting with a person, we are present to each other, sharing the same space, engaged in the mere passing of time together. That's a powerful hooch to the soul.

Just as importantly, it's a balm to the nervous soul.

Absent those elements, it can be very easy for the mind to wander, overthink, and devolve into fear.

That's when the damage starts, the yarns get spun, and the questions take root. And trust begins to erode, not because of the other person, but because of my own fear.

>> See Long-Distance Relationships, Control, and Fear (Part 1): The Truth Behind Cheating; An Article for Men

>> See Pt. 2: Long-distance Relationships, Control, and Fear: Making Relationships Great: An Article for Men

LDRs Require the Mastering of Self

And, this leads to the harder answer to the question of why LDRs are so difficult. LDRs can be very hard for the same reason really anything can be very hard. It's because it requires the mastering of self and all that is raging inside one's own mind, particularly the fears.

See, so often people seek and use relationships, often unwittingly, to assuage the very fears, pain, and long-ago implanted messages of their own lack of worth. The partner and their presence become the cure to the pain and fears of aloneness. Rather than being an addition to an already happy life, the relationship becomes the antidote to having to feel the power of that loneliness. This is, tragically, far too common.

But, what this means is that if the relationship either starts as or becomes a long-distance one, then the antidote has a lower rate of efficacy, as it almost works against itself. The lover is both present and absent, simultaneously – present in the relationship, yet absent physically and thus not producing the deliverables that the receiver needs. Resultingly, the heart-wrenching uncertainty can be even worse than being alone, strange as that may seem.

Again, it is the fear virus infecting the operating system. For it not to do so demands that a person engage the process of self-mastery, of flushing out all of the pains and BS beliefs they were taught about themselves, particularly as a child. And, that's damn hard work whether in or out of a relationship.

>> See Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child

However, it's reasonable to assume that if a person got into a relationship, at least in part, as a way to avoid that inner turmoil, they ain't about to start deliberately going into and healing that pain now when the LDR has become challenging. Self-mastery was never on the table. Instead, it's always easier to take a drug, particularly the uniquely strong one known as a relationship.

For, the presence of even a hard or bad relationship/love is, for a great many people, preferable to no relationship at all. Because, the presence of a person, even a person who treats me poorly, wanting me is confirmation that I matter. Whereas, if there is no one here loving me, those old messages creep in and flood the brain and heart. You know the messages:

I'm no good

I don't deserve love

See, I'm not important

I'm unlovable

No one wants me, etc.

And few things in life hurt more than those messages that got pressed into the wet cement of the child's soul, the same ones you've been running from your whole life and that the love was intended to dampen.

>> See 9 Badass Questions About Emotional Incest 

How Do You Maintain a Long Distance Relationship?

Well, the true answer, unwelcome as it may be, is that you actually have to begin the process of self-mastery. There's no other way around it. 

See, if you don't, you'll become a hyper-clingy/hyper-needy version of your already likely emotionally needy self. Your fears will likely consume you, no matter how many reassurances you get from your LDR partner. You will choke them or push them away from the sheer labor of dealing with all of your insecurities. Or, they will do so to you. Or both.

You maintain and actually improve an LDR by forever going inside to identify the fears and beliefs you've been taught about yourself that are undermining your relationship.

This is precisely the purpose for which I wrote my book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup. It steps you through the process of finding the origins of your insecurities and rooting them out.

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

I also recommend that you start listening to my podcast, The Badass Counseling Show. I not only answer listener questions but actually counsel people on the show, most of which are dealing with some derivative of this exact same issue. And, we learn by watching and listening to others. It helps us understand ourselves and our own difficulties much better. (You can find it on Spotify, Audible, Apple Music, and most other podcast sites.)

>> Explore the Badass Counseling Podcast Page 

How Do You Recommend That Couples Prepare for LDRs?

Well, apart from the obvious (discussed above) of each person beginning to work on their own inner stuff, couples in a long-distance relationship need to work on not only the cliche of better communication (which very often gets misinterpreted as simply more conversation) but the more difficult process of talking out feelings, insecurities, fears, and disappointments. Aye yi yi!

Talking about feelings is hard even for non-LDR couples. Having the courage to express how I really feel, which I call 'radical honesty' in my books, especially when it's small, is tough for any person or couple. But it's soooo very critical to high-functioning relationships, which LDRs have to be in order to not only survive but be life-giving.

The act of sharing feelings, particularly insecurities, and feeling heard and understood is a profound salve to over-thinking and fear. 

For the speaker of feelings to feel truly heard and accepted, the hearer must bring a spirit of openness, understanding, and slowing down.

That is the next thing that LDR couples can work on -- slowing down and making time and room for these hard conversations and doing so with the spirit of compassion. Without that compassion for your lover's insecurities and a willingness to not just 'have' but actually express your own insecurities, your relationship is dead in the water. You'll never survive the inevitable worries and wandering of the mind.

Are There Instances Where Distance is Beneficial?

Well, this is a hard curveball in the LDR conversation, because it takes us into the realm of non-LDR relationships.

Distance can be a wonderful tonic to any/most relationships. It can bring breathing room, re-appreciation, and its own fresh set of challenges that can create a renewed vigor to the non-LDR relationship.

Then, also, there are those couples that simply thrive better in an LDR situation. Believe it or not, some do. Some people live in such commitment to their work, their families, their travel, and their health that they prefer to have greater distance in their love relationships.

This is a different breed of cat, one wherein the fear that can afflict the person and relationship is not one of being left or being alone, but of being suffocated; or the fear of having too much responsibility for another person. That can be just as legitimate a fear for this person as aloneness is for the former.

How Do You Know If Your LDR Will Be Successful?

The simplest metric for success in an LDR is whether you have the ability to calm yourself the hell down when you start getting worked up inside. Maybe it's when you're tired, hungry, overworked, or simply haven't seen your lover for a longer than normal time. The virus starts to creep into more empty spaces inside you. The other tensions of life seem to light a flame under your fears, igniting them, and turning them hotter.

In those moments, be they yours or your partner's, do you have the ability to quiet your inner self?

And see, this is why doing the work of flushing out all the past crud is so important.

>> See How To Do An Effective Soul Detox

But also, this is why learning and becoming adept at what I call 'spiritual disciplines' is critical. Spiritual disciplines are those things we use to modulate our own inner anxieties or to flush them out entirely: routine exercise, good sleep, rest/downtime that is not sleep, journaling, alone time, consistent and healthy diet, etc. All of these are mechanisms to re-center ourselves to a state of peace and connection to self, day to day.

If you do not have these tools in your belt, you're absolutely screwed when the worries and spinning minds start to work their dark magic in the heart and mind. If you don't have ways to flush out the fears, they will overtake you, especially -- ESPECIALLY! -- in a long-distance relationship.

The Importance of Trust for a Successful LDR

If you’re involved in a long distance, what issues have you come across and how have you dealt with them? How do you keep fear at bay? Have you prioritized the building of trust with your partner?
Let us know.

 Thank you for reading!

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com

Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child

If there's one whopping cliché sitting smack-dab in the middle of the world of counseling and healing and psychology stuff it's this whole idea of 'inner child' stuff, whatever that is.

“You have to heal your inner child,”

“His inner child is obviously wounded,”

“My inner child was instantly triggered.”

To people who use the idea of it, it makes total sense. To a whole lot of other folks, it can sound dopey or like someone is just stuck in the past, all of which is understandable.

Why worry about an inner child?

Obviously, none of us has an actual, literal child living inside of us. Thus, what the idea of the inner child is attempting to convey is that stuff happens in childhood, often bad stuff, that wounds that kid in a deeply emotional way.

Those wounds don't go away just because we mature into adulthood.

In fact, quite the opposite.

Those wounds are so extraordinarily powerful that they undermine, or outright run, every subsequent decision, long into adulthood. Despite the blather of the willpower sellers, who say, “Man up,” or “Quit blaming your past,” or “You're an adult and you're now responsible for your own decisions,” childhood wounds are so strong and, often, so deeply hidden that they can wreck a life, much as misaligned tires on a truck can undermine not just mileage but brakes, suspension, axle strength, tire fitness, belts and rods, and more.

Thus, until a person actually does the dirty work of going inside and healing those childhood wounds, they spend their lives forever unwittingly compensating for them or acting directly from them.

How do I know if I have inner child problems?

Are you depressed? Do you feel unfulfilled in life? Do you have dreams you cannot seem to muster the motivation to pursue; or you do muster it, but then it runs out, such that your life/career have a sputtering flavor to them? Does anxiety run your life? Are you forever answering to other people, whether a spouse, friends, parents or even a dead parent?

All of these are indicators that you're not operating from your own center, not drawing inspiration, peace, and power from being your own authentic self. These are all powerful indicators that you've got inner conflict – your own native voice rising up from the depths of your soul is being met by past voices inside you that denied your worth, lovability, wantedness, goodness, or even your mattering, at all. Those voices from way back then wounded you, when you were 2, 8, 13, and/or 18. And because the people with those voices had basically infinite power in your life, you took their messages. (You had no choice!) And their messages became embedded in the bedrock of your soul. They became the initial virus infecting the operating system of your soul. That was the wound – the messages about you back when you were a child. The wounded inner child.

And, that wound doesn't just magically go away because you turn 18, someday. Instead, the messages about your worth and mattering run everything, from that day forward. That becomes the slow-growing depression, the self-sabotage, the overthinking, the agoraphobia, the flying below the radar, or the incessant need for attention, the longing for male attention or female approval, the hyper-anxiety, the proving of self through accomplishment, the descent into drugs or 'self-medication.'

Everything finds its origins in the wounded inner child.

To the layperson, it may sound like bunk. Do this stuff long enough and the patterns become so blatantly obvious.

So, what is the 'dirty' work of healing the inner child?

The dirty, ugly-ass work of healing the inner child means turning into that tidal wave of pained memories that you've spent your life running from. It means seeing the depression as gift, as the soul calling you into your healing, no longer allowing for the incessant running. It means facing the fear of being overwhelmed. It means re-feeling all that pain. It means admitting origins that we don't want to admit. It means facing implications of the origin truths that can be so heart-breaking to face.

When we stop and turn into that tidal wave, it all washes over us. If we're not equipped with tools to flush out all of that pain and the truths they come from, it all can shatter us.

The tools are things like counseling, journaling, writing letters we don't send, the Sedona Method, and more. To finally heal the wounded inner child means to express, to release all of the pain, fears, and BS beliefs you've been taught about yourself. It means to become fully aware of it all. It means to talk about the great unspeakables of your life. It means to open a conversation with your past and to not stop the conversation until the depression, anxiety, chaos, busyness, and lethargy have lifted completely. It doesn't have to take forever, as some tools work faster than others, such as my book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup. But it does require courage, above all else. For this is the scariest stuff of your life.

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

I've counseled police, firefighters, special forces operators, professional fighters and athletes, artists, hardened CEOs, and all manner of typically tough, strong folk. Yet, invariably, in the safety of my office, they admit that nothing in their lives has ever been scarier than facing this inner child stuff, which is of course why so many people poo-poo it in society and culture – better to diminish something than have to actually face it.

But how does the inner child differ from the adult self?

The simple answer from a soul health perspective is that the inner child is any part of your past that keeps you from being fully present in your present. In fact, often we think we are fully present in life as adults, but very often we're compensating for stuff from our past, or we're outright driven by past stuff that we are maybe not even aware of.

A simple way to understand this is to imagine that on your first day of a new job, you witness your new boss completely chewing out another employee. Then, quite by chance, later that evening you happen to see that same person yelling at a person who almost hit them in a car while they were crossing the street, and justifiably so. It is reasonable to assume that how you interact with that boss, and potentially other people in that company, is going to be colored by those two experiences. You might be more tentative, quieter, and less likely to share your ideas or opinion. Or, perhaps you'll compensate in the other direction – you become Mr. Affable or Ms. Jokester to keep things light and avoid the boss's wrath, when those two patterns may actually go against your normal personality. Ten years later, you may still be acting the same way, even though you've had two new bosses since that time after that first one moved on.

Now, imagine a similar scenario but with a powerless child and the boss is the parent. It doesn't even have to require yelling.

One person I know had a son who grew up quiet, always sheepish, and slow to offer an opinion. In his 20s when he and I got to talking, I asked about this. He said, “I just remember my mom telling me in the car to keep quiet, a lot.” I corralled the mother and brought her into the discussion. What we discovered is that the drive to school as a boy was through thick traffic and mom, like most people, would get stressed. But little Billy was a chatty guy and mom couldn't focus. So, she'd ask him to hold that thought till later or to be quiet for a minute. And that utterly harmless and completely understandable reaction by the mother drove the son into himself, fearful of speaking up.

The inner child is that part of your self that bears marks from childhood that are driving the equation of your life, but which may not be your authentic self. Thus, the goal of soul healing work is to not only identify and root out all of the trauma and pain from the past. It is to also go deep and identify the beliefs about self and life that got embedded into that child that may be undermining that now-adult's life.

This is where the real action happens, in terms of radically transforming your life and coming into a state of ALIVENESS!

Why does the inner child need healing?

The reason we have to do the sometimes scary work of healing that inner child is because that dissonance you feel inside of yourself is killing you.

– You have dreams, but don't have the energy to pursue them;

– You long for happiness, but can't seem to find your own sense of direction or self;

– You just feel depressed all the time;

– Your anxiety feels unrelenting;

– You just want to be free, happy, and ALIVE, but your misery only seems to increase with each passing year.

Sven, have you had to heal your inner child?

I definitely have. I had been deeply involved in journaling from my early teens. And my deliberate spiritual journey began at about 19. But it was in my late-20s/early-30s when I really was exploring deeply my own wounds from childhood...AND I HAD GREAT PARENTS! What I realized I had been wounded by was simply a lack of positive attention. This would seem laughable to my five older siblings who likely saw me as the pampered baby of the family. But when you have six kids but only two parents, there's only so much attention to go around, especially when one of the parents needed a lot of attention himself. Again, I loved/love my, now-deceased, parents. I adore them. But I just needed more positive attention, lots more. I just wanted people to like me.

Thus, soooo much of my young adult life was spent desperately wanting attention, wanting someone to love me and pour love into my love cup, and dreaming of being famous and having people shower me with attention and love.

As I dove more into my own inner child work, seeing origins, loving on myself, and releasing my need for more and more attention, I had a very distinct experience. In my early-30s, I begin to experience very clearly my life energy calming down. I began to feel myself just relax, more and more.

Further, I began to be less defensive about the odd path my soul was calling me to. I began to stand up for myself, more and more. And, despite my lack of career success, I felt good about myself and my trajectory.

What keeps people from doing the inner child work?

Most people don't want to touch inner child work, at least until the pain gets so bad that they can't keep running from it anymore.

The reason is that the thought of going back into that crud is too painful to consider. Every time they've touched it, either in therapy or when drunk or when caught off guard in some random conversation it has brought a world of hurt that they have zero interest in touching again. So, they build up all sorts of defenses to keep from having to do so. They deny the importance of therapy. They tell their spouse they don't have problems; all problems are the spouse's. They may even isolate themselves from others by keeping all relationships surface, never getting down into the realm of feelings and realness.

In other words, what keeps people from doing inner child work is always fear of pain, as with most things in life. But, as mentioned, eventually the pain of living this way takes its revenge on life, whether through physical/medical problems, fractured relationships, extreme inner turmoil, massive unfulfillment in life, or a million other ways

How long does it take?

Healing the inner child, like all soul work, doesn't have to take forever.

There is this myth in therapy that healing has to take years. It doesn't. The speed of healing depends upon the depth the healer and client are going. If it's taking years, either the counselor doesn't know how to take a client deep, or the client refuses to go deep or simply move faster.

It is this depth of diving and healing that all of my work is geared toward. My book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup is designed specifically for this task – take you deep and challenge the sh*t out of you.

How do you know if you're healed?

Let me answer it by asking instead, How do you know if you're healing?

You begin to feel lighter, physically lighter.

You begin to have greater clarity in life.

You find yourself not only setting by insisting on your boundaries.

You cut back things, people, and beliefs about yourself that undermine you or simply suck the life energy out of you. Sometimes, you even have the strength to cut them out entirely when their drain on your life is so obvious and soul-sucking.

As we heal, we begin to experience life completely differently, like THIS is what life is supposed to be.

And how do you know when your inner child is healed?

We're always healing from the new stuff, as well as from the random, small old things that may come up or be remembered. But you're healed when your days are energized, your path is clear, and you have clarity and tidiness regarding your past and the people in your life from your past.

That doesn't mean everything is always perfect. It means, you're good; you got it. You've got things not just under control but the way you really want them to be and you're happy and excited about life.

You feel that ALIVENESS and spontaneous energy.

So do the inner child and adult self ever work together?

Yes, when the pain of the inner child has been healed what comes through is the original reckoning device imprinted on that child's soul.

What comes through is the authentic self.

What comes through is a life of no longer fearing pain.

And so, the adult can be directed by an inner soul spirit of passion, play, fulfilling work, and happiness, rather than merely a life of shoulds, fear, and closing oneself in.

And what happens if you don't heal the inner child?

You continue to die slowly while seeing your life slip away, all with a sense of remorse and helplessness. You maybe can't name the source of your unrest, hopelessness, and sadness, but the source is most assuredly a wounded inner child who never healed.

You walk through the remainder of your life fully aware that you never lived the life you knew you were capable of, the life you always knew you wanted.

Is it Time to Heal Your Inner Child?

If you’re ready to spend time on yourself and focus on healing your inner child, Sven is ready to counsel you! Just click here.

Thank you for reading!

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-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books , Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com