Ep 25: Bridging the Gap between Intention & Action for Your 2023 Parenting Goals

[INTRODUCTION]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

Welcome to episode 25 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. It’s the new year which is such a potent time to review and release what no longer fits or aligns with our values and to set goals and intentions that we can wholeheartedly grow into with radical audacity. Being wholesome takes time and the best part is we have a lifetime to do it. But you already know that having the most wholesome intention is one side of the coin -- the other side is putting that intention into action.  

That’s why in this episode, you and I are going to explore some unseen forces that can get between your best intentions and your goals. We’re going to start by talking about the Immunity to Change model which will help us understand what keeps us from getting to our goals. Then, we’re going to do a self-reflection quiz to get even clearer about what exactly is stopping us from making necessary changes. If that sounds like fun, let’s do this. 

I know that you’re here because we share values like equity, liberation, justice, and joy. I know you want to practice decolonized parenting so that you are raising your child by your values instead of by oppressive social norms or outdated family patterns. You want to practice embodied parenting by taking care of your body and nervous system and doing the healing work your ancestors couldn’t. And you’re also here because you want practice intergenerational parenting by breaking any family cycles that no longer serve you and carrying on the ones that honor your lineages. Yet, there’s often a gap between what you want and taking steps to get there.

Immunity to Change

Both you and I know so well that change is hard. Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan, Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty members, put together 30 years of adult development research to help us address what they call our Immunity to Change. We covered a slice of Immunity to Change in Episode 17: Why it’s so hard to get free Pt.1. I know that was a while ago so allow me to share a quick summary of the model with you. 

The Immunity to Change™ methodology helps people get to the change they want by understanding their internal unconscious resistance to change. Lahey and Kegan believe that wanting change alone isn’t enough because there are unseen forces that prevent you from actively taking actions towards your goal. So they’ve developed a self-assessment model that has four questions you can reflect on and answer to uncover your immunity to change aka the inner unconscious resistance that’s getting in the way of the change you want. In a nutshell, the immunity to change framework says that fear of loss keeps us from making changes. Even when we want to change and we have the intention, motivation, and skills, we’re still immune to change… because deep down we know that when we achieve our goals and get from point A to point B, we’re going to lose something.  

In this episode, I’m highlighting the last two questions in the Immunity to Change process. And I’m paraphrasing them in my own words here. The two questions are: what are you afraid of losing if you get to your goal? And why do you think you’ll lose it? To say it differently, what are the assumptions you’re making about what would happen? Let’s put these questions in an example, shall we?

Say you grew up in a household where talking about feelings and expressing them was seen as weak. The family rule you grew up hearing was to always be tough…not soft. Now you want your child to be tough but you also want them to be in touch with their feelings. Your goal is to teach your child to be okay with feeling feelings and you know you gotta walk the walk by modeling talking about your feelings with them…which you can do because you’ve been working on your emotional literacy and doing your inner child re-parenting work. So, intention to change aka break the outdated family cycle? Check. Motivation? Check. Skills? Oh yes, check. But you might find yourself resisting this change at family gatherings where your parents are present. To uncover your immunity to change, you might have to do a deep dive and explore what you would lose if you were to change, reach your goals, and start talking about your feelings with your child in front of your parents. 

You might already have a few guesses in mind. Beautiful! One of them might be you might risk being criticized for not raising your child to be quote unquote tough or you might be labeled by your parents as quote unquote soft. So what’s the loss here? The loss is you risk losing acceptance and approval from your parents

When a part inside of you is working hard to protect you from loss- real or perceived-, it makes sense that this protection keeps you from doing what you need to do to make changes and achieve your goals.

So at family gatherings, out of protection slash survival, you might be tougher with your child and less touchy feely. You might not work towards your goal of nurturing emotional literacy in your child and breaking the family cycle of being tough. And remember you’ve set your intention on this goal and you want it because it aligns with your social justice values, right? Yet, that fear of losing your parents’ acceptance and approval- whether the risk is real or perceived- is so strong that it keeps you protected from loss but at the same time it keeps you stuck in place instead of taking action towards your goal. 

Lahey and Kegan use the term “competing commitment” to describe this push and pull. You want to break the family cycle of being tough AND a part inside of you is trying to protect you from losing acceptance and approval from your parents. These are two competing commitments. 

Nuances

Instead of using the same term “competing commitment,” I want to intentionally stick to the language of protection and survival. Here’s why. 

When we talk about how a fear of losing something can keep you protected yet stuck, we can easily slip back into the good old colonial and capitalist conditioning that says “let’s buckle up, smash that barrier, adjust our mindset, and get rid of that fear.” And that’s not my invitation here. Courage without context is clueless at best. Getting rid of fear aka your protection without understanding the social-cultural context of why that fear is there in the first place is like going to a battle in your silk lingerie….no armor, no protection. If there’s a part of your identity that’s not white, middle class, Christian, cisgender, heteronormative, and able bodied…in other words… if the norms of white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy see you as a threat to the status quo, please respect your fear that’s trying to protect you and keep you alive. Because ignoring it and being quote unquote “courageous and vulnerable” might come at the cost of being silenced, criticized, ostracized, or killed. So, my invitation is this. If you’re in a body that society forces to be at the margin, discernment is key. When you need to stay protected, please do. And when you’re at home with your child and partners and you feel safe enough, I hope you take a moment to thank your protection, your armor, your fight-flight-freeze-people please self-protection so you can set it aside. So you can wholeheartedly connect with your child and partners and intentionally make necessary changes and meet your goals. 

One more thing I want to say is when we think of losses, we often think that we have to lose tangible things like money, homes, or loved ones for the loss to be devastating. But losing social connections like acceptance and approval from those you care about is equally painful. In fact, three researchers from the University of California Los Angeles, Naomi Eisenberger, Matthew Lieberman, and Kipling Williams published their findings in Science showing that the same parts of the brain are activated whether you’re experiencing physical pain or emotional pain from being socially rejected or excluded. 

Naming what you’re afraid you’re going to lose when you change is one step in the Immunity to Change process. The next step is to peel another layer off and see what assumptions lie underneath that fear.

You might be assuming that your parents will criticize your parenting style because it’s very different from how they raised you. Seeing this underlying assumption, it makes even more sense why you wouldn’t take the necessary steps to meet you goal even though you want that goal, you’re motivated, and you have the skills.

Lahey and Kegan then encourage people to take their assumptions for a test drive and see if the assumptions are true. Let’s continue with our example. At the next family gathering, you might test your assumption that your parents will criticize you for raising your child differently. You might name your child’s feelings during their meltdown and be present with them until they’re settled enough to problem solve their big feelings with you… in front of your parents. Are you holding your breath and cringing? Me too.

If your parents actually say that you’re too soft or criticize you, then you know that your fear of losing their acceptance is- actually- valid and keeping you immune to change. 

On the other hand, if your parents have done their own healing and growth work over the years and they are curious about your take on parenting, then you know you can let go of your fear of losing their acceptance that’s keeping you immune to change. 

Either way you make the implicit explicit…you make the invisible forces that are working against you in the background visible. And now you can make conscious and active choice about how to make changes and meet your goals. 

[MIDROLL]

If you're a social justice curious and conscious parent who wants to stop performing parenting by white, colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal scripts so you can raise your child according to your own values, I'd love to invite you to join a community of like-minded families in the In-Out-N-Through® Program. An online 7-week, cohort-based social justice parenting and inner child re-parenting program.

Let’s write your own parenting playbook using child development sciences and social justice actions like solidarity, power-with, and accountability to guide your parenting decisions. So that you can practice social justice through your daily parenting while promoting your child's development at the same time.

And let’s re-parent your inner child too so you can intentionally respond to your child based on your values instead of automatically reacting based on your childhood wounds. So that you can heal your inner child wounds underneath your parenting triggers and do the healing work your ancestors couldn’t while raising your child with equity and liberation in mind.

If you’re interested in joining a community of decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational families please visit comebacktocare.com/learn for more information and registration. It's comebacktocare.com/learn.

Alright, back to the episode…

[END MIDROLL]

To recap, the Immunity to Change framework says that we don’t change because deep down we’re afraid of losing something, often social connections. And getting to know your fear can help you address the inner resistance that keeps you from making the changes you want to meet your goals.

I’ll leave the links to the Immunity to Change book, episode 17 of our podcast, and all the resources and references mentioned in this episode in the episode show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/episode-25.

SCARF Model

These fears of losing our social connections lie deep inside us and many of us don’t think about them often. I can imagine that “I’m afraid of losing my parents’ acceptance and approval” might not be a fun party conversation for many of us (even though it’s the kind of conversation I live for). 

So, to help us make these implicit fears explicit so we can name them and work with them, I’d love to share an acronym with you in this episode. The acronym is SCARF which stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness, and it was developed by Dr. David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute. As you can see, each letter represents an aspect of human social experience that motivates our behaviors. Dr. Rock shares that when we perceive that an action comes with the threat of losing our SCARF- Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness, we’re motivated to avoid acting on that behavior. On the flip side, when we perceive an action might reward us with a boost in our Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness, we’re motivated to act on that behavior.

I’ll describe each letter and I’d love to invite you to reflect on each one so you can name any aspects of social connection you are afraid of losing and which therefore get in the way of your decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting goals. 

In my own personal work and my work with parents, combining the Immunity to Change framework with this SCARF model makes this tough task of confronting our fears a tiny bit more manageable. 

Alright let’s begin our exploration with the first letter in SCARF which is S for status. Your social status in a group can help you feel like you’re a part of it. In our culture where white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism dominate, social statuses like “the hardest working parent” or “the most devoted and self-sacrificing” parent are highly valued and rewarded. When you play by a script written by these social norms, you keep your social status and therefore your access to food and housing. These scripts could be hashtag momboss where you look flawless while having it all- jobs, marriage, and family. Or, they could be hashtag momlife where you are constantly running around in your makeup-no-makeup look taking care of everyone but yourself because being a martyr and sacrificing yourself is what patriarchy loves. And I promise I’m not judging you at all if you have a hashtag momlife coffee mug or a hashtag dadvibe water bottle. Please own it. No judgment.  

And because you’re here listening to me and we’re advocating for equity and liberation together, I know you want to become a decolonized parent. You want to unapologetically put your own oxygen mask on first so you’re not in fight-flight-freeze-people please survival mode when you’re trying to meet your child’s needs. Or as we say at Come Back to Care…so you can meet your child where they’re at in solidarity instead of as a savior. This is very different from what capitalism and patriarchy are telling us counts as good parenting where a good parent SHOULD sacrifice for their children and override their needs and identities for their children. 

I know you want to become an embodied parent, that you want to connect with your body and soothe your nervous system’s survival mode when you’re triggered so that you’re not automatically reacting to your child from your inner child wounds but instead you’re intentionally responding to your child according to your values. This is very different from what white supremacy is telling us about good parenting where a good parent SHOULD be perfect and flawless, and SHOULD keep it together at all times. 

And I know you want to become an intergenerational parent who understands that your parenting triggers aren’t saying you’re weak or defective or incompetent. Rather, your parenting triggers are showing you that there are unhealed wounds from your childhood or your inner child wounds. And these triggers or reactions- the yelling, shutting down, controlling, people pleasing, or fixing- are your old survival strategies that protect you from feeling the same rejection, abandonment, criticism, and humiliation you experienced as a child. And when you understand your triggers and the underlying inner child wounds, you can actively re-parent your inner child and stop passing down these generational family patterns to your child. This is very different from what colonialism is telling us about good parenting where a good parent SHOULD be efficient: here’s your trigger so go meditate and be better…instead of understanding your triggers in their social, cultural, and political contexts and working in a community to address the root cause. 

I can really see that practicing decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting is different from what social norms like dominance, extraction, coercion, and control consider “good parenting”. So if you choose to be a decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parent, you might risk losing social statuses like MomBoss, HustlerParent, or the most flawless parent of the year. These statuses that you’ve put so much work and investment into.

So that’s S or Social Status. If you’d like, please take a moment to reflect on whether there’s any social status or identity you’re afraid of losing if you go off script and play by your own parenting playbook. 

Alright, the next letter in SCARF is C for Certainty. Social norms- no matter how inequitable and oppressive- give us some level of certainty because we know how to behave and what to expect in social settings. Predictability feels safe and feeling like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing according to societal expectations, roles, and scripts feels rewarding. In fact, you get a dopamine hit too from meeting those expectations… according to a University of Cambridge professor of neuroscience, Wolfram Schultz. In our context of parenting, I know you hear it all the time that raising a child doesn’t come with a manual. So the closest thing to certainty in parenting could be raising your child by the parenting playbook written by your in-laws, by that parenting guru from Norway you’re following on Tik Tok, or by your family cycles that have been passed down across generations, or by capitalism. You can see that it may feel safer to play by these people’s rules. And practicing decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting can cost you that comfort in predictability and certainty. Especially when we talk about making deeply decolonized and imperfectly intentional parenting choices now for the liberation in the next seven generations…seven generations! That’s a lot of uncertainty there. So, I wholeheartedly understand how scary it can be and why a part inside of us wants to keep us protected but stuck in place. 

The third letter in SCARF is A for autonomy which is a sense of having a choice and an influence over outcomes. When you fly solo, you get to make all the calls and have things go your way. And in our white, colonial, capitalist culture, we confuse this kind of hyper independence as success. We feel amazing when we exercise that will power. That sense of control feels good, right? Yet, in any social justice organizing space- decolonized parenting included- we actively dismantle this individualism and replace it with collective action. We also actively dismantle this independence and replace it with interdependence. Instead of flying solo, we fly in a flock. Instead of making all the calls, that decision making is now shared. And here’s the tricky part. Many parents who also practice social justice tell me that they really, truly, wholeheartedly believe in interdependence and community power. But when your partners aren’t quite on the same page about raising your child and your to-do list is never ending, it’s just more convenient to “my way or the highway” your way through the to-do list instead of making decisions together collaboratively with your partner. Or, when you’re loading the grocery bags in the car as fast as you can to get home to make dinner and then your child has a meltdown in the car seat, snapping and yelling at them might be the quickest way to get them to stop crying for a second even though you know that doesn’t align with your value in power with not power over. But if you were to name the feelings and talk through those big feelings it would take you 45 more minutes to get out of that parking lot. Community comes with compromises, which might make you feel like you’re losing some autonomy. Does that resonate with you at all?

The next letter in SCARF is R or Relatedness which Dr. Rock defines as a sense of safety with others, a feeling of being with a friend rather than a foe. If practicing social justice parenting will risk getting you kicked out of the hustling parenting club where all of your parenting friends go, you might not be as motivated to practice decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting…at least in front of these parents. Again not because you don’t want to be a decolonized parent, or you’re not motivated enough to be one, or you’re not skillful…it’s just that you’re going to lose your friend group and to our human nervous system that’s a huge threat. A big “no, thank you.” And we discussed this fear of losing our loved ones’ acceptance and approval earlier in the episode. This fear is real. 

The final letter is F or Fairness. If you have any version of “it’s not fair” screaming in the back of your mind, you might hear follow-up sentences like “I’m done with this” or “WTH…I’m tired of being the bigger person” or “I don’t care anymore.” Raising your child by your values and going against the grain requires all kinds of mental gymnastics and on top of that there’s no structural support like paid parental leave and childcare support. So, you might find yourself feeling like “Why do I have to do all the work?” or in Michelle Obama’s words “go high when other people go low.” When you are burned out, it’s hard to care. So this numbness or checking out from the unfairness and injustice might be what’s keeping you from making the changes you need to reach your parenting goal.

And there you have it: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness or SCARF. Is there a tiny part inside of you that’s afraid of losing your SCARF and that keeps you from making changes and achieving your decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting goal? 

For my own SCARF, I just want to give it my wholehearted gratitude for keeping me safe from being criticized, rejected, and invisibilized by white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. But I’m going to live for what I believe in now and do so imperfectly with the community of support I’m building. 

Facing Your Fear Compassionately

Now that you know your fear of losing your SCARF a bit better, let’s explore some ways to face your fear fiercely and compassionately. 

And a tender reminder here that my invitation here is discernment. If you’re in a body that society forces to be at the margins, perhaps both you and I need to be extra perfect, extra hard working, extra overdelivering just to be perceived as adequate. In that case, by all means, we do what we need to do to play that hunger game of capitalism otherwise we would certainly go hungry when we can’t pay the bills. However, when you’re at home with your child and you’re safe enough, you can intentionally check in with the social status you’re carrying whether that’s hashtag momboss or perfect parent. So you can set it down and connect heart to heart with your child from a power-with perspective not power-over. 

Alright, losing your SCARF is scary. But when the SCARF is old and it doesn’t fit your new style, it might be time to update your wardrobe and get a new SCARF… you know the one that wears well with your decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting goal. Or your autumn/winter 2023 collection.

I know that going with the norm is so convenient and most days it’s the only thing you have enough bandwidth for. But the flip side of not playing by the oppressors’ parenting playbook is that you get to write your own. And you can find certainty when you ask yourself “hold on… the Internet people said my child is 3 years old so I need to send him to time out for 3 minutes. How does this parenting strategy align with my values in abolition, nonviolence, and solidarity?” The certainty doesn’t have to come from getting a standing ovation from the oppressors by perfectly performing your parenting by their standards. The certainty can come from the moment-to-moment decision when you adapt and align your parenting decision with your social justice values. 

Practicing decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting presents you with a rich opportunity to unsubscribe from whatever oppressive norms are telling you about what “good parenting” SHOULD be. You raise your child your way -- you can adapt the 5 S’s of soothing baby or the Harvey Karp method to be the Rachel method, the Carina method, the Daniel method…you know, YOUR method.

You’ll also find your parenting accountability buddy or a whole support system that also believes in raising children with consent instead of coercion, with power-with instead of power-over, or with reciprocity and relationships instead of having to always be right. One thing Resmaa Menakem taught me is that the people you started the journey with aren’t usually your people, it’s the people at the end. And in this community you’re building, you get to define what a good parent means and your co-conspirators hold space for you to live your values. Isn’t that worth the risk?

Saying that right now…hmm.

I notice a bit of excitement in my chest area and also fear around the back of my neck. And when we try to do something different or norm agitating, excitement and fear often show up together. When fear is outweighing my excitement and I need to take risk for liberation, equity, and justice, I always bring to my heart Audre Lorde’s teaching in 1982 address titled Learning from the 60’s quote, "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." End quote. 

Closing: Collective Action and Community Care

Alright, let’s do a quick recap. Skills and motivation and willpower alone aren’t enough to get you from point A to point B if you don’t take a moment to pause and explore the unseen forces that are working…not against you per se…but working to protect you from experiencing loss. 

To address this fear, we use the acronym SCARF to get really specific about what exactly we’re afraid of losing. Is it fear of losing status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, or fairness that keeps you from doing what you need to do to get to your goal? And to keep this self-reflection work from sliding into individualism, we contextualize our fear and understand that sometimes we need to do what we need to do to keep the lights on, pay bills, and put food on the table. That means when we’re not in survival mode – for example when we’re with our children and we’re supported -- we can be extra intentional about not letting our fear of losing social connections get in the way of practicing decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting. 

Getting specific about our fear can help us set our parenting goal by asking what we are going to stop doing. Then, instead of asking what else we are going to do for the decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting goal in 2023…let’s ask WHO we can do this liberation work and decolonized parenting with. Who can we build an ecosystem of support with so that we can hold one another in compassion and accountability?

I’m so grateful you’re here. I’m so honored to be fumbling our way towards liberation together. 

You can find all the links to the references and resources mentioned in this episode and the transcript when you go to comebacktocare.com/episode-25. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.