Ep. 44 – Emotional Adulthood

Hi, my beautiful friend and friends. How are you? Well, I have to tell you that I’m feeling so much better than last week. I was fortunate that I did not have covid, but I had the flu and it kind of kicked my tushy. But I’m feeling so much better after one week, and I thank you for all your well wishes.

Sending great gratitude for that because I’m sure that it helped me to get where I am right now, which is feeling. So thank you. I promised you that I was gonna give you, uh, a good subject today, a kick ass subject, and so it’s gonna be a little bit of tough love because I care about you and because I want the best for you.

It’s about being an emotional adult. Versus being an emotional child. So if you are ready, let’s get started.

Are you ready to create a life that’s better than ever before? We are Doreen Yaa and Jeff Wilson, and we are here to give. Strategies you need to create the life after divorce that you deserve and desire. As partners, both in marriage and coaching, we use our expertise as well as our own personal experiences to help you make the next chapter of your life the best chapter.

What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could have happened to you? I’m Doreen Yaa, marital and family lawyer and certified life coach. I’ve been consulting women for over 25 years. I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time.

Your amazing divorce.

So we’re gonna talk about. The concept that my coach taught me, which is emotional adulthood. And what that means, if I’m to summarize it, is emotional childhood is when we do not take responsibility for how we feel. Our actions and the results that we have in our life. Emotional adulthood, on the other hand is when we do take responsibility for all of that, you see, we each one of us, you and me, we’re responsible for how we feel every moment.

We are in charge of how we think. And we are in charge of how we feel. But when we’re functioning as an adult, but as an emotional child, we basically are blaming other people for how we feel, for how we act and for the results we get. And when you’re going through divorce and post divorce, there’s a lot of that going on.

I have a lot of clients when I’m handling their divorce, there’s a lot of blame going on, A lot of, he made me feel this way and she did that to me and all that. You know what I’m talking about? But learning how to take responsibility for our emotions as an adult is something that we’re generally not taught.

And so it’s really not our fault that we don’t generally know this, right? We feel bad and we just react a certain way because we don’t stop to think about why we’re going to feel the way we do, why we do feel the way we do, and why we’re acting certain ways. You see, when we’re in college, there’s no course on this, or even in high school, nobody says to us, look, you’re now an adult.

You’re 18 years old, and it’s time to start acting like an emotional adult, and this is what it means. It means that you are going to be responsible for how you feel. You’re gonna stop and think about things, and you’re going to control. Your thinking in a way that serves you. That we have the ability in any given moment, no matter what anyone else does or doesn’t do, including your ex to feel a certain way.

So think about when you grew up, because this probably happened to you. I know it happened to me. It was not uncommon for a parent, a caregiver, a teacher to say something like, Hey, Johnny. Stop treating Sally that way and say you’re sorry for what you said to her. It made her feel bad. It’s so ingrained that we don’t even realize that we were taught this and that we likely are teaching our own children this.

Because children don’t have the capacity to make a distinction, and there really are so many emotional children functioning as adults that it perpetuates all the way into today into our life. And it’s very, very disempowering. It’s disempowering to let others place us in a position where we act as an emotional child that others, many of us believe, are responsible for what we do, how we feel, and the results in our life.

You know, our society general. Is very good. Not everybody, of course, and let me caveat that, but at blaming others for where they are, we blame the government. We blame Covid, we blame our ex pee even blame our parents. For our upbringing, we blame people. Instead of taking responsibility, and when you are an adult emotionally, you realize that it’s not the world and others that are responsible for how we feel and what we do with those feelings.

Remember, feelings create an action and result in our life. So most of us are not even aware that we are blam. Others, including our ex, for what’s going on. And here’s what’s really interesting. I’m gonna use an example. One of my clients recently was complaining about her ex, she has a child with him, and she was doing a lot of the blame, like he makes us feel this way and he makes me so angry and I can’t believe what he did and all of that.

And I asked her with love and kindness, but I was kind of firm and I said, listen, could we just stop for a minute? I wanna ask you a very, very serious question. You just spent the last five minutes complaining about your ex and how they’re. Making you feel this way, all these negative emotions and how you’re all caught up in that.

And my question to you is, why in the world would you let the person that at least at this point in your life, you, you like the least in the world, have the ability? To control your emotions. Have the ability to push your buttons, have the ability to have you react by having a feeling that triggers you to do things that later you are embarrassed about.

That later you regret. If you’re going to give that power to anyone in your life, which I suggest you don’t do, you don’t let others control how you feel, right? Why in the world would you let that be your ex-husband? It just makes no sense, and it was an aha moment for her. She sat there and basically was just looking at me like, what is going on?

I’m like, my dear, I really care about you and I want the best for you, but look at all the energy and the time that you are spending dwelling in this feeling This. Because of him. He’s never gonna be this person that you expect him to be. Not that he ever should be the person responsible for making you happy.

Having three girls and coming from a divorced family where it was my mother and my sister and I, my mom taught me something that carried forward to me to this very day. She always taught me that I need to be, and my sister. That we need to be responsible for our own destiny, for our own future, and to never.

Ever rely on someone else, a man in your life to bring you happiness in the way that you want. In other words, if you want to go out and have a beautiful house and have a big bank account and become the best lawyer or the best doctor, or the best anything. That is on you, and no one can take that away from you and you.

My girls, my mother used to say, are the ones that are responsible for that. Please learn. She used to tell me from my mistake, we’re taught as little girls the fairy tales that we hear that she meant the prince and lived happi. Ever after. Think about that. Is that implying that the prince is making her happy?

How about she meant the prince and she fulfilled her own dreams and found her own happiness, and together they lived happily ever after. You see, when we are dependent on another person for our emotional happiness, It really places a lot of pressure on the relationship. I mean, think about it. We’re all just struggling to keep our own emotions in check, to understand our own feelings and our actions and our results, and to reach our goals when we have to rely on another person to.

Be the cause of our happiness. That’s a lot of pressure on a relationship. It’s one of the areas that I tend to disagree with some. Marriage counselors, have you ever heard something like this? You sit down in a therapy session with your husband, with your wife, and they’ll say something like, now tell me all the things that you want her to do that would make you.

And then they turn to the other person and say, now tell me all the things that you want him to do to make you happy. My suggestion is that this just places a lot of pressure, unneeded pressure on the relationship. So think of that. Potentially as you go on with your life, you’re creating your new life, the next chapter of your amazing life, that, number one, you wanna take responsibility for the results in your life, for how you feel, how you act, and who you blame or don’t blame.

Be aware of that. Number two, as you get into new relationships, maybe even remarry, which most of you will do, even though you may not be thinking, you’re like, no way, Doreen, that ain’t happening in my life, ev, as I always say, if I got a quarter for every time I heard that, right? But think about that as you enter into your new relationships to find happiness yourself with what you are.

Outside of your person, outside of that husband, that relationship. Find happiness. Set your goals. Be an independent. Always understand that you need to be responsible for yourself on many levels. When you don’t do this, when you don’t take responsibility as an emotional adult to not let others trigger you, to not blame the world and, and your divorce and your parents and everybody else in your life, but you take responsibility yourself.

It’s empowering on a level far be beyond what many of us can ever imagine. And the reality is that most people, they don’t want to spend time and energy trying to make us happy. If it comes naturally, that’s one thing, but in other words, making such a concerted effort to make another person happy places such a pressure on every.

When, again, as a humans, we are, we’re all just trying to make it through. We’re all just trying to succeed. I believe that the best relationships are when two people come together and say, I’m going to meet my needs. You’re going to meet your needs. We’re going to come together, and when we’re together, we’re going to really enjoy and love each other’s company and be here for each other, independent.

Of that, and it doesn’t mean that you’re being selfish with your time or your energy, or you’re not a caring, loving, giving person, right? It doesn’t mean that at all. What it does mean is that you take responsibility for who you are. And I suggest that it makes for healthier relationships because listen, we’re going to mess up.

At times people, the world and things and events are going to trigger us and we’re going to act. As a child from time to time. But when we can own the responsibility of that and say, listen, I was wrong in the way that I acted. I did not act as an adult. I am sorry for that. That brings people closer and that takes an adult to recognize that and to apologize.

Children don’t do. Children are told to apologize, but they don’t do it as a natural reaction in a relationship. And yes, it is hard work. It’s hard work to be able to understand your feelings and to take responsibility for them. It’s much easier just to react from a place of just reacting without even thinking about.

But we’re not children, we’re adults. So what I ask you to do, my friend and I encourage you to explore this deeper for yourself and in your own life, is write down some examples of where you might be acting. As an emotional child where you are blaming in your life, where you are not taking responsibility, where do you feel entitled to something you haven’t earned?

Knowing that instead we have a choice and how we respond to everything. We have a choice in how we feel. We have a. In what goals and results we want. In our life. And yes, we have a choice to react or not to react to the buttons that people try to press to get us to react, including our ex. Yes, being an emotional adult does require more effort.

It does require a lot more responsibility, but any of us, Who have done this work, understand and know that it is well worth it. It’s worth it to take that step into managing ourselves and our minds so we aren’t dependent on other people for how we think, feel, act, and ultimately the results we get in our life.

Try. Look in your life where you are being an emotional child, how you can take more responsibility there, how you can stop blaming there and ultimately how you, my friend, can change the results and get the life you want and the life you my friend. You got this. I have no doubt you have everything it takes to get there.

And so my beautiful friend have a most amazing week. Think about what I’ve said today. Write down in your journal and be kind and loving when you do this. Do not blame. It is time to move on and get to the next chapter of your most amazing life after divorce. All right, my friends, thanks so much for being there.

I thank the world of you. Make it an amazing day, and until next time, bye.

You have the vision of what you want your life to look like after divorce, but maybe you just don’t know how to get there. So if you’re ready to take control of your life and want to find out more about our coaching, visit us. L a d-coaching.com. That’s l a d as in life after divorce-coaching.com. Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day.

And remember, yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce.