159 The 3-Step Guide to Navigating Hard Feelings in Your Blended Family

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Blended®

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Season 7, Episode 159: The 3-Step Guide to Navigating Hard Feelings in Your Blended Family

Guest:Dr. Alison Cook

Air Date: March 10, 2025

Alison:It was hard from the kid’s perspective; it takes them a while. They liked me. That doesn’t mean that they were ready to bring me in to be an attachment figure in the same way that their father was. And for me, I knew enough intellectually that I needed to honor the pace of the kids, but then also parts of me felt, “Gosh, are they ever going to accept me?”

Ron:Welcome to the FamilyLife Blended podcast. I’m Ron Deal. We help blended families, and those who love them, pursue the relationships that matter most. Relationships help us grow up. I mean, if we allow them to, that is. It’s both the sweetness and the grind of relationships that help us mature in Christ, even as we extend God’s love to those around us. I think that’s what it’s all about.

That’s what we’re about here at FamilyLife, and I’m glad that you’ve joined us for this podcast. You may know that we are one month away from our next Blended and Blessed® livestream live in Franklin, Tennessee. You can attend from anywhere in the world. If you’re near Franklin, come join us. We’d love to have you in the live audience, but if you’re not, that’s okay. All you need is a link and you can join us for this one-day marriage enrichment seminar designed specifically for blended family couples.

And if you didn’t know this, you can host some couples in your home; or your church can put a whole bunch of people in one room, and you can stream it and watch it and experience it all together. We have people all around the world who do that every single year. We hope you’ll be involved. Join us BlendedandBlessed.com or just look in the show notes and we’ll get you connected.

This year we’re focusing, by the way, every year is different. I don’t know if you knew that. Every year is a different theme, different speakers. We focus on a different aspect of stepfamily living. This year we’re going to focus on a few of the key themes from our new book The Mindful Marriage that my wife and I have coauthored with Terry and Sharon Hargrave. I hope you can join us. I think there’s going to be a lot of really good stuff for you and your family.

If you’re looking for a small group, a virtual group, or a live blended family group or events that are taking place in different churches around the country, we have a new and improved searchable map at FamilyLife that will help you find all kinds of marriage, parenting, and blended family opportunities. Again, our show notes will get you connected to that.

I am thrilled to have Dr. Alison Cook as my guest today. Alison is a therapist and host of a top ranked podcast called The Best of You. She’s the author of bestselling books like I Shouldn’t Feel This Way and The Best of You, and she’s co-author of Boundaries for Your Soul. She loves to help people heal from past wounds, forge new relationships, healthy relationships in experiencing a loving God who is for them she says. She and her husband, they formed a blended family when they married. They’ve got two adult children. They spend as much time as they possibly can in the mountains of Wyoming.

Alison, thank you so much for being with me today.

Alison:It’s such a delight to be with you, Ron. I’m so grateful for you and for this ministry.

Ron:The mountains of Wyoming, which mountains?

Alison:We are a little spur off of the Rockies called the Bighorn Mountains. We like to think of them as the undiscovered section. We’re about two ranges east of Jackson Hole, so we’re kind of the very happily undiscovered section out here.

Ron:It has been a long time since I’ve been up through Wyoming, but it is beautiful country.

Alison:Yes.

Ron:I remember it well from driving through a few times. So good for you. Glad you get to enjoy that. It was fun being on your podcast a little while ago. Thanks for being here on mine. I really want to talk with you about your latest book, but before we jump into that, I’m curious, I got to ask you this question. A lot of mental health professionals who are also part of a blended family have told me that their formal training really didn’t prepare them or equip them very well for stepfamily stuff. I’m wondering, was that your experience?

Alison:A hundred percent. I never really thought about it, but I don’t think I had any training, not one bit of training in it.

Ron:Wow.

Alison:Yeah.

Ron:And as you and I both know, there’s lots of things that we get in our training that we can eventually figure out how it applies; but I think what I hear you saying is nobody really connected those dots or really talked to you about the inner workings of blended family life.

Alison:None. You were the first person when I got ahold of your book, which we talked a little bit about on my podcast. It’s been fun as we’ve been getting to know each other, but that was the first time someone said, “You’ve got to read Ron Deal.” Because I had nothing, no help whatsoever.

Ron:Okay, so everybody’s wondering now, so what’s your journey been like, and so tell us a little bit about your family.

Alison:Yeah, so I met my husband, I was a little bit later. I was into my thirties, had really been waiting for just a wonderful Christian man and he showed up later and then come to realize I understood why the Lord in His providence brought our paths together a little bit later in life. He had been married, very happily married, and his wife grew ill with a terminal illness and had passed away. I met him about a year after she had passed away and he had two young children. I think when we met, they were seven and nine, and so immediately when I met him there was already this understanding that he was a single dad, a hundred percent single dad, which also was very rare.

That was another thing we found. There were very few resources for single dads, and so we both just ended up having to kind of scramble to figure this out. We had some good instincts. I was trained as a therapist. He had some really good instincts, but to be honest, in many ways our instincts, which turned out—you turned out to validate for me. We can go more into that, but were very different than some of what we were getting both from our Christian friends but also from the therapeutic community,

And so when I found your book, it was like, “Oh my goodness. Okay, we’re not crazy here,” because we were so aware of the needs of the kids through that transition.

Ron:Okay, just keep going. I’m so interested and fascinated about what that experience was like for you. What were your instincts, what needed confirmation and what needed readjusting?

Alison:Yeah. I mean my husband, without understanding the terminology, he did have someone speaking into his life who was very helpful to him, a family friend who had some background, but he really understood without using this language, the importance of that attachment.

His kids had a really tight attachment with him, and they’d had that. She was ill for a couple of years, and so he had really stepped into that primary caregiver role for a while. He was just aware, “This is really important. I have to maintain this secure connection with them.”

I also understood that and loved that about him, but understandably, even as a trained therapist at this point, the kids and I bonded very quickly. We met a couple of months after Joe and I’d been dating and had a sense of, “Oh, this is going to go somewhere. This is something.” He had not introduced anyone to them before. We immediately connected, just had this affinity for each other very naturally, but as you know Ron, it’s very different to have this really fun connection and affinity with each other than to leap from there to “I’m going to become your stepmom,” and so we took it really slow, really, really slow.

I lived in an apartment about five miles down the road. I would spend a lot of time, but I would always go home, and we kept these rhythms, so we very slowly—you named it for us, the crockpot method—very slowly began. I began to kind of come into some of those daily rhythms from a distance and really fostering that connection that I had. There was a natural affinity again, but again, every stage we noticed would stir up. Again, thinking back a little bit of that attachment anxiety and looking at it from the kid’s perspective, they’re like, it takes them a while. They liked me. That doesn’t mean that they were ready to bring me in to be an attachment figure in the same way that their father was.

Ron:Yes, exactly.

Alison:Makes so much sense to me in hindsight.

Ron:It does.

Alison:But in the middle of it, and I’ll be honest, it was also confusing for me because parts of me as I was trying to wrestle with, I knew enough intellectually that I needed to honor the pace of the kids, but this is where that internal family systems framework came in, so parts of me really got that, but then also parts of me felt, “Gosh, are they ever going to accept me?”

Ron:Yes.

Alison:“Will they ever receive me?” Right, that was really normal too, but it was a lot to kind of navigate internally for me until you came alongside, and I read your book that begin to name these things as so normal, so normal in this process.

Ron:There’re so many things I’m sitting here thinking, okay, if somebody’s listening and they’ve never heard this podcast before and they’ve never heard any of these ideas, there’s so much wealth of wisdom in what you just talked about: the going slow, the different parts, the recognizing that children need this. I now call it attachment reassurance; that I haven’t lost my dad just because this new woman’s coming into his life. We haven’t completely lost him or ourselves and our family relationship and the piece about the kids liked you. Yes, because there’s parts in them too and there’s a part of them that likes you.

Alison:Exactly.

Ron:Right next to it is another part that goes, “Huh, so what does this mean about mom? How do we remember her? How do we hold onto her when we’re sort of moving towards Alison? Well, I don’t think I want to move towards Alison.” This is why kids go hot and cold, and stepparents just need to hear that that comes with the territory and there’s nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong, or they are doing something wrong. It is what it is. Hey, reflect a little bit on the confusion between your parts and then looking at their parts and trying to make sense of it all. I mean, what was that journey like for you?

Alison:Yeah, talk about a crockpot; because the crockpot, each of the vegetables in the crockpot has its own constellation of parts.

Ron:That’s right. That’s right.

Alison:And each one of us, even I think about sometimes on our wedding day and we just named things. It was for me, mostly happy, for my husband, both happy and sad. He had lost a wife. He had different parts there and for our kids, in some ways it was more sad than happy. Again, not because they didn’t like me, but because it evoked a lot of their grief from that and kids, there isn’t a logic to it necessarily, but there’s always that loyalty, and so just learning to name together those different parts of all of us began to become how we grew closer together.

For me, I will say what I had to learn again through reading your books and recognizing I had parts of me, Ron, that are very wired to please people, to win people over, to earn love. I felt pretty skilled at that, and so God used this as an opportunity because what I had to do is go, no matter how wonderful I can be, there is in certain junctures I felt it as there’s a limit to how far I can go. Now, I don’t think about it so much that way now, but at the time that’s what I felt.

But what that did in me when I turned inward with that instead of and used it as an invitation to go, “Okay, God, what do you have here for me,” and God just had so much fun with the parts of me that were like, what does it mean to love really selflessly; that to love in this case isn’t to get that hit of, “Oh, my kids just think I’m great,” but to love is to actually lay down that desire to be seen as the primary caregiver. To actually paradoxically earn that right to be that person in their lives I had to simultaneously, in many ways, let it go and honor their mom’s priority in their attachment in their world, in their inner system.

That’s how I actually earned the right to be that second mom, that second parent, and so a lot of it along the way was giving voice to the parts of me. I had to find safe places because again, as many of your listeners know, especially as the stepparent, even that word, and we talked about it with our kids, none of us like that word because of the connotations. I’m sure you talk about this on the podcast, right?

Ron:Yes, yes, we do.

Alison:But as a stepparent or becoming a stepparent, I had to honor the parts of me that would feel hurt, that would feel rejected, that would feel left out. Sometimes it came out of the blue. I wouldn’t go on, early on there were times where I would step out of some holidays or some family events to really let the kids see, “I’m not trying to take this over.” I would feel hurt in those moments, but what I had to learn was that the part of me that felt hurt, that part of me needed to get care elsewhere, definitely not from the kids and sometimes from my significant other. He could be great about it but also bearing in mind that he was carrying a lot of responsibility.

And again, you named that Ron. He was that central figure. He had more power, and so also being careful not to overburden him, especially early on, and so a lot of that meant—and I will say a lot of that, what was hard is the people that I would turn to for the support who didn’t understand the reality of blended family dynamics. I had to get so careful about who I shared with on behalf of the parts of me that genuinely would feel hurt, that might feel rejected because other parts of me understood “This is the right thing we’re doing.”

I had to learn how to get care for those parts of me from folks who understood the larger picture. I just saw so many ways where this can go awry, basically. It’s a lot of internal work on everybody’s parts.

Ron:It’s a lot of internal work, and we’re going to come back to that, those parts here in just a minute. I really want to just emphasize to our listeners what Alison had just said about having to sacrifice the desire in her to be accepted and received and be more central in the lives of those stepchildren in the early years, to sacrifice that on the altar of what’s best for them. “I’m going to love them without that expectation,” and that is what earns you the right.

Alison:Yes.

Ron:That’s exactly right. Because what you’re doing is you’re proving yourself to be a safe person, trustworthy person, and without that trustworthiness then they’re not going to continue to move for you and give more and more and more your direction. If they feel like you’re infringing on the space that is the mom part of their heart, then they back up. If they feel like you’re coming in heavy and changing rules and trying to be the new authority and new sheriff in town, they sort of intuitively back up. Lack of safety equals “I move away from you.” More safety equals “I can move towards you in my timing as I’m ready.” As that, each ingredient in the crockpot is warming up and becomes ready to move toward in deeper and deeper ways, but safety first, right?

Alison:Yeah.

Ron:I just can’t emphasize that enough.

Okay, so it must have been helpful. Sounds like you and your husband were reading together, talking together, digesting concepts and ideas together for him to be able to see his role and maintain that connection with his kids. That’s equally important, isn’t it?

Alison:Yes, and I saw that, how important when everybody, and what I love about your work is you talk about the honeymoon coming at the end. I would not trade. It’s almost like a crash course. You get dumped into the fire of growth that I think most people, it comes, it just comes later on. You get the honeymoon first and then the crucible of growth later.

Ron:Yes.

Alison:In our case, as you named for us, the crucible came earlier, and so this trust like we’re dating, and I just have to trust that I’m not second. Because a lot of in Christian circles, there’s a big emphasis on the marriage should be primary and the kids are second, which is true. That marital bond needs to be the primary bond within the family, but in a blended family as you teach us, it’s different.

It’s a little bit different. It takes a minute, and we talked about that. We talked about that, but that requires next level trust. I’m not second. There is no second, first of all, in Christ. We were in the process of becoming one, but our process of becoming one looked very different because we really needed to ensure that the kids were pacing. Their pacing was slower than ours coming in, but again, I had to trust this isn’t me being second. There is no second in Christ, but those are great words. But we were immediately, that was put to test very early on for us, and so just a lot of conversations and a lot of naming.

Very honestly, I talk in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way a lot of—one of the skills that I learned that has been so helpful to me is naming behaviors, naming feelings as very separate from individuals, keeping those things very separate, naming really honestly without projecting things onto other individuals, if that makes sense. There are a lot of emotions that come up in that crockpot.

Ron:Right. Let’s come back to that too. Speaking of emotions, crockpot parenting and stepparenting, I’m curious what your step parenting journey was like, just the attachment bonding stuff was. We’ve talked about that a little bit. What was it like finding your way into, “Hey, could you guys help clean up the kitchen,” just everyday logistics?

Alison:Yeah, so early on, again, the pleasing part of me that is very pronounced, so I think even as a biological parent, we very quickly find our growth edges. As a stepparent without that kind of base of that biological connection, it is next level if I step in and ask for something. Again, because it’s something that’s the right thing in this moment, it’s good for them. It also forces you to really be aware of your motivations of yourself, so it’s like, I need to do this. This is going to displease them, and this is the right thing to do for our family and for me and for them.

So again, it takes that core strength, that internal core strength of the growth that I experienced in Christ as a result of that, I wouldn’t change for the world. It was hard. I had to do a lot of internal work around, like you said, asking to empty the dishwasher. It would’ve been very easy for me to just go in and do a lot of enabling to earn that love.

Ron:Absolutely.

Alison:And that was a pattern that would’ve been hard for me no matter what, but it was next level hard when there’s—so that again on the front end, you’re just jumping into the deep end of not only merging your life with another human, but some of that growth that you have to do as a parent.

Ron:And that would’ve been doubly difficult had you not known your husband had your back.

Alison:Yeah.

Ron:Or that he would step in and support you or that he would follow through with his kids if it needed to be. That’s why we say parenting’s a team sport. That’s true in any family. It’s ten times as true in a blended family and knowing how you’re going to help each other. Biological parents have to understand the limitations of what stepparents can do.

Alison:Yeah.

Ron:That fragileness that you feel and you’re in, you’re out. You’re hedging your bets, taking risks about, do I follow through because it’s going to come at an emotional cost, and so for the bioparent to be the one who says, I’m the stabilizer for you—

Alison:Yes.

Ron:—and all of this is so important.

Alison:And the understanding of the power dynamics; that you are often borrowing power. Now over time that gets less and less. Sometimes now I have the power; it’s kind of fun. I’m the one—

Ron:Good for you.

Alison:But especially early on, you are borrowing power. Again, the internal work that I had to do, that this is not a slight on me, it actually takes a certain kind of strength to be able to say, “I need you to do this thing because in this situation you need to be the one. It’s your power that,” and that’s not saying I am being a doormat. That’s using my agency wisely.

Ron:Absolutely, absolutely, and this is a parenting strategy we need in lots of moments in life. Some moms will say that when their teenage boys get to a certain age that mom has just lost all credibility as an authority in their life and dad needs to be the one who steps in, and that’s in a biological family situation.

Alison:That’s right.

Ron:So this is not, like you said, letting go of your strength or stepping back or just punting on your parenting responsibilities. This is playing to who has the leverage at this point.

Alison:That’s right. It’s wisdom.

Ron:Exactly. It’s an application of wisdom and for a stepparent to say that and to talk. I’m also picking up as you’re walking through all this, the importance of communication between parent and stepparent, getting on the same page about who’s going to play this role, who’s going to play that role, how are we going to help and support each other? It takes a lot of just overt dialogue so that you do come together as a team, so you are helping each other through those little journeys.

Alison:So much again of that naming work, just naming and again, really trying to get into that part of our brains that’s objective and not operating out of reactivity.

Ron:That’s right. That’s right.

Alison:It’s so crucial to say here, “I’m seeing something here. I’m not sure how we should handle this. Here’s how I might handle it. Here’s how I think you might handle it.” We had to get so next level on that communication. Here’s something again, or even about for him to see something that maybe I was doing that he was hearing about.

We need to name this without shame. Here’s something that’s happening and just getting really internally resilient to be able to tolerate some of the nuances of that to where we’re taking all the, again, I could have the parts of me that might be, “Ouch, that hurts.”

Again, that happens in all of parenting, but it is on the front end in blended families where before you’ve developed so many years of trust, it’s precarious, right? You’re doing it very quickly. There’s a lot of real time. The reactivity can get high, and so it was sort of a crash course in that kind of listening, repeating, removing emotion from conversations doesn’t mean I can’t have the emotions after the fact with God, with my journal, with a couple of safe people down the road. Certainly within the context of our family, we got better and better about naming these emotions.

But early on, because you’re still, the trust is still pretty delicate on all the ties, that naming work was just so important for us. Just we’re going to do some naming work now. We’re not going to solve. We’re not going to blame. This is just a naming exercise. That was really helpful to us.

Ron:I’m curious, there’s probably a hundred things you could list, but is there one or two things that looking back, watching your stepchildren grieve their mother—you know grief, we carry it with us. It didn’t end just because there’s a new family. A new marriage doesn’t mean that that is turned off at all. I’m just curious, what observation, what are one or two things that were, sort of stood out, or experiences that you had as a stepparent trying to love and be compassionate for the grief that the kids were going through over time?

Alison:I would say the one thing that I learned more than anything was that actions spoke the loudest. Kids pick up on their just authenticity radars. They know, and so the actions always spoke the loudest, the actions of sometimes needing to leave the room and letting them be able to grieve the three of them. That action spoke far louder than a lot of words about trying to make people feel better, but maybe actually just was alleviating my own discomfort.

So sometimes honoring the need for space, honoring their need to have rituals to honor grief and not necessarily needing to participate in them, but again, the action of making it a safe space for that to come up whenever it needed to come up.

So holiday decorations, that was a big one. Holidays are a big, again, back to that, letting go of some of my needs or not needs but desires, right? That was a big one for years.

Ron:And making space for them to grieve and honor and remember and reflect.

Alison:And keep some symbols, many symbols that it didn’t just need to replace some of these things, right, and then just again, the wisdom again, Ron and what you read about the crockpot and time over time, it all comes together for everybody, but on the front end, being willing to say for these holidays in some of these cases, decorations, tree decorations, rich family rituals, I’m going to step back. Again, not to be a doormat, not to enable, but more to empower a process that needs to occur, and if I understand the ten-year plan here, the twenty-year plan here, the five-year plan here, I can do that in this moment. I don’t need my specific idea of what this should be about drive. I can defer that.

Ron:Yeah. The irony is the more you push for it today, the less likely it is to happen.

Alison:Exactly.

Ron:The more you’re patient—

Alison:A lot of delayed gratification.

Ron:That’s right. The more you’re trusting that it will come at some point in the future then the paradox is it sort of helps people relax and they begin to actually move toward each other in their own timing and in their own way.

Alison:And they get curious because again, as you said, you earn trust. You become someone they want to know. You become someone they want to invite in. “What’s this like for you?” “What would you want to do today?” And “Oh my goodness, let me share that with you.” And suddenly you’re having those conversations you’ve longed to have. “Oh, let me share with you what’s meaningful for me on this holiday. What’s meaningful for me as far as these traditions,” right? Suddenly you’re invited in and it’s just all the more beautiful for that, the timing of it.

Ron:You’ve mentioned The Smart Stepfamily; that’s a resource that was helpful for you. I want to say to our viewer, listener, Diane Fromme’s book, Stepparenting the Grieving Child, which is specifically about stepparenting with children who have lost their biological parent. We’ve had Diane on this program before. You can scroll back through the podcast and find that interview, but that book is an exceptional one as well.

Okay, so we’ve been talking about parts. Let’s break this down for our listener a little bit. You are a certified Internal Family Systems therapy person; IFS we call it. If anybody’s ever seen the movie, the animated kids’ movie Inside Out, which is not just for kids by the way, one and two, it’s sort of built off some of the principles of IFS or at least reflects that in some ways. We’re just sitting here talking about the parts of us as a wife, as a stepmother, kids and the different parts of them and how they’re all sort of inside there. Can you just sort of give us an elevator summary of some of those core principles to just start our conversation and we’ll begin to wrestle with it in terms of the applications and blended families?

Alison:Yeah, I love that. So Internal Family Systems is exactly what it says. It posits that there’s an inner family inside each of us. I think the Inside Out movies are a brilliant depiction of it. We each have an inner family of parts. Richard Schwartz, the founder of the model, he just called these parts, and we all are aware of this. Part of me loves being a parent; a part of me I wish I had more space. We all experienced that.

And what he noticed in people though, were there really these three categories of parts. There are parts of us that are manager parts. These are the parts of us that kind of show up, get dressed in the morning, get to work. They want the world to see us in a certain way. These are the parts of us that want to prevent pain. So they please, they produce, they perform, they perfect, they analyze, they control, they problem solve. These are the manager parts of us. We all have these parts.

The second category of protective parts are firefighter parts and to their name these are the parts of us that seek to put out the flames of pain after it surfaces, so they’re the parts that numb. They shut us down. They reach for the booze. They reach for the Netflix binge. They can become addictions if we’re not careful, but these are the parts of us that are just trying to remove the pain, the flames of pain.

And then the third category of parts that we all have are what we call these exiles. These are the parts of us we try to shove away. They’re the painful feelings, the hurt, the fear, the insecurity, the loneliness that we don’t want to feel. And in a healthy family system, in a healthy family system, which applies to blended families, it applies to all families, but it also applies to our internal family, there’s harmony. We don’t want to eradicate any of these parts. We need them all to some degree, but they need to be in a healthy balance.

And so what we see when a soul, a human soul gets misaligned, the manager parts might’ve gotten extreme. We might see that show up in perfectionism. That is a soul where that perfection, that we’re perfecting everything and we’re doing it so well to avoid the pain and shame from our past usually, that it’s just extreme. We can never move back from that. Or we see extreme firefighters when in addictions where it’s just we’re going for that hit of feeling better constantly.

But we can also see exiles take us over in the form of depression where that sadness just floods us, or those exiles can also take us over. The goal is to lead through the power of the Holy Spirit. We talk a lot in the book, our book Boundaries for Your Soul about the Spirit led self; that the Holy Spirit, John 14 Jesus talks about, comes to live inside of us as a counselor, as a comforter, is the very presence of God inside of us. And so through that place where the Holy Spirit lives inside of us, we can actually lead these different parts of ourselves. We become a parent to our own inner world.

And so if I notice, “Oh man, I am just working for me,” sometimes that production part of me just I’m, “I can’t get myself to stop.” What that signals is a cue to get curious. There’s no shame in this. I’m noticing that it’s usually cue we’re out of balance and that a more vulnerable part of me that’s maybe fearful, that’s maybe feeling hurt, is wanting to come to the surface. And those other parts of me are like, “We’re not going there.”

And so the goal is actually to have a healthy relationship with each of these different parts of you so that you can lead yourself. So for example, Ron, when we were talking earlier, I can be aware of a part of me that’s hurt and honor that while simultaneously the part of me that knows I need to show up as the adult here, I need to show up in a responsible, mature way, doesn’t mean I’m not also simultaneously hurt.

Ron:That’s right. So let’s do an application. I’m thinking a stepparent is listening right now, and they’re going, “Ugh, yeah, I get hurt every other day. I get that look. I get that attitude, and it just tells me I’m not wanted, nobody enjoys me. I’m not really a part of the family, and that’s hurt. And yet you’re telling me, Alison, I got to show up as an adult in this moment. So what do I do with those two parts of me?”

Alison:So this is the beauty of inner complexity, and again, I want to just take it back to the theology briefly that we are made in the image of God. And if you think about the Godhead, there’s a three member Trinity. God is three in one. There’s that inner complexity even in God; that’s a mystery. I don’t fully understand that, but I do know that it’s as made in the image of God. We are so complex. We’re so complex, and it’s just a super helpful tool to be able to say two things can be true. I can both honor the part of me that feels rejected in this moment and deploy the part of me that needs to parent in this moment.

And you have to do that work internally. That takes some of that prayer journaling, that processing on your own, “Oh, I feel hurt,” and also, “I love these kids” and I get it, and I have compassion. Those things are both true. And so you begin to kind of notice in your body, I can carry sometimes even I’ll put my hand on my heart to honor, “Oh, that hurts a little bit,” even as while I’m present in front of me, “Hey, I know you don’t like this, and this is what we’ve got to do.” That parent part of me can still show up.

And it’s such a freeing reality when you begin, we call it Spirit led self-leadership. You begin to lead yourself in partnership with God’s spirit. You’re not denying the complexity of your emotions. You’re honoring them while simultaneously showing up.

Now, another one I would also say is those firefighters, where they come in is this is a lot of work to do.

Ron:Yeah, right.

Alison:Right?

Ron:Yes.

Alison:And so those healthy firefighters, when they’re healthy, say—and this is why in my own relationship, we slowed things way down because even for me, the way that I’m wired, this is a lot of emotional work. I needed space in the evenings by myself before we merged households where I could take some breaths, pray through the different feelings. That’s a healthy firefighter, instead of just numbing and saying, “Oh, I’m going to drown this out,” it’s saying, “I need some comfort. I need some release. I need some rest. I need some reassurance. I need some healthy self-care to do the work of honoring the complexity of these emotions.” So that’s where those parts can come in and actually help us when we have them in proper balance.

Ron:Okay, and let’s flip it over because same things going on inside children, whether it’s your own children or somebody else’s children. They’re going to have bad moments and bad days, and they’re going to have fire in their eyes toward us at some point. How do we think about, okay, what I’m seeing this kid do, what’s coming out of them and what is that telling or signaling to me about what may be going on inside them?

Alison:It can be so helpful as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, to have that framework in mind of, this is a part of them. And when you immediately recognize this is a part of that person, this is not all of who they are. In this moment that child is saying they hate me or they’re mad at me, or I can see it in their eyes, this is not all of who they are. This is a part of them.

So number one, you get curious instead of taking it personally. I wonder what’s happening inside of them. This is a part of them that just got really activated. I wonder what that’s about, right? It allows you to honor. There’s probably more going on here. And so instead of reacting to the anger there, it helps us be able to say, “I see that you’re angry. I’m curious about that. I’m curious about that part of you that is so angry right now.”

I’m holding space. I’m not enabling that behavior, but I’m naming it. But I’m naming it in a way that hopefully over time as kids age can go, “Yeah.” That allows them to be able to recognize, “Oh, something just happened there. That was a part of me.” And so it’s just a helpful framing of when especially kids act out of these parts. So to just name that, get curious about that. We still need to set a healthy boundary with the behavior, but it’s one part of that person. It’s not all of who they are.

Ron:That is so really helpful. I’m sitting here thinking about moments in my own parenting journey and moments I’ve seen in others where child gives you attitude and we come right back with, “You’re not going to disrespect me that way.” I think the way to hold that reactivity is if you can remember as you just said that this is a part of this child. This is not all of who they are, and that doesn’t represent everything they think or feel for you.

But it’s really important to go, “Wait a minute, if I’m empowering this child to be the person who tells me whether I’m respected or not, I’m in trouble.” I mean, you can’t really give that power to kids because you’re not going to stay in charge of yourself as a parent in that moment. Instead for you to say, “No, I’m going to act respectable. I’m going to act as if I have dignity and honor.”

Alison:That’s right.

Ron:“And out of that, because God first of all tells me He’s made me that way. He’s done that in Jesus for me, and so I’m going to act that way in spite of what I see coming out of you, and instead of making this about me, I’m going to make this about you.” Then you can get curious. Then you can go, “Huh, I wonder what’s behind that,” and start asking questions or listening at a deeper level.

Alison:Exactly, and if you understand these loosely, these categories of parts, it doesn’t so much matter. So for example, let’s say a child comes to a stepparent, “You’re not my mom,” “You’re not my dad,” right? First of all, inside of me, “Ouch.” I can give myself that. And then the more we train ourselves, let’s get curious about that. We don’t know where that came from.

So the naming of, “Okay, I see that you’re angry,” or the naming of, “I’m curious about where that came from.” There could be a couple of different places. It could be that there’s pain underneath there, something happened that put the kid, the child, into a position of feeling threatened, feeling that attachment threatened. So we want to get curious about that versus taking it personally. Maybe the child has learned that that pushes our buttons.

So that might be another way to frame it, but the more we stay grounded in our own curiosity, it’s such a powerful way. Get curious about that, paradoxically, we retain power. When we try to power over the child, we lose power.

Ron:Yes. You lose it and you lose. You send a message that you’re not safe and the child feels intimidated and more threatened and you’re going to get more from them of what you’re already getting instead of less. So yeah, the goal there is maintaining self, self-control in the midst of that difficult moment because that is actually what empowers you to lead through the moment to something on the other side that eventually can come about as a result of you maintaining yourself.

It’s so difficult. I just want to acknowledge that. I mean, what we’re talking about here is really hard stuff because those parts of us that feel the pain to go ouch, they run deep. And if you’ve had a pristine, beautiful, amazing life of childhood, family, people who’ve loved you your entire time and the first time you hear that from your own child or somebody else’s, it hurts. But if you’ve had some experiences in life where you have been rejected, you have been pushed aside—

Alison:Exactly.

Ron:—you were unimportant to the people that you were trying to be important to, then that little moment is huge in your life and extremely difficult.

Alison:Yes. I know in your new book you talk about this a lot; we tend to replace some of our own childhood wounds in the families that we choose.

Ron:Yep. We bring them with us.

Alison:And so we have a choice there. So for example, in my family of origin, my parents were married, there were four of us, but there was a bond, a sort of bond between my older sister and my parents that I often felt left out of. So imagine me going into a family where there’s a bond between two people—

Ron:You’re often left out of it. You’re an outsider.

Alison:—that’s not an accident that God has brought this opportunity to heal a part of me in this way; to begin to heal, begin to notice. But in order to heal it, it does flare up.

Ron:Yes.

Alison:I do know that “Oh, I feel so rejected.” And I feel rejected, and this is another example of when a part is presenting itself for healing, and I would be aware of that I was like, “This hurt.” That should be an ouch, but this feels like catastrophic to my soul. That was a cue to me to again go, “That is so interesting.” There’s a young part of me that is feeling that as that five-year-old me felt that in my family of origin when I was left out, that had never been witnessed yet, and so this is creating an opportunity for me to, yes, I have to figure that out in the moment, but it’s also an opportunity for me to honor the deep roots of that wound, of feeling like I wasn’t valuable in a family. I mean that worked because I took that invitation, allowed me to heal a part of me that had been buried for decades.

Ron:I just got to draw out something you just said. I think a lot of people when you pointed out that that was a theme from your childhood, now you’re going to experience that as a stepmother. A lot of people would’ve said, and that’s evidence of Satan right there. He goes after the jugular, but you said, “How nice of the father to give me a chance to heal that in a present-day situation by learning how to respond differently here and being a different person in the similar circumstance than when I was a child.”

A lot of things depend on how you look at it and if you frame it up as, this is the devil just beating me down, now, there may be a little enemy warfare going on behind the scenes. I’m not going to discredit that, but at the very same time to say, “But Lord, through your power and strength, we can redeem this part of me,” but I have to be willing, as you said, to look at that part, to wrestle with that part, to do my homework, to struggle with that part of me. You’re in a book is I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t feel this way.

So that first thought is, “Well, I’m going to cram this down.” Is it firefighter? Is that the right? “I’m going to dispose of this. I’m not going to look at this or wrestle with it or struggle with it.”

Alison:Exactly.

Ron:And then what happens? We just end up pushing it further into our heart where it just remains and it keeps bubbling up all the time, but we’re not able to do anything about it. Talk to us a little bit about some of those core concepts. When we feel like we need to just run away from something, what should we do instead?

Alison:Yeah. I think Ron, in our culture, the messages that we have about these feelings are, on one hand it’s like validate and live from every feeling you have, which I don’t think is helpful at all. Right? On the other extreme is just deny your feelings, suppress them. God will take them away or putting everything to God or the enemy, which is also I think, an extreme that is not helpful.

And to me, what I was trying to lay out in the book is this sort of wisdom approach, which is I have the feeling. The feeling is there. I don’t want to try to, I use the word gaslight myself. “Oh, I don’t really have it.” Well, I actually do. I have that feeling. I don’t really know what it means or what to do with it. That’s a process of discernment, but at the baseline level, I am having that feeling.

So again, for me early on in our relationship, I feel really rejected. I just had to, and I talk about this in the book, I just had to name that, not necessarily to the family, but what is this about? I also knew I wanted to be able to go into my family feeling like a whole person, so I had to be able to work through that. I couldn’t work through that if I didn’t name it, but I also wasn’t sure yet. This is in the book I’ll talk about, so there’s the naming.

The framing is how do I frame that? Is it spiritual warfare? Sometimes that’s right. Is it a wound from my past? In my case, bingo. Oh my goodness, I didn’t even know I had this deep, deep wound of feeling rejected from my own family of origin that is now resurfacing. Wow, God, that’s what’s true. We get at the truth. That was how I needed to frame it.

Sometimes we need to frame things like this is a part of me that isn’t deeply rooted. It’s a carnal part of me and I need to just, “You know what, Alison, take a step back.” Sometimes that’s the way to frame those feelings. “This is a part of me being petty.” We don’t know until we do this work.

I really believe this is the work of sanctification. It’s daily, and I talk in the book about, I’ll take daily walks now kind of noticing, “Oh, this is what I’m feeling. This is what I’m feeling.” I name without shame. How do I frame that? That’s the deeper work of, am I just kind of being a jerk here? Do I have a deep wound that is really crying out for some healing? Is there something going on here? There’s lots of different ways to frame it.

And then what I go through in the book is then we can brave the path forward, but when we’ve done that work to discern our inner world, our inner life in partnership with God’s spirit, I cannot emphasize that enough, right? In partnership with the Holy Spirit, who is the author of truth, the brave steps flow from there. The brave step might be like, for example, in my case, I need to work on those childhood wounds or I’m not going to be able to step in a healthy way into this family. That’s my work. The brave work could have been I’m actually being disrespected and I’m not getting the support I need. Then those would’ve been different steps because sometimes that can happen, right?

Ron:Right.

Alison:So that work on our end, taking accountability for “This is what I’m feeling,” “This is how I’m framing it,” prayerfully with God informs us so that when we do take those steps forward, we’re taking them with confidence and with clarity and knowing that God is for us and with us in this.

Ron:As you’re talking, I pulled up my phone because a Bible passage came to mind.

Alison:Yeah.

Ron:I just am chewing on this in light of what you’re saying: name what’s hard, frame your reality, and get brave about finding a new path. It’s a curious story. In John chapter five, Jesus walks up to a guy who’s sitting at a pool and he’s trying to get healed. He’s a paralytic. He’s been there for 38 years. Now, everybody knows that’s why you sit around this pool. Everybody knows that’s what people are doing there is they’re hoping that they’re going to be able to receive some miracle and be able to walk away from their circumstances. Jesus walks up to this guy and He says to him, “Do you want to get well?”

Now that is just on the surface the most curious story, Alison, like, “Duh, what do you think I’m doing here for 38 years? That’s what everybody else is doing. You’ve heard the stories. You know why we’re here,” but Jesus doesn’t take it for granted that we actually want to get well.

Alison:That’s right. That’s right.

Ron:What you’re talking about is people having to make a decision, “Do I really want to get well? Am I willing to name this? Am I willing to frame it up? Am I willing to get brave about this piece of me that I just discovered perhaps, or maybe I’ve known about a long time? I don’t really want to face it.” Well, you know what? You can sit around the well hoping to get fixed and it’ll never happen unless you really want to get well.

Alison:Yes.

Ron:And for those who haven’t read the story, what happens is he has a conversation. The guy says, “Yeah, I’m here. I just don’t have anybody to help me get into the waters when it’s stirred and there’s a miracle about to happen.” And then Jesus says, “Okay, I’ll give you what you want. Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” Maybe you’re listening right now and you’re realizing you haven’t really wanted to get well. You sort of flirt at it. You pretend, but you really haven’t been willing to do what’s super hard to do. What words of encouragement would you offer to somebody who’s kind of having that realization?

Alison:Yeah. First of all, I love the honesty, if you’re aware of it, because it is so true. We have a choice. God gives us the gift of agency. We have a choice, and really hard things happen in our lives. I look at my kids’ loss of their mom. That was not their fault. That was a tragedy, and they still have a choice about how they’ll respond to that.

I think about I have learned from that, and to your point about how I responded to my own, I have a choice how I respond to things that are hard, that are not my fault, that are out of my control. I have a choice about how I respond to things that even I had a hand in. Am I going to turn toward the healing of Jesus? That’s it. That’s the question I have to answer. It does not matter what the thing is outside of me. I have a choice. God doesn’t gaslight us. I will say that. He doesn’t say, “Oh, no, it’s not hard.” It is hard, and also, we have a choice. You have a choice. You have a choice to say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

That’s that agency that we say to the Lord, no matter what we’re facing, “I will follow you even though this is hard, even though I didn’t want this, even though it feels unfair, even though I feel like I don’t deserve this and even though I’m a little bit angry, God, yet I will follow you and put my trust in you.” It’s an active faith and we have a lot of choice in that. God doesn’t impose. He gives us that agency.

And so I would just say to the listener, oh my gosh, is it worth it? Is it so worth it? I wouldn’t trade anything for what I have grown in my spirit of that freedom that we talk about, freedom in Christ, that freedom of gosh, what a beautiful journey of becoming more and more and more like the woman he wanted me to become. That is so lifegiving. It so worth it. It isn’t always easy. Sometimes it’s easier to play the victim.

Ron:Yes.

Alison:Sometimes it’s easier to blame others, and I’m not saying sometimes other people aren’t at fault for what’s hard. We can name that. We can name “They hurt me,” and also, what am I going to do to turn toward Christ in this?

Ron:You say in your book, towards the end, I wrote it down. I just was captured by it, “To experience hope,” you say, “you have to face what’s hard.”

Alison:Yep.

Ron:And man, you’ve been helping us face what’s hard today. Thank you, Alison. I appreciate you being with me.

Alison:Thanks so much for having me. Again, I’m just so grateful personally, as I’ve mentioned to you, about how you’ve helped my family so much and I’m so grateful for the good work you’re continuing to put in the world.

Ron:Appreciate that. If you want to learn more about Dr. Alison, her podcast, her book I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, check the show notes, we’ll get you connected. It’s all good stuff.

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