Intentional Living with Tanya Hale Tanya Hale: Certified Life Coach

In recent years, fawning has been added to the survival responses of flight, flight, and freeze. While fight is a conflict strategy and flight and freeze are avoidant strategies, fawning is referred to as an appeasement strategy.  When we fawn we seek to bring ourselves into alignment with the other person, who our brains perceive as a threat, by people-pleasing, saying yes when we want to say no, or doing what it takes to avoid conflict. Though fawning can work out well short-term by diffusing the situation, it makes it impossible for us to create healthy relationships.  Understanding what fawning is, why we do it, and how to stop is an important conversation.

Sometimes the decisions we need to make feel overwhelming and super scary.  And because of that we hesitate and procrastinate, and we drag it out and cause ourselves extra hours, days, weeks, months, or even years of angst as we struggle to make the decision.  How can we find the confidence to make decisions easier and faster?  And how will we know if the decision we make is right?  The answer to those question lies in our SELF confidence.

People having a mid-life crisis is common enough that it is often the focus of movies and tv shows, memes and jokes.  It is often portrayed as middle-aged people buying expensive cars or running off and having an affair.  But a mid-life crisis does not need to be something that brings down the financial well-being or the family.  If we understand it and approach it from the inside, rather than the outside, it can be an amazing turning point in our lives for tapping into our life's possibility, of creating a renewed zest and energy for life that feels amazing.  In that context, I absolutely say 'Yes, please!' to a mid-life crisis.

Setting healthy boundaries is an important part in every relationship, and sometimes, it is just so hard.  When the other person is not happy about the boundary, when they get angry or make accusations or threats, it can be so challenging to stick with what we feel is important for our relationship.  So, when we get pushback from those few special people in our lives, how can we hold to the boudaries that we decided to set?  

This week I get to interview my husband, Sione, on his experience with moving forward after divorce.  Though it can often feel as though divorce is the end, and it absolutely is in some ways, it can also be the beginning of greater self-awareness, cleaning up your dysfunctional behaviors, and creating a life, and even a relationship, you could only dream about when you were in the thick of a really difficult marriage.

Divorce is tough, and when it happens to you, it can be devastating, and it can feel like the end.  And to be honest, in many ways it is. But divorce can also be the beginning of finding yourself in a way you never have before.  It can be the beginning of understanding who you really are and how you can grow into a healtheir and happier version of yourself.  In this episode I am talking with my good friend and fellow life coach Wendy Lee Johnson about her divorce journey and how what seemed like the end, really turned into the beginning of an incredible life journey.  You can find Wendy at www.wendyleejohnsoncoaching.com or on her podcast 'Parenting the Tough Stuff.'