Newbury Park Counseling

06/15/2024

Learning to Invest Your Energy in People Who Deserve It

In life, our energy is one of our most valuable resources. Like time, it's finite, and once spent, it cannot be reclaimed. Therefore, it's crucial to be mindful of where and in whom we invest this precious resource. Learning to place your energy into people who deserve it is not only an act of self-care but also a pathway to more meaningful and fulfilling relationships. Here are some insights on how to cultivate this practice:

1. **Recognize Your Worth**
Understand that your energy has value. You bring unique qualities, perspectives, and strengths to any relationship. When you appreciate your worth, you become more selective about who gets to share in it. This self-awareness serves as the foundation for healthy interactions.

2. **Set Boundaries**
Setting boundaries is essential for maintaining your energy levels. Know your limits and communicate them clearly. Boundaries help filter out those who respect and value you from those who might drain your energy without reciprocation.

3. **Evaluate Relationships**
Regularly assess the relationships in your life. Ask yourself:
- Does this person support and uplift me?
- Do they respect my time and boundaries?
- Is there a balance in our give-and-take?

Positive answers indicate relationships that deserve your energy. Negative patterns, on the other hand, may suggest it's time to reevaluate your investment.

4. **Look for Mutual Effort**
Healthy relationships are characterized by mutual effort and respect. Pay attention to who reaches out, who shows interest in your well-being, and who supports you during tough times. Genuine connections involve effort from both sides, creating a balanced and nourishing exchange.

5. **Practice Letting Go**
It's tough to let go of people, especially if you've invested a lot of time and emotion into the relationship. However, if a relationship is consistently draining and one-sided, it's healthier to release it. Letting go makes space for more deserving individuals to enter your life.

6. **Trust Your Intuition**
Your gut feelings are powerful indicators of who deserves your energy. If someone consistently makes you feel uneasy or exhausted, trust that instinct. Conversely, if you feel uplifted and energized by someone’s presence, they are likely worth your investment.

7. **Surround Yourself with Positive Influences**
Seek out relationships with people who inspire you, who push you to be better, and who celebrate your successes. Positive influences will enhance your energy rather than deplete it.

8. **Nurture Self-Care**
Investing in yourself is just as important as investing in others. Make sure to prioritize self-care practices that replenish your energy. When you are well-rested and content, you are better equipped to discern where your energy should go.

Learning to place your energy in people who deserve it is an ongoing journey. It requires self-reflection, honesty, and sometimes, difficult decisions. However, by doing so, you cultivate a circle of trust and positivity, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling and balanced life. Remember, you deserve relationships that nourish and elevate you. Choose wisely, and cherish those who reciprocate your energy with love and respect.

04/10/2024

12/22/2023

Happy Holidays

07/31/2023

This is so true

WHEN YOU SAY GOODBYE TO A PARENT
You are suddenly living in a whole new world.

You are no longer ‘the child’ and regardless of how long you have officially been ‘grown up’ for, you realise you actually never were until this moment. The shock of this adjustment will shake your very core.

When you have finally said goodbye to both your parents, assuming you were lucky enough to have had two. You are an orphan on this earth and that never, ever gets easier to take no matter how old and grey you are yourself and no matter how many children of your own you have.

You see, a part of your body is physically connected to the people that made it and also a part of your soul. When they no longer live, it is as if you are missing something practical that you need – like a finger or an arm. Because really, you are. You are missing your parent and that is something far more necessary than any limb.

And yet the connection is so strong it carries on somehow, no-one knows how exactly. But they are there. In some way, shape or form they are still guiding you if you listen closely enough. You can hear the words they would choose to say to you.

You can feel the warmth of their approval, their smile when a goal is achieved, their all-consuming love filling the air around you when a baby is born they haven’t met.

If you watch your children very closely you will see that they too have a connection with your parents long after they are gone. They will say things that resonate with you because it brings so many memories of the parent you are missing. They will carry on traits, thoughts and sometimes they will even see them in their dreams.

This is not something we can explain.

Love is a very mystical and wondrous entity.

It is far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all and grief, grief is the price of that love. The deeper the love the stronger the grief.

When you say goodbye to a parent, do not forget to connect with that little girl who still lives inside you somewhere.

Take very good care of her, for she, she will be alone and scared.

When you say goodbye to your parents, you lose an identity, a place in the world. When the people who put you on this earth are no longer here, it changes everything.

Look after yourself the way they looked after you and listen out for them when you need it the most.

They never really leave.

Donna Ashworth
From my poetry collection
To The Women: words to live by
UK: https://amzn.eu/d/i8Xpzmu
US: https://a.co/d/2FaN5Ey

To The Woman is the second book from History Will Remember author, and social media wordsmith, Donna Ashworth. Donna’s poems and essays for women are constantly flying around the internet bringing positivity and solidarity. This collection contains 48 favourite poems, plus beautiful quotes; truly....

03/22/2023

This is good

I went outside to get my mail yesterday and felt the warmth of the sun on my skin. I looked up when I heard a squeal of laughter a few hundred feet away. My heart stopped for a moment as I watched short, chubby legs race down the driveway across from me, but just as the small feet came close to the street, long, thin arms grabbed the boy from behind and lifted him up to safety. I watched as my neighbor wrapped her limbs around the small body and pretended to eat him up like a chocolate chip cookie.

I sighed at the sweet sight and was jealous of my friend with a two-year-old son; not because I miss the exhaustion of raising little ones, but because she knows where the edge is when it comes to parenting—and can pull her child back to safety.

When I was the parent of three small children, I always plucked them back from edges. I would grab their hand as we walked through parking lots, picked them up when they got to close to the ledge at the pool, made sure they slowed down as they ran towards to stairs.

I put plastic gates up and buckled car seats. I chased and grabbed and lifted them to safety over and over again. I did everything I could to protect them, to keep them alive, to make sure they didn’t get too close to the edge.

Then my kids grew into teenagers. And those scary edges I’d worked so hard to protect my kids from now feel like cliffs—and no matter how fast I run, no matter how far I outstretch my hand, no matter how hard I try, sometimes I just can’t pull them back.

Sometimes I don’t even know where those edges are.

And I recognize I’m no longer supposed to envelope my kids, I understand that they need to make decisions on their own, I know that they need to teeter on the edge—but it’s just so damn hard.

Over that edge is the rest of the world, and it is full of scary things.

Will they be safe when they walk through the doors of their school each day? Will they remember not to respond to a text number they don’t recognize? Are they empowered enough to retain their self-worth when dating and strong enough to say no when offered alcohol or drugs?

Did I ever tell them not to put a drink down at a party or leave with someone they don’t know? Will they remember to be careful when they walk too close to the edge?

And although holding on tight to their hands feels so good, I know that letting go is the most profound expression of love I can give, and the only way I may get my children to return from the edge.

My heart still sees three little kids, but I can’t deny their growing independence.

I watch my neighbor and her son for a few more moments. He runs around the side of his house and then peeks around the corner to see if she is still there. He smiles at her, contemplating taking another step, but then giggles as he turns and races back to her, wrapping his short arms around her long legs.

I can’t help thinking that this is also the appropriate protocol for parenting a teenager. You stay back in the distance while your child ventures away independently, hoping they know you’re behind them, waiting to be a safe haven if needed.

It is a difficult thing for a parent to watch their child at the edge of danger, of choices, of independence; yet, I sit on my hands, monitoring from a distance, and resist the urge to pull them back.

Because it is at the edge I know they will one day jump, and hopefully soar to new heights.

And God willing, fly back to me again.

Photo cred: Liz Binder Photography

Follow Whitney Fleming Writes

02/07/2023

Via Wordables

09/28/2022

Try it

So much this! 🥰

09/23/2022

This is a good one

Right before I was married, my mom told me that she once overheard me on the phone when I was 14 years old. I was talking to my brother who was in college. Apparently, I was ranting that
it was hard being at home without him because our mom embarrassed me and wasn’t like “other moms.”

My mom told me she cried for three days after that phone call. I never knew.

She made a tremendous effort to connect with me and provide the fun teenage years she never had, and even though she knew we were going through typical pains associated with teenagedom, she didn’t know how I truly felt.

As I listened to her words as an adult, I felt the heat of shame creep up on my cheeks. Of course, I was mortified. I attempted a feeble apology for my behavior during those years and claimed that it must have been my hormones.

But even though decades have passed by, and we have an amazing relationship now, I remember feeling that way. I remember feeling embarrassed of my mother and wishing I could be a little “cooler” than my family could manage.

Luckily, that was a short phase, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was acting like an idiot, and my mother was a living, breathing saint. God and karma had the last laugh, however, and blessed me with three daughters.

I think about that story a lot when I am in the weeds of parenting three teenage girls, which, to be honest, is every day. I think about how I broke my mother’s heart and how she often tells me she course-corrected a lot based on my attitude toward her.

If I was belligerent, she knew it was often something going on with my friends. She let me get away with a little bit more then.

If I was exceedingly obedient, she knew I was guilty of something, and she tightened the reigns.

When I lashed out at her, she knew she needed to reel me back in a little tighter.

But to think that I didn’t hurt her during these times, to think that she didn’t take it personally, well, I could tell by her face that she carries a little bit of that pain with her to this day.

It’s this knowledge that frustrates me sometimes when experts say, “Don’t take what your teen says or does personally.”

I mean, I understand it in theory. They will make bad choices that are not a reflection of your parenting. Sometimes they just want to get a rise out of you. It could just be hormones or “hanger” or simply them slowing breaking away.

But my relationship with my children is the most personal thing in this world to me, and during this tumultuous time their words and actions often shatter my heart.

I often tell myself that I’m too emotional, too invested, but I don’t know how to parent any other way. I’m not even sure if I would want to.

But instead of telling parents not to take it personally, let’s start acknowledging that there will be times your teen strikes you where it hurts, perhaps even where you are most vulnerable. Let’s start by admitting that watching your teen make poor choices is gut-wrenching. Let’s start supporting each other through those times when our teens break our hearts.

Because every one of us is going through it, feeling it, trying to figure out what we’re doing wrong. And if you’re not, consider yourself lucky.

It’s all personal.

I’m not glad I hurt my sweet mom, but I’m glad she kept feeling my emotions. I’m glad she didn’t respond in kind, and instead parented the kid in front of her at any given moment. I’m glad she called me out when I acted like a brat and lost her temper because I pushed too hard and coddled me when I needed it most.

She simultaneously felt every emotion as I went through it, and loved me through it all. It was personal to her and part of our story.

I wish the experts would say, “Your teen will break your heart, but I promise you’ll survive. In fact, one day, if you’re lucky, your relationship will be stronger because you felt it all—the good times and the bad.”

Because I’m no expert on raising teens, but that’s the one thing I know.

xoxo,
Whitney Fleming Writes

09/13/2022

Love this

This is everything!

09/10/2022

Love this

I'm feeling this one today. Never enough.