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231: Empowerment from Trauma with La Shanda Sugg

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this episode, Shane talks with La Shanda Sugg about empowerment from trauma. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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    • Show Notes
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The Couples Therapist Couch 231: Empowerment from Trauma with La Shanda Sugg

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In this episode, Shane talks with La Shanda Sugg about empowerment from trauma. La Shanda is the Founder & Chief Love Officer of Labors of Love Counseling and Consulting. As a therapist, trainer, and coach, she is gifted with the art of translating complex concepts and making them relatable and easy to understand. Hear her formula for working with couples, how to move your clients into compassion for themselves & others, how to renarrate their story, what we can learn from our inner child aka little, and how to help clients live in their full selves - not just their thoughts. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Does La Shanda work more with individuals or couples?
  • What is her formula?
  • How does she renarrate clients' stories?
  • What can you learn from your inner child?
  • Why do we treat our own children differently?

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below: 

 Show Notes

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: Transcript is not 100% accurate.

La Shanda Sugg 0:00
So many people have gone through so many things alone, and what's healing is that they can go through that again. But the biggest difference is you're not by yourself this time.

Intro VO 0:13
Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now your host, Shane Birkel

Shane Birkel 0:26
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I try to bring you the best topics and guests in the world of couples therapy. I'm really excited to share with you the episode today I spoke with Lashonda Sugg, and she's a therapist who has a similar background to me in healing our core issues, which we go into more detail about. But before we get into the episode, I'd love it if you went over and checked out the couples therapist couch.com you can find all of the previous episodes from the last several years, and also find some more other educational material about how to work with couples. So thank you all so much for listening. I'm so grateful for you. And without further introduction, here is the episode with La Shanda Sugg. Everyone, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and today I'm speaking with La Shanda Sugg healer, trauma informed therapist and host of the podcast The Labors of Love. Hey, La Shanda, welcome to the show.

La Shanda Sugg 1:39
Hi, Shane, thanks for having me. Yeah,

Shane Birkel 1:42
I'm excited. I'm so excited to talk to you. I was just telling you before we started recording. I've been hearing about you for years from people who we have in common from our training, mostly with healing our core issues. So I'm excited to get into all that. But why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself. Yeah, thank

La Shanda Sugg 2:02
you. Um, such a loaded question, but for the purposes of our time today, it would be important to share so many things. But yeah, I am a soul having a human experience on this journey called life, and at some point in my journey, I went to therapy and realized that I needed to heal from things I didn't even know I was sick from. And that was so pivotal for me that just the fact that healing existed made me want to share it with the world. So my journey into being a therapist and a coach and all the other things that I do was really because I wanted people know they can heal even if I wasn't the person that they did that healing journey with. And so that led me through, you know, a lot of things, including becoming a therapist and working with people for them to be able to make informed choices about their present and future, because I realized that so many of us are operating off of the patterns and cycles that we have developed over our lifetimes. By the time we're seven years old, the brain kind of has figured out how life works. And that might sound ridiculous, but it does, and so all information that comes after that is either being stuffed through the worldviews and the beliefs and behavioral patterns that we developed up to that point, or we start to make adaptations. And I really have a desire for people to be free. And for me, I define freedom as the ability and capacity to do with all of our resources what we want, our time, our money, our relationships, our energy, and we can get to freedom when we realize where we're bound. And so I work with a lot of people to start doing that exploration around where am I not filling in control of my actions and choices, and start working through often, the trauma and the situations that have have led them there.

Shane Birkel 4:06
Yeah, as you're saying that, I'm thinking about this idea of, like, a lot of people have kind of a victim mindset, you know, where they feel kind of stuck and they can't do anything about it, you know. And what I hear you saying is sort of moving people into a feeling of empowerment. You know that this is, I can be conscious of these things that happened to me in the past, and maybe that's another word for it, like bringing people into consciousness, because only then, only if they're looking at the truth, can they really move into that freedom and that sense of freedom, like, if they become conscious of those things that are making them feel stuck and possibly having new conversations. But, and you're doing this with individuals and couples?

La Shanda Sugg 4:48
Yeah, so the work I do with individuals is my coaching work, and the work I do with relationships has a tendency to be more therapeutic. I do work with some individual. Tools therapeutically. And I think the main distinction is, when I'm doing coaching work, it's really with people who are in the present and they're trying to go somewhere, but they might have these stuck points, these, you know, things they want to work through. And so as hey, let's get unstuck and let's go. And when I'm working therapeutically with folks, it's because they are living out of their past. Their past hurts, their past wounds, their past patterns. And so journeying with them into the present where they can recognize and their entire echo in our ecosystem, can realize that they are an adult, that they do have autonomy, that they can make choices, and so that's how I kind of make that distinction. But yeah, and for me, I do work with couples a lot, but I work with all relationships. So when I stopped working with individuals, it was for a couple of things. One, honestly, I got bored. Mainly, people were coming with relational issues, but they were coming by themselves, so I had the weight of, like, trying to bring in the perspective and the potential perspective of whoever their relational challenges were with. And finally, I say, you got to bring them, yeah, we got to come together, or maybe someone. You don't have a relation relationship that's in rupture, but you got to come with somebody, because you can't access me at two o'clock in the morning, but you can access your best friend or your cousin or your cousin or your neighbor or your mom, and you all can go on separate individual journeys, but with each other. So that you know a lot of people say, I say healing happens in relationship, but we take for granted that most people don't know how to be in healthy relationship. How they going to heal if they're not a healthy relationship? So I wanted to help people learn how to be in healthy relationship in the therapeutic sense, while continuing to work on their therapeutic journeys. So that's when I decided that I wanted to work exclusively with relationships. Yeah,

Shane Birkel 6:51
that's great, and I feel like most people's problems are relational, whether even whether they realize it or not. That, you know, I totally agree. You know, sometimes working with an individual, it's like, you know, as soon as another person from that relationship comes into the situation, we just start making so much more progress, more quickly, all of a sudden. Yeah, and tell me a little bit about, you know, let's say that you're just starting to work with somebody in a relationship. Let's say you have two members of the relationship there. Well, how do you decide, you know, am I going to or do you have a process like, am I going to take more of a future focused approach about what they want? Or am I, am I exploring, you know, some of the places they're stuck that might be connected to their past. You know, how are you thinking about that when you start?

La Shanda Sugg 7:40
Yeah, I do. I have a I have a process in what I would consider a formula. That formula starts with a consultation. My every person who works with me has a consultation, because there are just a few things that I need people to know. I need people to know that we're going to slow down. We live in a very urgent world, and so this is a place we're going to slow down. I let people know that I'm a root worker, R, o, o, t, whatever you've come with is a leaf. And it's not that that leaf is not important. It's very important. It is impacting your relationship. But I we got it. We go to the root. So I want people to know that you came and said, I mean, the number one, if this were Family Feud, the number one answer, when people come and say they want to work on is communication. We have problems communicating. And I say, I mean, I'm not discounting that, but you probably now, y'all communicate very well. Your silence is communication. Slam doors. Eye rolls. It's all communication. I think you having problems interpreting. And it's like, oh, you know. So I start with letting people kind of know what they're going to get into, that whatever you said you wanted to work on might not be where we start, but I haven't lost mind of it if they decide they want to move forward. My first two sessions are what I call gathering their templates. And so I, by default, start with the oldest person and the entire session. First session is answering the question, generally, what was it like growing up being you? But when you ask someone that question, their mind immediately goes to the stories that they tell over and over again. And so I guide them through in questions. And what's guiding that is my genuine curiosity. I just want to know is high level. How did you become the person that you are? Because whatever is happening in this relationship is coming from that past, if we start working with what's happening now, but we don't have a good grasp. I'll speak for myself. I don't have a good grasp of the past then now we're grasping at straws. So I ask questions like, when and where were you born? And if I'm familiar with the place, great, but if I'm not, is that rural? Is it Suburban? Is it urban? When were you born? What was the historical social context at the time of your birth? How old were your parents when they were born? Were there other children? What do you have siblings? What's the birth order? Did you spend. Time with your extended family. What was that like? Tell me a little bit about your parents. What birth order do they have? What was their relationship? What was your relationship like? Relationship like with your siblings? Then questions like, What did affection look like in your family? What did discipline look like in your family? If I am working with someone assigned female at birth, I asked, What was the story of your first period? You can gain so much information about the context of a little girl or a young woman growing up by asking that question, was there a spiritual, religious context? What was school? So I'm just kind of like just genuinely curious if I could watch a short clip of your life from zero to 18. What would that have looked like? The invitation to the partner or the other person in the relationship is listen as if you've never heard it before, like you probably can fill in these gaps, but and then notice when your body is drawing you closer, pushing you away. When do you want to lean towards that person? So I'm also simultaneously helping the person who's listening to learn how to attune to themselves, even when they're in relationship with someone else. And so the second session is the same thing for the other person. And if I'm working with more than two people, which I do, then we do that until those templates are gathered. And what that usually does is, I will say now, where are the threads? Now that we've gathered everyone's template, what from the past is showing up in the present, and that allows people really a good sense of empathy and understand, because they're like, Oh, I knew that detail, but I didn't know how you felt about it. And so they begin to understand when that, when that person I'm in relationship does that thing, it usually doesn't have anything to do with me. It's their own thing. Oh, and when you do that, yeah, it's bumping against my own story, but it actually has nothing to do with me. So half of my work, I feel like it's done just by doing that. So they can start meaning, making themselves. And then from that point now we say, All right, let's come more present. Another thing is, I do after the template ask we do? We spend some time saying, Give me a high level overview of how you met, how you came into relationship with each other, kind of thing. And then from there, we start to tackle some of the things they brought in, but always with this is how this person came to be this. This is what it means for them. And then we move into the practicality of let's look at beliefs. What beliefs are you holding that are causing challenges in the relationship? And those beliefs turn into what behaviors. Because I believe we as a culture, have been, well, we've been sold many lies, and one of the lies is that change happens when you want it enough, and it just drives me crazy. If you love me enough, you'd stop doing that. That's not how it works. So I often tell people, change is three to four steps down the line. First we got to figure out what belief is guiding the behavior. Once we figure that out, we got to figure out, okay, well, what needs are being met by that belief? Oh, well, now that we know that, what are some other ways we can meet the need? Now let's practice and eventually we'll be able to let go or shift that thing. But when people come in and they start with, I want to change this, and it's like, that's fine, as long as you know that it's a journey. If you want sustainable change, we can fake many things for long periods of time, right? But if you want to get down to the root. So that's my process.

Shane Birkel 13:37
Yeah, that's great. I love listening to you. I mean, I know you and I have such a similar training background, and it's very similar to the way that I work and I loved, you know, to me a lot, everything you're saying is about moving into compassion for the self and for others. And so, you know, when you're saying like, if my partner loved me, they would just change this. You know, I think about that as being very shaming. Or, if I love my partner, I would just change what they're asking me to change. Then I'm shaming myself, you know? And so I think that's the way these conversations often, often get approached. And when you when we we begin to look at their history and their experiences growing up, we can bring that compassion to it and help their partner bring that compassion to it, and help them for themselves to look at and say, it makes sense the way I'm struggling in this relationship, because of something that I went through and to me, that just opens the door for people To start having different sorts of conversations about what's possible. Absolutely.

La Shanda Sugg 14:43
Yeah, shame is a big component. And for me, I think one of the greatest gifts I give people is their story re narrated, so people remember the highlights and low lights of their story. And I. Make sure that I first give them their story as they've given it to me, and then I offer them a re narration. And I am a storyteller, and that re narration usually involves keeping the same content, but using words that I feel are more accurate. So an example is I had a client once who was telling this story about they had so much anxiety when they were a child, and they remember being maybe around nine or 10 years old, and they were so anxious that their parents had gone to a restaurant to eat dinner and left them with a babysitter. But they were so anxious that they called the restaurant to speak to their parents. They had a lot of held a lot of shame around that. And my re narration was, wow, at nine or 10 years old, connection meant so much to you that you use the resources that were available to you like a phone book. There was no internet during this time. You found a phone book, you found the number of the restaurant, you called and requested to speak to them, and when you felt that connection, you were okay. Took a lot of bravery. It took a lot of insight. And I think that's beautiful. And this person's like, I've never thought about it like that? Probably on my family. Few top five things people say to me, I've never thought of it that way, and it's cool. And I always ask, did I add anything or take anything away from your story? And they're like, no. So here's an opportunity to look at that nine year old through the lens of resilience and empowerment and compassion, instead of perhaps the way that you've been looking at them, as this wounded part of you that caused so much trouble or needed so many things, it's okay to have needs, right? So re narrating people's story back to them, away from words like bad, lazy, bad, all these different words, it increases their vocabulary to look at their story from a different lens.

Shane Birkel 17:06
I love that. And would you say that that's part of challenging the limiting beliefs that you mentioned before? You know, so they were operating from a belief just in the way they're telling the story. There's sort of a belief coming through about who that little child was, or who they are as a person, and the way that you're re narrating it is changing. It's language that's offering a new opportunity in what could be believed about that child and that person.

La Shanda Sugg 17:37
Absolutely, I call them reintroductions. Yeah, you spent a lot of time with this nine year old, but I'd like to reintroduce you to them. And you know, and introducing people to their what I call littles, their littles, their inner children, is such a joy. And then relationships with our littles are like any other relationship. They take intentionality, they take effort and they take time. So I help people decide, how do you want to connect with this part of yourself? What are the activities you'll do with them? And that can be as much as I'm going to go for I go for a walk every day. Wonderful. Can you invite that per that part of you with you? And what that might look like is say to yourself, come on, nine year old, let's go for a walk and allow them, allow that part of you to point out what they notice all of a sudden, you're seeing a tree you've never seen before, and you walk this path every single day because the various parts of ourselves have lenses that create such a beautiful perspective of the World. So limiting beliefs, yes, limiting perspective, yes, but literally just limited senses that 12 year old and you might smell something that you just ignore you bypass. So I think we experience the world more fully when we invite our entire inner ecosystem to live it with us, instead of trying to shove them away and live it just as we are right now.

Shane Birkel 19:02
Yeah, and I was thinking of oftentimes, and maybe this is two different inner child parts of ourself talking to each other, but oftentimes, you know, we'll, we'll look at that inner child part with contempt. You know, if that part of us is coming up in a moment, he or she's feeling scared and overwhelmed and vulnerable, and we're like, you know, just be tough. You're fine. It's going to be okay. Or whatever it is, that kind of self talk that we do to each other, you know, and what you're saying, you know, in developing this relationship, I'm just imagining it's part of that connection and compassion that this part of me is feeling overwhelmed for a reason, and there's some, you know, and that's okay, and you know, to teach our adult selves to have the capacity to be understanding and compassionate with the other parts of ourselves that are coming up.

La Shanda Sugg 19:59
Yeah, absolutely, and it's okay to set to have agreement and set boundaries with our inner ecosystem. So I, for a very long time, envisioned my inner ecosystem to gather around a very large island in the kitchen. And I said everyone had a seat, and there were some empty seats, because there are parts of me I hadn't discovered yet that has morphed into an entire house. And so I envision what my what my inner house looks like. And so some of my agreements, and I have two that are very particular that I have with my inner ecosystem. One is, Don't arrest my breath. I was a breath holder for a really long time, so it's not if I got anxious or scared or overwhelmed, I'd hold my breath. And that was parts of me trying to get my attention. And so my agreements were, please do not arrest my breath. And my second is, if I am where, if I'm with someone, if I'm one on one, I'm doing a training, whatever I'm doing, please don't interrupt. And that was the agreements I asked them to agree to. The agreements I agreed to is that after any session or training or whatever, I am going to come check on y'all. I'm going to come and I'm going to say, Hey, y'all doing okay. Did anything that happened in this session activate you? Is there something you need me to know? I built ritual around that when I before I start a session or anything, particularly if I'm working from home, but even if I'm working in my office, I will walk clockwise around my home, and I will my my I say the same thing, Father, God, mother, nature and ancestors, please give me what I need to be with, whoever I'm going To be with. You know their needs better than me. And then when I'm done, I walk counterclockwise and I release those things because they're not mine. So I say, Father God, Mother Earth, ancestors, I'm giving to you what I'm holding from these people. I know that you will make good of it, recycle it, and do good. And so during after that time I come in, I check with my inner ecosystem, and because I'm trustworthy, so are they? So even if someone is saying something in session that really connects with my story, and a part of me gets activated, they trust that I'm going to come and check on them. And it's not that I don't feel it. I might feel the thing, but I don't get flooded with images. I don't lose concentration, because we have a I have agreements and boundaries with my littles, with my inner ecosystem. And I think sometimes people are afraid of the work, because it feels like this part that they've been trying to hold back. If they allow it in, it's just going to take over, right, right? And it's just like it doesn't have to be that way. And I say, you know, our littles and our emotions are like toddlers. A tantrum is very often not the first thing that it does. There have been signs they've been trying to get our attention. If we ignore those because we're not paying attention, or because we're too busy, or whatever that is, or it's too painful. I the intensity in which they're trying to get our attention will grow. So I try to listen when I hear the first whisper, and I try to teach others to do the same.

Shane Birkel 23:10
And I love what you're saying, you know, when, let's say you're in a therapy session or something like that, and you notice one of those inner child parts coming up, you know, and you've made that agreement, you know, don't arrest my breath, don't interrupt something like that. And you know, they can have the confidence that if they need to have a temper tantrum later on, that you are going to hold space for them to be able to do that. And that's part of the agreement and the relationship that you've developed over time. I'm assuming Absolutely

La Shanda Sugg 23:42
I encourage temper tantrums from my children, my kids, kids and my inner children, get it out. It's energetic. If I allow it to come out, it's not staying in there. And I'll be honest, if one of my littles does peak up during a session, I also there my I don't view my parts and my littles as something I need to control. If they show up, they're giving me information. And I will share that. I will say, Can we pause for a second? I feel the little girl in me feels so sad right now, and I can only imagine that that little girl in you feel sad. They does that feel resonant, or, you know, if I feel angry, if I start sweating, you know, this leads to, it's a newer thought process that I have and been sharing a little. We are taught clinically to validate and acknowledge, but I do not believe we are taught adequately how to reflect, and I believe that all people need to be reflected. So we've taught to we're taught how to say the thing someone says to us invalidate their experience. But for me, a reflection is literally like standing in the mirror. So when someone is in session and they're talking to me, I'm not only just. Saying what they've said, and sometimes re narrating the story. But I'm also saying, Oh, I noticed there were, you know, I could see a lump in your throat when you said that. Can you pause for a second? Do you notice that? Oh, I noticed that your shoulders went up a little bit when we started talking about this. Did you notice that? And what often happens is, whatever I point out, people stop doing and then I go. So I do it. If their shoulders are up, I'll lift my shoulders and I say, No, need to stop. But can you notice? What do you think your shoulders are communicating right now? So I help people realize that, though our culture has taught us that our cognitions and our words are the most important ways to communicate, I don't believe that everything is communicating. So what do you think your shoulders are telling us right now? Oh, your leg is bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, keep bouncing. What do you think your leg is trying to let us know in this moment? So by giving people a reflection of what's happening inside and outside, they can become more attuned. And sometimes I do that by mirroring that, but I also know that I am part of the session. And I think as clinicians, we are, in some ways, taught to be robotic. It's their session. Yeah, and we are just the guide. And I don't, I don't ascribe to that. We are in this together. So when I feel something in my body that feels relevant and knowing the difference between when it's just something that's activated in me, for me, or when it's a response to like, what's happening. I'm going to share that Oh, I felt my heart just do a thing. How? How's your heart? Because I trust my body to also be part of the process. If I'm feeling something. It's not necessarily that the person is feeling the same thing, but I want to check in and let them know that I'm another human sitting across from them. I'm having an experience. I'm not at the destination, waving you to come towards me. I am walking right next to you. And if we're driving in a car and we hit a big bump, it's foolish to think that the driver is the only person who felt it, we're both going to be like, Oh, that was a big bump, right? We had that shared experience. And for me, that's the crux of healing, because so many people have gone through so many things alone, yeah, and what's healing is that they can go through that again, but the biggest difference is you're not by yourself this time, and that feels very important,

Shane Birkel 27:23
yeah, and to me, that's so helpful, and it's like very honoring and valuing of that human being who's with you, which I think in our culture, people are encouraged to live in their head and Live in sort of like there's a very devaluing of your emotional experience, which I think is devaluing of you as a human and it's like we are doing something that they may have never experienced before. You know, which could be helpful, could be really helpful. If you say, Wow, I really feel that in my heart, or wow, I really that makes me feel sad. It's an invitation to them to be begin to be more embodied and be more conscious of what's actually happening to them, and valuing, you know, their experience

La Shanda Sugg 28:11
Absolutely. That brought to mind. So you mentioned Rick butts. I might be the only person on earth he, let's call him Ricky, but I'm very close to Ricky. I was with him last week, and one of the and he I've done several intensive was intensives with him. He knows so much of my inner ecosystem. And one of the things that Rick does that has been so tremendously healing, is he joins me in the emotion of my experience to have someone say they are angry about what I went through has been so healing, because for a long time I didn't feel I had the permission to be angry about the things that have happened to me or have been done to me, and into for someone to get angry on my behalf, opened it up to be like, Oh, wait, that gets me angry about that, you know? And he'll pause me, he'll slow me down and say, let, let's just sit in that for a second. You know, I'm feeling this, and that allows me to go, you know what? I'm feeling that. And so that's been very helpful. And because that was so helpful for me, I was on the receiving end of that, I would not want to withhold that from someone else and then something else you said, you know, we are encouraged to live in our heads, and I'm just looking at your background. And while I don't know the size of your home, I would imagine that if someone had a three story, I don't know, 2500 square foot home, but only lived in the bathroom in the bedroom. That would be like, man, we got all this space, and we literally only live in these two rooms. That's how I feel when we are just left with our thoughts. There's so much more house, and we get to live in it all. All. And I just think so many of us haven't been given the express permission to live in our full selves, to take up our full houses, and that's the encouragement we can turn the basement into whatever we want. We gotta know we got one. You gotta know that you can spread out. And so for me, I just think that's in that feels very important, because our culture isn't going to give it to us, because our culture benefits from a cognitive only experience. Our culture benefits from people believing that they their worth is what they produce are the culture benefits from people not living in freedom. And so the work I do, I consider liberatory work, because people don't even know they've been told accomplish, you know, achieve, and then I will feel free, and then they realize that, oh, that carrot will continue to move forever. So how can we have the opportunity to re evaluate the narratives around where our worth is, where our value is, and how we live our lives. And, yeah, I think that's just very important, yeah,

Shane Birkel 31:14
and that, when you were talking earlier about, you know, the fear that people have of going into those emotions, like, if I go into this, I'm going to fall apart. And I was just thinking, you know, I think because people start receiving those messages basically from birth, that you need to deny your your own lived experience, and live in your head and figure things out and and, you know, the performance based esteem and whatever else that you know that there's a huge lack of safety in staying with my emotional experience. Because from the time that I was an infant, I've sort of been given the message, either verbally or non verbally, that it's not okay to feel these emotions, that if that's what, if you're feeling this way, you need to fix it, and you need to stop being upset, or something like that. And so I think some clients, you know, have a have a really, really strong wall, understandably against going into those emotions, because there's, there's so much meaning behind that for people, and a lot of times we aren't even conscious of it, absolutely,

La Shanda Sugg 32:21
I think about how and to say taught is unfair, but like, it's this natural thing. You got an infant, baby's crying, and you pick it up, and the first thing people start doing is, and, I mean, it immediately sends the message, all right, you gotta need but stop all that noise. Or no, no, don't. Don't be sad. No, no, no, you know, instead of just going, Oh, here's a need, I'll meet the need and the crying will stop first, we gotta stop the crying while meeting the need. And I think that sends very powerful messages. You know, we will not have autobiographical memory of those times, but our body is holding it all, Oh,

Shane Birkel 33:01
that's great. That's so true, yeah. And it's telling the child that other people's comfort is more important than their lived experience.

La Shanda Sugg 33:12
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And so I do work, yeah, I do this work, but I also do a lot of parenting work, first re parent your littles, helping people to understand that there's an externalization of our own internal needs that happens, particularly when people are parents or have any kind of authority over Another person. So what I see happen so much is a person's parenting style is, yes, not only indicative of how they are parented, but also what their inner children need. But they focus it outward. So they move to, like, do this thing with their child, and it's like, pause, your child is fine. Your inner children are not so when you feel that urge to go do something with your child, can you employ the power of the pause long enough to say, is this a child within me that needs something, or is it a child out there that needs something? And children become very convenient narratives. You know, I remember working with someone who was trying to make a relationship work with their partner, quote, unquote, for the kids. And me being like, Have you asked the kids what they want? Oh no. Well, the those kids came, they like, I see families and not always all together. And it's like, well, I've talked to the kids, they don't want what you want, but you've never asked them what they want. So let's pause. No shame, no shame needed. Who is it really for they were able to go I want it to work correct? Now, that's neither good nor bad, right or wrong, but let's be. Honest. And for me, own your shit. You got to. And I think you know you gotta own it, because if not, and so if you read Jan bergst book, she was writing in the process of writing it, when I went through the Hawkeye model, model. And for me, this is what made sense. It's not about blame and shame of our parents, but it is about the rightful assignment of responsibility. And she's like, can I put that in my book? And I'm like, Yes, you can. Because for me, if we don't do the work to rightly assign responsibility, then we're either heaping all of the responsibility onto ourselves, or we're constantly putting it on other people and anywhere in between. So when we can say, I don't have to shame my parents, but I do have to rightly assign the responsibility that they did not protect me. Yes, some were doing the best they could. Some were limited on resources. Some didn't get it so they couldn't give it. Those things remain true, and they get to still be true, while saying and I deserved better, and when we can rightly assign responsibility, that increases the opportunity for us to own our shit, because then we look at our kid, who's just being themselves, but it's aggravating and activating to us, and instead of trying to make them stop The thing. It happens in my house all the time. I hate the videos my kids watch, and I feel like the volume in which they watch them is just, well, I don't want to hear it, because What are y'all ever talking about? But I have to say to myself, we're in a common area of the home. If I don't like what's being played, I got options. There are other parts of the home I can go to. I can put on headphones, but because I have a level of authority in the relationship, I could also, equally say, Turn that off, watch something else, or shame them. That's stupid. Why are you watching that? These are all options I can employ, but in an effort to consistently own my shit, I go, I don't want to hear it, so I'm going to go somewhere else. I can make a request, right? I can say, Oh, my goodness, this is really aggravating to me. How can we reconcile this? But my children are eight, and we still get to negotiate. That's not a skill I want them to develop when they're off in a job somewhere trying to negotiate. No, they get to practice having their needs and desires met here, and I also get to practice that I got options. And ruling over my children is one of them. It's just one I choose not to but that requires a real, hard, honest look at myself and for me to own my stuff, so I'm not projecting it onto them.

Shane Birkel 37:43
Yeah, absolutely, and we offer them the opportunity to see a healthy relational communication at that point, you know, and I think you know, as parents, we are responsible for teaching our children about boundaries, that their actions have effects on other people. But I think parents use that as an excuse, you know, but and like you're saying, like, it's really just about their own stuff, like, this volume feels too loud for me, and I'm not owning my shit. And so instead, I'm just saying, like, Hey, turn it down or whatever, and missing an opportunity, and I'm modeling something for them that they're going to take into their relationships, where if someone's upset with something, you just yell at the other person to do it differently. You know,

La Shanda Sugg 38:33
absolutely and I and in part of that, I do say, like, let's look at the options. If your volume stays where it is, I'm going to go to a different part of the house. It's not a threat. It's just what I'm going to do. And if my child decides, but Mommy, I want to spend time with you. You know, I want us to be in the same space. I say, Okay, well, how are we going to negotiate

Shane Birkel 38:53
that? And then it's like, a couple relationships, yes.

La Shanda Sugg 38:58
And then it's like, oh, well, what if I turn it down, or what if I go get my headphones? I said, Well, if you turn it down or go get your headphones, then I will feel more comfortable to stay here and we can stay together, you know. But they also get to call me out when I'm doing something. They're like, Mommy, you're loud. And I was like, Oh, I am loud. You know, that is true. And so I think that begins to be, for me, a mark of health in relationships when we have the ability to employ authority, but we choose to use relationship instead. Yes, people move to threats and Con and punishment when they've run out of relational currency. And so many parents are parenting without relational currency that they have no choice but to use authority, and I don't want to have to use authority, because that means I have not been as relational as I have needed to been in order to be able to rely on the relationship for all of us to somehow get our needs met, instead of just prioritizing mine over my children's Mm, hmm. Yeah,

Shane Birkel 40:00
that's great. And I love the idea, you know, we're willing to be emotionally abusive. Let's say I'll use that language with our children in ways that we wouldn't be with any other adult in the world, you know. And we feel like it's justified simply because of that authority thing, like, like, well, this is how parents are supposed to be, or whatever. And I love the way you're talking about it. It's a whole different way of seeing it. None of us have had really good modeling, perhaps, in this society. And you know, we're trying to do things in a way for our children that's going to hopefully change society for the better and help their relationships in the future.

La Shanda Sugg 40:40
Absolutely, I often ask myself, if someone spoke to or did to my child, what I just did, how would I feel about that? Oh, that's good and and that, that that really has me to pause and think about how I want to interact with it, because I do know I got some mama bearing me, and if one of my kids at whatever age came to me and said, my boss yelled at me and did this, or my partner did this, I will be like, Excuse me, what? Right? So then I have to ask myself, Am I willing to treat my children in a way that I would not appreciate, or in some way allow someone else to talk to my children. And like you said, What I talk to another adult this way? You know, the only difference between me and my children, besides our unique qualities, is that I entered the earth plane earlier than they did. They are no less worthy of love, unconditional acceptance, all of those things than I am, because time has not passed as long as time has passed with me. The age gap for me, that's they are souls on their souls, souls, paths, journey. And I'm so grateful that we get to travel together. But I am not better than and I am not more worthy of anything than they are, simply because I've been here longer, and that feels like a nice anchoring point for me to have what I consider to be some really amazing relationships with my children. Oh,

Shane Birkel 42:09
that's great. Lashonda, I really, I really appreciate that anything else, just in the way of sort of wrapping up our conversation, or anything else you feel like would be helpful. We

La Shanda Sugg 42:20
are all so worthy of unconditional love, unconditional acceptance. We are worthy of the beautiful path of making mistakes, making adjustments and trying again. And there's no age limit on that. We can't be too young for it. We can't be too old. And those are the things that keep me doing the work that I do to simply help people understand that they are worthy of the things, even if they never got them, and that it's never too late to start now.

Shane Birkel 42:52
That's great. I think that's a great foundation for therapists when they're working with people you know, to figure out ways of tapping into their each human beings value and worthiness and helping them see that their clients see that for themselves about themselves and others. But thank you so much, and can you so I want you to mention your website and definitely your podcast, or anything else that people should go check out. Yeah.

La Shanda Sugg 43:22
So my website is www.TheLaborsOfLove.com. My podcast is The Labors of Love. Podcast on all streaming platforms, there's a labors of love YouTube channel. For years, I did things called therapy Thursday, three to seven minute videos around various topics, and I guess I'll just share that I'm also leaning into a bit of my creativity now. So if you as an artist. So I also have an Instagram Artist Elle Marie great, wonderful, yeah,

Shane Birkel 44:03
yeah. Thank you so much, La Shanda. I really appreciate it just so great talking with you. I'm glad we finally had a chance to connect.

La Shanda Sugg 44:10
Yes, it was great to connect finally, and thank you for having me.

Shane Birkel 44:14
Yeah, hopefully we can catch up again at some point in the future. Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much La Shanda, such a great conversation. I'm really grateful for you, and I'm really grateful for all you listeners out there. Definitely go check out couples therapist couch.com where you can find all of the previous episodes and a lot of other educational material about how to work with couples. Really appreciate all of you. I'm hoping to continue bringing you the best topics and guests in the world of couples therapy. And I love when people reach out if you have any ideas for topics, or if you have any questions, definitely reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. I'm Shane Birkel. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and this is The Couples Therapist Couch. Thanks, everybody!

 

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