Thank you to all of you who take your time and energy to read my newsletters/blogs, I really appreciate it and am so glad to hear of how so many of you have found helpful information and support from them.
Sometimes I miss the mark for some folks.
After my post last week about how caregivers can have freedom from ed, I heard from a parent who is in the trenches and found it hard to read the parts I shared about my travel experiences as they felt like I was comparing my travel aches and pains to parenting a child with an eating disorder. My intention was to share how much I wished for parents in the trenches to find the serenity I’d just found, yet for this parent, it was received as comparing the pain.
It made me wonder if others had also received the message in a way I’d not intended.
Some of you might be thinking, “But Becky, you’re always saying we cannot be responsible for how others receive our words.” Yes, you’re right, we can only be responsible for our intentions and not how others receive our words. And…we are also responsible to make amends when others feel hurt by our words. Even if it may have been received differently from the message we were trying to share.
So in my efforts to make amends and be responsible for how my words are intended, I hope to effectively apologize, create clarity and make amends. This also serves as an example of how families can use the tool of a “Therapeutic Apology” which is part of the training of Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) that I was trained in and families can also get training in.
To all who felt hurt and/or unseen by my blog last week, I want to talk to you about when I shared the serenity I was feeling after a massage during my travels, how hard that must have been for you. Especially because you are in the throes of this never-ending ironman of parenting a child with an eating disorder. And I know that you didn’t get the emotional support you needed from me.
I can imagine that might have made you feel hurt and/or unseen because it felt like I was comparing my travel pains to parenting a child with an eating disorder and because hearing about my travels abroad must be painful when you’re so hurting and because you’re trying to keep your child alive.
I am so sorry that you were hurt and unseen.
I should have taken the time to more clearly express that while dealing with back pain while traveling is not comparable to parenting a child with an eating disorder and clarified that while it may seem impossible, I wish for you all to find moments of serenity that I never dreamed would be possible when I was in your shoes.
Starting today I will take the time to be clearer in my writing so that my intentions come across to all who are reading.
If you’d like help with working on a “Therapeutic Apology” as you provide support as a caregiver, please reach out for a consult about individual coaching services or check out our weekly parent support group.
Speaking of the weekly parent support group, I am actually taking a vacation week (yes, I’ve just been living life in Europe and not on vacation all this time…it’s complicated and often called, “Geo-arbitrage” for those of us who cannot afford the health care in the USA) so there will not be a weekly parent support group this Wednesday. I rarely take a week off from the call and apologize to those who are needing the support. Parents in the group, please reach out to one another via the group email thread to get extra support. I’ll be sending a couple extra emails to make sure you know about this schedule change. We will resume August 1.
If you’re working with families and can see that the moms need their own support, feel free to send them to the Hope Network, LLC website to see our services and request a free 30 minute consult. We also have both Affiliate and Subscription options for clinicians to provide our HUG Kits and the Recovery Roadmaps video series at a discount. Reach out to me for info on those options.
