Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / The Myth of Fear as Respect
Transcript
- Hi there. Welcome back to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. I wanna just say thank you for taking some time to spend. Here with me and today I wanna talk about something that shows up in parenting. It shows up in partnerships. It shows up in friendships and workplaces. And it is the thing that pops up most often in, in, in leadership. And it is this myth that fear equals respect. And I'm here [00:01:00] to say that that's a myth that doesn't. It doesn't mean that fear doesn't grow. Trust. Fear doesn't foster connection. Fear doesn't build us into the leaders that we want us to be. It doesn't help us foster performance and. Generally speaking, it's a myth that we have inherited. Many of us may find that we have grown up in homes or in situations where respect was demanded, it was not necessarily earned, or where silence was mistaken for obedience or silence was mistaken for. Respect where eye contact maybe meant to disrespect or mistakes came with emotional shutdowns, with yelling or maybe something even worse. And so over time you may have learned to perform. You may have learned that love has a price tag. You know, you needed to be perfect or you needed to be compliant, or you needed to be quiet in order to get that appreciation. What looks like a good kid on the outside. Generally there's a kid who might be screaming for [00:02:00] some safety on the inside and not developing character. Uh, is, is really actually a trauma response. So what ends up happening is these quiet kids learn to monitor your emotions. I. Rather than monitoring their own, they learn to assess risk. Not at, you know, right from wrong, but instead, is it safe for me to even speak up? The will I get caught becomes louder than is this aligned to who I want to be? Right. And that happens with, I think a lot of us parents who have teenagers. There's this fear that the or the running thing is, will I get caught? Rather than are teenagers making choices from what actually aligns with themselves? Because here's what happens in the brain when fear enters the room, the prefrontal cortex or that part of the brain, the front part of the brain that's responsible for problem solving. It's where we have some regulation that actually shuts down when we're in that fight or flight. And instead our stress hormones spike. And you know that fight or flight is what takes over. Our ability to critically think is [00:03:00] gone. Our ability to express self-express that becomes suppressed. Our ability to be creative is diminished because again, the prefrontal cortex has been shut down and the amygdala is what is online. It was all about. Survival. And so when a child or an employee or a partner is afraid of your reaction, they aren't growing. They're just surviving. They don't learn to trust themselves. They learn to tiptoe around you. They learn to walk on eggshells. Respect, built on safety. Sounds like I trust you enough to ask you questions. I feel safe enough to mess up and still be loved. I know I can speak and be heard, even if I don't agree with you. That's the difference, right? Fear forces, compliance, respect, which is what we all say that we want to create. Invites connection. So the child who feels safe enough to [00:04:00] say. Mom, dad, I don't like that. Or that hurt My feelings is the child who becomes a thoughtful adult, a leader, they become the individual who's not just a follower, stuck in people pleasing or rebellion. True respect isn't about silence. It's about presence. It's built in the moments we choose curiosity over control. It's in the moments that we choose compassion over judgment. If you're realizing now, maybe as I'm talking through this, that you've been parenting or maybe leading or living from a fear-based conditioning, first, I want to invite you to breathe and to offer yourself some compassion and some grace. The very first step is to become aware, right? You've heard me say this a thousand times. Awareness is the doorway to change. So if you're realizing this and you're, some of this is resonating with you, this is your first step. It's to become [00:05:00] aware and then it is to figure out what action you're gonna take. So how do we shift? Well, repairing instead of repeating. We need to to step into an action of repair instead of repeat. So if you raise your voice or shut down a conversation, it's not too late to actually say, oh, okay, I got that wrong and I'm sorry. And instead, an inviting voice to the person would be, how did that feel for you? Or what would help you feel heard right? Now? Another way that we shift this is by modeling, self-regulation. Show what it looks like to pause instead of explode. To actually ground yourself before reacting. And you know, when we're thinking about parenting, we're thinking about leadership. We're thinking about any relationships. It's not about perfection. It's about giving yourself permission to evolve. And it's also about giving the people that we're in relationship permission and space to evolve and to be human. So again, [00:06:00] while fear might get you obedience in the moment, it's not gonna get you that authentic connection that you're really wanting. All of us deserve more from our relationships, right? They shouldn't be based on performance. They should be based on that real deeper connection. You don't need to be feared to be respected. You need to be consistent. You need to be clear, and you need to be safe. So if you're the one who's healing from being raised in this, raised from fear or through fear, you know, remember this, you are not too sensitive. You may have been really aware, but you're not broken. It was just how you have shown up and the way you have been was shaped by surviving. And so now it is about doing your own self work in order to understand where, and you're reacting from a place of fear. If this has resonated with you. And you'd like to talk about how coaching could help you continue to grow and evolve. Feel free to book a time with me [00:07:00] anytime@coachwithcolony.com. Until next time, stay well