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Light the Way Counselling, Euroa (2025)

📍 Victoria, Australia 🐨🦘
Deep Inner Work Therapy for Individuals, Couples & Parents 🌱
Nervous System Wisdom • Emotions Expert • Attachment Style Lens • Embodied Processing • Generational Healing • Trauma-informed

05/11/2025

🌙 What Do You Know for Certain?

Adyashanti once asked:

> “What do you know for certain that hasn’t been taught to you?
When you look deeply, you’ll find that most of what you know has been handed down to you — by your parents, teachers, culture, society.
And yet, there is a knowing within you that is untouched by all of that.
To discover it, you must be willing to let everything you’ve learned fall away, even for a moment.”

It’s one of those questions that stops you mid-thought.

Because when you really pause and look honestly… almost everything we think we “know” — what’s right, wrong, valuable, successful, beautiful — has been taught to us.
By parents, culture, religion, school, and the environment we grew up in.

We absorb beliefs like sponges.
And then we spend our adult lives trying to make sense of which parts actually belong to us — and which parts were never ours to begin with.

---

🪞 Conditioning Runs Deep

From childhood, our subconscious is recording everything:
how to behave, what to fear, who to please, how to earn love, what success looks like.

We inherit belief systems like invisible scripts:

“I have to work hard to be worthy.”

“Conflict means I’ve done something wrong.”

“I can’t trust my feelings.”

“Love means self-sacrifice.”

And we live them out unconsciously, mistaking them for truths.

But these are not truths.
They are stories — passed down, reinforced, and repeated until they became familiar.

---

💫 The Truth Beneath Conditioning

So… what do you know for certain beneath all that?
Beneath the noise, the labels, the conditioning, the striving?

When you sit in stillness — really sit — you may begin to sense something quieter.
A knowing that doesn’t come from words, but from presence.
A felt sense of truth, like a whisper from your own being.

It might sound like:
✨ “I am here.”
✨ “I am aware.”
✨ “There is something within me that has never been broken.”

That’s not something anyone can teach you.
It’s what you remember when you stop running on autopilot.

---

🧠 The Mind vs. Inner Knowing

The mind wants certainty. It craves answers.
It wants to organize and label everything so it feels safe.

But inner knowing isn’t about mental certainty — it’s about direct experience.

You know the sun warms your skin because you feel it.
You know you love someone not because you’ve reasoned it out, but because something inside you opens.

That’s the difference between intellectual knowledge and embodied truth.

---

🌿 Trauma and Disconnection

For many, trauma and conditioning blur that inner knowing.
When safety was inconsistent, your body learned to outsource truth:
“What do they want me to be?”
“What keeps me safe?”

You adapted to survive — not to stay authentic.

But healing gently invites you back home — from externally imposed truths to internal wisdom.
Back to your body’s signals, your intuition, your quiet awareness.

The journey of healing isn’t just about feeling better — it’s about remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.

---

💔 The Cost of Borrowed Truths

When we live only from learned beliefs, life becomes narrow.
We might chase goals that aren’t ours.
Stay in relationships that drain us because “good people don’t leave.”
Or silence our feelings because “being emotional is weak.”

Eventually, the disconnection becomes unbearable.
The soul begins to whisper, “There’s more than this.”

And that whisper is the beginning of awakening.

---

🌱 Remembering What’s True

Adyashanti’s question isn’t meant to confuse — it’s meant to free.
It invites you to peel back the layers and discover what’s undeniably true in your own experience.

Here are a few places to look:

💫 What do you know for certain when you sit in silence?
💫 What have you felt your entire life, before anyone told you what to believe?
💫 What part of you remains unchanged, even through all you’ve lived?

You might not find words for it — and that’s okay.
Truth isn’t always something you can explain. Sometimes it’s just something you are.

---

🔓 The Invitation

What if, just for today, you loosened your grip on all the things you’ve been taught?
What if you met life as it is, without reaching for a label or belief?

You might notice a quiet intelligence moving through everything.
You might discover that awareness itself — your awareness — is the one thing that’s always been here.

And maybe that’s the only thing you can truly know for certain.

---

🌤️ In Closing

So much of life is about unlearning.
Shedding what was borrowed, inherited, imposed.
And returning to what’s always been true beneath it all.

You don’t need to become anything new.
You just need to remember what you’ve always known, before you were taught to forget. 💛

By Brianna King.
Light the Way Counselling.

05/11/2025

🧠 The Subconscious Mind: The Hidden Power Running Your Life

Most people believe they’re living consciously — making choices, setting goals, creating their own path.
But what if 95–97% of everything you think, feel, and do is actually being directed by something beneath awareness?

That “something” is your subconscious mind — the part of you quietly running the show.
It’s not bad. It’s not broken. It’s just conditioned.

And until you understand how it works, you’ll keep wondering why you can’t change the things you consciously want to.

---

🌿 A Trauma-Informed Lens

From a trauma-informed perspective, the subconscious isn’t your enemy — it’s your protector.
It’s the part of your mind-body system that learned how to keep you safe in moments when you didn’t have power or choice.

When you experienced emotional neglect, chaos, criticism, or inconsistency, your subconscious quietly recorded:

> “This is how the world works. This is who I must be to survive.”

Those patterns — stored as emotional memories and nervous system responses — become your automatic way of being.
They shape your tone of voice, your boundaries, your habits, your relationships, even how you handle money or success.

Your conscious mind may say, “I want peace, love, stability,”
but your subconscious says, “Familiar equals safe.”

So it keeps you returning to what it knows — not what’s best.

---

💫 Thais Gibson’s Insights

As Thais Gibson explains, the subconscious mind is a needs-meeting machine.
It’s always trying to meet your emotional needs — love, safety, connection, validation — in the fastest, most familiar way possible.

That’s why people repeat unhealthy patterns even when they “know better.”
The subconscious doesn’t care about logic — it cares about speed and survival.

If overeating, people-pleasing, withdrawing, or arguing once brought temporary relief, your subconscious locks it in as a “solution.”
This is how addictions and coping mechanisms form — not out of weakness, but out of the mind’s brilliant attempt to find safety quickly.

---

🌙 Why Affirmations Alone Don’t Work

You can repeat “I am confident” a thousand times,
but if your subconscious still carries the wound, “I’m unworthy of love unless I perform,”
your body won’t believe the new story.

That’s because affirmations speak to the conscious mind — the tip of the iceberg — while the subconscious lives in the depths.

To reach it, you need to work through emotion and imagery, the language your subconscious actually understands.
It responds to feeling, repetition, and safety, not forced logic.

Affirmations work only when paired with embodied safety, emotional congruence, and new experiences that prove the new belief true.

---

🎥 The Subconscious Speaks in Imagery and Emotion

Think in pictures, not words.
When you imagine something vividly, your brain and body respond as if it’s happening now.

That’s why watching a scary movie speeds your heart rate — even though you “know” it’s not real.
Your subconscious can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality; it only understands emotionally charged imagery.

So if your self-talk is full of fear or catastrophic visualization, your body lives that stress daily.
Conversely, when you visualize safety, peace, and success — and feel them in your body — you start re-training your subconscious.

---

🧬 Epigenetics and Conditioning

Science now confirms what healers have always known:
Your environment and emotional experiences can literally change how your genes express themselves.

This field — epigenetics — shows that trauma, stress, and nurturing environments all influence which genes turn “on” or “off.”
So if you grew up in high stress, your body might remain primed for survival even in calm situations.

But here’s the hopeful part: new environments, relationships, and emotional safety can re-signal your genes.
Healing isn’t just psychological — it’s biological. 🌱

---

🔁 Comfort Zone vs Growth Zone

Your subconscious is obsessed with one thing: what’s known.
It doesn’t care if the known is miserable; it equates familiar with safe.

So when you try to grow — set boundaries, rest, or receive love — your body might panic.
It’s not sabotage; it’s protection.

The goal isn’t to fight your subconscious, but to expand its comfort zone gently.
Safety first, stretch second.

---

⚡ The Quickest Way, Not the Best Way

The subconscious always seeks the fastest way to meet needs — not necessarily the healthiest.

If you need comfort and can’t self-soothe, it might reach for food, scrolling, substances, or toxic relationships.
If you need control, it might overwork or micromanage.

Every coping mechanism is a subconscious attempt to avoid pain or gain relief.
The task isn’t to shame it, but to teach it new ways to meet the same need — through safety, connection, and presence instead of compulsion.

---

🌿 Core Wounds: The Root of It All

At the root of all subconscious patterns are core wounds — deep-seated emotional imprints like:

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m unlovable.”

“I’ll be abandoned.”

“I’m powerless.”

“I don’t matter.”

These wounds trigger the thoughts → emotions → behaviours chain that runs our lives.

When something happens that hits a core wound, it activates old meaning:

> “They didn’t text back” → “I’m being rejected” → “I feel panic” → “I over-function to fix it.”

Until you heal the wound itself, the loop keeps repeating.

Humans are meaning-making creatures — and the subconscious is constantly assigning meaning through the lens of past pain.

---

💔 Moving Away from Pain, Toward Relief

The subconscious has two main drives:
👉 Avoid pain
👉 Seek pleasure (or relief)

This is why it resists healing at first. Healing can feel painful — confronting old shame or grief — so the subconscious says, “No thanks.”
It takes gentle repetition and safety to convince it that facing pain now leads to relief later.

---

🧩 Myth-Busting the Subconscious

Myth #1: The subconscious is mysterious or magical.
It’s not mystical — it’s mechanical. It’s simply your emotional autopilot, trained through repetition and association.

Myth #2: You can change your subconscious overnight.
No — reconditioning happens through consistent emotional safety over time, not force.

Myth #3: Subconscious patterns are disorders.
Often, what we label as “anxiety,” “avoidance,” or “control issues” are survival adaptations — brilliant strategies your body created to stay safe.
Healing comes when you thank them, not shame them.

---

🌗 The Best Times to Recondition

Your subconscious is most open when your brain is in theta and alpha wave states —
the relaxed, receptive moments right after waking and right before sleep.

That’s the perfect time for gentle reprogramming practices like:

Visualization and feeling-based affirmations

Guided inner-child dialogue

Gratitude and self-compassion statements

Safety anchoring (“In this moment, I am safe”)

During those windows, the barrier between conscious and subconscious softens, allowing new beliefs to take root.

---

🧠 The Subconscious in the Body

The subconscious doesn’t just live in your head — it’s stored in your nervous system and body memory.
That’s why you can’t “think” your way out of trauma.

Reconditioning must include the body: movement, breath, grounding, and presence.
Otherwise, the mind may understand safety, but the body won’t believe it.

Healing happens when your thoughts and your body are finally on the same page.

---

🧩 Vulnerability to Influence

When you don’t understand how your subconscious works, you’re vulnerable to manipulation — by advertising, religion, politics, even well-meaning authority figures.

These systems often bypass logic and target emotion, repetition, and imagery — the very language of the subconscious.
That’s why fear-based messaging spreads so effectively: it hijacks your survival wiring.

Learning how your subconscious operates protects your autonomy.
You become less reactive, more discerning, and harder to control.

---

💰 The Subconscious Rules Everything

Your subconscious dictates:

How you earn and handle money 💸

How you choose partners and tolerate treatment 💞

How you set (or avoid) boundaries 🚪

How you communicate and express needs 🗣️

How you perceive risk and possibility 🌍

Until you rewire those programs, your outer life will mirror your inner conditioning.

When you change the subconscious pattern, the outer results naturally follow.

---

🔓 In Closing: Learning to Run Your Own Mind

We spend years learning to use technology, tools, and systems — but few of us ever learn the manual for our own minds and bodies.

Your subconscious isn’t the enemy; it’s the misunderstood genius trying to keep you safe.
When you learn to communicate with it — through emotion, safety, and repetition — life stops feeling like a battle and starts feeling like collaboration.

Because the truth is this:

> You’re not broken.
You’re beautifully conditioned — and you can be re-conditioned.

And when you do the deep work — the embodied, compassionate kind — you don’t just think differently.
You become different. 💫

By Brianna King.
Light the Way Counselling.

04/11/2025

🌪️ Is It Really a Stressful Life — or Have You Not Learned to Handle Stress Differently?

We all say it sometimes:

> “My job is so stressful.”
“My relationship drains me.”
“Life just feels too much.”

But here’s something few people stop to ask:

👉 Is it really the situation that’s stressful — or is it the way your body and nervous system have learned to experience life?

Because if the situation itself were stressful, everyone would respond the same way. Yet, some people stay calm and grounded in circumstances that unravel others.

That’s because stress isn’t only about what’s happening around you — it’s about what’s still happening inside you.

---

🌿 Myth #1: “Stress comes from outside of me.”

Most of us were taught that stress is caused by things: jobs, people, deadlines, bills.
But real stress begins when your internal world interprets something as unsafe — even when it’s not.

Your nervous system doesn’t care if the threat is real or remembered.
If your body learned in childhood that love could be withdrawn, that criticism was dangerous, or that being perfect was the only way to stay safe — your adult self still reacts as though those things are happening now.

So when your boss frowns, your partner pulls away, or your child cries — your body may respond with the same alarm bells it learned decades ago.

It’s not weakness. It’s wiring. 🧠💛

---

🧒 Childhood Roots: Where We First Learn What Stress Feels Like

Stress begins long before adulthood.
In childhood, we absorb how to handle discomfort by watching how our caregivers handled theirs.

✨ If they shut down when overwhelmed, we learned to suppress.
✨ If they exploded, we learned to anticipate and appease.
✨ If they ignored our emotions, we learned that feelings are unsafe.

These early lessons don’t just live in the mind — they live in the body.
Muscles, breath, hormones, and posture all adapt to keep us safe in environments that once felt unpredictable.

As Bessel van der Kolk reminds us:

> “The body keeps the score.”

It remembers what the mind forgets — and that’s why your nervous system can feel flooded in situations that seem “normal.”

---

💭 The Attachment Lens

Your attachment style shapes your stress blueprint.

Anxious attachment leads to constant scanning for rejection or abandonment.

Avoidant attachment leads to shutting down under pressure — the body’s way of saying, “Don’t feel, just survive.”

Disorganized attachment often swings between both, creating cycles of chaos and collapse.

So stress isn’t random — it’s relational. It’s the body saying, “This feels just like when I wasn’t safe as a child.”

Healing begins when you recognize that what feels “too much” today is often something old asking to be released. 🌱

---

🌀 Myth #2: “If I change my circumstances, I’ll be less stressed.”

It’s tempting to believe that quitting the job, leaving the relationship, or moving away will fix everything.

And yes — sometimes, leaving a toxic environment is necessary.
But when the root is internal, you’ll find stress follows you wherever you go — new job, new partner, new city.

Because stress doesn’t live in your surroundings.
It lives in your nervous system.

Trying to control your outer world so your inner self stays untriggered is exhausting — and impossible.
The real freedom comes from creating safety within yourself, so you can meet life’s chaos with calm instead of collapse. 🌿

---

🔁 Emotional Addiction to Stress

Here’s something few people talk about:
Many of us are addicted to stress.

Not consciously — but biochemically.

Our body gets used to living on adrenaline and cortisol. It learns to equate intensity with aliveness. So when calm finally arrives, it feels unfamiliar — even boring or unsafe.

This is why you might unconsciously seek drama, overcommit, or procrastinate until panic sets in. The nervous system craves the “rush” it was raised on.

Peter Levine’s somatic work explains this perfectly:

> “Trauma is not what happens to you. It’s what gets stuck inside you.”

Stress becomes a habitual state, until you teach the body something new — that calm is safe, not threatening.

---

💥 Myth #3: “I’m just wired this way.”

No, you’re conditioned this way — and conditioning can change.

Your brain and body are beautifully adaptable.
Through neuroplasticity, you can rewire your stress response.

Thais Gibson teaches that the subconscious mind is a needs-meeting machine. It will always default to what’s familiar, not necessarily what’s healthy.
But when you start giving it new experiences of safety, your baseline begins to shift.

With time, your nervous system learns:

> “I can feel activated and still stay grounded.”

That’s true growth — not escaping stress, but building the capacity to handle it differently.

---

🩺 When Stress Looks Like Something Else

Many people end up diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, or chronic fatigue without realizing that their body is simply trying to process long-term stress and trauma.

You can’t medicate trauma out of the body.
You must move it through the body.

Symptoms like:

Digestive issues 🌀

Muscle tension or headaches 💢

Sleep problems 🌙

Racing thoughts ⚡

Autoimmune conditions 🌿
are often the body’s way of saying:

> “I’m overwhelmed. Please slow down and listen.”

Medication or herbal remedies may help with stabilization — but true healing comes when you teach your body safety again.

---

🧘 Myth #4: “Relaxation will fix my stress.”

You can’t “breathe away” trauma if your body doesn’t feel safe yet.
Calm isn’t something you do — it’s something your nervous system learns to allow.

That’s why meditation, breathwork, and other practices sometimes frustrate trauma survivors — their bodies aren’t ready to rest yet.
The system first needs to learn that the danger has passed.

This is where embodied processing and parts work (No Bad Parts) are so powerful.
Instead of suppressing the stress response, you meet the parts of you that are scared and help them feel safe — one moment at a time.

---

🌸 When Stress Is Actually Healthy

Sometimes your stress is right.

If your environment is toxic, unsafe, or emotionally abusive, your body is doing its job — protecting you.
In those cases, the goal isn’t to regulate; it’s to get to safety.

Your stress response isn’t broken — it’s intelligent.
It knows when something is off.
Learning to listen to it — and discern whether it’s a present threat or a past echo — is part of becoming truly conscious.

---

🧠 Myth #5: “Stress means something’s wrong with me.”

No.
Stress means something inside you wants to be understood.

It’s the messenger, not the enemy.

When you turn toward it — not with judgment, but with curiosity — it transforms.
Every wave of anxiety, tension, or panic is your body saying, “I’m remembering something that once felt too big to handle.”

Your work now is to let your adult self show up and say:

> “You’re safe now. I can handle this.”

That’s what healing looks like. 🌿

---

🩶 The Holistic View: Healing Stress from the Inside Out

Healing is not only emotional — it’s holistic.

You support the mind, body, and nervous system together:

🌙 Sleep & rest: The body rewires in rest, not rush.

🥗 Nutrition: Nutrient-rich food stabilizes hormones and mood.

🏃‍♀️ Movement: Gentle exercise, stretching, and walking release built-up tension.

🌳 Grounding: Nature, sunlight, and breath remind your body of safety.

🎨 Expression: Writing, art, music, and creativity move emotion through the body.

💛 Connection: Safe relationships and community repair the attachment wounds that created hypervigilance in the first place.

You can’t heal stress in isolation — you heal it through connection, regulation, and compassion.

---

🌼 The Deeper Work

Healing stress requires reflection:

What core wounds are being triggered?

What secondary gains do I get from staying stressed (control, avoidance, validation)?

How are my boundaries and communication adding or relieving pressure?

Which parts of me feel unsafe, and what do they need?

As Thais Gibson teaches, the subconscious mind doesn’t care about what’s logical — it seeks familiarity.
That’s why you unconsciously recreate stress until you consciously choose healing.

---

🌙 Integration Reflection

Next time something feels “too much,” pause and ask:

“Is this stress about now — or about something old being reawakened?”

“Which part of me feels unsafe, and how can I show up for it?”

Notice if your first impulse is to escape, fix, or numb. Instead, breathe, ground, and listen.

Each time you do, you rewire your nervous system to trust you. 🌿

---

☀️ In Closing

It’s not about creating a life without stress.
It’s about creating a self that can meet stress with grace, awareness, and inner safety.

When you begin to heal the stories your body still carries — the old fears, the early imprints, the attachment patterns — life stops feeling like a storm you can’t control, and starts feeling like a wave you can finally surf. 🌊

Because true peace doesn’t come from having nothing to stress about.
It comes from knowing that no matter what happens, you can handle it. 💛

By Brianna King.
Light the Way Counselling.

04/11/2025

🌱 Is Your Child Growing You Up?

Inspired by The Conscious Parent book by Dr. Shefali Tsabary 🌼
(My reflections as I read through the book and wanting to share with you all).

---

🌿 Face Up to Your Reactivity

Parenting brings up everything inside us that’s still unhealed.
The moments that trigger us most aren’t about our child — they’re about the parts of us that still need love, regulation, and understanding.

When we find ourselves snapping, shutting down, or overreacting, it’s a cue to pause and look within. That’s where conscious parenting begins — with self-awareness, not perfection.

🌀 Example: Your child refuses to listen, and anger floods in. That anger might not be about the moment — it could be the voice of your inner child who never felt heard.

Each reaction is a mirror. When we face it with honesty instead of shame, we give ourselves and our children something powerful: growth through awareness. 🌸

---

🧬 Discover Your Emotional Inheritance

We don’t just pass on eye colour or expressions — we pass on emotional blueprints.
Our reactions, coping mechanisms, and patterns often come from generations before us.

When we explore why we respond the way we do, we start to uncover our emotional inheritance — the beliefs and defences we learned from our parents and environment.

💭 Ask yourself:

What did love look like in my family?

Was it safe to feel angry or sad?

What did I have to do to feel accepted or valued?

🌿 Example: If your parents demanded obedience, you might now crave control over your child — not out of malice, but out of fear. Recognising this helps you stop the cycle.

Awareness is the first step toward rewriting the emotional script you inherited. 🌸

---

🌺 How Can You Integrate Your Pain?

You can’t heal what you won’t feel.

Integration means turning toward the pain you’ve been avoiding — not to stay stuck there, but to finally meet it. It’s where the child inside you learns that it’s safe now.

When you notice old emotions rising, try to breathe, soften, and listen. The parts of you that once needed love are asking to be seen.

🩷 Example: You feel shame after yelling at your child. Instead of drowning in guilt, pause and say, “That reaction came from my own fear. I can repair this, and I can choose differently next time.”

Through conscious awareness, pain becomes the portal — not the punishment. 🌿

---

💫 How to Handle Your Child’s Pain

Children come with their own emotions, experiences, and ways of processing. Our instinct is often to fix their pain — but what they really need is to feel safe in it.

When you can hold your child’s pain without absorbing it, you teach them emotional resilience.

💛 Example: Your child is crying about a friendship ending. Instead of rushing to distract them, you simply sit, listen, and say, “That must hurt a lot.” That moment of presence tells them their emotions are valid.

There’s nothing passive about acceptance.
To sit with a child’s pain without needing to change it is one of the most powerful acts of love. 🌿

---

🐾 Take One Step at a Time

Becoming conscious doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey — a lifelong unfolding.

You will lose your patience. You will react. You will fall back into old patterns. That’s okay. What matters is that you notice and return again.

🌸 Example: Yesterday you shouted. Today you pause before shouting. Tomorrow you breathe and choose a calm tone. Each small shift builds a new pattern in your nervous system — and your child’s.

Parenting consciously means progress, not perfection. One small, loving step at a time. 🌱

---

🧘 What It Takes to Tame Your Anxiety

Parenting anxiety often comes from the illusion that we must control everything — our child’s future, choices, emotions. But control comes from fear, not love.

The more we regulate our own nervous system, the more peace we give to our children.

🌿 Try this:

Take 3 long exhales when you feel tension rising.

Ground yourself with your senses — notice what you see, hear, feel.

Speak to your body kindly: “We’re safe right now.”

🩵 Example: When your child is melting down, instead of tightening, you breathe, soften your shoulders, and remind yourself: I can stay calm, even if they can’t.

Your calm is their compass. 🌞

---

🌻 In Closing

Children don’t just grow up — they grow us up.

They awaken the parts of us that have been asleep. They call us to face our reactivity, to reparent our inner child, and to learn the art of presence.

Conscious parenting isn’t about doing it perfectly — it’s about doing it awake.

Every time you choose awareness over reaction, compassion over control, and curiosity over fear, you evolve. 🌿

> “To connect with your child, first connect with yourself.” — Dr. Shefali Tsabary

Your child is not here to be moulded — they’re here to awaken the parent within you. 💛

By Brianna King.
Light the Way Counselling.

03/11/2025

🌿 A Blow to Our Ego

Inspired by The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary 🌼
(My reflections as I've read through each chapter of this book and wanting to share with you all).

Parenthood is one of life’s greatest teachers — not because it fills us with pride, but because it humbles us to our core.

As Dr. Shefali Tsabary writes in The Conscious Parent, raising a child is meant to deliver a blow to our ego. 💛

That’s not punishment. It’s awakening.

Because parenting strips away everything false — every illusion of control, every image we’ve built, every idea of who we should be — and leaves us standing face-to-face with our truth.

---

🌸 How Does Ego Function?

Our ego is not evil — it’s protective.
It’s the part of us that wants safety, certainty, validation, and identity.

The ego says:

> “If I can control everything, I’ll feel secure.”
“If people admire me, I’ll be loved.”
“If my child behaves perfectly, I must be doing well.”

The ego feeds on image, comparison, and fear of rejection. It’s always trying to prove something — that we’re good enough, lovable enough, or in charge.

But parenting exposes how fragile those ego-driven identities really are.

Children don’t care about our status or appearance — they want connection, presence, authenticity. 🌿

The moment we try to parent from ego, our children will mirror back the truth: we cannot control love, we can only embody it.

---

💭 The Ego of Image

This is the voice that says, “What will people think?”

It’s the part of us that wants our children to reflect well on us — to behave, achieve, or “look right” so we can feel like successful parents.

We want our family to appear calm, happy, harmonious — even when beneath the surface, we’re struggling.

Example:
Your child throws a tantrum in public.
The ego of image panics — “People will think I’m a bad parent!”
So you rush to silence the child, not because you’re concerned for them, but because you’re ashamed.

But consciousness asks:

> “What if I chose empathy over appearance?”

Because love isn’t a performance — it’s presence. 💛

---

🌿 The Ego of Perfection

This is the part that says, “I must get it all right.”

The ego of perfection sets impossible standards:
✨ The perfect routine
✨ The perfect reaction
✨ The perfect parent persona

When we inevitably fall short, the ego attacks: “You’re failing.”

But perfectionism is really fear in disguise — fear of being unworthy, of being seen as flawed.

Children don’t need perfect parents.
They need real, grounded, emotionally honest ones.

Example:
You lose your patience and yell.
The ego says, “You ruined everything.”
Consciousness says, “This is a moment to repair and model humility.”

There’s deep power in saying, “I’m sorry. I’m learning too.” 🌸

That’s where real connection grows.

---

🌾 The Ego of Status

This is the part that defines worth through external measures — grades, achievements, roles, or social approval.

It whispers,

> “If my child succeeds, I’ll feel important.”
“If they struggle, it reflects badly on me.”

This ego uses children as proof of identity — a dangerous burden for any young soul.

Example:
A parent feels anxious when their child isn’t top of the class. Instead of asking, “What does my child need?” the ego says, “What does this say about me?”

But our children aren’t here to validate us — they’re here to discover themselves. 🌿

When we let go of status, we make room for authenticity.

---

🌸 The Ego of Conformity

This ego thrives on fitting in, pleasing others, and avoiding judgment.
It tells us to follow social rules, even when they go against our intuition.

It says:

> “Everyone else’s child is doing that, so mine should too.”
“If I parent differently, I’ll be judged.”

But conscious parenting often looks different.
It’s slower, softer, deeper.
It honours the child’s spirit more than social expectation.

Breaking free from conformity requires courage — to trust your intuition, even when others don’t understand.

Your child doesn’t need to be “normal.”
They need to be themselves. 💛

---

🌿 The Ego of Being ‘In Control’

This might be the loudest ego of all.

It tells us:

> “If I can control my child, I’ll feel safe.”

So we micromanage, command, threaten, and tighten our grip — only to discover that love withers under control.

Example:
Your child resists your directions, and instead of pausing, you double down — punishments, lectures, withdrawal of affection.

You feel powerful in the moment, but later, you feel disconnected and guilty.

The truth is, control is an illusion.
The only real power in parenting is connection. 🌸

Children cooperate when they feel safe, not when they feel dominated.

When we let go of control, we make space for trust — and that’s when true guidance begins.

---

🌼 You Can Transition Out of Ego

Awakening out of ego doesn’t happen overnight — it’s a gradual, tender process.

The first step is awareness.
You notice when your ego takes the lead — when you feel defensive, reactive, or ashamed — and you pause.

That pause is consciousness being born. 🌿

Then comes self-compassion.
You remind yourself: “I’m learning. My ego is trying to protect me.”

From there, you begin to choose differently:
💛 Presence over perfection
💛 Curiosity over control
💛 Connection over image
💛 Authenticity over conformity

Every time you choose awareness over ego, you strengthen your spirit.

Children are our greatest teachers in this — because they challenge our ego every single day.

But that’s their purpose. They don’t come to feed our ego — they come to free us from it. 🌞

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💬 Reflection Prompts

✨ Which form of ego do I most identify with — image, perfection, status, conformity, or control?
✨ How does that show up in my parenting or relationships?
✨ What situations trigger my ego most often — and what deeper fear lies beneath?
✨ What would it feel like to respond from presence instead of ego?

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🌸 Closing Thought

Parenthood is a sacred mirror — it reflects not only our love, but our illusions.

Every challenge, every trigger, every “failure” is an invitation to awaken beyond the ego’s need to be right, admired, or in control.

Because on the other side of ego is truth.
And on the other side of truth is love — pure, unconditional, liberating love. 🌿

> “Children don’t come to elevate our ego. They come to humble it — so that love can finally take its rightful place.” 💛

By Brianna King.
Light the Way Counselling.

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Euroa, VIC

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Saturday	9am - 1pm

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+61439776040

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https://lightthewaycounselling.com/

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