When Mary came to me for a session to work on invigorating her business with an abundance of productivity, the last thing on her mind was her husband!
She had some deadlines coming up and needed to be focused and energised in the little time she had available while juggling children, home and family life. Mary’s business was more than just a business to her. It was her connection to an aspect of herself that had been neglected due to prioritising 2 young children. Now was the time to reignite her self-fulfilment and sense of confidence as a knowledgeable entrepreneur.
I decided to approach this session by introducing the use of felts (as used in Family Constellations) to represent different aspects of herself. We started with representing her business self (represented by the orange felt) which she place close to her to one side. Thinking about her business, made her feel excited. Next she placed her children – her number one priority, close to her and in front of her. And a purple felt to represent herself. She said that now that her children were at school, she could focus on her business.
We then added other aspects of her which she chose:
- yellow to represent her family
- dark green to represent sadness that was affecting her
- light green for joy that she wanted to bring more into her life
- pale pink for friends.
I then asked her if someone was missing. She looked puzzled for a moment so I asked her where her husband was? She had bunched him in with the yellow family felt but realised that actually she was thinking of her parents and siblings. It was a big aha moment to notice that her husband wasn’t present. Waves of guilt washed over her as she realised that she was so focused on her children and her business and reclaiming her sense of identity, that she had forgotten her husband. So we did some EFT Tapping to release the guilt and infuse self compassion.
It is common for mums of young children to be so wrapped up in parenting that their partners often take a back seat. According to author and therapist David Code, “As we break our backs for our kids, our marriage and self-fulfilment go out the window while our kids become more demanding and dissatisfied. By killing ourselves to provide a perfect, trauma-free childhood for our children, we’re wasting our energy. The greatest gift you can give your children is to have a fulfilling marriage yourself.”
We then added her husband with a blue felt. Mary made space for him by moving the orange business felt across making way for her husband (blue).
Through the tapping she became grateful that it was not too late to bring more priority to her relationship with her husband. The final constellation illustrated below shows a more balanced view and that although she is still prioritising her children (bright pink), her business (orange) and husband (blue) now also have centre stage.
There is still more work to do but it is interesting how a client can come with one issue only to find another seemingly unrelated one pop up to be addressed.
If you are a mum who wants to have feel happier in herself, with her children check out my book Frazzled to Fabulous in 5 Minutes a Day Follow my quick and easy step-by-step programme here https://www.frazzledtofabulous.com/
