Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying FreeNow.com and you're listening to the Flying Free

podcast, a support resource for women of faith looking for hope and healing from hidden

emotional and spiritual abuse. Welcome to episode 319 of the Flying Free Podcast.

Every day I interact with Christian women in my private kaleidoscope community.

I call it the kaleidoscope because that is the word for a flock of butterflies.

And our private kaleidoscope is populated with hundreds of them. Christian women who are either

in a destructive relationship, or maybe they're separated or going through a divorce, or maybe they're

already divorced. But basically, it's women who have had to navigate a life dealing with an emotional

abuser or maybe an abusive family of origin or a spiritually

abusive religious community. And we have a lot of resources inside of this kaleidoscope for these women.

But one of the ways that I help them is by providing this forum where they can ask questions

and get feedback from each other, as well as from several professional coaches that work with me inside this program.

One of the most common struggles that I'm seeing in the kaleidoscope is moms who don't know how to think about kids,

especially boys, it seems like, come up a lot, who are showing up in similar ways as

dad is showing up. So they are arguing, blaming, talking back, being rude, dismissive,

not able to understand things from another person's perspective, and so on. So basically,

not showing up with a lot of emotional maturity.

And the moms are coming into the forum with a lot of distress, experiencing a lot of triggering

when their kids are showing up like their husband or these kids' dad. So when they're triggered,

they either back away from their child and hide

or they lash out in anger and go on the defensive and push back. They project their husband's

behavior onto their child and the part of them that's been wounded by dad for many years

...