How do you become emotionally resilient?
Our next guest, Rebecca Techeira, candidly discusses the initial excitement and subsequent difficulties of stepfamily dynamics. Rebecca talks about differing parenting values and how external pressures affected her choices. Rebecca and her husband repeatedly sought help from "canned solutions" that didn't last. It wasn't until Rebecca worked with a coach that she began to experience her own transformation, and bring her back from the brink of divorce.
My mission is to help you conquer second-wife syndrome for good.....So you can stop wrestling and start investing your time, money and energy into your dreams. Take the Empowerment Quiz to see how coaching can literally transform your life!
Take Your Power Back & Reclaim Your Joy, FAST! www.stepfamilypodcast.com/WorkWithJen
📞Get Featured on the show! Ask Jen Anything
Next steps:
Step 1: Join the Empowered Community bit.ly/joyfulwithjen
Step 2: BUILD BETTER BOUNDARIES! Powerful Free Handbook + Bonuses!
Step 3: De-Stress Planning - Celebrations Guide! bit.ly/CelebrateWithJen
Step 4: Top 10 tips to Regain Your Power & Prevent Burnout Free Download!
Step 5: Peaceful Co-Parenting Strategies that Work-Mini Workshop $97
Be strong, and let your heart be courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord.
Psalm 31:24
How do you become emotionally resilient?
Our next guest, Rebecca Techeira, candidly discusses the initial excitement and subsequent difficulties of stepfamily dynamics. Rebecca talks about differing parenting values and how external pressures affected her choices. Rebecca and her husband repeatedly sought help from "canned solutions" that didn't last. It wasn't until Rebecca worked with a coach that she began to experience her own transformation, and bring her back from the brink of divorce.
My mission is to help you conquer second-wife syndrome for good.....So you can stop wrestling and start investing your time, money and energy into your dreams. Take the Empowerment Quiz to see how coaching can literally transform your life!
Take Your Power Back & Reclaim Your Joy, FAST! www.stepfamilypodcast.com/WorkWithJen
📞Get Featured on the show! Ask Jen Anything
Next steps:
Step 1: Join the Empowered Community bit.ly/joyfulwithjen
Step 2: BUILD BETTER BOUNDARIES! Powerful Free Handbook + Bonuses!
Step 3: De-Stress Planning - Celebrations Guide! bit.ly/CelebrateWithJen
Step 4: Top 10 tips to Regain Your Power & Prevent Burnout Free Download!
Step 5: Peaceful Co-Parenting Strategies that Work-Mini Workshop $97
Be strong, and let your heart be courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord.
Psalm 31:24
Jen Rogers, Host 00:00
You've spent so much time living up to others' expectations.
They said, “Go!”
So you went.
They said, “Why are you doing that?”
So you stopped.
They said, “That's dangerous! Risky! Not a good idea!”
So you doubted and felt fear.
Your dream died, a death of a thousand cuts, as you listened to voices other than your own, ready to listen to your own voice, aligned with God's call for you, sweet woman.
00:29
This morning Bill and I read from the book of Judges, a time when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Peering over my steaming mug of yummy dark roast, Sumatra, adjusting my reading glasses to read the fine print in my study Bible, I paused to reflect on this. In Joshua 1, the tribes failed to conquer all the land God promised to them. This is a recurring failure among the tribes to rise to full trust and obedience for victory by God's power. Essentially, they compromise for much less than what God was able to give.
01:03
Are you compromising and missing out on God's best for you and your marriage?
When we listen to others' expectations for us, for our marriage, for our family, for our work, we get distracted from focusing on the truth, on God's promises, on taking our full territory and exercising dominion in our home, want to know how to stop giving up territory that belongs to you. Become emotionally resilient.
On today's episode, number 219 of the Empowered Stepmom podcast, we'll learn how to do just that. We'll take a deeper look into what moves us into pits of despair, how conflicting values create chaos in our blends, and what to do to rise above our circumstances. When you shift your perspective and take ownership for how God created you, you ask powerful questions, you practice new strategies and you become emotionally resilient. And that resiliency well, that builds confidence.
02:03
Meet Rebecca Techeira. Wife, mom, stepmom, coach and executive in the oil and gas industry. Bill and I interviewed her back in 2022, and this insightful interview has been hanging out in our vault until today. I'm so excited to share this powerful perspective from a woman who came back from the verge of divorce when she got caught up in the status quo.
Ever heard the expression compare and despair? Rebecca puts it this way:
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 02:32
Jen, I think one of the things we hurt ourselves the most with in blended families are all the expectations, the status quo we're comparing ourselves against, whether that's us as individuals, as stepmoms or as stepdads or as a family unit comparing ourselves to traditional nuclear families Just all of it is a setup for us to be the same, compare and despair To some degree. I think stepfamilies do quite a bit of that and at the end of the day, if nothing else, if you can get really clear as an individual person on what matters to you, what are my values, what do I care most about, what's worth fighting for for me individually, then I think from that place, making all the little decisions in your family every day get a lot easier.
Jen Rogers, Host 03:22
I am all about making it easier, so let's do that, shall we? The mission of the Empowered Stepmom podcast is to guide you to stand firm in your values Around here, we don't sugarcoat the challenges we face as a stepmom, and we don't wallow in them either. We believe God's word when he says we are more than conquerors because Jesus is with us. Hi, I'm Jen. Resiliency Coach, podcasting hostess with the mostest and professional speaker.
03:48
I empower women to reclaim their voice so they can show up authentically and influentially in their business, relationships and home. I'll inspire, encourage and lead you how to find your voice again, to reclaim your value, to dream even bigger dreams. How do we do that? Well, one small step at a time. For too long, I leaned into what other people said about how I was supposed to behave. I was shackled with shoulds and shame that kept me from fully trusting in the lavish love, gifts and promises of our Heavenly Father.
04:21
My mission is to inspire you to shake off expectations of others and focus on what God is calling you to do, as you fully embrace who you are, becoming a woman after his own heart. If you are struggling to find your voice or wondering how you can build your emotional resiliency. It's time to take the first step. As a certified professional coach, I'm an experienced guide who can help you smash through others' expectations that do not define you. Head on over to stepfamilypodcastcom/WorkWithJento take the empowerment quiz to learn if coaching is right for you.
All right, sis, let's get started with episode number 219. All right, so, from one stepmom to another, I'm very excited to have you on the show. We have issued the challenge for Bill to get a word in edgewise. I'm sure he'll be able to talk, but we are so pleased to have you share some of your triumphs and challenges and vulnerabilities being a stepmom which you've turned into helping other women. So welcome, let's get into it.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 05:30
Thank you so much, Jen. I'm so excited to be here.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 05:33
Yeah, Rebecca, in your journey, when you first met your husband, talk about how you totally didn't anticipate what was to come.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 05:43
That's a great first question, bill. So my husband and I first met 15 years ago and we actually met on match dot com, which is a really funny story, because the way we tell that story, depending on which one of us is telling it, we tell it very differently. So he will tell you that he did not chase me and stalk me to some degree to get me to respond, but I will tell you that is absolutely what happened. But to fast forward, we met on Match.com. We had our first date and it really just we clicked really from that very first date and haven't we've been together ever since. We dated for a couple of years and so I went into it, I guess probably like most stepmoms, thinking that I kind of knew it would be a challenge.
06:30
I did not know a bunch of other stepparents, but I grew up in a step family. I had an idea of what it would be like from the kids' perspective, and I was worried about that, from the kid's perspective, and I was worried about that. I was mostly worried about making sure that they felt a connection to my husband and with the other stepkids. But the thing was that part was super easy, because so I have two children that are only 13 months apart. My husband has two and his fell right between my two, so they were basically like little triplets, and at the time my kids were four and five.
07:07
The youngest was five and the oldest was 12. The 12-year-old and I got along fabulously. That was fine at first. Of course it got a little bit more complicated later, as I think most stepfamilies do, but initially the three little ones just took to each other milk and cookies. It was fantastic, and part of what kept us going when it got really tough was how close those three were and our worry about splitting them away from each other again. That was a big thing that really kept us going through some of the harder parts in the beginning. It didn't keep us together all the way through, but in the beginning that really gave us the strength to keep pushing forward.
Jen Rogers, Host 07:46
And I'm curious to know how long would you define the beginning? Oh, that's another good question.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 07:52
It feels like it was a long time before it really even settled at all. I would say that I would call the beginning probably the first three or four years, yeah.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 08:03
And then by then did you say it was your stepdaughter? It's 12 years old, so she's then becoming a teenager now, by the end of that three or four year period.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 08:13
Yes, exactly which you know. Hormones come with that and just all of it. We had a little bit of drama for lack of better words from our exes. All the standard fare for any blended family started to come into play and by that point the youngest ones were even. They were getting more independent and wanting to have friends that were outside of the house and not just each other. They were in school. There was just.
08:42
It felt like there were a lot of outside pressures from all these different places, pressures and pulls from all these different directions. Me being the kind of the control freak of the world who at the time thought it was my job to make everybody happy all the time, took me a very long time to realize that, especially in blended families, that is really an impossible task because there's just too many people in the mix, with competing and opposing wants and needs and all of that. So you know, as the person that was trying to maneuver everything and everybody and make it all work, it was just exhausting for me and really frustrating for everybody around me as well.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 09:26
When things started to become difficult for you? Would you say you tried to hide that, or would you say you sought for help somewhere?
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 09:36
We did seek help pretty quickly. We initially hired a marriage counselor. Actually, the first big thing we did was we went to a marriage boot camp. It was a very exhaustive, like 13-hour days, four days in a row, in this group with other married couples. But it wasn't for blended families, it was just traditional marriage boot camp for traditional families. We tried that. Then we hired further down the line, we tried counseling. Then we hired further down the line, we tried counseling, we did individual therapy, we did couples therapy and then we did another marriage camp. Yeah, we tried to reach out for help in all the different places.
10:19
I counseled with our pastor for a while, myself at two different churches and on top of that, myself at two different churches. And on top of that I'm very introspective. I have always been that way Because I was the one trying to control it all and fix it. I took it on myself that it was my job to find the answer and I read every book there was to find. I was just really hungry for help and looking for it in all these different places and all of it would work for really short periods of time and then it would just slowly go back to the way it was before and we'd end up right back where we started. Except then I had the added layer of this feeling of failure, that another method that I'd tried also failed.
Jen Rogers, Host 11:03
So it just got bigger and worse over time. I would say, when you're first expecting a baby and you read the what to Expect when You're Expecting book, I just realized that we should have a book called what to Expect when You're Stepmothering book. I don't know, Because you have no idea. Especially I can relate. I'm a recovering control freak so I can relate a little bit to this whole control factor. I do ensure that everything is going the way that you want it to go, and wondering why people are not behaving the way that you think that they quote unquote should be behaving, which I have learned from talking to you is one of your forbidden words. You have eradicated this word from your vocabulary.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 11:39
Is this true? Yes, 100%. One of the first things that I learned in working with my own coach was how much we hurt ourselves with all the shoulds and all the expectations that we're trying to meet. Yeah, shoulds. I no longer say the word should it relates to me or anybody else.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 11:56
You always say don't should on yourself.
Jen Rogers, Host 11:59
Yeah, exactly. So now this is a test: Listen for that word and see if we follow that rule that we are going to avoid that word as we record.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 12:09
I think we should avoid that word as much as we can.
Jen Rogers, Host 12:12
You think we should? Huh, yeah, okay, all right, knock it off, all right. So here's the thing that I know that you have yet to share, and that is you basically chucked it all. I did.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 12:26
I did In two actually different ways, so I'm not sure which one you want me to go into first, but the first one was when things got really bad between my husband and I About three years ago. I actually moved out and filed for divorce. I got a townhouse just down the road and I had decided I was done and I actually hired my coach because I wanted someone to help me with the emotional process I knew I was going to go through through the divorce. But when I started applying the tools that she taught me to my marriage, it was like I hate to even use the word magic, but at the time it felt like that, Like it was. It hit me so hard and it fundamentally changed the way I think and the way I process what happens around me, just in this fundamental way that's hard to describe.
13:19
And when I started applying those tools to my marriage, it literally changed everything. Applying those tools to my marriage, it literally changed everything, which is crazy because my husband didn't change anything. I did not ask him to change a single thing. I changed the way I thought about the things he did, the things he said or didn't say. I changed how I thought about our family and myself. I got really clear on who I am, who God created me to be, what was important to me and what wasn't. And then I started showing up from that place and it's like the entire. I decided to walk away from a VP position in oil and gas to go teach what I learned to other stepmoms, because I just feel like it's the secrets and not enough people know it.
Jen Rogers, Host 14:21
Let's go back to the dance with you and your husband. You changed the dance steps. What did he?
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 14:27
do. It's funny and the clients that I work with have the same experience the first few weeks, maybe even first couple of months, depending on the husband, because everybody's different but they're confused and they don't really trust what's happening. He kept waiting for me to react, in the same way that I'd used to react, and he was.
It was like he was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop or something Just very confused in general. I bet he slowly started to realize okay, this is actually different and the biggest shift for him was that he was suddenly free to be who he is, 100% who he is, without having to meet my expectations or make sure I was okay or get home at this time, because he knew I'd be mad if it was 20 minutes after that. Like, whatever he did, it was fine, he was free to be himself and that changed the way he reacted to me and it just became the cycle that went back and forth and fed off of itself.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 15:32
That sounds like the grace cycle.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 15:34
I love it.
Jen Rogers, Host 15:35
Yes, that is so good, so good. You say all of us are half awesome and half hot mess.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 15:43
I think that's so important for stepmoms, for anybody in a blended family, to really get their arms around. We're all 50-50. We are a half fantastic and half hot mess, like half the time. I'm a phenomenal mom. I do things on time. I love them all the time, but half the time there may be days where I struggle to like everything that they're doing that day, or there's times where I forgot to put something in the lunchbox, or we didn't wake up on time and everybody was late. I could go on and on.
16:16
But I just think it's so important that, instead of beating ourselves up and holding ourselves to this standard of perfection that nobody ever meets, and then we use it when we don't meet that standard, we just beat ourselves over the head with it, as if that self-criticism, that critical voice in your head beating you up, was actually changing anything. And it doesn't it just it drives you down into the ground, and then you expect the same from everybody around you. So, like, the first thing I tell people that I work with is number one we're not going to change your husband. We're going to work on how to accept him, realizing that if you change, think of all the things you love about your spouse. If you change any of the stuff you don't like, you'd lose some of the stuff that you love, because we're all like little ecosystem. That's what makes us who we are.
Jen Rogers, Host 17:08
Is that why your hair grows so fast in some places, but not others? Okay, you know what I love, though.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 17:14
What I love is that what you're getting into there, rebecca, is the idea that, even though we're half hot mess, the hot mess becomes awesome when the grace flows, and that's the way we all are. We don't none of us respond greatly to constant criticism or negativity.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 17:36
Absolutely not. No, and I think that's especially true of how we feel when our spouse is telling us all the things that they want us to be different at or to change this or that. I think we give enough of that to ourselves. I think we're all a lot more hard on ourselves than anybody realizes.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 17:55
I used to have a saying when we were dating and shortly after that, is this you or is this your representative? And it's a joke that when we're dating, we become our best self and it's our representative. It's not the real us, but there is the real us in it, and what I'd love to hear is what was it that went off in you when you were working with your coach to realize he didn't change because he's the same person that he's always been?
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 18:26
Yeah, that's a good question. So I think the biggest thing was, first, the day the earth moved. For me was the day that my coach showed me how to separate reality, like the facts of what's going on, from the interpretations that my brain would give me about what was going on, my thoughts, my head. I did not know how to separate out this is the fact from. This is my thought about that fact.
18:53
And when I learned how to do that, coupled with this concept that we really do get to choose what we think about, we can choose our thoughts.
19:03
They're all a hundred percent optional and we can pick any ones we want, but some thoughts don't serve the result that we're trying to achieve, like in my case, in all of our cases a happy blended family. The thoughts that I was holding on to about my husband were things like I married the wrong man, we got married too fast, that he treats his kids better than mine, and so what happens? Like, until you know how to do this process, what happens is we get an idea in our heads, like in my case, he treats his kids better than mine. Then your brain goes to work, doing its job, one of its jobs. Your reticular activating system is literally wired to pick up all the evidence to prove your thought true. To pick up all the evidence to prove your thought true and, importantly, to filter out anything that doesn't jive with that original thought. So you literally create the perception, you create your own reality in your brain.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 20:04
There's a particular brain scientist who proved that basically, you are building trees in your brain that are very real to you and that every thought builds on that tree. Negative trees are spindly ugly things, but the beautiful ones are like big, thick evergreens and they're real things. The thoughts are real things, so I can really appreciate what you're saying with that. How do you do it? You just said, when you learn how to distinguish. So how do you?
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 20:40
So step one really is to separate out what are the facts and what are my thoughts, and that seems like it would be easy, except it's a little more complicated than it seems at the surface. So a fact would be it's 78 degrees outside right now. My thought about that is it's hot outside. The first step is just recognizing that, if it's truly a fact, it's a fact that does not have any opinions or descriptive words. It's 78 degrees outside. Or I have a stepdaughter, I am married to Alonzo facts only. And then, what are your thoughts about having a stepdaughter? What are your thoughts about the weather? What are your thoughts about being married to your spouse? If you don't start, it gets just very confusing in your own head because you're mixing facts with your thoughts. Or what usually happens is we think that something is the fact.
Jen Rogers, Host 21:37
It's actually just a thought.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 21:39
Does that make sense it?
Jen Rogers, Host 21:40
does make sense. Earlier on you were saying I said I'm done. I think that is the most classic actually that's probably number two classic statement of stepmoms. The first one is I would never do it again. That's what we often hear, is that I just would never do this again. There's a lot of judgment in that statement and that lacks the total opposite of what you need to be able to discern between thoughts and facts, and that is we need curiosity. So I'm married to Alonzo and I have a stepdaughter. How does that make me feel? What makes me feel that way? What kind of relationship would I like to have with my stepdaughter? How would I like to respect my husband by demonstrating love to his children, even when I don't really feel like it? So those are some of the differences that come to mind as you're talking about this very important distinction between, I would say, judgment and curiosity, or facts and thoughts. They go together in my mind.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 22:45
Yeah, absolutely, or like a good example could be. I've heard lots of stuff. I'll just quote myself. There was a period of time where I would say one of my children was more difficult than the others and I thought that was just a fact. I'm just telling you. I'm telling you, bill and Jen, this child is more difficult than the other three.
So you see, when you start from that place, then how do you separate out a fact from that, when you think it's a fact from that, when you think it's a fact and when you think it's a fact. This is the biggest thing. There's no, you don't have any leverage over it, because if it's a fact, you can't change it. There's no power there and all of your power is in the story. Your brain is telling you about the circumstance in your life. Circumstance is something that is completely outside of your life.
23:31
Circumstance is something that is completely outside of your control.The only thing we get to control in this world is ourselves, our actions and our attitude, and all of those things flow from the thoughts in your brain about your circumstance. Those thoughts create a feeling in your body, and that feeling is what drives every action you take or what you don't do, anything you're trying to avoid. All of that is coming from the thought you have about the fact.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 24:01
Control is an illusion I'm really curious of. Is this, rebecca, that feeling that becomes a fact to you? I would imagine when you're reaching out for support, you are coloring that support. You're out there telling a story to other people that are then oh yeah, you're right, you got to make sure you do that. You're in the upper hand and blah, blah, blah.
That's what I love about what your coach did. Basically said you know what? I'm not playing the game. I'm not going to let you color my thought here, but let's address some differences here. How do we as counselors whether it be as coaches, pastors how do we remove the emotion from that kind of teaching?
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 24:51
I love that question. It's so important to just first start with helping people separate out the facts from their thoughts about it. Because, as you're saying, if we in the school that I was trained at, we call it being in the pool with the client when the client is telling you my husband is so awful and he says mean things to me and my marriage is difficult, if we jump in by agreeing with them, by not calling that out, by not helping them separate out and realize that all of their power is in the way that they're telling that story to themselves.
That's the only thing they get to change. And if we don't do that, then we're in the pool with them trying to save them from drowning as they grab onto us and pull us to the bottom of the pool with them. Oh my gosh, that is so wonderful.
Jen Rogers, Host 25:38
I was drowning there for a minute. That is so good. I love that question, though, so let's apply that question. So a woman comes to you and it's her first time, and she doesn't really know what to expect. She's done some of the things that you've described the boot camps which, the way you described it, it sounds grueling. I think it's intended to sound grueling Oftentimes the focus is there's something wrong with you.
26:04
Whereas and women come and show up for coaching, one of the first things that they get to hear is we're focused on the future. We're not going to rehash the past and go through and figure out how, when that lollipop was stolen from you when you were three, how that made you feel and how that's still something that you're carrying around in your body right now. So can you share a bit about how you minister to women in that way when they first come and see you from the coach's perspective? Yeah, absolutely.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 26:33
The big focus is on, as you're saying, it's focused on the future and it's becoming. To put it in a nutshell, it's how do you become emotionally resilient? I'm not coaching people to believe that we can change your blended family into unicorns and rainbows in three months, or six years for that matter. It's not possible.
We start with how do we accept reality as it is today, accepting ourselves right as a whole person. Your life is 50-50. We are literally meant and wired to have 50% negative emotion and 50% positive emotion. It's starting with this baseline truth, that reality. How do you accept it as it is and be in love with where you are right now?
27:19
And being emotionally resilient means that even when the tough stuff happens because it will, being on yourself, prayer, your relationship with the Lord, like that to me, is that is how you exercise faith. That is where the rubber meets the road. I focus on what I can control and the part that's really hard. I take that to God and I let Him my heart and work that in others' hearts, without control the things outside of me. I'm worried about focusing on trying to control me, how I show up the hard stuff.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 27:56
Sounds so much like the Apostle Paul, who said I've learned to be content in all situations, whether well-fed or hungry, whether in need or want. And what I love about that is when you say it's not going to be all unicorns and rainbows, for example. That's a perspective, and that perspective is a change of the mind. It might not be a change of circumstance, but it's a change of the mind, and the mind then can change circumstances.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 28:23
Absolutely, Absolutely. For me, when I read the scripture, seek, and you shall find to me. That is what this work is. What you seek with your brain is what you will see in front of you. Where you put your focus is what you'll see in front of you. So you can have lots of difficult circumstances happening around you and you can still have a content experience within that. How do you get there? What's that process like? What's the nuts and bolts of how to do that? And that's where I coach people from.
Jen Rogers, Host 28:57
So I'm curious to know in the hot mess part I guess actually in both parts we have values that we bring to the marriage and to the family. So is there a value that you could put your finger on to say, I value this and my husband does not value that at all? And if that exists in your marriage, how do you get to the same place? As far as a married couple, our outcome or our desired outcome is this when you have conflicting values, I love that.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 29:30
So I'll give you a very specific example. Actually, my husband and I have very different. We have a lot of similar values when it comes to parenting kids, but there are some very distinct differences, some of which still don't make any sense to me. When I try to understand where he comes from, I still don't get it. And it's fine, I've decided I don't have to.
29:49
But the example is when it came to what should be important in raising children, I was always big about their grade. You need to have a B plus average all the time. I had my two children very smart, very good at school and I held them to a standard of a B plus average, and on the other hand, their bedrooms were never like I closed the door. I'm not. I kick my battles. That's not a battle I'm ever going to win, so I would just close the door. Your room can look however it looks. My husband, however, was the exact opposite. He did not care about their grades at all, but if their bedrooms were a mess, he was on fire, and I would just sit back and be so confused about what. How did you come up with this? I was very convinced that I had it right and he was very wrong.
Jen Rogers, Host 30:42
I can so totally not relate to that.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 30:44
Not at all.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 30:45
Yeah, like to this day, I still don't understand it and, like I said, I probably never will, but it's fine. So the way I got there was just to decide you know what. That's what he values, that's what he thinks is important as a parent, and I can let him have that and I can still have what I have. I still hold my children to that standard. He doesn't have to Like. He has agency. God gave him free will.
31:09
I am not supposed to be the one that changes everything about the way he perceives the world. It's up to him. I mean, there's a million things I could go on and on where we just agree to disagree. He's going to do it his way, I'm going to do it my way and in the rare, I guess, let me pause and just say this there are so many issues in marriage that we make a bigger deal than they need to be, and if you really narrow it down to the key things that you just absolutely need to have total agreement on before you can move forward, it's a really short list and in conversations with you I know that this does not involve love, languages and his needs and her needs.
Jen Rogers, Host 31:51
You want to share a little bit about your perspective on that? You've got a different take than many coaches that are working with couples on their marriages, so would you share it with us?
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 32:02
Yes, definitely Okay. So our first day of couples counseling is the day I'll remember forever. So we walk in, give him the spiel or whatever, and he hands us two books. Each of us got our own copy of his needs, her needs and the five love languages, and his whole plan was to have us read these books. And then we were going. He was basically going to counsel us to meet each other's needs for the next six months.
32:27
So I took you know I was a self-help junkie I'd dive in. I'm highlighting, taking notes, doing all the stuff. I've got my whole big list for my husband to meet my needs and I hand him the list and then the funniest thing happened. One of the things on my list was I want you to bring me flowers every now and again. And the very first time he walked in with flowers, my brain said you had to tell him to do it. That doesn't even count.
32:53
I think what happens when we go into this this whole idea that his needs, her needs, five love languages that if we just learn how to manipulate the world such that our spouse can be okay all the time, you lose the fact that you have to contort yourself and turn yourself into someone, that it's not natural to you and in most cases, I think for most women that I've talked to anyway, it really doesn't mean as much anyway, because we know we had to tell you to do it.
33:23
So what's the point? The whole thing is just like this big game. That makes no sense to me. Oh, and then here's the biggest reason I think that it's all not the best way to go is because in every case, like we went to two different counselors that prescribed those same books, we went through the same process and when it was done that whole thing would last three months, maybe four, where Alonzo was doing the things I wanted him to do and I'm trying to do the things he. But we hate the whole process, like it's not done out of love, it's done out of instruction.
33:58
I just think that's the opposite of the point, which is truly love your spouse like truly love them as the person God made them to be.
Jen Rogers, Host 34:07
Yeah. Now I just want to say if you have the idea to get flowers for your wife, it's okay, Don't tell her. Don't tell her that you heard about it on the podcast, because then you just heard from Rebecca that it won't count. So if you want it to count, just do it and shush it.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 34:27
Exactly that idea of expectation. You aren't the first owner, as it were, of your spouse, you're a steward, so you got to go to the owner and get permission for the way to treat your spouse. That's something that people are like huh what? Yeah, we all belong to God, and when you mentioned that before, you said yeah, and then I go to God in prayer. One of my favorite little Bible stories is Jehoshaphat, because one of the things he says is he says, god, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 34:53
One of my favorite things to say to my brain when it's offering me reasons it should be different is just nothing has gone wrong this is the way of it.
35:02
What you do with the negative emotion when it comes up. That's another big thing that we don't talk about enough, especially in the church, is how do you process a negative emotion? How do you let that energy flow through you and release it, instead of trying to talk yourself out of it or go change the circumstance, which is what most of us try to do. We try to go change the circumstance. We try that eight ways. It doesn't work. And then in a lot of cases, that's where people start called buffering. They start in some cases drinking alcohol or could be just eating like their emotional eating.
35:40
That's where that kind of stuff comes in, or Netflix, and then we create a whole other problem because now we've gained some weight or we've spent too much money at the home store or we spin in that because we don't know how to just be like it's okay to just be sad. Give yourself space to be sad or to be disappointed that your stepkid didn't get you something for Mother's Day or whatever it is. We're all human, and so I don't coach people on how to just think positive all the time and wish them the best, because that's just not realistic. 50-50 means you have to be prepared for the 50% that will show up and is probably going to feel awful. You'll know that it's coming from your thoughts. So it does make you feel a little better in the moment, because you at least then feel like you have some control over what's going on. And then you have a process to fall back on. For how do I process that emotion in the first?
Jen Rogers, Host 36:33
place. Yeah, that's so good, so good. I'll tell you, it's really been a pleasure spending time with you and getting to know you more and learning more about your heart, and I certainly appreciate you being honest about your approach and challenging the status quo. The status quo for stepfamilies is not that great. The stats part in the status quo can be really intimidating, but when we make a decision that we're not going to pay attention to what other people are telling us our marriages are supposed to look like and we instead turn to God and ask God to reveal to us the blessings and restoration that he has for us in our marriages and that means it's going to take some work. That this is not. You just didn't win the million dollar prize and everything is great. This is life. This is real life, and real life is hard, yet rewarding as well.
Bill Rogers, Co-Host 37:31
But you're being taught too. God is not just using you to teach somebody else. Oh no, he is teaching you as well. That's the way he works.
Jen Rogers, Host 37:41
Yes, that part is really painful. So, believe me, if you and I are in a coaching call together and I'm sharing some things with you that are causing you a little pain, I have felt that pain.
Rebecca Techeira, Guest 37:50
That is 100% true, yeah. And just to expand on what you were just saying, Jen, I think that is 100% true, yeah. And just to expand on what you were just saying, Jen, I think one of the things we hurt ourselves the most with in blended families are all the expectations, the status quo we're comparing ourselves against, whether that's us as individuals, as stepmoms or as stepdads or as a family unit, comparing ourselves to traditional nuclear families. Just all of it is a setup for us to be the same. Compare and despair to some degree.
38:20
I think step families do quite a bit of that. And at the end of the day, if nothing else, if you can get really clear as an individual person on what matters to you, what are my values, what do I care most about, what's worth fighting for me individually, then I think from that place, making all the little decisions in your family every day get a lot easier and you stop doing things because you're trying to keep your husband from getting upset or because you should. I'm using big air quotes here, but you should do this, or here's one of my favorites I should want to do this. It's like not accepting that that part of me isn't there. I don't want to do that right now. Just accepting who you are and then being able to not hold yourself to a standard that is perfection.
Jen Rogers, Host 39:14
Hey there, so funny things happen. When episodes are stored in the vault, circumstances change. Hey, if you want to connect with Rebecca, you can find her on LinkedIn. I'll be sure to put her contact information inside the show notes. If you liked today's episode number 219 of the Empowered Stepmom podcast, reach out to her, send her a message and let her know how much her story encouraged you in your journey. Ps, I love hearing from you and I so appreciate it when you leave a review.
39:45
A special shout out to HLaughter for leaving this five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Much needed information!! Stepmama here. Not an easy task whatsoever. This is a much needed podcast.
Let me see One, two, three, four, five. There are seven exclamation points in this review. Hlaughter, thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review. Hey, you can hear your review read on the podcast as well. Head on over to your favorite platform and leave a review letting me know how this episode blessed you, encouraged you and supported you. That's what we're all about here.
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