Ep. 91 How our relationship with ourselves impacts our children with Dr. Alexandra Kasozi

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This week I’m speaking with Dr. Alexandra Kasozi, a chartered counselling psychologist with a special interest in working with mothers. We had initially intended to frame our conversation around the inner critic and how we speak to ourselves.

Whilst we do cover that, as you’ll hear it actually became a much broader, powerful conversation about one of my real passions; working on the relationship we have with ourselves. I really believe that this is one of the most important things we can do as mothers and it was so helpful to have Alexandra’s insight from her years of experience working in this area.

We talk about how the way we speak to ourselves becomes internalised and affects how our own children speak to themselves. I share some personal insights from my own journey and Alexandra shares some practical tips and simple things you can do at home to start working on your relationship with yourself. I hope you find it useful.

And if you haven’t yet gone through it, my Freedom from Perfectionism course is a really helpful resource. 100’s of you have now done it and I’ve received some amazing feedback. It’s currently on offer with 10% off - head over here to find out more.

You can download a transcript of this week’s episode here.

As always, we continue the conversation over on Instagram, so once you’ve listened to the episode, come and join me there.

Key Takeaways From This Week’s Episode:

Origins of Your Inner Critic:

• Your early relationships play a significant role in understanding and relating to yourself and others. (7:05)

• When our inner critic becomes loud, and we don't have other aspects of ourselves to combat it, we end up directing and loading all the criticism towards ourselves. (7:47)

• Some children tend to learn more about how their parents treat themselves than how they are treating their children. (8:24)

• Mothers can be physically present and emotionally disconnected from their children due to their unresolved issues. (13:06)

Working On Your Inner Critic:

• You have to work on yourself first to stop passing your inner critic to your children. (19:46)

• If you criticise yourself often, you will start to feel guilty and ashamed of yourself. You also begin to feel resentment towards others. (21:13)

• When a situation starts to become stressful, and you begin to feel angry towards others, it is your inner critic coming through. (22:25)

• Internal criticism goes outwards and then it comes back around. You start to feel unappreciated, invaluable and self-loathing. (24:29)

• Identify your critics, do more work on yourself, rationalise it, and get the emotional support that you need. (25:28)

• Be honest with yourself and don't feed your inner critic. (28:48) 

How to Avoid Passing Your Inner Critic to Your Children:

• Prioritise working on the things that you're avoiding, scared off and hiding from your kids. (32:19)

• Aside from therapy, you can start doing self-healing work. Ask yourself what gives you a sense of self-worth and self-fulfilment to become more self-aware. (33:52)

• Create an antidote to your inner critic, champion it. (35:44)

• Never believe your first thought, it's a reaction not your response. (38:22)

• Have dialogues with yourself. 39:25)

• Understand that no mothers are perfect. All mothers are going to fail at something, and it's part of the criticism. (39:50)

• Model yourself to your children, if you can't do it for yourself then do it for them. (40:12)

Accessing the Compassionate Voice Within You:

• Find something kind to say to a friend. (42:44)

• If what you believe in yourself is different from what others are saying to you, then you need to re-assess. (43:09)

• It can get scary, and it gets worse before it can get better. (44:26)

• It's daily work. You have to work on yourself continuously. (44:56)

• Understand who you are so you can help your children understand themselves as well. (47:01)

About Alexandra

Dr. Alexandra Kasozi is a chartered Counselling Psychologist working in London. She carries a professional Doctorate in Counselling Psychology (PsychD) and is registered with the Health and Care Professional Council (HCPC) and the British Psychological Society (BPS).

Alexandra previously worked as a psychologist in secondary care for numerous NHS mental health trusts, charitable and not-for-profit services. She specialises in trauma such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) related, childhood, adulthood, relationship abuse. She also provides counselling, psychological therapy, coaching and facilitation to organisations focused on women's mental health and wellbeing.   

You can find out more about Alexandra and be in touch with her over on her website.