Ep #173: From Reaction to Regulation: Choosing How You Show Up

Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who want to move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name's Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, we'll get ready and let's dive into today's episode.

Hi, welcome back to the podcast. So today I want to talk about sort of the only skill that you're going to need to create healthy, effective, lasting change, whether that's in marital conflict, whether that's in your separation of divorce journey, whether that's honestly parenting or any relational conflict that's going on. But before we jump into that, I want to just take a moment and thank you for being here, for listening, for learning, for getting different perspective on your journey. When I talk to you as listeners, many of you'll come in and do a clarity call with me, and you've come through the podcast having listened, and I just want to say that I really value you and your time, and I really value that you are putting yourself in a position to learn more, to be a change agent for your children, for you and for the world.

Right now, it is for me, October of 2025, and this is one of those times where we can look around at the media, at politics, at what is going on in our country, in America, for those of you that are in America with me. And it's really scary. It feels really uncertain, really unsettling. But here's what I know to be true. Change starts inside each of us. And when we make the change inside of ourselves, we then impact the people closest to us. And the way that we create a better world for our children is by starting inside of ourselves, making those changes, which then transfer to our children. They transfer to our partner or our ex. They transfer to our families, to our workplaces, to our communities. And then that translates to states, countries, and the world. But each one of us, I was just talking to just a beautiful soul of a woman the other day who said, well, is really taking care of my children enough of a purpose?

What screech halt? What? Yes. I said to her, absolutely, that is our purpose, to care of ourselves and to take care of our children. And if more and more and more of us actually did the work to do that, this world would be a different place, period, end of story. And so that's what I want to talk about today is what is the skill that we need to make lasting change? Listen, we all want to change relationships and make things better and be better parents and all of that. And we're like, okay, well, what do I need to do to change everyone around me or change the situation or get more money or get more, whatever it is. No, the first thing that we need to do is learn how to self-regulate. Okay, I've talked about it before. I'm going to talk about it again, and I'm going to talk about it many, many, many more times.

Because without our ability to regulate our nervous system, regulate our thinking, regulate our feelings, and therefore regulate our actions and behaviors in the world, until we're able to do that, all we are is a reactive sort of pinball, just bouncing around in the world, just going from thing to thing, waiting for the next person to tell us what we should react to. No thank you. That's exhausting. It hurts my stomach just thinking about it, right? So no, what I want to talk about is a state of regulation. And so often we think that regulated means calm. That is not necessarily true, right? Is calm, great, sure is feeling at ease. Great, amazing. But regulation doesn't mean that we're sort of calm zen budd alike. What it means is that we are in a state of being that we can access choice. It means that we are awake.

So much is about woke culture. Well, it just means being awake. I am not talking about woke culture or the opposite of whatever. I am not getting into that. But what I am saying is that we have to be awake, we have to be conscious, and a state of regulation is being connected to ourselves, to the divine, and then ready to connect to others. That's what a state of regulation means. It means being grounded, being clear, able to make conscious choice. And that conscious choice is what creates change. So you can see why regulation isn't necessarily just calm. No, it is awake, it's conscious, it's connected and ready to connect, and it's in a place that you are able to make decisions and choices without regulation. Again, we're just reacting, handing over our power, perpetuating more of the mess, more of the drama, more of the conflict, more of the disease, dis-ease or disease.

And what are the barriers? Well, not understanding how things work is a barrier. Just believing that you have no choice, believing that you are just sort of the victim of what's happening around you, that's not the truth. And so what we need is to really understand that we have a nervous system that connects our brain to our body. And that nervous system is our spinal cord, is our nerve endings. It's this amazing system that sort of keeps everything moving and connected. But in that it's not thinking, how can I help Mikki evolve to her highest self? No, it's thinking, how can I keep her safe? How can I expend as little energy as possible? And how can I shortcut this? Because that's what our nervous system and our brain does. But instead, what I want to do is actually access the wisdom that is within me, within my body.

And I do that through awareness, through regulation, through being able to regulate my nervous system, have all of those fight or flight moments chill out so that I can access the power that's within. I talk a lot about that in other podcasts, so I don't really want to get into that right here. But really understanding how things work between your brain and your body is important. One more thing I will say is the thoughts are the language of our brain. So the thoughts that we're having is sort of the way that our brain is articulating what's going on inside of it. Feelings are the language of our body. Feelings are those messengers that happen so that we can understand what's happening in our body. We can't just listen to one or the other. If we just get stuck listening to our thoughts, that's a train.

We don't want to really go down. We have to be able to understand both and be able to access that wisdom of our body because the body will never lie to you ever. It's incapable of lying. Our brain different story will lie all day, every day because it's just using pre-programmed thoughts, old past memories, patterns, biases, all of the things that are sort of locked in there. And so what we really always want to do through self-regulation is be able to access the wisdom and the knowing that we have. You have intuition, you have an inner knowing, and you have a divine connection that you can use to make different decisions moving forward. And that really is an important point, is that no matter what, no matter what anyone says, no matter what anyone does, no matter what is going on in your external environment, you have choice.

You have choice. You don't have choice necessarily over all of the things happening, but you do have choice over what is happening in your thoughts, in your feelings, in your body, in your nervous system. And so it's important for us to be able to learn that our choices, our behaviors, are not dictated by other people. Our thoughts and our feelings and our actions are 100% our responsibility. So instead of waiting and having everyone else tell us what's going on and what we should or shouldn't do, no, we want to learn how to self-regulate so that we have the ability to be able to stand up and to move forward in a different direction, in a direction that is aligned in the direction we want to go in the direction of alignment for our greatest good, for our family's health and wellness. And so before we go any further, I want to say just one more thing is that some of the barriers to awareness, the ways that we keep awareness out are ways that we have really learned and we've been told and conditioned that we don't have choice.

And when we're believing that, when we believe that we don't have choice, we get really stuck. And some of the things that we do in that place is self abandonment, silence, people pleasing, suppressing emotions, reactivity over functioning, codependence, exhaustion, conflict, unmet expectations. I could go on and on and on about that, but the more that we buy into the lie that our power is outside of us, the more we will experience some of those barriers I just mentioned. And so instead, what we want to do is learn how to does not happen in the moment of conflict. No. We need to actually teach ourselves how to regulate. We have to practice it. It's a skill. It's like going to the gym. We have to build the muscle of regulation because we can't wait until the shit hits the fan because it probably will. Instead, we have to really start today to put ourselves in a position of being able to be supported, to being able to regulate ourselves, to being able to have the capacity to do it, to make decisions.

And so what does that look like? Well, it's really sort of setting yourself with a foundation that's unshakeable, because from that unshakeable foundation, you can build higher and higher and higher. But that foundation is really learning the skills of self-regulation, learning the tools, practicing the tools, mastering the tools, and using the tools. It's not and done. It's every single day. Just this morning, I was in a negative thought spiral that was keeping me in a very activated place. And so I had to use a lot of skills to regulate myself, to get myself to a place where I could actually move it in a direction that was healthy for me. And so I use these skills every day. I teach them to my clients. I have a three step process, a three step method of awareness, agency aligned action. How do we use those things over and over and over to create true lasting change?

We need these skills most when relationships are difficult. Relational conflict is one of those things that is emotionally just draining and exhausting. It can make us feel powerless again, whether that's you're in your marriage and you're having conflict and you're wondering like, ah, do I stay? Do I go? Or maybe you're already in a separation or a divorce journey. No matter where you are in that process, we can use tools to change the way that you are showing up in that relational dynamic. And we can change the trajectory of it because you hold the power to decide which direction you go. Are you continuing the conflict? Are you adding to it? Or are you the change maker? Are you the one who is going to really shift things for your family and for yourself and for your partner or your ex? This is the work that is your responsibility to do end of story.

We each have our responsibility and we can outsource it, but that's a lot of the time when we end up with other people making decisions for our lives that we don't like. So instead, take back that responsibility. And how do you do it? You start to learn some of these techniques, breath work, breathing, pausing, learning how to become more and more aware, learning how to change your thinking. We can learn how to access our intuition. We can learn how to access and trust ourselves to move forward. But it really is a putting yourself in a position with a teacher and with someone, because most of us were not taught this. It doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. It simply means that you weren't taught that. And so instead, we actually have to start to teach ourselves what we need to know. So get a teacher.

I have a ton of podcasts about it. I work with people one-on-one in groups. We have some new exciting things coming up, which I'll tell you about more in another episode. But I have ways for you to learn these tools, right? And I'm happy to be a support for you. You can always jump on a clarity call and we can talk about what those are. But if not me, therapists, other coaches, podcasts, learn from people about how you can regulate yourself, how you can start to step into self-regulation, because we need to be to do that so that we have the power and the accessibility and the capacity to make change. Build a community around you of people who are doing this work that is so important. A lot of us are in families and nobody's doing the work, and they're looking at us like, what is she doing over there?

What's he doing? We don't care if we look weird. When you are moving yourself forward in a positive direction, not everybody is going to be on board, especially the people who like it when you're reactive in conflict. So those people, they just need to be moved to a different room. And you got to build a community of people around you that can support you in the journey. And that's where coaching therapy, support groups, friendships, other people, other parents who are doing this work, get in community. Start to put yourself in a position where you can learn the skills, you can practice the skills so that you can master them, and then they become just something you do. They just become a muscle that you use over. And the more you use it, the stronger it gets, the stronger it gets, the more opportunity you have to create massive change.

So what do I want you to know at the end of the day? That you have choice all the time. Nobody can make you behave below your own standards, your own values, your level of integrity. You get to decide that. And so really learning how to put yourself in a position to have the capacity to make the most change begins with this tool of self-regulation. I'm here for you. We're going to talk about this a lot more, but I just wanted to put this out there today. I hope it was helpful. If you have questions, always, please send me an email. Let's jump on a call. Everything's in the show notes. You can reach me. I'm sending you so much love and many blessings, and I'll see you on the next episode.

Oh, and one more thing, the legal stuff. This podcast is solely intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for any medical advice. Please consult your physician or the qualified medical professional for personalized medical advice. Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week.

CPWC173 (Completed 10/29/25)