Emotional Intelligence is the ability to tune into your own emotion and identify it – the ability to respond to your emotions appropriately – and the ability to connect to the emotions of others.
 
Let’s break this down:
 
Tuning In and Identifying Your Emotions.:

Anger and Righteous Indignation are big ones that are hard to see beyond.  They’re the big wall.  They tell you that you have this big emotion and you don’t have any responsibility to curb that emotion, because it’s the world’s/other person’s fault.  But usually, if you were to sit in the quiet of your anger then you’d realize it was also disappointment, frustration, guilt, shame, confusion, disillusionment, sadness, etc.  Those are all emotions that make you vulnerable, so anger rides in on its white stallion to allow you to feel the “bigness” of the emotion without feeling the accompanying vulnerability of it.

A person with developed Emotional Intelligence can feel that anger or righteous indignation, and know that there’s probably something else under it.  They can feel the anger while also searching for the other emotion and feel that one as well, knowing both are valid, even if they’re uncomfortable.
 
Responding to Your Emotions Appropriately:

Some people will feel ashamed of their big emotions and will hide them, stuff them down, cope in unhealthy ways.  Some folks will engage in horrible self talk, lash out, or use sarcasm to hurt others who they deep down feel have been hurtful to them. Some will “wear their heart on their sleeve” and inappropriately disclose or emote in situations that would have best been avoided if they had connected to their emotions and declined the invitation.  However, responding to your emotions appropriately means having the self-control to stop the sabotaging inner voice or unhealthy behavior.  To fight against it if you see it there.
​
Responding appropriately means crying when you’re bereaved.  It means going for a fast-paced walk when you’re angry.  It means talking calmly to the person who disappointed you to let them know how you feel about the situation and giving them an opportunity to rectify it.  And it means saying “no thank you” to a party invitation when you’re struggling with something emotionally and you won’t be able to shake it off while you’re there.
 
Connecting to the Emotions of Others:

This is different from empathy (which is basically being able to feel the emotion someone else is feeling).  Connecting to the emotions of others is being able to identify what someone might be feeling and knowing what they can handle in the moment.  Someone is crying about the death of their beloved pet, they are not in a place to handle joking, criticism, guilt, or other negative interactions that will compound their bereavement.  You don’t have to feel their feeling to know that they can’t emotionally take on certain other emotions (that’s why it’s different from empathy). 

A person with Emotional Intelligence can identify what someone is experiencing emotionally and then respond with appropriateness. 
 
Emotional Intelligence is something that is taught during childhood.  Your parent, teachers, friends, and friends’ parents all take part in helping a child learn how to identify their own feelings, others’ feelings, and then coach them how to respond.  Some kids are born into families in which the parents aren’t very connected to emotional intelligence, so they don’t have that role modeling or coaching.  They might not have the other close relationships with other adults either.  Then those kids grow up to become adults with poor emotional intelligence.

Those folks are difficult to be married to: they pile it on when things are already hard, they don’t understand why you’re so sad about something and tease you about it at the worst times.  They are difficult to have as colleagues or friends because to them you should just “grow up.”

Whether you’re the spouse, friend, or colleague who needs to improve your emotional intelligence or if you’re in a relationship with someone the good news is that you can hone this skill.  You’re not doomed to be on the outskirts of your heart or society.  This is doable.

This is something that can be worked on in therapy since each person has their own strengths and barriers to their emotional intelligence.  It’s something that is worked on through stories in your past and present, and rewriting the narrative from your past and honing skills to use today.
 
Emotional Intelligence is a topic I feel pretty strongly about and love helping people through.  If you ever want to sit down with me as one of my clients please feel free to contact me at (530) 994-5114 or email me at jwilkerson.ma@gmail.com

"What do you mean, 'owning our choices?' Of course I own my choices!"

Here's the thing, the way we talk to ourselves and to other people can often lead us astray from authenticity and lead us to the same ol' path toward the self-preservation of using our mask.  We mostly do it to protect ourselves from ourselves.

What do I mean by that?

Well, we are humans and in our humanity we can tend to make bad choices.  In that humanity we can tend to be judgmental.  We can easily end up judging ourselves and then subconsciously fear others will judge us with that same standard (or worse).

So we bend the truth:

• "I didn't have time to get that done." = We had time.  We were burned out or tired, so we watched TV instead.  

• "I didn't realize the deadline was on this date." = We likely knew it was that date and if we didn't we were capable of reaching out and confirming the deadline.  We thought we could find flexibility, we have a difficulty with time management, or we were dreading it so we procrastinated and ran out of time.

• "Yes, I'll go to that event with you." or "Yes, I'll do that favor for you." = We wanted to say no, but couldn't think of a good reason not to do it, so we said yes.  Now we're going through the motions of the thing we said yes to, but we're doing it half-heartedly or with a resentful heart.

None of those examples are showing us in our best and most authentic light.  Most of the time we believe what we're saying while we're saying it.  We want to.  We need to.  If we felt we were lying then we'd feel too convicted, ouch. Right in the heart.  There's some truth to whatever it is we just said... so we say it and let it go.

But what if it looked like this instead:

• "I'm sorry, I didn't get it done.  I've been feeling really burned out lately and I just really needed to refresh so I could be at my best.  I plan on tackling it first thing on Monday."

• "I wasn't able to make the deadline, and I apologize.  I need one more day to finish, is that okay?"
  

• "That event sounds amazing, but I'm going to have to skip it this time." or "I feel for you that you need help with that thing (favor), but I just can't do it right now."

In none of those examples did we have to over-explain ourselves or bend the truth.  We owned it.

With the last bullet point where the person said yes to an event or favor but went about it half-heartedly or with some resentment I gave the bulleted example of saying no, but there are some times where saying yes is appropriate.  They've gone out of their way for you in the past or they're truly in need and while you don't really want to you know it's the right thing to do to say yes.  In that instance let your yes mean yes.

If you tell someone yes - then do it full-heartedly and without resentment.  You said yes.  It's not their fault that you made the choice to go with them when you weren't feeling it.  If you made the choice to say yes, then also make the choice to enjoy yourself.  Make the choice to pull yourself out of whatever mood you're in and try to find the good in the situation.  Is there a song playing you love and you can bop along to?  Is there a friend there that you usually enjoy seeing?  Are you going to be blessing someone with this favor and it feels good to pay it forward?  You chose to say yes to the friend and/or the event/favor - so then also choose to say yes to putting your best foot forward.  

Own your yes.

Yes is a choice.

No is a choice.

Own each one of those.

Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.  Own it.  Don't say one and mean the other, and then make the people around you pay the price for your inability to be authentic.

Let that sink in.  Marinate on it.  Hear yourself when you're bending the truth or using the wrong yes/no.  Let yourself have grace from judgment and just keep working on being real.  Being true to yourself and thereby true to others.

You'll be surprised at how much people respect this quality it the people around them.  It makes you trustworthy.  People respect trustworthy.

I feel like "Authentic" is the newest buzz word for the field of psychotherapy - but you know what: It's about darn time!

What is being authentic?  It means knowing your limits and being transparent about them.  It means not making excuses to get out of something, but standing with your own two feet and saying no.  It means portraying who you really are, rather than fitting a mold of who you or others think you should be.  We don't always "know who we are" in the way that we think monks would hope we do, but at any given moment in time we can say we know how we feel and what we want in that moment; and I'd say that's pretty much close enough.  If we can truly own those feelings and desires then we can be authentic.

Sometimes it's easier to describe what it looks like NOT to be authentic, because well frankly, it's our human nature to see a description and try to fit into it and identify with the positive traits.  When we are shown the other side of things and identify with that we are also able to see where we have growing to work through.

Examples:

• If your friend asks you to babysit her kids and you don't feel like it, but you don't have any other plans - and you feel guilty about saying no, so you say yes and then feel irritated with yourself or resentful toward the friend: that's not being authentic.  If you make up an excuse to get out of it, you lie: that's not being authentic.  ​ On the contrary, if you say, "I'd love to help you, but I just don't have it in me to watch children today." or  "I'm sorry, but I can't." that's being honest and authentic.  Those are true statements and you don't have to feel guilty for not doing someone a favor that will cause you to harbor ill feelings about yourself or your friend.

• You say "yes" when you mean maybe or no.  Your spouse asks to go on an outing, but it just doesn't sound fun at all.  But you don't want to hurt her/his feelings, so you smile and say, "let's go!"  But the whole time you just want to be home.  If you can't say no when you mean no or if you can't say, "maybe, let me think about it." when you're not sure - and you jump to people pleasing: you're not being authentic.  On the contrary, if you say, "Babe, that sounds like something you'd love and I'd probably enjoy on a different day - but today I'm just not feeling it.  Can we stay home or is there something else that sounds good to you to do today?"  That's being authentic. 

​

• Are you allowed to give yourself praise?  Are you allowed to own your flaws and work on them?  I ask this because many people feel like they're being overly prideful or arrogant by praising themselves, so they take a false humility and use that to arm themselves from internal or external perception of egoism.  Some people also have difficulty admitting flaws because they fear that they'll be labeled or judged as flawed - so they take a defensive stance to others and to themselves, constantly justifying why they just did this or that.  How exhausting!  Neither of those are authentic.  On the contrary, REAL & AUTHENTIC people are both flawed and deserve praise.  It's okay to say, "I'm amazing and I did a great job!" and it's okay to say, "woah, I really messed up, big time." without the "but" (but, so-and-so didn't do their part, etc).

• Do you wait for your significant other to know what you need "because I shouldn't have to tell them, they should know by now."  With your marriage vows neither of you were bestowed the ability to mind read - and your marriage vows didn't include "I vow to vigilantly be on the lookout to meet your need before you state it."  Waiting for someone else to do something isn't being authentic, but stating your need or want is - even if sometimes your spouse should know that thing.

Why would you want to be authentic?  Because it's freeing! It's liberating!  It feels really, really good.

You get to just be you without all that guilt or pressure to be or do otherwise. 

Are you still tactful and diplomatic?  Yes. Absolutely!

Do you still find compromises with your spouse and friends sometimes?  Of course, you're not selfish.  You don't just turn everything down because you don't want to do it, but you're honest about not wanting to go and you find a way both people can make a situation work.

Do you know how to be honest about what you want or need, and don't feel ashamed to cover up what you're going through?  Yep!

Do you end up feeling like the people in your life know and like the real you - not the "if they only knew the real me..." version of you? They do, and you know they do, and there's TRUE JOY in the knowledge that people like the real you - warts and all.

Learning to be authentic is scary and takes time.  But each time you're authentic and it goes better than expected you build a little reserve of confidence, making the next authentic experiment easier.  It snowballs over time and gets easier and easier and easier.  Until one day, you encounter someone inauthentic and you have no patience for it.  You realize that you've been operating with honesty with yourself and others for so long without realizing it that someone else's inauthenticity is frustrating and intolerable.

And then you realize you need to work on the character trait of grace: "there, by the grace of God, go I."  You were there once upon a time, so giving them a little grace for their journey will go a long way in your heart.

So, you've noticed some patterns in the way you interact with people in your life.  You've been becoming self-aware of negativity that comes out of your mouth and you're growing increasingly frustrated with yourself.  You never intended to become this person, but here you are.  

You want to change.  You want to be different.

But...

• But some of the people in your life are idiots and you can't help yourself when you respond with sarcasm.
• But there are some really rude folks at work and you feel like you have to fight fire with fire or else you'll get burned.
• ​But... there are also times where you're kind of the bully, and you're not super proud about it.

Ugh!  It's so frustrating because sometimes your quick wit and healthy self-esteem serve a greater purpose, and sometimes it douses you in the face!

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news: it's never serving the greater purpose.

People with self-control over the words they think and say actually have the upper hand when confronted with "idiots" and "rudeness."  Quick wit is wonderful when in a mutual debate or poetry slam, but using it as a defense mechanism is what is fueling the part of you that's unsafe.

It feels so much more vulnerable to pause and to take a pass.  Don't get me wrong, taking a pass doesn't mean lying down and taking abuse.  It means that you're rising higher and that you're better than the defensiveness that's boiling up inside of you.  It means that you're growing and that eventually you'll be far away from those "idiots" and "rude mongers."  Because when you stop the game with them you become boring to them.

So here's what it looks like to work on BECOMING safer:

Acknowledge hurt you've inflicted on the people in your inner circle: your spouse, child(ren), siblings, parents, whomever it is that's truly near and dear to you.  Is there a best friend who feels like a sibling?  They count, too.  

Tell them that you've been noticing how you've been pretty negative and you feel like you've been hurtful over the past (period of time).  Tell them that because you've noticed this you want to apologize for any ways you've been inappropriate and that you're really working on being self-aware and curbing this part of you.  

Know that it takes time, change happens slowly and relapse is a part of the change cycle - so you'll probably be unsafe again from time to time, but the intervals will get fewer and farther between.

The rest of the folks on the outskirts of  your inner circle, you can take them on a case-by-case basis.  You can just start trying to implement the self-awareness and let the relationship evolve on its own without your grand declaration.  

Tasks to facilitate change:

• Start looking for things to appreciate about others.  You don't have to tell them to their face (you can, but it's not necessary).  Just look for it and notice it: for example, "Janet is very conscientious about keeping her files in order, it's nice when I have to look through one of hers because I can find things right away." or "Melissa always has a smile on her face, even when the people around here are griping or snapping at each other."
• Start looking for things to appreciate about yourself and your changes, for example: "I'm drained at the end of the day after all this paying attention to my stuff while also trying to do my job. I'm kind of a rock star for it!" 
• Find things to compliment in the world at large.  "Wow, the city counsel has really been working hard for the past few years to make this part of town greener.  I can't wait until all those new trees get big and bushy."   

You might start feeling a little "Pollyanna" because it's new to you, and because people don't generally go around looking for all this positive.  But A.) you're trying to change so it takes a little extra, and B.) it feels like Pollyanna because you're not used to it.  People who are safe people are also people who regularly look for ways to build other up, even in small ways. 

But do you see that part there?  They LOOK for ways to build others up.  That's a verb.  A doing word.  It's a muscle that needs to be exercised so it becomes second nature.  It will eventually become natural to give a sincere "good job" and to allow negativity to flow from you like water off a duck's back.

Change is exhausting at first, I'll be honest.  So is starting a new exercise routine when you're out of shape.  But both of those things get easier with time, practice, and consistency.  You've got this!

You are not an island.  I actually say that more often than you'd expect from a therapist.  But it's one of my favorite sayings because it can mean several things in different circumstances.  Here's what I mean when I say, "You're not an island:"

You are affected by other people.
So many people beat themselves up or call themselves weak when they get their feelings hurt by what someone else says or does.  They think they should have complete control over their own thoughts and feelings that if they hurt or are offended it means there's something wrong with them.  Nope.  

In large part you are indeed responsible for your thoughts, feelings, and actions.  But you're not an island.  People do and say things that hurt you.  People can be unkind or selfish.  You can feel left out, disappointed, pained, etc.  It's what you do in response that separates you from the rest of the world.  Do you retaliate?  Do you criticize yourself?  Do you withdraw?  Do you confront diplomatically?  Those are the things you have control over, not whether or not your feelings were hurt by someone else's cruelty, that's natural and human. 

And after all, you're not an island...

You effect other people.
A lot of folks mistakenly believe that their inner voice is their own.  And yes, it is.  It is truly and more than you realize.  What I mean is that your inner voice affects your outer voice and actions.  Your inner voice isn't really just an inner commentary that lives and let's live.

When you're making fun of people in your head, the way you treat them in real life is influenced.  If you're loving and respectful about them, looking for things they do well, in your head then also you influence the way you interact with them.  If you're inner voice has that sarcastic "I hate people" mantra, but you think you're a nice guy... well, your "nice guy-ness" is colored by that statement you tell yourself about others.  

This goes the same for how you talk about yourself to yourself, too.  Can you see the pattern?

The thoughts you think are your own.  You are responsible for them.  But the thoughts you think effect the way you behave in your relationships with other people, because you are not an island and neither is your mind.

How does this change things?

It changes them BIG TIME!  When you give yourself permission to feel your feelings but take ownership on how you respond to those feelings it makes a positive difference in your relationships.  When you realize that your inner dialogue is influencing the relationships around you then you can start monitoring that inner dialogue and start enjoying people more deeply and safely.

It's up to you.  You.  Are.  Powerful!

What life do you want for yourself?  What kind of relationships do you want?  

​You're not an island, so no matter what choice you make it effects you as well as those around you.

Sometimes we wonder if we are making healthy choices by limiting our interaction with others or if we're pushing people away.  When those thoughts creep in we start to ask ourselves if we're safe people or not.  Personally, I believe that sort of questioning is so healthy and regardless of where we are on the scale of safe or not - just asking that question and digging deeper into our own behaviors and thoughts moves you up a notch or two on the scale of safety.  Unsafe people aren't usually asking that about themselves (until and unless they're ready to change, at which time they inadvertently become slightly safer because they're more invested in not hurting others than they were before they started their journey for knowledge).

In order to be a safe person for other people, you must first be a safe person for yourself.

What are your thoughts?  Are you putting yourself down?  Are you overly critical of your accomplishments?  Do you compare yourself?

Here are some thoughts that people wouldn't necessarily identify as being an unsafe person to themselves:

1) If only I had a bigger house or more money for nicer furniture. This place looks cheap or dated.

2) Gosh, I hate my (body part), why couldn't God have given me.... (thicker hair, a better metabolism, etc).

3) I can't dance, why bother going out with friends to the concert.  I'll look and feel stupid.

4) My boss liked the job I did on that thing, but if he only knew that I whipped it out half-assed he'd be pretty irritated.

5) My boss liked the job I did on that thing, but it took every ounce of everything I have to get that done, I couldn't do it again.  I hope he doesn't expect this quality of me again in the future.  I totally screwed myself.

6) There's no way my spouse is happy right now, life stinks, she's totally faking it and lying to me by doing so.

I could go on and on and on...... But do you see a trend here?  People think that negative self-talk is saying, "I'm a piece of garbage."  But really, it's just holding yourself up to a standard that isn't true and has you falling short.  It's rephrasing things in a way that is defeating and defeated.  And when you're regularly shortchanging yourself and the people who love you you're not being a safe person for yourself.

If you can't be safe for yourself, then how can you possible be safe for other people?

It comes out in the end.  You might really feel like you're building people up around you, but then you have those days where the unsafe self-talk is displayed in your interactions with others.  It's during those times that the people around you become confused.  Is this person for me or against me?  Since it's inconsistent they size you up as unsafe.  They might even start behaving negatively toward you as their defense mechanism, and you'll have no idea why.

Oh man, it can get so convoluted.  Relationships with others start first and foremost with our relationship with ourselves.  

I really love it when I am providing couples counseling and the individuals are also seeking their own therapy because it's a place where they can explore what's going on in their minds and hearts while I'm working with their relationship as its own entity.  Actually, to be honest, my absolute favorite is to be the therapist working with the individual while they're getting couples sessions with someone else.  There's just something really beautiful about helping someone explore themselves and grow, and then watching them use that knowledge to also help their relationship heal.

I was talking with a girlfriend the other day and she asked me how does she know if she's the one who's toxic or if it's the other person.  She gave me a moment to pause and think.  How do I answer her?  This question is heavy.

The reality of the situation was that my friend grew up in a very toxic household with parents who didn't display healthy coping, relationships, and took everything out on the kids (i.e. blaming everyone else and not making amends).  Does that mean my friend is toxic?  Heck no!

Does that mean that my friend has a few social skills to learn so she can:
 
A) Learn how not to accept undue blame.
B) Learn how to take ownership for what's hers when she's in the wrong.
C) Learn how to reach out and make amends.
D) Learn how to accept an apology gracefully.
E) Learn how to identify toxic behaviors from others (because she's used to certain ones, they feel normal to her).
E) Learn how to love herself when she implements healthy boundaries and then toxic people fight her on them.

All of the above.

Our parents do the best they can with what they have.  I firmly believe (and maybe because I'm a mom, myself) that parents truly try to do what's right for their kids - yes, even selfish or abusive ones.  Parents don't have it on their radar that now that they have children they have little slaves or the perfect excuses to keep engaging in unhealthy thinking and behaviors - those are just a part of their own wounding that usually they either don't see or think they're powerless over.

We can't go back and change our childhoods.  We can't prevent the pain that we're still healing from.  

But what we CAN do is look into "where am I hurting and what do I need to learn in order to be the kind of person I want to become?"  A little bit of exploring our childhoods allows us to give ourselves grace and to disallow the illusion of perfection from creeping into our self-expectations.  But beyond that, it really becomes about what messages are my reality and are those messages really true for me or for the world at large?  How can I grow and learn from my patterns or my thinking so I can be freer and more comfortable/confident in my life and in myself?

That's my favorite part about being a therapist.  I have grown, healed, and am always a work-in-progress so I can be the best mom, wife, friend, and SELF that I can be, so when I'm working with someone in that space I fully understand how taxing and draining it can be, but I also know how liberating and beautiful it is to get to the other side.

You've got this!  Like my friend, keep asking those questions.

Sometimes a traumatic thing will happen and you'll bounce right back after a bit, but sometimes it sticks with you.  Bits and pieces that pop back in.  Body reactions that you don't know where they came from - sudden panic, sweating, recurring thoughts about death or injury.  Unhealthy responses to people and situations that are similar to or bring up memories about a horrible time in your life.

The theory of EMDR is that these memories didn't fully process and instead are still connected to the emotions that you were experiencing at the time of the event.  Now, when you think about or talk about what happened those emotions take over.  You cry, you get angry, you become afraid, and then you respond to yourself and to others from that state of mind.  It might even be affecting your marriage, parenting, or friendships.

EMDR is a well researched technique and it's believed that how it works is to help transfer those memories from the emotional and creative thinking side of your brain over to the more concrete thinking part of your brain.  The result is that when you think about, talk about, or are in similar situations you can be the one in control of your emotions, not the other way around.

It's not a quick fix.  It doesn't work for everyone.  But I've seen some incredible changes and I've had clients who report a lot of healing.

Here's the description from the official EMDR website.

Here's an interesting youtube video.

If you want to talk about your situation and assess if EMDR would be helpful for you, then please feel free to give me a call at (530) 994-5114 or send me an email at jwilkerson@chicocreekcounseling.com.

I have been given a wonderful opportunity to host a live, call-in radio show to help our community with their questions regarding family, parenting and relationships.  It started today, September 15, 2014.

You can tune in every Monday at 12:30 pm on kkxx.net or if you're local on 104.5 FM/ 930 AM.

The 12:30 show is live, but if you don't have time during your lunch hour to listen, they play the recording again at 6:00 & 9:00 later that same evening.

Here is our first show ever!  I discussed "What is therapy,"  "Why would you go to therapy," and took a call from the father of a "rambunctious 4 year old boy".  

Remember, this is a Christian radio station, so there is a little discussion of faith in there.

Click Here to Listen!

I was talking to one of my girlfriends the other day and they were telling me about how they are not close to their sibling, but that they've never been close.  They and their sibling liked different things growing up, and their parents would rather have them play separately than listen to them bicker.  Consequently, she also said that the way she feels about her sibling today (in her mid-30's) is that they are like an acquaintance with a shared friend - but that friend is their mother.

Their parents were/are nice people.  They each worked.  They shared custody after divorce.  They re-married.  The kids didn't play any sports, weren't a part of any clubs, didn't really have many friends, and she doesn't remember anything unique or fun about her childhood, just as she doesn't remember anything terrible or abusive either.  Non-descript.  They just lived their lives day-by-day, and now she continues to exist.  She has one friend that she's semi-close to, and can't figure out why she has such a hard time making good, close friends.

By all accounts she was loved, cared for, given food and opportunity when she was young.

But the problem here was that this family just went along with the tide of life.  If the kids didn't initiate doing something, then nothing happened (and have you met very many kids who pursue extra-curriculars all on their own?).  

My friend never learned to "get along" with someone with whom she had a dispute.  If she didn't want to play with her sibling, she just didn't do it.  If she didn't like someone, she didn't have to learn how to work it out or talk through it.  She wasn't challenged to try new things - try a new club, try a new sport, take a chance and see what it's like to be surprised.

Parenting on Purpose means doing the hard work of looking forward into the future, deciding what character traits and goals you hope for your child, and then putting your best foot forward to implement the necessary steps today.

You want your child to have healthy relationships in the future - teach them to talk to you and negotiate with you.  Encourage them and create opportunities to do things they don't want to do (but they are safe) because their friend wants to try it - teach them to think through: is this safe, will someone get hurt, what happens if I like it, what happens if it turns out wrong, what is the value of my friendship with this person?

You want your child to go for their dream jobs someday - they need confidence!  Encourage your child to try out for teams now.  Let them feel what it's like to be rejected from the team, but it didn't "kill" them to be rejected.  Let them feel what it's like to be accepted to the team.  If they don't try for anything they won't know how to react in the future when putting themselves on the line is worth a job, promotion, spouse, etc.  This teaches them to be vulnerable to say what they want and go for it.  Teach them that.

Parent your child on purpose, don't just go with the breeze or the tide.  You'll be so happy you did (and so will your child when they're all grown up) - even if they're grumbling about it today (no child wants to take emotional risks, they'll resist, but you are their cornerstone, their grounder, their safety net - now is the time while they have you.  You know this, they don't, let their grumbling be heard but don't take it too much to heart.