Magic Happens When You Stop Digging Your Fingers in Someone Else’s Pie

The benefits of letting people make their own decisions

She sat in front of her camera, and I sat in front of mine, and the miles between us disappeared.

She knew I held her in a safe space.

As Francesca carried on talking, the tears dripped off her chin.

‘I’m so scared. And so worried. And I’m so upset with myself for being scared and worried.’

Francesca’s daughter was transitioning. She’d split with her boyfriend and confessed to her parents that she had always felt like she was a man in a woman’s body, and now she was going to become who she truly was.

My client supported her daughter but was caught in anxious and fearful thoughts about what her soon-to-be son would have to go through.

She was also deeply upset with herself for her reactions. She was caught up worrying about the obstacles her new son would face and also imagined what she thought people would think about him.

And what they would think about her as a mother. Had she somehow caused this?

She needed help to take her fingers out of her son’s pie.

Taking your fingers out of someone else’s pie

It can be tough to do this when the pie belongs to someone you care about. Especially, it seems, if the pie belongs to your child.

Maybe this is because you’re used to having your fingers in their pie as they grew up?

After all, you were the one they came to with their problems when they were little. You were the one who knew how to solve their problems.

And as they grow, it’s hard to keep your fingers to yourself.

But let’s think about why it’s hard.

You want to protect your child.

Is your child being threatened by a knife-wielding axe murderer? Could you help them if they were?

Hopefully, they’re not.

So what do you want to protect them from?

You might think that you’re protecting them from what might happen to them. But you don’t know what might happen to them.

You’re projecting your fears onto their unknown future.

Another client of mine, Louise, first came to me to lose weight, but it became clear very quickly that she was highly anxious too.

She told me how her food issues had started when her mother took her to a slimming club when she was 11 and how her food at meal times was monitored. She was the only family member around the table who wasn’t allowed a second helping of food.

Louise lost the weight she thought she would never lose when we worked together. She learned to recognize that her thoughts about food and what she thought food gave her weren’t real.

She didn’t have to follow her thoughts, and she came to see this around anxiety too, which gave her a happier time.

But she didn’t see it when it came to her daughter.

She told me she wasn’t sure whether she should talk to her 11-year-old daughter about her weight.

My client was concerned that her daughter, who was, in my client’s opinion, already overweight and was likely to get bigger.

Louise said that her daughter only wanted to eat junk, and she was sure that her daughter would be bullied and end up in a Fat person documentary by the time she was 15.

Oh, the irony.

Luckily my client was open enough to see how she projected her past into her daughter’s future.

She saw how she had her fingers in her daughter’s pie. And I’m not going to make any jokes about who ate all the pies.

I asked Louise to take her hands off the situation. At first, Louise was scared that if she wasn’t vigilant about what her daughter ate, her daughter would eat everything in sight.

Had this worked for her when she was a child?

When she took her fingers out of the pie, she was able to be neutral about the situation. She provided the fresh, healthy food she now ate and stopped buying junk for the house.

She told her daughter that if she wanted to buy a takeaway or junk food with her pocket money, she could have what she wanted one day a week.

At first, her daughter bought cakes, sweets and chips on her pocket money day. But then, as time passed, she watched what her mother ate.

She started to buy fruit for herself with her pocket money. Slowly, slowly she changed what she ate. And if her daughter had junk, Louise shrugged her shoulders and said that her daughter could do whatever she wanted.

These days, Louise is forever telling me how gorgeous her now 14-year-old daughter is.

What Louise’s daughter and Francesca’s son does is nothing to do with their parents. And the parents don’t have to make anyone else’s decisions, and life choices mean anything about them.

I spoke to someone earlier today who said they were going to sit their teenager down to talk about why they are questioning their gender, and I gently asked this person to ask themselves why it matters to them rather than asking their teenager.

If you’re overly involved with what someone you care about is doing and you have a reaction to their decisions, ask yourself why?

Be honest. Are you worried about what other people will think?

That they’ll think negative things about you, and they’ll assume you aren’t a good parent. That your child, young or adult, is making mistakes, and you should set them straight?

This person today said that they thought they should be a guiding parent. Guiding the child to what? What the parent thinks is right?

Francesca thought everyone was talking about her and her son and that others would judge her.

She was sure that she knew what everyone was thinking.

You never know what anyone else thinks

But you never know what anyone else is thinking. You can only ever do your thinking about their thinking.

This means that you can only ever react to your own personal thinking and not to what is in anyone else’s mind.

If you imagine that other people are judging you or your child, you must have judgemental thoughts yourself that you’re projecting onto others.

So when I say that it isn’t about you, in one respect, it’s all about you. It’s all about what you’re thinking about the situation.

But the situation is nothing to do with you.

Respect that the other person has their own wisdom, and they will act on it. If they come to you and ask for your help or your advice, give it freely but if it isn’t asked for, take your fingers out of their pie.

You can be neutral when you do this, when you stop creating a scary future for your child and when you stop imagining all the ways your child will get hurt or attacked.

Neutral isn’t not caring; neutral is caring without an agenda. Neutral is taking your fingers out of the other person’s pie.

And when you do this, you can watch the magic happen as the other person makes their choices and grows.

And takes control of their own pie.