Clarissa Constantine: Parenting Guilt and the Perfect-Parent Myth

Guilt has a habit of landing on the wrong person. Clarissa Constantine points out that the parents beating themselves up over what they did to their kids are, as a rule, not the ones doing damage. The ones doing damage are not losing sleep over it.

Our guest this episode is Clarissa Constantine, founder of The ParenT(w)een Connection, a community and coaching practice for parents of tweens and teens. She spent 27 years as an SAT, ACT, and graduate admissions coach, and the pattern that started her current work was noticing how many young people brought her the conversations about identity, sexuality, and their own futures that they could not bring to their own parents. Asking why produced the Foundations of Connection, an acronym built around creating a safe place, observing without judgment, challenging your truths, taking your time, and nurturing. She is candid that she is not a parent herself, and that the distance lets her look at these situations with less heat.

Clarissa and Lisa talk about where the guilt actually comes from: the societal picture of the perfect parent, social media's highlight reel, and the specific version that hits people in high-conflict cases, who cannot talk publicly about what is happening and so compare their reality to everyone else's edited version. They get into ruminating and the visualization Clarissa's own coach gave her for stopping it, the difference between anger as fuel and aggression as a liability, why exercise before a court date is worth the hour, and what to do with the feelings you have about your own feelings.

The second half is a set of tools for talking to kids, especially teenagers who come back from the other parent's house dysregulated. Asking whether there is anything else they need to let out. Taking notes while they talk instead of interrupting. Reflecting back what you understood rather than what they said. Naming a problem as ours instead of yours. Handing a young person some agency, which is exactly what they are short of. Clarissa closes on self-trust after betrayal, and on what a repeated trigger is usually pointing at, which is often not your ex and not your kid.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why guilt tends to land on the parents who are not doing the harm
• The Foundations of Connection, and the two this conversation is built on
• How to interrupt ruminating instead of arguing with it
• Anger as fuel versus aggression as a courtroom liability
• What to say to a teenager who comes home and unloads: "anything else you need to let out?"
• Why taking notes and reflecting back what you heard defuses the argument
• Dropping absolutes: why "you always" fails at home for the same reason it fails in court
• What a repeated trigger is usually pointing at, and why it is rarely your kid

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The Foundations of Connection, and who guilt actually lands on
5:00 The perfect-parent myth and everyone else's highlight reel
9:00 Ruminating, catastrophizing, and the dead-end sign
13:00 Quality over quantity, and building new traditions
17:00 The emotion wheel, and anger versus aggression
19:00 Self-care that regulates you, and the gym before a court date
22:00 Staying regulated when the kids come back from the other house
26:00 Teenagers: influence over control, and letting them finish
34:00 Emotional literacy, reflecting back, and dropping absolutes
40:00 Shoulding on yourself, self-trust after betrayal, and what triggers point to

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Clarissa Constantine at The ParenT(w)een Connection: https://parentweenconnection.com/

🎧 More with Clarissa Constantine on this podcast
Ep 34: Staying Close to a Kid Who Pushes You Away

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.