A Simple Mantra for those Hotbutton Moments

There's a mantra I usually need to repeat to myself. Over and over again.

Because without it, I usually forget.

And things get messy:

I get stuck in the anxiety rollercoaster of "my-child-will-grow-up-to-be-a-lazy-slacker-good-for-nothing-outcast-to-society-blah-blah-blah-blah."

It happens so quick and I call it getting blindsided.

Something happens. That something that happens is your child: your child who behaves a certain way. She does something, says something, acts a certain way. And it gets right to you.

It can be anything. Maybe it's insidious and creeps in slowly: a nagging feeling that there is something off, something wrong that needs correcting. Or it can be fast; swirling you into a disoriented disarray of blind madness.

This past weekend this happened to me.

I forgot my mantra. I forgot to remind myself.

When the armageddon thoughts about my child's behavior started to swirl, I didn't stop to pay attention. I didn't listen to the map:

Step One: Compassion for myself

Step one guides me to notice if I'm feeling reactive to my child's behavior: it tells me to pay attention to my thoughts, my emotions, the sensations in my body, and ask myself if they are incongruent with the situation at hand. Are they out of proportion? In this case, yes: there was no serious harm, no one was struggling or suffering or hurting in any way because my daughter was acting stand-offish with a group of peers at an event. Everyone was content and peaceful in fact! My daughter included. I was the one with the problem.

Step one guides me to:bite my tongue.

Hold off for a moment,

a day,

a couple days,

a week.

Pause and think.

Pause and feel.

Pause and pay attention.

DO NOT correct or admonish or control or threaten.

If I had done this, if I had stopped and paused and breathed and slowed down, step one would have reminded me what the mantra is:

My child and I are separate people.

...But back in that moment we weren't.

In that moment her behavior triggered my own unhealed wounding. We were NOT two separate people with separate life journeys. I needed to control her and change her behavior to meet my own unmet, unhealed, core needs: my own desperate childhood longing to be included. A little girl who just wanted to belong.

I'll just take a moment to reiterate what I did: I needed her to behave a certain way to meet my own unmet, unhealed, core needs. I took my problem and made it her problem.

Now that's kinda messed up. And totally not fair to her! That's a burden that is excruciatingly painful for her to carry. It limits her freedom. It stunts her development. It cages her in.

But it flies so close under the radar it goes unnoticed.

Us humans are typically like this: walking around all day long reacting to life, reacting to our relationships, reacting to circumstances, that we end up trying to change everything else outside of ourselves to try to heal the core wounding inside.

And our relationships with our kids? It is probably the most potent hotbed of reactivity that we will ever face in our lifetime. I'm serious! Climbing Mt. Everest is probably easier than choosing to stop and pause and feel the pain of our own unmet needs and longings.

We spend a lot of time and money and energy wasted on trying to change and control our child's behavior when there's a very simple way through: pay calm, kind, attention. Feel our own feelings. Accept responsibility for our own needs.

And it can be a beautiful opportunity.

After I said some mean things to my daughter (something along the lines of "you have to try harder") we repaired and talked it through. (More on rupture and repair to come!)

And I spent some much needed time with myself, I sat with my own pain, my own story, my own inner little-girl who stood on the edge of the playground watching all the other kids play. I know, sad right? What a sweet, innocent thing she was. Her longing to connect was so pure and true and good. I love that little girl. She's come such a long way.

After I spent some time with myself this way I could see I was overreacting. But most of all, my mind got clearer and clearer and I could see the situation for what it was. I could see some of the (let's be honest, pretty minuscule) gaps in my daughter's understanding of navigating social situations with peers... in that specific situation. It's wasn't any big deal really. I got level-headed enough to check myself and remind myself that she is not socially stunted, that there is evidence of good, happy social relationships in her life. It was just this particular situation.

NOW I am ready to support her where she truly needs support, based on her own journey, her own needs. Not because I want her to take on the responsibility to staunch the pain of my own anxiety about not being accepted by a group of people.

Now we get to authentically connect because we are each coming from our own truth. And it feels so good.

I'm sending so much love to you as you navigate this parenting journey, aka. rollercoaster ride: the high highs and the low lows and everything in-between.

And when you're on that rollercoaster and you get blindsided, just step aside for a little bit, it will all get much more clear, I promise. Feel free to use my mantra: my child is having her own separate experience, she is a separate person from me.

With so much love,

Vanessa