Reframe

Like many others out there, I like reading articles on topics such as parenting, relationships, child development, pretty much anything counseling-related really.  There are lots of opinions about how kids should be raised when it comes to nutrition, sleep, development, potty training, discipline, habits, and education, just to name a few.  Hospital birth or home birth?  Breastfeed or bottle feed?  Sleep train or shared bed?  Time out or spank?  Binky or no binky?  Home school or public school?  There are things we need to do for our children, but don't do it too much or else it will spoil them but if you don't do it enough they won't have enough self-esteem.  It becomes overwhelming!  

There are also articles that talk about how we need to appreciate our children more and how we need to put down our electronics and bask in every moment of parenthood.  I don't know if these articles are more prevalent these days or if it just seems like it with all the technological outlets available now, but I always seem to notice them in my newsfeed on facebook and then get depressed after I read them.  I'm not saying I am against them by any means.....I think it is good to be reminded of how fast our kids grow up and how we need to enjoy the time we have with them when they are young.  But for someone like me who {overly} stresses about things to the point of not being able to sleep at times, these articles are just a constant reminder of the millions of ways I fall short as a mom.  I think about all the times I lost my temper, blew them off when I was busy doing something that seemed important at the time but really wasn't, got them McD's happy meals way too many times because I didn't want to cook, told them "no" to things that really weren't that big of a deal, etc etc.  But then it occurred to me that thinking of all the things I was doing wrong as a mom was not doing me or my children or my husband (or anyone for that matter) any good.  All it does is make me depressed and overwhelmed.  I decided today that instead I would reframe my thoughts in to something positive and think of some things I am doing RIGHT as a mom.  And by "right" I mean right by my own standards, not anyone else.  There may be some things on this list that are not your style and that's okay.  There are lots of different ways to be a good parent.

Sadly, this list took me a while to do, but I'm so glad I did it. {Why is it always so difficult to think of the positive instead of the negative?  I've always wondered that.} A lot of these things might seem obvious to others but they were important to me.  This is not in order of importance :)

1. I take lots of pictures and videos of my kids to help document their childhood.  I also keep a personal blog and try to keep track of my kids' milestones and fun activities we do as a family.

2. I take my kids to parks or let them play outside as much as possible when the weather is nice.

3. I am a pretty affectionate mom.....I don't go a day without giving me kids a hug and kiss and telling them I love them.

4. I do not shame or belittle my children, and do my best to provide a safe environment for them to express their feelings.

5. Of all the times I have lost my temper, there's probably that many times (or more) where I didn't, even when I probably should have.

6. I went back to school even though it has been difficult at times so that I can make a better life for my kids and be a good example to them of the importance of education.

7. I keep a baby book for both of my kids with pictures and keepsakes so that they can look back at them when they grow up.

8. I worked hard to set up a fun play room for my kids with lots of different activities to keep them busy.

9.  I try to make holidays fun for my kids, like decorating for the occasion, making cookies, doing crafts, reading stories that tie in with the holiday, etc.

10.  I teach my kids important manners and social skills, like saying please and thank you and I'm sorry, among other things.

11. I go to their parent-teacher conferences and try to stay updated on how they are doing at school.

12. No matter how mad I get, I have never laid a hand on my child in anger.

13. My husband and I make sacrifices so that our kids can have what they need and do fun things.

14. I throw my kids big birthday parties and make their birthdays a big deal to make it special for them and to create fun memories for them.

15.  I love my kids unconditionally.

So the next time I get down on myself and start thinking of all my imperfections, I am going to try and remember this post, maybe even come back and read it again.  I would urge anyone who is reading to make your own list (you can even leave a comment with your list, I'd love to read it!).  This concept can be applied to everyone, not just parents.  I think if we can learn to see ourselves in a more positive light we will live much happier lives.

Shame

Back in THIS post I talked about Brene Brown's amazing Ted talk "The Power of Vulnerability". This talk was life changing for me, I think everyone should listen to it!!  I came across a follow-up talk she gave called "Listening to Shame" (link HERE).  I had never really thought about the difference between guilt and shame until listening to her talk.  I always thought they were one in the same, but now I realize that they are different.  She talks about how we all have guilt ingrained in us, which is a good thing.  If we didn't feel some degree of guilt we would not feel remorse for the mistakes we make in life. We would be emotionless and lack empathy for others.  Pretty much the only people who don't feel guilt in one way or another are sociopaths.  The problem is, well, guilt doesn't feel very good.  It's a yucky feeling.  It gives us that gross feeling in the pit of our stomachs.  The other problem is that sometimes our guilt turns in to shame, and shame can be toxic.

She explains it well: 

"Shame drives two big tapes -- "never good enough" and, if you can talk it out of that one, "who do you think you are?" The thing to understand about shame is it's not guilt. Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is "I am bad." Guilt is "I did something bad." How many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, "I'm sorry. I made a mistake?" How many of you would be willing to say that? Guilt: I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I'm sorry. I am a mistake."

Amazing!  I also love how she explains shame from a woman's standpoint.  I felt like she was talking about me!

"For women, shame is do it all, do it perfectly and never let them see you sweat......Shame, for women, is this web of unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we're supposed to be. And it's a straight-jacket."

I just love that.  As I was doing research for this post I looked up "shame emotion" on google images and instantly discovered a common theme among the images.  Here's a few examples, see if you can figure it out:

Even the cute little polar bear does it....

There were two things I picked up on. The first one, obviously, is that each person is covering their eyes or hiding their faces, as if they don't want anyone to see them. Symbolically, they think that if they cover their face that others won't see what they see in themselves.  I found that very interesting. The second one is that they are alone, isolated and lonely in their shame.

Brene Brown continues her talk by discussing this very concept (this is my favorite part...seriously, if you get nothing else out of this post, at least pay attention to this next part): 

"If we're going to find our way back to each other, we have to understand and know empathy, because empathy's the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment.  If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive. The two most powerful words when we're in struggle: me too."


All I can say is, WOW. This concept has been so influential to me as an emerging counselor who is trying to improve her skills. So powerful!

So how do we get past shame?  How do we experience guilt without allowing shame to define who we are?  Let's first hear what Brene says about it:

"Shame is an epidemic in our culture. And to get out from underneath it, to find our way back to each other, we have to understand how it affects us and how it affects the way we're parenting, the way we're working, the way we're looking at each other."

Recognizing how shame plays a role in our lives is the first step in overcoming it.  Many of us try to hide our personal shame, but it manifests itself in different ways.  Sometimes we're not even aware of it.  For some it may reveal itself through unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drugs/alcohol, overeating, self-harm (cutting), or other self-destructive (and sometimes addictive) behaviors.  For others it could be covered up with anger or hostility. It can become evident through mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.  And for some it could be overcompensating for insecurities through a variety of different behaviors.  Becoming self-aware and paying attention to our reactions in certain situations will help us to see how our own personal shame creeps in to our lives.

Another important step in overcoming shame is to train ourselves to think differently.  We must learn, when we make a mistake, to differentiate the behavior from who we are.  It should be "I did _________, which was a bad choice/behavior, but I am not bad" and not, "I did __________, so I am bad."  We must pay attention to our own self-talk and challenge those negative thoughts when they occur.

When we feel shame we might have the tendency to want to isolate ourselves from others. But this is the last thing we should do. Just as Brene mentions in her talk, we should seek out connection with others and, even better, with others who can relate to our struggle.      

The next important step is to realize that we are human.  We all make mistakes.  We need to learn to accept ourselves and to love ourselves for who we are.  Of course we should strive to become better, to grow and to develop.  But we must avoid beating ourselves up for being human.  Instead of dwelling on our mistakes, we should take what we can learn from the situation, and then let it go.  This is perhaps the most difficult part of the process. But once we are able to let our shame go, we can feel a sense of overwhelming peace and freedom. 

I'm still here....

So the last few months have been super hectic and I haven't had as much time for this blog.  I LOVE writing and have tons of different ideas for things I want to blog about, but for now I am just trying to survive my last semester of graduate school (yay!).  I just took the Counselor Preparation Comprehensive Exam (CPCE) that is required for graduation from the program, so after weeks of studying and preparation it is a relief to have that over with.  Now I'm just praying that I passed!  Anyway, just wanted to check back in and say that I haven't forgotten about this blog.  I have been working on a post about shame that I will be posting pretty soon, and then hopefully once things settle down I can post more often.  In the meantime, for the three of you that read this blog (haha), I will be back soon. :)

Expectations

(Can you tell I love quotes?)

I remember back in October of 2000 being SO excited for my 16th birthday....getting my drivers license, having a party that evening, it was going to be great.  I had an expectation in my mind of what it was going to be like before it even happened.  Then came my birthday.  And guess what?  It was a good day, better than most days.  I went to the DMV to get my license with my mom.  I got flowers delivered to me at school from my parents.  My close friends threw me a small party that night with a few of our friends.  And then it was over.  And sadly, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed.

I don't know exactly what I expected.  It's not like I expected my parents to pull up in the driveway with my dream car and a big red bow around it, or get a kiss from my latest crush, or have hundreds of people at my party.  It wasn't like that.  But for whatever reason, the build-up to that day in my mind didn't match what happened.

Expectations set us up for disappointment.  Of course when you expect something to be great, even if it ends up being okay or even good, you feel disappointed. This got me thinking about why we have expectations in the first place.  I think, for me, expectations are a way of coping with uncertainty and exercising some control.  It also gives me something to look forward to.  Those aren't necessarily bad things, but how do we prevent expectations from getting in the way of our happiness?  I've been trying to figure this out for myself for a while.  Especially in my marriage.  Because let's face it, expectations play a huge role in marriage.

I came up with three ways that I feel we can keep our expectations in check.

1. Be realistic.

There's two different ways that we need to be realistic about expectations in marriage.  The first is about "falling in love".  I came across THIS really good article that was going around on facebook called "I Didn't Love My Wife When We Got Married" by Pop Chassid.  The title caught my eye, so I read through it.  It talks about how we have unrealistic expectations of what marriage is supposed to be like.  You "fall in love" with someone....can't stop thinking about them, get butterflies when you see them, spend all your waking hours with them, talk on the phone until 3 am, can't keep your hands off each other, etc.  (This time period usually involves overlooking all that person's faults, too).  You date that person, get married, and the first few months are wonderful.  You can't imagine life without that person!  Then a couple of years go by and reality sets in.  That "twidderpated" feeling wears off.  A few more years go by and suddenly you're thinking, "Who is this person I married?!  I don't love him/her anymore."  We think that maybe our spouse wasn't "the one" after all and maybe "the one" is still out there.  Well what REALLY happened is....you were never "in love" in the first place.  Love is so much more than that.  We get unrealistic expectations through movies or books or whatever that being happily married means that everything comes easily, that you never fight or have disagreements, that everyday is blissful.  When really, marriage is HARD. It takes A LOT of work.  A LOT of sacrifice.  A LOT of compromise.  And there are times when you might feel like you don't "love" that person anymore.  But "real" love means being committed to that person despite all those hard times.  It means putting up with all their faults and forgiving them when they make mistakes.  "Real" love is not glamorous.  It's exactly that....REAL. 

The next one is the expectations we have of our spouse.  A lot of the expectations we have of our spouse stem from watching our own parents' relationship.  Imagine a young man who grew up with a mom who always had dinner on the table when his dad got home from work.  Then he married a young woman whose mom worked full-time and didn't make dinner very often, if at all.  Her version of dinner is picking up a pizza on the way home.  You can imagine that there might be some difficulty in this relationship.  Or imagine a young woman who grew up with a father who was a great provider and did well financially.  Then she married a man who struggled financially and kept moving around from job to job.  Naturally the young woman would feel like her husband was not filling his "role" as a husband.  Not only should we not compare the expectations our parents had of each other to the expectations we have of our spouse (although it can be difficult not to), we also need to be realistic of what our spouse can do.  Maybe the young woman in the first example isn't a good cook or doesn't enjoy cooking.  We can't expect her to suddenly be a whiz in the kitchen.  Or maybe with the second couple, the wife can't expect the husband who struggles financially to suddenly become a millionaire.  We need to be realistic about the expectations we have for our spouse.  And we need to make sure they know what those expectations are.  That leads me to the next one.....    

2. Communicate.

I remember the first Valentine's Day after I got married. I was building up in my mind this amazing, romantic evening that my husband was going to plan for me.  The day came, aaaaand.....it didn't happen.  Not only is Valentine's Day my husband's birthday (which makes it a little complicated) but I had unrealistic expectations about what it would be like.  The silly thing about it is, I expected him to be a mind reader!  He didn't know what I wanted.  I've even heard girls say (and I'll admit I've been guilty of this before too), that "he should just know".  Yes, of course it's more romantic when a guy does something we don't expect and we don't have to ask.  But realistically, most guys are just normal guys who love their wives but aren't always savvy when it comes to romance.  I've had to learn over the years that I have to TELL my husband what I want.  And ever since I figured that out he's gotten better and better each year.

The same is especially true of the expectations husbands and wives have of each other when it comes to their roles in the home (as I touched on earlier).  I realized after years of marriage that one of the expectations I had of my husband was to be way more hands-on with chores around the house than what he was actually doing.  I EXPECTED HIM to know this, and after years of him not meeting that expectation, I became resentful.  It seems almost embarrassing now looking back at it.  I was getting mad about something he didn't even know!  Then one day we sat down together and wrote out what our expectations were of each other, and rated them on how important they were to us and the likelihood of our spouse being able to meet that expectation. Then once we knew what those expectations were, we started doing them.  Boy did our marriage improve!  It's amazing how something as simple as communicating improved our marriage exponentially.  

(I'm sorry, I couldn't resist!)

Then the next step is:

3. Be grateful.

We need to learn to be grateful for what we do have, so that we're not disappointed by unmet expectations.  Instead of thinking, "boy, my spouse didn't clean up the house as well as I would have liked him to" (or as well as you would have done it), we should think instead, "wow, I know my husband really hates cleaning and yet he worked really hard on this because he knows it's important to me.  I am so lucky."  It's amazing how that shift in perspective makes such a huge difference.  On my 16th birthday, instead of being disappointed, I should have thought, "my mom went out of her way to take me to get my license today and to send me flowers, and my friends planned this whole party just for me because they care about me....I must be really special."  We should think about what we have as always being BETTER than the alternative, not WORSE.    

Tears

There's nothing better than a good cry!

So Small

The other night I was trying to remember the name of a Carrie Underwood song and ended up spending about an hour listening to a bunch of her songs on you tube.  She is one of my favorite singers and is so talented!  I came across this song that I've heard many times and known for a while but for some reason on this particular night I decided to read the lyrics.  Maybe it was my daughter starting Kindergarten or my baby turning 3 later this week but I've been pretty emotional and this song caused the flood gates to open....

  (Click on the title to listen to the song on you tube)

"So Small"

By Carrie Underwood 

What you got if you ain't got love?

The kind that you just wanna give away

It's okay to open up

Go ahead and let the light shine through

I know it's hard on a rainy day

You wanna shut the world out

And just be left alone

But don't run out on your faith

'Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbing

Is just a grain of sand

And what you've been out there searching for forever

Is in your hands

And when you figure out

Love is all that matters after all

It sure makes everything else

Seem so small

It's so easy to get lost inside

A problem that seems so big at the time

It's like a river that's so wide

It swallows you whole

While you're sitting around thinking 'bout what you can't change

And worrying about all the wrong things

Time's flying by, moving so fast

You better make it count 'cause you can't get it back

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing

Is just a grain of sand

And what you've been out there searching for forever

Is in your hands

Oh, and when you figure out

Love is all that matters after all

It sure makes everything else

Seem so small

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing

Is just a grain of sand

And what you've been out there searching for forever

Is in your hands

And then you figure out

Love is all that matters after all

It sure makes everything else

Oh, it sure makes everything else

Seem so small

This song really has so much meaning to me, especially with some of the struggles I've gone through over the last few months.  {I bolded some of my favorite parts}. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life and lose sight of what's really important. It's also easy to let things that really aren't that important to get in the way of what is.  I love songs like this that help me to keep that perspective.

Love This

A great reminder!