A Tribute
October 2, 2009 at 2:30 pm | In emotions | Leave a CommentTags: grief, love
Grief hits at odd moments, like on a sunny day when I walk down the hill towards home and remember a similar day that I met her coming up. She was coming to greet her children as they arrived home from school and couldn’t walk far because of the pain. I still believed then that she would get better, and I think she did too.
Another day I leave the kids at school and as I walk back I remember seeing her ahead of me on a morning years ago, I remember running to catch up, I remember the turn of her head as she waited for me, the way she cleared her throat and gave a little laugh, the quietness in her voice when she spoke.
Grief brings memories that seem almost alive, that make it almost impossible to believe she isn’t. One of our children says something cute and I remember how we used to laugh in pleasure at those little sayings, at their sweet ways. I dig in our garden and pull out the beautiful weeds that she told me were poisonous. I can’t remember how she advised to dispose of these weeds, and I can’t ask her now. Then I see her gentle smile. The image expands to become her standing in jeans and a loose tee-shirt, hands in her pockets. The memory is filled with warmth, the pleasure of having known her. Images flow through my mind daily: hundreds of images: sometimes nothing more than flashes, sometimes little movies. Some of these images aren’t even memories, but my mind constructing pictures from what people have told me of her last days in hospital. I wasn’t there: I had a virus and, still thinking she would recover, at least for a while, I didn’t want to infect her.
Months ago I read an extract from a novel, Shadow Child, by Libby Purves in which the main character has lost her son in freak accident. This character goes to the various places her son used to go, and her son is dead there too. I can relate to that; it makes no sense, yet death defies sense, defies understanding. Yes the person, the body is gone, and yet something of her remains.
My daughter googles her name and finds her website, and tears flow down my face. This isn’t sadness, and I don’t know what it is. To see her name still in cyberspace touches how I feel, touches the sense that I sometimes get that she too is still somehow in the air around us, in the flowers she planted last spring, in the park where we first met when our children were small. As my daughter chatters on I start to write this tribute to my friend, Alison, who died at the beginning of the summer. Quiet, accepting, brave: these are words that come when I try to describe her, and words can never give the essence of who she was.
On Youtube is a video of a man doing ‘The Work’ on his sister who he thinks should get over her daughter’s death, and at the end of his inquiry he reaches the turnaround and falls silent. After a few moments he says “Wow, I thought I was over it.” Byron Katie replies, “You can’t get over love.”
(This is a link to the video referred to above.)
A Little Wisdom
August 22, 2009 at 6:46 pm | In fun | Leave a Comment
When LB was four, she often called me by name rather than ‘Mummy’. One day we were discussing my middle name – which I rarely use as I don’t particularly like it. I said what it was (and no I’m not telling you!)
She replied, “No it isn’t. Your name is Mummy Yvonne.”
I asked then why it was she called me Yvonne.
“Well,” she said. “Mummy is such a common name. Yvonne is so much nicer.”
The wisdom of four-year-olds. Why do we get them to call us such a common name?
Not Crying Over Spilt Milk
August 20, 2009 at 10:12 pm | In emotions, family, parenting | Leave a Comment
“When we are present discipline isn’t even an issue, whereas when we are distracted by beliefs about how children should be life becomes a battle of wills, an endless task of trying to mould children into whatever they currently are not!”
That quote is from one of my earlier posts. Being present, aware, awake - whatever you like to call it - is something I sometimes am, and sometimes am not. I’ve written quite a bit about what it’s like when I’m not present (by which I mean reacting in a conditioned way instead of being aware of what’s going on inside of me and what might be going on inside of someone else) so this article is about the difference awareness brings to discipline.
One recent Sunday morning the girls were downstairs eating breakfast, my husband was at work, and I was upstairs doing one of those Sunday morning somethings, like reading a book or taking the cat off the bed because his paws were muddy. I heard the sound of an argument from below and then LB came screaming up stairs and past the bedroom door.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Or fresh from reading Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, I may even have shown more empathy, saying, “You are upset.” But I can’t guarantee it. I can’t guarantee that any of what I’m about to write is exactly as it happened, but it’s near enough.
LB replied, between wails, that she and Lolo had had a fight. “She was by the fridge and I asked her to get me a spoon. She said no.”Choke, sob. “So I shouted at her please do it and she still wouldn’t.”Choke, sob. “And then I went to hit her and she was holding the milk, and I hit the milk and now it’s everywhere!” Huge choke, huge sob, and then back to wailing.
“The milk is everywhere?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s everywhere.”
“Is it on the carpet?” (We have a Turkish rug fairly close to the table.)
She shook her head.
“Then it’s not everywhere,” I said. “And if it’s not on the carpet it can be cleaned. Have you wiped any of it up?”
“No,” LB wailed, and tried to run off. She often runs off and hides in a cupboard if she thinks she’s done something wrong or if she’s in conflict with someone. I could have let her, go, and sometimes I might have, but that day instead I held her and hugged her. “You feel ashamed,” I said. “Will hiding away change that feeling?” As she continued to wail, I asked what she thought would help. She wailed some more.
I told her I thought she’d feel better after she’d cleaned it up, that hiding wouldn’t stop the feelings of shame, and that she’d be better off coming downstairs. She angrily told me to stop repeating myself. (I hadn’t noticed that I had, but I’d mentioned the word shame twice, and that’s what LB objected to.) I suggested we go and clean up the mess together. She hesitantly agreed.
Downstairs Lolo was busy mopping up the table with a hand towel, so I suggested to LB that she could clean the milk off the floor and wall. “I can’t do it!” She wailed. “There’s too much.”
“You feel overwhelmed, but looks worse than it is,” I replied. “Liquid always does.
Lolo held up the milk carton and said, “Look there’s not very much spilled at all.”
As I filled a bucket with soapy water, Lolo said, “I like mopping up, can I do it?”
I heard myself say, “Thank you, but no. I know you’re trying to be kind to LB, but she needs the feeling of having cleared up the mess. I would be kinder to let her do it.” (It was one of those times when words come out and afterwards I realise their truth. To me, those moments are pure joy, moments when I know I’m not in control, and something wonderful is taking place. I often experience similar moments when I’m writing fiction and a story goes off in a direction I never imagined.)
Lolo understood, and while she and I finished cleaning the table LB mopped the wall and floor.
LB’s relief after she’d cleaned up was obvious. We’ve talked about it since, and she says that she felt self-forgiveness afterwards. Later that same morning the girls were in their bedroom tidying out some boxes. I heard LB’s raised voice again. “I did hit you,” she was saying, “and I’m sorry.”
It turned out she’d thrown something to Lolo and had hit her. Lolo said it was okay, but LB wanted the chance to apologise!
I’ve long believed that punishment doesn’t work. Yet, I’ve resorted to it many times. There are so many beliefs in Western culture that children are bad or wild and need to be tamed that it is challenging to simply trust ourselves and our children. If I had followed a punishing route that Sunday I would have ordered LB downstairs to clean up the mess she made, and I would have reprimanded her for hitting Lolo. I might have worried that I ’should’ issue some sort of sanction, have tried to think up one that fitted the crime, and felt guilty because I couldn’t come up with anything. She, meantime, would have been screaming that wasn’t fair, that I always picked on her and that if Lolo hadn’t refused to bring her a spoon it wouldn’t have happened. If I had managed to force her to clean up the mess she would have done it with resentment. We would have had a morning of misery and she would have learned that the way to get people to do what you want is to use force, and that as she was being punished for doing just that adults weren’t to be trusted. And she would have had no sense that I understood how she was feeling.
Instead what she learned was that cleaning up a mess she’d made wasn’t so hard as she’d imagined, and that she felt better afterwards. She was able to use that learning a few days later. She was in the bathroom making flower waters (as eleven year-old girls do). Petals were soaking in pots on top of a chest of drawers full of swimming gear. She knocked a pot. Water and petals floated towards the swimming costumes. LB wailed. “Oh no! It’s everywhere. It’s all ruined!”
I reminded her that the milk hadn’t been as hard to clean up as she’d imagined, and she calmed right down. Within seconds she had wiped it up.
It also got me thinking about making amends and wondering where I run away instead of cleaning up messes I’ve made. Hmm…
PS
I mentioned Non-Violent Communication at the beginning of this article. “Nonviolent Communication (also called Compassionate Communication) can be used in any interaction. NVC provides practical skills in language, awareness, and using power to communicate in ways that inspire compassionate giving and receiving toward meeting the needs of all concerned.” (From the web-site: http://www.cnvc.org/ )
I go on reading about other processes not because The Work doesn’t work, but because it does. As my thinking changes I understand in ways I couldn’t in the past. I read an introduction to NVC years ago, and thought I’d never be able to do it properly, so I didn’t explore it. Then a few months ago I saw a video clip of an interview with Marshall Rosenberg, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEXGNui2OQ and realised that NVC wasn’t about getting the words right, but about learning to think in terms of needs instead of judgements. Rosenberg says, “All language which criticises others is simply an expression of an unmet need.” And that applies to ourselves as much as to others.
Walking Together
June 26, 2009 at 12:09 pm | In beliefs | 2 CommentsIt’s been a long, long time since I posted anything on this blog. There are reasons, including travel, illness in my extended family and in myself, the death of a friend… and yet, none of those is really the reason. I haven’t exactly had writer’s block, since I’ve filled journals and worked on some fiction, but I’ve probably had something like ‘writing for publication block’.
I had been half aware that as people began to post favourable comments it seemed to take me longer and longer to post. The possibility that having an audience meant I’d got stage-fright seemed too much of a cliche, and yet something was clearly stopping me. So I began to look at what thoughts came up whenever I considered posting an article. I noticed a recurring thought: They think I’m better than I really am.
Is this true? I have no way of knowing of course, but that doesn’t stop my mind running off into painful fantasies, imagining people thinking that I’m some sort of saint or wise woman, when really I yelled at Lolo last night because she yelled at LB, who had been yelling at the cat. (I’m making this up, but you get the picture – we do still occasionally have such scenes in our home.) And of course in this blog I’ve written about the rough as well as the smooth in our family – but again why let the truth get in the way of a good dose of self-flagellation?
As often happens, several factors in my life have converged to provide the understanding I needed. I caught a virus a while ago, and illness lingered on in the form of exhaustion. People kept telling me, “You need to take more care of yourself.”
I was resting, and eating healthy food, so I couldn’t see what else I could do. Then I watched a video on The Option Institute web-site. http://option.org/index.php In this Barry Neil Kaufman described how he and his wife developed a way of communicating with their autistic son on the boy’s terms. It took all day every day for months, and then one day their son put his arms around his mother’s legs. He later went on to not just leave autism behind, but to help other autistic children. An interviewer asked about the commitment parents have to make to do this. “Have to is a very funny word,” Kaufman said, and went on to explain how people often say, “What a sacrifice, what a burden.” Kaufman didn’t see it as a burden, and likened what they did to Picasso producing a piece of art. Instead of sculpting stone they were sculpting a human being, and it was beautiful.
As I heard this, I realised my illness had nothing to do with how much I did, and everything to do with how I did it, in particular with the thoughts I still beat myself with. Doing the Work means I’m already aware of many of these thoughts, yet I can also have a tendency to think that because I do The Work so I should be able to cope with any situation. So I focused on the way I talk to myself. What I noticed were several hidden beliefs, all telling me the same thing in different ways: I’m not good enough.
One lovely thought I uncovered was: “I shouldn’t think that what I have to say is so special, so different.”
As I wrote this in my journal, a new understanding came to me. Maybe what I write is not so different, but part of the joy I experience in reading other people’s experiences is the recognition. It’s seeing myself, or at least my fears and understandings, reflected in another’s writing, and feeling that what they’ve written applies to me, it’s seeing that others go through the same (or a similar) process of doubt and growth. A few days after Lolo was born, a nurse took me aside and described the mixture of guilt, shame and fear that mothers of premature babies feel. Everything she described I was feeling, and hearing that I was normal, and not some sort of monster-mother, made it more bearable. Perhaps as someone else reads the process I go through, it encourages them to continue with their own process. This was always my intention when starting this blog, to walk through the process together. As I began to get readers I guess I also began to get expectations, and to think I had to live up to those expectations. No one else created those expectations and no one else needs to dismantle them. My writing doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly innovative, stunningly advanced. The value of this blog is in its ordinariness, in my ordinariness.
So You Want to be a good parent? It that true?
December 3, 2008 at 10:45 am | In beliefs, family, parenting, society | 3 CommentsI’m guessing that about two out of every three readers of this blog are parents. (Okay, two out of THE three readers, and the other one is Pam – Hi Pam!)
If you’re not a parent you might think this post doesn’t apply to you, and I’d say that it might. As you read it, perhaps you can think of other situations where you think you want to be ‘good’ – a good spouse, employee, teacher.
There’s nothing obviously stressful about wanting to be good at something, so it might not seem worth questioning that belief. Yet I’ve found that often it’s the beliefs that seem so very reasonable that generate most stress. I’ve read that stress is caused either by trying to push away or to hold on. This makes a lot of sense to me. We push away what we think will do us harm, and try to hold on to what we think will bring us peace. Holding on creates tension. (If you find this hard to imagine stop reading for a moment and pick up something on your desk. Hold it tightly and notice what happens to your hand!) So the very act of trying to cling on makes it harder to do or be what we think we should.
Then there’s the word ‘want’. I want to be a good parent. Want can mean lack. If you want something you don’t have it (or at least you don’t believe you have it), so if I want to be a good parent, that implies that I’m not. For me, one of the most important sub-questions I’ve heard Katie ask is, “What images come into your mind when you think this thought?” What I’ve noticed, many times is that when I think I have to be or do something its opposite also comes into my mind. I think I want to be kind and patient, and images appear of me nagging and criticising my children. I think I should be a good parent, and my mind fills with pictures of people telling me I’m not. The day that I first noticed this was long before I’d discovered “The Work”.
The girls were still little – three and four. I had pain that a doctor told me was fybromyalgia. It could take years to get better, so I’d read. (It didn’t.) Some days I couldn’t lift the girls, couldn’t open the garage door. Yoga helped, so I had started doing yoga in the mornings. That particular morning I hadn’t done my yoga when the girls woke up. After breakfast they wanted to go swimming. I explained I needed to do yoga first, and they wanted to join in. Sounds idyllic doesn’t it? And wasn’t I such a wonderful mother, introducing my children to wholesome activities like yoga at such an young age? That was what I wanted to believe. How virtuous I felt saying, yes, I would show them what to do.
It didn’t work out like that. I can’t remember exactly what happened instead. Either they thought they’d do their own version of the exercises, or they climbed all over me when I lay down. It could have been cute and fun, we could have invented some new exercises, had I not had a head full of people telling me how a good parent should be. “You should take control, not let them run riot,” ran the commentary in my head. So I snapped at the girls to stop messing about and do what I showed them. The internal rant switched from taking my side to theirs, and carried on, “Look at you, you idiot. Yoga is supposed to be relaxing. How are they ever going to find it relaxing if you snap at them? They’re only little kids! Lighten up for goodness sake. If you’d been more organised and got up earlier you could have finished yoga ages ago.”
Strangely enough, this didn’t help me relax! Strangely enough, this snarling voice didn’t bring serenity to that yoga session! But that voice in my head didn’t shut up. I told the girls I knew they hadn’t done anything wrong, that I was trying not to be angry, and we got ready for the pool. Meanwhile old nagging-voice told me I was useless at getting organised. As we set off for the pool, it said, “You can’t go swimming now. It’s far too late. By the time you get back lunch will be late, and the girls will be hungry. Any decent mother would be better organised at feeding them.” We took a detour via a corner shop and bought muffins, but that only momentarily quieted my self-criticism. It wasn’t proper food, not the sort of thing a decent mother fed her kids. And lunch would still be far too late.
I kept listening to the voices in my head, trying to please them, not realising then that I didn’t have to believe a word they said. I had to be a good parent, and I was failing. Miserably. I’d say sorry to the girls, say I knew it wasn’t their fault, but the next minute I’d start snapping again. About the only time I stopped snapping that morning was when we were in the pool. My four-year-old pointed this out (who says wisdom comes with age?) Now, I can see that the reasons were simple – in the pool we were all doing something we loved, the self-criticism let up and I was able to focus on them and what we were doing instead of trying to please some imaginary audience.
That day was the first time I realised that trying to live up to what I imagined other people believed a good parent should be was preventing me from being able to be the best parent I could. I didn’t know about The Work then, but it’s interesting to look back and see how I would have been different without the thought. It’s not hard to see, because for part of the day, I was that person. For part of even that day filled with self-doubt and frustration, I was a woman in a pool, playing with her children, enjoying their company. I can also see that what prevented me from staying that way when we left the pool was fear. Fear of other people’s disapproval, and also fear that without this constant nagging voice pointing out my errors I wouldn’t know how to do the right thing. A few years before this, as LB changed from baby into toddler I scoured bookshops looking for a parenting book that explained what was acceptable behaviour in a toddler, and what I should correct. It took me a while to realise that nobody could tell me this, that for each parent the answer is different. Later I came to realise that my confusion came from never having learned to trust my own inner voice, and that is why I find The Work so valuable. It’s not about adding any new rules, but about letting go. Even the turnarounds aren’t new rules to be followed, but options to explore.
What turnarounds might you find for ‘I want to be good parent”?
I don’t want to be a good parent. Not if it means following someone else’s ‘rules’, and trying to live based on what I imagine will get me approval.
I want to be a good child. Yes, is that a child is open to learn.
The thought “I want to be a good parent,” loosened its hold on me that day, but it came visiting many times since, and still occasionally does. When I write for this blog it whispers, “You can’t say that, people will think you’re a bad parent.” Now, after years of doing The Work, I know I don’t have to believe it, and that what people think is their business and doesn’t threaten me in any way.
Just For Fun
October 31, 2008 at 2:36 pm | In fun | Leave a Comment
This post is a bit of fun, but it does also show how easy it is to believe total lies!!
Inquiry: The Cat Is Out
Is it true?
Yes.
Do you absolutely know it’s true?
No.
How do you react when you think that thought?
When I believe the cat is out I go to the door and call. I go upstairs, check her favourite place under our bed, and see nothing, read for a while, then call again. When she still doesn’t come I brush my teeth. Then I go outside and wander around calling for her. Eventually I give up and go to bed. I imagine her coming to the door, and waiting in the cold. (We don’t have a cat-flap.)
It also flits through my mind that she may have been knocked down by a car, given her fondness for lying in the middle of the road, but as our street is currently shut to through-traffic due to road-works, that thought doesn’t grab my attention too long.
After a while I get up and call for her again. Back in bed, I lie for a while with that image of her coming to the door and then I console myself thinking that if she really was cold she would have come home, and maybe she’s got some hiding place I don’t know about. (Spot on as I will soon find out!!)
I doze off and then wake in the middle of the night, hearing the tinkle of a cat’s bell. I convince myself it’s my imagination, get up and have another look for her outside.
Supplementary question: when did you first have the thought?
When my husband told me the cat was still out.
Who would you be without that thought?
I’d be thinking that sound isn’t just a cat’s bell now, there’s also a distinctive little noise that I’ve only ever heard our cat make – almost like a miaow, but not quite. And I’d be leaning over and looking in the basket under our bed, and seeing that yes, indeed she did have a very cosy hiding place.
And I’d be laughing.
Turnaround: The cat is in! Yep! That little bundle of ginger, black and white is a cat and she’s definitely in.
Are We Ill At Ease With Illness?
October 15, 2008 at 11:43 am | In family, society | 2 CommentsTags: illness
The girls have both been ill lately, and one or the other has been off school for weeks, which is largely the reason it’s taken me so long to post.
I find it fascinating to notice the mass of contradictory beliefs in society, and in me, connected to illness. Western cultures seem to believe that we have to fight illnesses, be they life-threatening like cancer or heart disease, or more ordinary like the common cold. (Though the common cold that Lolo had as a baby meant nine days in intensive care on a ventilator.) I’ve heard of companies that reprimand employees for being off sick, and in the UK we have TV ads for cold cures that suggest you can swallow the potion and get straight back to work. The alternative, it seems, is to huddle in bed with a hot water bottle, nose dripping, feeling totally miserable and sorry for yourself.
So when I start to feel ill, or my children are, thoughts come popping into my head, thoughts I once would have believed or fought, and now instead I question. Here’s a selection:
It’s weak to be ill.
I should find a way to prevent my children getting ill.
Teachers/other parents/people will think I’m doing something wrong if my children are off school.
People won’t believe me that the Buteyko Method works if my children are ill.
I shouldn’t be ill.
I’ve too much to do to be ill.
I won’t be able to cope.
One morning recently, noticing my sore throat, runny nose, headache, I also noticed these last three thoughts, and that I was seeing only the options of fight or give in and collapse – and that led to feelings of anxiety and tiredness.
What if there was a different way? What if instead of letting my mind run off into the future it stayed right where I was? What if instead of imaging the day ahead with all the struggles I’d go through because I was ill, I took each moment as it came? In other words, who would I be without the thought that I couldn’t cope?
Interesting this – I’d be living in the now, right here, with no stories of struggle.
What if illnesses aren’t the enemy? If we were to treat illnesses instead as teachers, how would we see them differently? How would we feel differently about them? I’ve read many articles about people who have developed disabilities or debilitating illnesses such as cancer, and who have come to see them as a gift. (I’m reading Michael J. Fox’s book Lucky Man right now, and that’s how he describes his Parkinson’s disease, and says that the ten years since he was diagnosed have been the best of this life – though he also writes he has been criticised by others for saying this and that it is a gift that keeps taking.) I’ve not experienced serious illness myself, so I have no idea how I would react, and if you or anyone you know are in that situation, I certainly am not suggesting that you should look on your illness as a gift – if you don’t. I simply notice that for some people it is possible to see things that way, and this inspires me when I think about my own minor ailments. I guess the fear is that if we stop regarding illness as the enemy we will be overwhelmed by it. Yet, what if illness is perhaps a signal that somewhere, somehow we are out of balance? Would we stop looking for cures then, or would we approach the search for a cure with less – or maybe even no – fear?
For years my fear of the breathing difficulties Lolo experienced with colds led me on a panicky search for a cure. It’s probably six years since the day that she got furious at me about something, (I’ve conveniently forgotten my crime!) and as she raged at me she began struggling to breathe and needed her inhaler. Yet, though I noticed the link between her outburst and her breathing, I missed the opportunity in this. It didn’t occur to me then, for instance, to notice what happened to my own breathing when I felt upset. And a few years later when someone gave me an article about the Buteyko breathing method, it took me months, maybe even a year, to ring a teacher. Why? I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. Probably because of beliefs I had such as: ‘Doctors wouldn’t like it.’ I have yet to meet a doctor who complains about it, and when I discussed it with the asthma nurse at our clinic, she said it was very effective. But fear rarely lets evidence stand in the way.
I am aware that I still hold many crazy beliefs about health, and accepting that is oddly peaceful. I don’t have to try to force myself to drop unhealthy beliefs about health! That seems similar to trying to force my body to be well. I read more and more about research that indicates placebos are as effective as drugs, and when we read this it’s easy to start thinking if a dummy pill can do it we should be able to simply heal ourselves. Some people seem to find this comes relatively easily, and others don’t. I tend to think we all have lessons that help us become more aware of the inherent wholeness of our being, and that certain situations recur in our lives because that’s how we learn. So if you or I experience recurring illness, for instance, it’s not because we’re inherently weak, stupid or careless, but because these illnesses bring to the surface beliefs that tell us we are, and we then get the chance to question these beliefs and more toward love.
Trusting the Process
August 29, 2008 at 10:17 pm | In beliefs | 2 CommentsTags: beliefs
The school holidays slipped by and I barely got near my computer. I have checked e-mails, and written a few, I’ve ordered flippers for Lolo, who has now joined the swimming club LB is already in, but what I haven’t done is find time to write a post for this blog. I (mostly) need time to write, or so I believe. Maybe that’s a thought I could question, a facet of the fear of not being good enough that still pops up now and then!
The trip LB was dreading the last time I posted went so well she didn’t want to leave for home. (Though she is happy to be back home too.)
What I love about doing The Work on a regular basis is that more and more of life seems like fun and less seems like hassle. I love how sometimes, with virtually no effort from me, stories I’ve clung to just show themselves to be crazy and disappear. I have long had anxieties about driving, to the extent that I passed the buck to my husband whenever possible. But since he couldn’t come with us, I had a 120 mile drive to do on our trip. The girls are used to me asking for quiet when I drive. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t. On that trip they argued, I got tense and loud, and they got quiet – for a while. Then it felt so hot I turned on the air-conditioning. LB whined. I told her it was just for a while and I would switch it off again soon. She whined louder, said the smell made her feel sick. In the argument that followed I yelled at her to be quiet (yes I did notice the irony), and yelled that I found driving stressful enough without her arguing with me.
She cried. I pulled into a layby, and we hugged. I explained that I wasn’t really angry at her, I had yelled because I wanted her to understand that I really needed her not to argue, that I find driving stressful and so I really needed her to allow me just to concentrate on driving – all stuff I’ve believed for years, and that seemed reasonable to my muddled mind. She got back in her seat and we set off again.
I began to think about this belief I’ve had for so long. “Driving is stressful.” Was it really true? I’d been so convinced this was true for me, even if it wasn’t for millions of others, that I totally believed I couldn’t ever change on it. I also thought anyone who didn’t believe it must be extremely confident or manic, or both. But as I drove along ,I began to notice that I was thinking over and over, “Driving is stressful.” You’ve probably heard of positive affirmations – this was a negative affirmation for me. A while ago I noticed that when I was driving I often imagined crashes. (You will also have heard of positive visualisations – how’s that for a negative one?)
In particular, I believed that I can’t drive well if I’m tired, and this thought often keeps me awake the night before I have to drive. (It had the night before that journey!)
I began to wonder what it would be like to be driving without this repetitive thought – and it seemed like it might be less stressful. I went on driving, still not convinced I could change on this, and yet knowing that I had seen over and over that I can trust the process of The Work.
Then, less than ten miles from our destination, I remembered the breathing meditation I’d read about in Cheri Huber’s book How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be. In this meditation you simply count your breaths from one to ten, and then you start back at one again. Cheri wrote about doing this while she was driving, so I thought it was worth a go. By focusing on the body in this way the mind stops its racing around and comes back to the present. It probably also helps to focus on the breathing since stress creates shallow breathing, which in turn creates stress in the body. By the time we reached our destination I was calm and knew that thought had lost its grip. It popped up from time to time during our holiday, but I didn’t have to believe it.
Am I now the most relaxed driver in the world? Nah, that would be exaggerating a bit, but a couple of weeks ago after another trip away, we fetched our cats back from the cattery (and one of them had miaowed all the way). When we got home I realised I hadn’t visualised one crash! It seems that when we question a thought it gives our minds the space to find new solutions. As long as I was repeating, “Driving is stressful,” there was no room for anything creative to happen in my mind. Once there was doubt about that thought the mind could open up, whereas trying to stop imagining crashes had changed not a thing.
It’s interesting to see how even thoughts we are deeply attached to can crumble away when we start to wonder. Or these may return, but we are a little less attached, so we don’t react so strongly. I’ve noticed that sometimes after I stop believing a thought I’ve been hooked into it can take a while for the behaviour that goes with it to slip away. Sometimes it’s days, or even weeks later, that we notice the change in how we react. I’m suspect that thinking a change should happen – and so watching out for it – makes it take longer. This after all has parallels with the old way of thinking we can use willpower to force ourselves into line. I’ve caught myself thinking, “I did The Work” on that, so I should have stopped reacting this way by now. Of course, if I remember not to beat myself up over it, it becomes an opportunity for even deeper inquiry. “I should have changed by now – is that true?”
The answers I get allow more compassion for myself and others – others because what I expect of myself there’s a tendency to expect of others too.
Lastly, I am really grateful to come back to my blog and see that I’ve had readers over these two months of my silence. I would love to hear about your experiences of questioning deeply held beliefs, so please do write in with comments.
Parent’s Intuition
June 23, 2008 at 11:53 am | In family, parenting, society | Leave a CommentTags: sleep problems
A different style of post today.
Yesterday in a newsagent I picked up a parenting magazine and flicked through it. I read a short article about research that claims to have shown that children whose parents are with them as they fall asleep or who are taken into the parental bed if they wake in the night will more likely continue to have sleep problems as older children.
Hmm, I wonder, could this be a bit like the research that showed babies who had a night light grew up to be short sighted? That research came out when LB was a year or so old, and I fretted about it long enough to switch her light off one night. She screamed, the light went back on, and some time later the researchers realised that they had overlooked one fairly vital piece of information – babies with night-lights tend to have parents who are short sighted! (And no, I’m not but my husband is.)
So am I now going to beat myself up over all those nights I picked LB up and took her through to our bed in the middle of the night? Am I going to assume that’s why she still occasionally has bad dreams? (The article suggested these children more often had bad dreams.) Or am I going to take a wild guess that these researchers may just have overlooked important information – for instance that children with high levels of anxiety or who get scared at night may well have parents who sit with them as they go to sleep and who soothe them when they wake in the night? It gets even more interesting – I looked up the magazine’s web-site and found a mass of information about children and sleep, including evidence that controlled crying creates stress chemicals in a child, whereas co-sleeping reduces them. So who do you believe?
This post is not a argument about whether you should take your baby to be with you or not – I think that what works for any family depends on so many factors unique to them that it is impossible to generalise. I can’t help feeling that instead of doing endless studies to prove one way of parenting is better then another, it would be more useful to encourage parents to trust their own intuition.
Going back to LB – not long after Lolo was born (and while she was still in hospital so our lives were somewhat disrupted) a “sleep expert” asked me what I did when LB woke in the night. I told her it depended how LB was – if I hugged her and laid her down and she settled quickly I tucked her up in her own bed. If she was clearly distressed and unable to settle I took her into my bed. “You’re confusing her,” the expert said. “You must always be consistent, always leave her, or always take her into your bed.” Being consistent was apparently more important than trusting my instincts or responding to the needs of my child at any given moment. Probably that sleep expert did my a huge favour – her advice seemed so utterly crazy to me that it may have been when I began to listen to that small voice of wisdom inside of me, the voice that told me I knew my daughter better than any expert.
We all have this wisdom, we all know instinctively how to look after our children and ourselves, and I sincerely hope that in some small way this blog can help others learn to trust that wisdom – others including well-meaning sleep experts!
Being Present With Our Children
June 19, 2008 at 6:27 pm | In emotions, parenting | Leave a CommentTags: anger, present moment awareness
“Compassionate self-discipline is nothing other than being present, rather than engaged in distracted, unfocused, addictive behaviors based in an I-need-to-fix-myself mentality. “
This quote is from Cheri Huber, whose wonderful writing I’ve recently come across. (More details at the end of this article.)Though she is writing about self discipline this could just as well apply to any form of discipline. When we are present discipline isn’t even an issue, whereas when we are distracted by beliefs about how children should be life becomes a battle of wills, an endless task of trying to mould children into whatever they currently are not!
Some time ago LB went through an angry phase – yelling that she hated me, hitting her sister, snapping at little things. It was stressful, very stressful. But not because of how she was. The stress came from my thoughts about her behaviour.
I noticed that I wasn’t seeing her as she was, I wasn’t with her as she was. Instead my mind was racing ahead imagining that she would grow up to be a monster, so bad-tempered no one would want to be her friend, and so she would be alone. I was predicting a life of misery and depression for her. As I noticed this I realised that there was no way I could know any of it. I also noticed something else – because I believed as a child (and often as an adult) that my anger was wrong and people didn’t like me if I got angry, and because I had bouts of feeling depressed and friendless from my teenage years onwards, I was assuming that unless she changed her behaviour, she would have the same experience. And I had to save her from that.
For all I knew, expressing her anger at eight years old could mean that she would grow up to be the most peaceful, relaxed adult on this planet. I have absolutely know way of knowing how she will be tomorrow, let alone in ten years time. Yet I was allowing this fear-filled vision to affect my relationship with her now. When I saw this it was obvious that by trying to stop or control her anger I was more likely to encourage the creation of the monster in my mind. If her reaction to my disapproval was to bury her anger it would simply simmer away looking for an outlet.
After this I began to notice how often parents’ problems with discipline turned out to have nothing to do with children as they were, but with how the parent imagined they would become. A friend’s five-year-old was openly defiant, according to my friend disobeying her ninety percent of the time. What was going on in my friend’s mind when this happened? “If I don’t stop him, if I don’t show him who is boss now, what will he be like when he’s a teenager?”
Another woman was terrified of her two-year-old’s tantrums. As we talked the same pattern became apparent – her husband had been an angry young man, and although he’d mellowed, she was imagining her child growing up to be the same way.
How often do families look at children and compare them in appearance and behaviour to family members from the past? After gender, the first thing people want to know about a new baby is who he or she looks like. How often have you thought your child is behaving exactly like Aunt Mabel/father/grandmother/crazy cousin used to do? And if you don’t like how your crazy cousin behaved, how to you react to your child? If you react by trying to stop the behaviour you’re not alone. When we feel uncomfortable about the ways our children behave, it’s good to remember that our past (or our relative’s past) is not our children’s future.
It’s also good to remember our child is hurting in some way – or they wouldn’t be behaving the way they are.
LB’s been raging again, these last few days. At times it has felt exhausting, as if she’s determined to push every button I’ve got. Yes, there have been times I’ve reacted by getting annoyed back. When that happens it’s because I listen to my thoughts and react to them, not to what she says. “You’re horrible,” she shouts. “I hate you.” And if I believe her, even for a second, then I start to think that I have to do something, that I have to make her see that I’m not horrible, or remind her that just a few minutes ago she was telling me how much she loves me. If instead I remember what it feels like to be caught up in the belief that someone in horrible and you hate them, then I can feel love and compassion for her.
A couple nights ago when I didn’t react she got even more angry. And then came the tears. Underneath the anger were fear and sadness. These related to several things, including a trip we’re soon about to make, and that she thought she might not enjoy without her dad there (he will be working). Everything she was upset about was in the future, things that may never happen.
I realised I was thinking I had to do something to change it for her. I also noticed my mind was filled with memories of people saying children should be happy, children shouldn’t worry about things. I noticed this led me to imagine these people say I was doing something wrong as a parent since my child was worrying, and there was something wrong with my child for being unhappy. And then I remembered that if I have a period of sadness or depression, it is generally followed by a time of understanding and expansion. So instead of trying to make things better, I just explained this to LB. She understood, and she understood that she wasn’t wrong or silly for feeling the way she did.
(The Cheri Huber quote comes from ‘Making a Change For Good – A Guide to Compassionate Self-Discipline. I also recommend: How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be)
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