Thoughts and feelings

Handling the holidays ……

December 16, 2016 Leave a Comment

When you’ve been struggling with fertility issues, family gatherings for Christmas and other seasonal holidays can be a challenge. There are the relatives who seem to pop out babies with no difficulty, the distant family members who ask you about when you are going to have a baby (grr….), and the plethora of toys, children’s’ choirs, and a zillion other things to make you just want to head for the nearest closet and stay there until the holidays are well over. You can feel totally alone, completely isolated in your suffering.

To help you remember that you are not alone, Resolve.org is offering a support service this December. You can sign up to receive a daily message of encouragement at this link: support. Even if it just reminds you that you are not the only ones in this situation, it can be a bit of relief.

And the holidays are just that, a few days, and they’ll be over soon. Keeping limits on what you take on, choosing only activities and people that you enjoy, can be helpful. We may feel our grief and sadness most acutely during this time, but having feelings is normal even if we don’t necessarily want to experience them. Creating space for what we really feel can make the rest of it more manageable. And ask for support, either through Resolve or from your partner or others.

Sending peace and light to you during this season of darkness.

Leslie

The Perfect Mommy: the myth that binds

February 8, 2016 Leave a Comment

There is a terrible mythology operating among sensible, educated, intelligent women, and the result of this mythology is a whole host of trouble: increasing stress levels, anxious thinking, moodiness, roller-coastering emotions and self-esteem. This is the myth of the perfect mother, who, with no apparent effort, has perfect children. She is totally self-sacrificing, perpetually loving, has boundless energy to give to her children, and her life, because she has sacrificed everything, is perfect. Her children lead charmed lives, as well, because she is a perfect mother.

Do you believe this? I know that in your intellectual mind, you understand that it is an impossibility, unachievable. We all “know” that nobody is perfect. But deep in your heart of hearts, do you believe that if only you are perfect you can protect your baby and child from harm? That you can support her development to the degree that she can become something wonderful and special? That if you breastfeed longer, play the right music, keep her away from screens, anticipate her every need, that you can protect her from anything that might befall her?

Many moms seem to have this belief underlying their everyday behaviour. There is a terrible fear of being less than perfect and thus putting your baby at risk. And maybe the worst part is this “perfect” is a moving target! Today it is about co-sleeping. Tomorrow it is about enforcing a schedule. Avoid peanut butter. No, no, offer it early, prevent allergies! When you are in the middle of this, it is impossible to see the whole context…. which is that the “right” way to raise baby is going to be different next week….and in five years, you’ll look back and say, oh, I can’t believe we thought that was right….

A mom got really angry with me once for suggesting that she could maybe try to be a “good-enough” mom. This concept is time-honoured, and I’ll get to the background in a minute. The mom who got angry thought that she would be short-changing her children if she only was “good enough.” She needed to be more than that, more than even what is possible, in order to justify her having these children in her life. She couldn’t relax into the idea of being “good enough” because that would mean she didn’t actually deserve to have children. What a painful, limiting way to think….and she wasn’t completely aware of it until it came out in therapy. When those ideas get some light and air in therapy, then we have the ability to think about them, and decide if we want to believe them. We develop the capacity for making choices in how we will mother.

So what about the “good-enough” idea? Well, it got its start with Donald Winnicott, a very important psychiatrist from the U.K. in the last century. He suggested that children have very particular needs in order to develop to their highest capacity. Most mothers supply these needs without a lot of outside intervention. And once those needs are met, then adding more doesn’t do anything to support development. It is actually energy spent that could be doing something else, like maybe taking care of yourself, or working at your career, or doing something you love.

How can you switch to being a good enough mommy when you have been programmed since forever to aim for perfection? You have to reprogram your inner world and then restructure your outer world.

Inner world

Check your default thinking. When you interact with your child and you hear self-critical thoughts come up in your mind, see if you can think “that was probably good enough.” If that’s impossible, see if you can think “I wonder what good enough would be like?”
If you tend to catastrophic thinking (i.e. if I give my baby a bottle all these terrible outcomes could happen), do a reality check. Specifically, how likely are those outcomes? If one happened, would you manage it? Another approach to that worst-case thinking is to just notice that you are doing that kind of thinking again. If it is a pattern for you, you might be able to notice that you are in your pattern. Once you can see the pattern, you have some traction for fact-checking. “Oh, this is my scary thought pattern. I don’t have to believe these thoughts; this is just my pattern.”
Practice thinking about what is constitutes “good enough.” Do I have to read three books at bedtime or is one book enough? Does the baby need to nurse five times a night at six months or is less going to be enough? Don’t expect to know what enough is…. but at least when you are asking the question you can notice when you are giving too much.
Destress your life as much as possible, and focus on enjoying the time with your baby or children. More about that later.

Outer world.

Check your context. Are you inundated with other peoples’ views on perfect parenting? Do you spend time on social media listening to women judge other peoples’ parenting? Or do you spend time in social groups trying to improve your parenting? See if the context supports your sense of being okay or if it contributes to a sense that you are not okay at this mothering thing. It probably won’t be all or nothing: there may be parts that feel good and supportive, and parts that feel judgy and uncomfortable. See if you can extricate yourself from judgement. That includes offering judgment as well as being the recipient.
Ask for what you want. In an effort to change the context to support you in being “good enough” instead of perfect, you can ask for support. Ask for support for your parenting and tell them what that will look like. For example, “Mom, I’d really like you to tell me that I am doing a great job, and that you know it is sometimes hard, and that you think I’m a good mom.” You can’t control whether she will do it, but you will have made your preference very clear.
Destress your life as much as possible. Yes, you did just read that in the list above, but it is essential for both inner peace and an outer serenity. More about this later.

Getting out from under the burden of perfectionism in motherhood is not easy, but it can be liberating. You know what your child needs, and you know how you want your family life to be. You and your spouse get to make those decisions for your family. It can just like the folks next door, or people on Pinterest, but it probably won’t be. And just as perfect mothering cannot protect your child from real life, it cannot keep you from struggling with the complicated feelings that arise as our children grow, change, and face their lives. Liberating yourself from the myth of the perfect mommy offers the possibility of deeply enjoying the process of raising children.

Photo credit: Thanks to Katie Huffman, of Looking at Life through Agreeable Hours for the lovely hands on mug picture.

The end of fall

December 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

Where I live in the Canadian Maritimes, late fall can look a lot like winter elsewhere.

This is the time of year that leads people to (frantic?) celebration, lighting up houses and trees, sprinkling glitter in unusual places, more parties, more drinking, more attempts to push back the darkness in any way we can. But the darkness deepens. Hours of daylight are few: the sun is barely visible over the horizon at the beginning of the workday, and by the time supper is taking shape in my mind, much less on the stove, the darkness is encroaching again. So we dance, and sing, and light our homes and maybe get half lit ourselves. What are we celebrating?

With the growing darkness two things come up in us: first, there is a primal fear that the darkness is all. That there is really only darkness and any suggestion of light is just self-deception or ignorance. The world growing dark merely demonstrates the darkness of the human heart. There is a lot of darkness in the world right now. Our hearts and minds grow dark, and we focus on the violence, the poverty, the problems both public and personal. We fear that we will be overtaken by dark, there will be no more warmth, no more growing season, no sunlight toward which we turn our faces to soak in the energy of our star.

But there is also something else in us, sometimes a very small something but it is there. There is also a spark, of faith, or belief, perhaps, but something that reminds us to keep on going. Even when the days are long and dark, when the nights seem to last forever, there is something in our human spirit that keeps us plugging along. I don’t think it is hope. Hope is too intellectual, too cognitive a concept. It is something more like life itself. Within us there is the fear of the ultimate darkness but more important, there is a push toward the light, toward life, a movement within us that says, “Yes” when all the world looks so much like “no.”

So maybe I need to re-frame my picture of our end-of-fall holiday mania. Maybe it isn’t really about desperate pushing away of the darkness. Maybe, instead, it is about our own small lights within reaching out to join with other lights, to band together until the light comes back into the world.

May you join your spark with many others to help bring light to the world. Now more than ever, your life is needed to bring light into the darkness.

Peace.

Shake it up, baby! On doing morning releasing exercises as a practice

October 2, 2015 Leave a Comment

Okay, so today is only Day Three, and maybe that’s a little early to be making any statements about this new practice of mine. I am trying to commit to a 28 day practice of engaging in the sequence of bioenergetic exercises that David Bercelli has pulled together and labeled “Trauma Releasing Exercises.” Click here to go to his website: trauma prevention

I’m not sure I entirely accept all of the claims made by the proponents of the method but I do know that the first part of the series is profoundly grounding and the second part opens up the opportunity for the body to discharge a lot of energy in the form of movement. I also know that when I work through a stress-release, stress-release sequence of movements, I usually can feel a lot more and mostly I feel better.

The FEELING more is what counts for me. I am pretty good at shutting things down in my organism, i.e., my body. I look quite contained and relaxed, and situations and events do not visibly distress me. I also have chronic tension in my neck and shoulders (my physiotherapist would just shake her head at this point) and sometimes stomach upsets and sometimes trouble with sleeping. If I am unwilling or unable to feel my emotions as they are happening, then I have to do something to keep them from being in my consciousness. So I tense my musculature, tighten and constrict so that nothing gets through. Not feelings, not energy, and if I am particularly tight, I can even limit the flow of fluids through my tissues. And I am not alone in this: many people are expert at this sort of shutting down. So opening up is a good thing!

On the weekend, I was delighted to have a group of bioenergetic therapists and trainees visiting me in my home and office. We shared a lot of good ideas and some of our particular interests. Margaret Bernard of PEI led our group through the TRE and that was a great reminder for me that daily bodywork is really a must for me to stay connected to myself. I can readily connect with my thinking parts but find connecting with the feeling parts takes more attention. TRE helps me to bring that attention and also to let go of the holding and constriction.

So in only three days, I’m noticing that my feet are connecting to the ground differently. I have increased flexibility in my toes, which is a bigger deal that you think. Toes are a critical connector to the ground, and thus when we have good movement in our toes, they can hold on better. Really! Take off your shoes and try it. Squinch up your toes and try to walk around. Yes, really do it. Do it until your feet have some intensity of feeling in them, say, a seven out of ten. (Intensity, also known as PAIN!!!) Then mindfully spread out your toes on the floor, feeling everything (relief?) and try walking with all of them active and engaged. Aahhh……thank you, toes.

Nicer toes than mine....flexible looking! creatve commons — Nicer toes than mine….flexible looking! creative commons

So toes. That’s good. I also notice that when the vibrations get going,, I can let them move quite readily up my body but that things get hung up at my diaphragm and throat. This is not new news to me; I know that I have blocks there, pretty typical ones from childhood. But when I allow myself to make a sound with those vibrations, the blocks ease up a bit. And when the sound starts to soar, almost like it isn’t part of me, then my body opens up to laughing and sobbing and all sorts of spontaneous movement. It is very cool.

I stay aware in this process, too, because I know that these kinds of unusual movements often permit the free flow of thoughts, memories, images, and sensations in the body-mind. This is access to my unconscious, and I don’t want to miss a thing! What I have found is that after I am finished (and how to decide to be “finished?”), I sit to write in my journal and the ideas are also flowing….ideas about so many things, not just the constricted content of my usual thoughts. Who knew that bioenergetic exercise would also open up my thinking self?

I’ll keep doing my daily practice and let you know how it proceeds. In the meantime, you can do TRE also…there are books and videos available from that website and also therapists and bodyworkers who are trained to help you learn the sequence. You can find a practitioner on the website. You can also just follow your body into movement and charge and discharge, but I know that can be harder to do than it sounds. Let me know how you do! Below is a video about TRE.

TRE video