Contact Is Currative

It has been a solid week of intense contact.  The friends from my party mentioned in the last blog I was able to make heartfelt connection with.  Man, I really do have good friends.  My heart wants to shut down but they are open to hearing my experience and well, I am relationally extremely good at repair.  It is why I am a kick ass couples therapist because couples therapy is less about communication "skills" and more about staying vulnerable enough to make repairs with those we love after we fuck up.

I continue to be amazed at how open hearted vulnerability creates a wide amount of space for connection and healing and deepening relationship.  I had some other harder conversations with my best friend where we each had to admit that we don't connect well in distress mode.  Her young stuff that had to take care of her mother's distress comes up. And when she is in distress mode she disappears.  I am the opposite.  I reach out in distress mode but on the ready for being dropped - sometimes setting the dropping up.  So each of us triggers very young stuff in the other.  It was a beautiful lovely place of witnessing and compassion and recognizing that each of us will have to stretch and heal to be present for each other - for her to reach when she is in distress, for me to take a deep breath before I reach and for each of us to stay uber present with each feeling, moment to moment in distress interactions and compassionately set boundaries so no one feels overwhelmed or dropped.  It is honest.  I have other friendships end because this conversation can't be had.  Makes me grateful to have so many friends so deeply skilled at contact, communication and vulnerability.  I am grateful I am so skilled at this.  I am.  It is my greatest strength.  Whew. 

I am grateful I do this repair process well because it gives my humanity a lot of room with my kids.  They have been in my heart all week in a massive way.  I love them.

Mothers Have Needs Too

We are fully in to summer.  Today is summer solstice.  Wahoo!  I love the sun.  I had some friends over this weekend, many close and many single.  It was a really fun time and I am grateful I have kept this "non kid" part of my life alive.  At the same time, I felt taxed and overwhelmed by how much work it is to host company especially with two active toddlers.  It ain't like throwing a party in the old days that is for sure.

Toward the end of the evening all who remained were me and my husband and a couple of my single friends.  One an acupuncturist, one a therapist, one a burgeoning tarot card reader and my husband.  I got really triggered by some of the things that came up in the conversation and went to bed angry at myself for being triggered and surely, again, my feelings must be wrong, you are screwed up etc.  It is this line of thought that is my problem, not the trigger.  The general theme was really just the difference between being single and having two active toddlers and what kind of devotion you can commit to things that I have admitted previously in this blog are so important.  But still, I think that certain kinds of sharing, can easily drift into advice giving, one upmanship and lack compassion. 

I am really getting that "doing" is less important than "accepting" and that cultivating self compassion - where ever that happens, taking a dump or sitting on a meditation cushion, it is all good.  Would I like to be radically re devoting more time to certain self care activities? YES!  But in the meantime, self compassion and compassion from others greases my wheels.  I got to experience being told that my primal and existential place of struggle (which is more painful than my usual dysthymia) was right where I needed to be.  I am open to hearing that when it is mixed with compassion, not when it is delivered devoid of compassion and tinged with one upmanship.   And, I was appreciativee of the mirror, because I think I have done that to people too and I am really committing myself in my own practice with psychotherapy clients the art of beginner's mind - to not know or even need to be an expert, so live and learn.  I likely was triggered because I am in the process of letting this "need to be expert go". It was still painful to here my friends speak so discompassionately about people who hadn't evolved enough and how they should. 

Needless to say, on Monday, which we term "mama day" I was exhausted from this party.  I was still dealing with my inner critic and just a general malaise. All I wanted was to go recuperate from the beating I had given myself...I was brutal.  But here were my two sons, no doubt picking up on my state and wanting more attention and still coming down, themselves, from all the people in our house.  I just couldn't relate to them.  "Oh great", I thought "Bad parenting, another thing to beat up on myself about."

So we went to the beach.  Had a sandwich, I even indulged in a diet coke and potato chips which aren't my usual fare and a laundry basket full of sand toys at a safe spot where no one could get carried out to sea.  I could feel their desire for me to join in and I also was aware, I just needed to sit, take in the moment, regroup, especially after the chaotic morning me and the boys had had, me probably not tending well to tantrums.

We hadn't been there ten minutes when a mother comes with two sons - I found out later were just has far apart as mine and only six months older.  She was actively playing with her kids, full on building moats and turrets and collecting sea weed and skillfully re directing them when any sibling rivalry showed up, was mirroring and exuberant (I am offered some reprieve bc it felt a little feigned) but what do you think I did?  I started comparing myself.  I should be more like her.  I should want to play right now too.   And when my oldest was drawn to join their play, I was sure this was proof I was parenting poorly.   I went over and tried to join in but it just wasn't where I was.  We played with them for 45 minutes but after some time, I realized, you know I am ready for us to leave.  I have played "nice" with this exuberant mother.  I really can make this easier on me and in turn feel more connected to my kids.  My youngest was beginning to bully her sons so there was a signpost he was tired.

We got home and had a great time and I must say, it was so much easier to take care of myself rather than tell some kind of story about how screwed up I am bc I wasn't playing with my kids.  Truth be told, I have been mindful of not wanting to intrude on my children's play and delight in what they come up with when I don't direct the play (like the mud, straw rock chocolate ice cream concoction they made in an old potty chair they found).  My kids and I all made the best smoothies we have ever made, ran around naked in the sunny back yard and everyone got to nap on time so mama got to do some self care.  Funny too, I saw a mom walking to the parking lot as I was leaving the beach, her children tantrum and all I felt real empathy as her face contorted in that combo impatience, embarrassment and forcibly keeping it cool.  What I sent to her was "Hang in there.  You are doing a great job."  Yet again, proving to myself compassion breeds compassion.  Have compassion for my own limits and needs allowed my heart to bust wide open to this other mother.

What is Mental Health?

I have a break between clients.  Getting ready to begin my study process.  But I have been feeling anxious again since yesterday after handling a couple situations with my kids sub optimally.   I am taking a mistake and calling into question my mental health because I made a mistake.  I am working toward a kind dialogue inside that says "Hey that was a hard situation.  You are still learning to self soothe so it makes sense that when your kids are beating up on one another you lose your cool.  You are committed to getting better at it and that is what is so great about you...your dedication and commitment to your kids.  It is what makes you such a wonderful mom.  I love that about you.  Let's not feel ashamed and get wrapped up in being bad.  You are doing great - the best that you can and what you can do better is being human and imperfect." 

When I make mistakes I go to the "I am all bad" place which I hope I will one day stop doing.  But just writing the nice couple words above have already made me feel nicer.  It occurred to me that other perfectionist parents could write letters to themselves - taking note of all the good things they are doing and really cheer leading themselves around their mistakes.   I need it because when I make mistakes, in any area of my life, I give myself an abusively hard time.  Good thing to shore up because I have a thread of criticism that eeks out to my kids.

That said, mindfulness practice - no not the thought of mindfulness, but actual mindfulness practice is a really important way to cultivate mental health.  And parenting from a mindful place as opposed to from the perfectionist place is the way to help our kids be mentally healthy.

Here are the 9 features of mental health per Dan Siegel and that living mindfully brings about because mental health is the opposite of rigidity or chaos - it is integration of the human organism.  (IE Rigid - it is always going to be this way to Chaos - bouncing around of ideas/sensation.)

1. Body Regulation - ability to calm the nervous system down when you were distressed.
2. Attuned Communication - ability to respond to one another empathically
3. Emotional Balance - Aroused enough so that life has meaning but not too aroused to too depressed - it is a kind of optimal flow so that you in your experience aren't too rigid or too chaotic  - flow happens in between.
4. Fear Modulation - Feeling safe actually impacts the brain
5. Response Flexibility - The ability to pause before acting - or separation between impulse to act and the action
6. Insight - Ability to review one's life and make meaning
7. Empathy - Compassion for feeling with another and be motivated to act on their behalf
8. Morality - Think about and act on the larger social good
9. Intuition - Use the data from your intestines and your heart to move through the world.

As I like at that list, I have some work to do and there are many I have in spades.  Mindfulness practice isn't about trying to "get better" at all of the above but to mindfully and radically accept my imperfection and humanity which then, in turn, makes me better at 1-9. 

For more on mindfulness practice check here.
Dan Siegel will have a new book on children's brains coming out Oct 4 which I will for sure be buying. 

Days of Sick Are Over

We have had sickies in our house for two weeks. The lay in bed, tongue hanging out kind.  And I am in the final weeks of prep for my MFT exam.  I hope to be back more regularly.  I am doing great.  Getting sick got me back in my body, focused on me.  I said to a mother I had over the other night about my "worried about what people think about my mothering" crap and the "being left out" fantasies that the antidote was a daily practice of self love.  Not thinking about loving myself, not enjoying the idea of self love but actually sitting in meditation every day, actually considering myself with a great deal of affection, actually ruminating about all the proof points in my life that prove how I am included and how I am a good parent and not ruminating on the other stuff.  It felt good to stand tall, in my kitchen, with such conviction to this mother who has very similar sensitivities about being left out or being judged as myself.  I could tell she took in my message of love and it cemented my own committment.

So here is a quote on mothering from the priveledge of parenting blog that I love.  I will have some more blogs coming but this quote sums up what happens in parenting and it also sums up what happens when you whole heartedly step in to the role of therapist.

"If parenting is an attitude of relating in the service of being, then perhaps what is “created” in this archetypal relationship is reciprocal; the child forms a self in the context of being cared for (learning trust and finding her unique voice and identity) while the parent forms her soul (learning that “she” is not limited to the singular identity of who she thought she was, but rather finds her true Self in the group, in nature, in the mystery of what just is).  Much as baby and mother work together to effect the first great transition of birth, the psyche and mind of the parent works together with that of the child to “create” soul in the parent.  In this way parenting is an organic and readily present spiritual practice—one that, like yoga class, allows us to be on our own matt, and at the same time connected with each other."  http://wp.me/pwpN2-1wZ

Lovely!