You're Not Just Angry At Your Kids...
I have been consumed with staying in control most of life. I don’t mean controlling others, I only mean being in control of myself. I want to hold the remote when we’re watching tv. I like to drive separately to have access to my own car or if I’m driving with a group, I want to be the one to drive. I prefer to be the one making travel and restaurant plans. I like to sit closest to the door (but always facing it), never with my back exposed if I can help it. I’ve never been drunk enough that I blacked out or don’t remember what happened. And to be clear, I don’t enjoy being like this.
I don’t act like this because I think I’m better at planning or coordinating than anyone else- I am not. This fixation causes me more problems in my life than it benefits it. But at the root of this behavior, is a core belief that my not being in control of myself is the ultimate moral failing. I can give you a hundred other examples of how this fixation shows up in my life, from the way it torments my relationship with food to my absolute inability to relax. Can I trace this problematic belief back to circumstances from my childhood? Absolutely. I could draw you a detailed map. But that’s not what I want to talk about today, because that doesn’t matter.
Kids + Control
What matters is the connection between the judgement of myself when I feel like I’ve lost control of me and how that tied into not only my childrens’ behavior, but my entire experience of motherhood so far. Because if you’re a mom or if you’ve ever spent more than five minutes around a child you know they are the ultimate example of something which cannot be controlled!
Early on in my parenting experience I really didn’t get mad at my kids. I’ve shared that I had a rocky road to motherhood and I was genuinely just so grateful to have children. Yes there were times I was frustrated but I was so exhausted that the frustration would just fizzle out. But as they grew into toddlers, and then having all three become toddlers at once, the anger percolated. Particularly toward one child who was clearly becoming more demanding of my time and attention. Who tested me and simply confused me. I felt like I was doing everything “right”, reading all the books on attachment, conscious parenting…I mean I’m a therapist for fuck’s sake. I felt like I should know what to do, but I was slowly losing control.
When they were struggling with something I knew was developmentally appropriate, I could not not internalize it. I had decided that anything my children did that wasn’t by the book or the same as any other kids, it was a direct reflection of my shortcomings as a mom. And the most embarrassing part of this to me was that it meant I wasn’t in control.
And I am always in control. I have to be in control.
Control Went Down, Anxiety Went Up
It was around this time my anxiety skyrocketed. I had experienced postpartum anxiety after both of my pregnancies but this was different. Although the PPA had leveled off a bit this anxiety felt like a low level hum of irritation at all times. It wasn’t usually directed toward my children but at everything and everyone else around me.
In full transparency this took me a few more years to piece together. My life had done such a quick 180 going from one to three kids overnight, feeling isolated and like my whole life was on pause, I reasoned it made sense why I was so irritated all the time.
But as they got older and I started to get parts of me back, and return to work, I connected this pattern with my clients as well. I’d hear…
Why am I so pissed off all the time when I genuinely like the life I have?
Why am I so angry with my kids when I know what they’re doing is normal?
Why do I keep blowing up at them when it’s really not a big deal?
These are really important questions and here is what’s going on…
This is about our inability to not be in control. If you were a “good girl” as a kid you probably learned that you could control your caregivers by pushing down your feelings and abandoning your own needs. By following the rules and earning a gold star you could control the way you made the adults around you feel.
It’s ultimately how you got praise, love and approval and that felt really good, so you could control that and get more of it by controlling yourself. By always being in control. But now you’re a mom and you realize you can’t control anyone and you certainly can’t control your kids. And this feels foreign and bad…like a major ick.
So as you parent you’re left with this feeling of not being in control, which you hate and it disorients you because you don’t know what to do with it. Naturally you try whatever you can think of to get control back; yelling, bribing, screaming, empty threats. And you turn into a mom you don’t like and you promise yourself every morning you won’t let it happen again. But it does.
Since we cannot control our children, the only option we truly have in parenting, and in life in general, is to figure out what we’re actually in control of. And that’s learning to sit in the discomfort that comes up when we’re not in control. And here’s the real kicker, when we sit with this we start to realize it’s not even really about not being in control as it is about the judgement that’s attached to not being in control.
This means when you’re not in control you are judging yourself, or assigning a narrative to this and thinking “I guess I’m not a good mom” or “I guess no one cares about me.” It’s the judgement of yourself and the story you’re telling yourself about who you are because you’re not in control anymore.
When you can get a hold of that storytelling, you can change your response to your kids.
Gutpunch. Now What…
The turnaround is learning how to catch that space between not being in control (i.e. kids are being defiant, lying, breaking rules, being chaotic gremlins etc.) and the judgement, and then expand it and give it more space. To start to be free of always needing to be in control to feel safe, good and okay.
I have to remind myself all the time:
Being in control is not synonymous with being good and worthy of approval. I’m good either way.
If this resonates with you, hit reply or drop a comment. I’d love to know!
XO
Melissa
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Thank you for this. It really resonates with me.
I’ve never felt so understood about what makes me tick. Thank you!