FEELING BETTER ABOUT THE WORST CASE SCENARIO
Welcome to The Small Jar, a podcast where we explore how to intentionally design the life that you want in the space between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 27.
Hello, my friends. The further I've gotten along in this empty nest journey, and the more women, friends, acquaintances, clients, the more people I talk to about this stage in life, the more people I meet who are turning to medication to manage the stress of this period of life in particular. It's anxiety about our kids, our marriages, our future.
It's loss and sadness. It's hormonal changes, which seem to make all of the varied challenges of our lives even more difficult. I have no judgment about medication.
I think it can be a valuable tool to manage some of the more challenging symptoms of this journey. For each of us, this is different. And so I think it's important to explore your options and decide what's right for you.
But the fact that so many of us turn to medication to cope with this period of life speaks to how challenging it can be. It doesn't take many nights of staring at the ceiling with your heart racing or time spent crying in the shower to make you wonder whether you're losing it. I get it.
My goal with The Small Jar podcast is to help give you a window into how I use self-coaching to manage the challenging circumstances and emotions in my life. If this is helpful to you, I hope you'll consider leaving a review for me, and I'd love to hear from you and hear how this might be helping you. So this week's podcast is focused on a topic that seems to be consuming my thoughts a lot lately, the worst case scenario.
When I find myself in the throes of anxiety, I'm often spending a lot of time in the most dramatic and terrible version of what could happen. No matter how many times you try to tell yourself it will all turn out okay, it's often hard for our brains to accept that possibility with any degree of comfort. All of us worry about the future.
But have you ever stopped to wonder how worrying helps you? We worry about what might happen later today or tonight when our kids go out. Our worries can be short term or they can be longer lasting about how the future will turn out for ourselves, for our kids. And the worrying can be all consuming because we can think of so many different scenarios of how things could turn out.
I've talked about how this can serve us in the sense that it protects us to a certain extent. There's this aspect of our evolutionary makeup. It's an instinct that ensures that we learn from our environment and imagine possible outcomes as a way to avoid pain and negative consequences.
This is how our species has evolved. If we can predict the possibility of a negative outcome and somehow avoid it by being proactive or learning how to get around it, then one would think that we could be able to save ourselves the pain of experiencing the negative outcome. This aspect of our minds is incredibly helpful.
We envision various scenarios and try to take steps to minimize the negative and optimize the positive. Whether you realize it or not, your mind is continuously evaluating the world around you and making decisions, many of them unconscious. And these decisions keep you safe and moving in the right direction.
These decisions, in fact, many of them habitual actions are proactive steps you are taking to avoid a negative outcome. For example, every time you get in a car, you probably buckle your seatbelt. As you do this, you're not thinking, I'm taking this step so I can avoid the consequence of getting hurt if I get into a car accident.
In that moment, you're actually not particularly worried about getting into an accident, but you take the step because you've learned that the consequence of not taking the simple protective step could be terrible. So you do it. You've worn a seatbelt all of your life, and now it's a habit that is a proactive step that keeps you safe.
We try not to be late to work or late with assignments or other obligations with deadlines, because we've learned that we want to avoid the negative consequences of being late. We don't steal because we don't want to go to jail. We don't drink and drive because we don't want to get in an accident and hurt ourselves or certainly anybody else.
We've learned either through our own experiences or what we've read about or seen on TV that there are certain outcomes we want desperately to avoid. So we take steps to minimize the risk of those happening in our own lives to the extent that it's possible. Of course, you can never avoid all of the bad things that could possibly happen to you.
You could do all of the right things in your life and still experience unexpected tragedy or disappointment. In fact, it's actually guaranteed that at some point something bad will happen. And there are times when we have done everything right and life still turns out in a way we didn't want.
Unfortunately, in these times, we can still find a way to take the blame and seek out answers even if there is nothing we could have done differently. But there are times when try as we might, we can't actually do anything to change the course of the future. This is a particular hurdle that we begin to grapple with as we approach the empty nest.
It can be really challenging for us as mothers as we learn to let go of our children while they're simultaneously going out of their way to demonstrate their independence from us. And for each of our children and each of our families, this can look very different. But what becomes increasingly true, what is almost inevitable, is that our children are going to go out and live their lives eventually on their own.
And in the meantime, as they're preparing for this monumental transition, they take the opportunity to try to make independent decisions and create their own path. And sometimes, maybe even often, this path, these choices, will look different from what we had hoped their path would look like. It's almost guaranteed that as our kids go out into the world, there are going to be a number of things that they do that we've warned them against or even begged them not to do.
We've reminded them incessantly about these things, and guess what? They are going to do them anyway. And this could be anything from the fairly minor things to major risk-taking behavior. For example, we might ask our kids to drive safely.
We might advise them to leave early enough so that they get places on time. We want them to be responsible and respectful at work. We might nag them to be sure to turn their assignments in on time, or, please, don't leave major assignments, or things like applying to college to the last minute.
We have nagging fears that our kids are going to make mistakes and that somehow we failed at helping them develop into responsible adults. But then there are the bigger concerns. We hope our kids won't do drugs or drink, and we absolutely don't want them to drink and drive.
We hope they'll be responsible if they do drink. We hope they'll wait to have sex, but if they do have sex, we're worried they won't be careful. There are so many things we want for our kids in their lives, and we can see all of the possible negative outcomes if they don't take our advice.
And this creates a ton of worry because as our kids get older, we have absolutely no control over the risks they're going to take on. And it often seems that they approach these risks without any concern for the consequences. In some cases, with some kids, it doesn't matter how many times you remind them not to do certain things.
It's possible they're going to do some of them anyway. And the scary thing is that we may not even know what risks they're taking until they possibly get scared enough to come to us for advice, or maybe they get caught. Or you may have no idea of the risks they're taking until you start to notice the consequences of these choices.
You hope in those moments that they come to you for help, but in other cases you may observe consequences and they don't want your help. In fact, they may push you away even more for meddling and getting on their case. The main point is the choices are now adult children are making.
Both the good choices and the risky choices, these are no longer in our control. And so we are left to worry about the future and what could happen to our kids without any possibility of fixing or avoiding the possibility of a negative outcome. Now that doesn't mean we're not going to try.
We absolutely will find ways to continue to remind our kids about their responsibilities and about the risks of certain choices. And what that can often mean is that we spend the majority of the precious conversations we have with our kids in a sort of reminding, nagging, controlling loop because we're not quite ready to give up our role as parents. And look, in our minds, this is our job.
We have a certain responsibility to help our kids navigate their lives. We don't want them to make the same mistakes we made. Or we hear about the consequences of other kids' mistakes, the horror stories we hear or read about in the news, and we see our precious children and we still think of them in some ways as these little people who loved us without reservation when they were younger.
We can't help but believe that they're still pretty naive as they go into the world to explore their independence. And some of them, they think they're invincible. They may have a high degree of confidence that they can figure it all out on their own, or your child may be terrified of what's waiting for them, but still not think you're the one who can support them on their journey, no matter how loving and supportive you've tried to be throughout their lives.
Take a moment to just think about how lucky you've been in your life, given some of the mistakes you may or may not have made or risks you may or may not have taken. You may think about times you've gotten caught or really messed up, but I would imagine there are many more times that you've taken risks, but these risks haven't in fact ended up resulting in the worst possible consequence. Let's just take the basic case of how little we wore seatbelts when we were younger.
That just wasn't a thing when we were kids. And you were probably, as were your parents, pretty naive back then too. You might remember a time in your life when you were having so much fun or facing so much peer pressure that it felt like consequences be damned.
We've all been there. But in this day and age, it's actually scary how much more aware we are of what our kids might be up to than our parents ever were. Think about it.
Let's start with the fact that our parents couldn't track our whereabouts. In fact, they couldn't even reach us unless we were at a friend's house and someone happened to answer the landline. There was no texting for quick updates about when we were coming home.
Think about the degree of visibility we still sometimes command over our kids, even when they're in college. Many parents use Life 360 to not only track where their kids are, but where they've been and how fast they've been driving. It's not my place to judge.
We all need to make our own choices as parents in terms of what we think is appropriate to do to keep our kids safe. And that's the bottom line, right? We tell ourselves it's for our kids' protection. And that could be valid.
It's not for me to know what's true for you. But what we're also doing when we maintain a window into our kids' private lives, or at least the aspect of their lives where they might assume they're independent and free from our judgment and oversight, what we can be doing is compiling evidence that continues to fuel our fears about what terrible outcome could be possible because of the risk we observe them taking. As I compare our visibility with our parents' relative ignorance, there is a big part of me that thinks ignorance is bliss.
Imagine that you didn't know all of these facts about the risks your kids might be taking, and you just lived your life and hoped for the best. Imagine finding comfort in the knowledge that you know you will be there to support your child if something were to happen and if they needed your help. It's not an easy leap, I know.
Our parents still worried about us, I'm sure. But without access to phone tracking and social media, without all of this inside information that many of us use to monitor our kids just to find some comfort and control, trying to keep the train from going entirely off the rails, our parents weren't constantly barraged with red flags in the same way that we experience these continuous triggers that remind us of everything that could go wrong. Have you ever stopped to consider that all of this additional information that we have about our adult children doesn't actually help us control the situation any more than if we were completely ignorant? Now, even as I'm saying this, I want to argue with myself a little bit because when I think about the magnitude of some of the risks that our kids might take, like doing drugs or having unprotected sex or any number of really risky behaviors, when I think about the consequences, the sheer statistical risk of some of these things, most of us would agree that we'd rather know than be in the dark and completely blindsided.
And I have to admit, I'm definitely in that camp. There's a big part of me that feels like being prepared for the worst case scenario might protect me. You see, when you fear the unknown and the negative things that could happen, a small part of us would rather feel certain about the negative outcome than sit in the discomfort of our uncertainty.
Now, I'm not at all saying that we prefer the negative outcome to uncertainty, but it's interesting that rather than just sitting with the emotion of anxiety, our brains would rather jump to the worst case and try to grapple with the pain of that specific scenario. Let's say you're anxious about how your child is doing in college, and maybe they've called a few times, maybe they've sounded sad, maybe they've said they've been lonely or they're overwhelmed by the workload. And let's say this child struggled with school a bit when they were home, but you remember that at least when they were home, you were there to support them when they were in high school.
You begin to think now that they're on their own, they're struggling. At this point, you have just enough information to fuel your brain with anxiety. You can't see them every day to gauge how lonely they may be or just how much or to what extent they're challenged by their classes.
We focus on all of the scary information and create a doomsday scenario. Before long, we have them with absolutely no friends, dropping out of school, coming back home, being miserable. What's really happening here is that we don't know.
We don't really know how they're coping. We certainly don't know how this whole thing is going to turn out. But it's interesting that by going to the worst case scenario, our brains try to help us feel a little bit more certain about how it could turn out, even if it's not at all what we want.
Our brains go to the worst case because there's a part of us that wants to know what could be coming. We're worried our kids are not going to be able to handle it if something really bad happens. There is a big part of us that worries we won't be able to handle it if something really awful happens.
So what does that mean, not being able to handle it? Well, there's no one answer. Each of us has to consider this for ourselves. But I find it interesting that when I'm talking about anxiety and fear with my clients and I ask the question, what does the worst case scenario look like? Often my clients stop to think about it and they answer, well, maybe it won't be that bad.
Now, this isn't the case when the fears are around life and death concerns, but we can often build up even the most basic fears into a dramatic boogeyman that we're afraid to even look at too closely. If your child really did come to you and say they made a mistake, that they were miserable at college, for example, what would you do? My guess is you would support them in figuring out the next step. What if they failed a class in college? What would you do then? I would imagine you would work with them to figure it out.
What if they decided to drop out of school? What if they were dating the wrong person or they got addicted to drugs or they got into a car accident? God forbid. What would you do? I'm willing to bet that you would take one step at a time. You would figure out the first step and the next step and the next step.
You would find your way through it, even the worst case scenario. Having seen so many people experience the unimaginable and then step by step seeing them come back to life, this is what we do as humans. We survive one step at a time.
For me recently, I realized I'd been spending a lot of time in the worst case scenario. In my mind, it's almost seemed like a certainty, although right now nothing has gone wrong. Given the range of powerful and negative emotions I was experiencing, I actually thought to research the stages of grief.
I'll go through them quickly for you now. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages are not meant to offer a linear progression of emotions.
In fact, what's typical is that you can cycle back and forth and through the continuum of these emotional experiences. As I thought about these stages, I started to realize how much they mirror what we can go through when we're experiencing anxiety about some pretty painful possibilities for our children's futures. This is particularly true when you see your child struggling, taking risks, or going down a path that you don't like.
The worst case feels too real. Maybe in the beginning we experience a bit of denial, but once we start to notice certain warning signs, maybe they're taking risks you wish they wouldn't or their grades are slipping, you see they're not taking their responsibility seriously enough, they're ignoring our advice, or shutting us out completely. It's not uncommon for us to get angry.
If they would only listen, be more careful, be more responsible, take our advice. If we were really honest, our anger about our kids' actions is more to do with us than them. I mean, why am I angry that my maybe going out to socialize too much and potentially not studying enough, in my opinion? Why would this really be a problem for me as a parent? Well, a big part of this is that when our kids don't do what we think they should be doing, we worry.
And we think that if they would just listen and be more careful, we could get some relief from our anxiety. When it comes down to it, that's the problem for us. Our kids are doing things, taking actions that are, at this point in their lives, totally out of our control.
And we're left observing and thinking this is going to be a disaster. The worst case scenario is looking even more probable. And it's these thoughts, our vision of the terrible future looming ever more closely for our child.
That story is actually what's causing the anxiety. But when we're in it, we're first angry because we don't want to be worrying. We actually just want them to be responsible and respectful and compliant.
After anger, we get to bargaining, which is back to trying to control and change them to make us feel better. When someone dies, the bargaining stage involves thinking about all of the things you maybe could or should have done to have avoided the loss, the death of the person you loved. The outcome can't be changed.
And so in grief, when you've lost a loved one, this can feel like such a helpless place to be. You can be overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and shame. You may blame other people.
But when this stage involves your child who is still very much with you, but simply not taking the steps they need to take to avoid the disaster waiting for them, after you move through anger, you get stuck in overthinking the future and all of the ways you could possibly avert it. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and your brain offers you endless suggestions of how you can fix the situation for your child? You cycle through ideas about new ways to approach the situation. Maybe you could approach it in a way that they would listen this time.
Should I punish them? Should I beg, threaten, offer incentives, maybe bribes? Again, this stage is about trying to control the future, trying to control the way we feel by changing our children. And while we may still be able to exert some influence depending on our approach and our child's receptiveness, the fact remains that we are still largely helpless over our child's actions now that they're adults. The bargaining stage is exhausting and eventually can give way to a feeling like depression, hopelessness, sadness, feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of our negative emotions, like you're caught up in your anxiety and fear and sadness over what looks increasingly like the inevitability of the worst case scenario.
You almost feel like you need to shut down. These emotions can feel so powerful, so overwhelming. I understand why seeking medication can feel like a solution.
We can also seek out alcohol or other substances or buffers to help numb the pain a bit in the moment, to just lessen it a bit. It's not fun to be here. Unfortunately, alcohol and other drugs, not those prescribed by a doctor, if we rely too heavily on these buffers, it creates other problems for us, negative consequences on top of an already negative emotional state.
As we move through depression, the final stage of grief is acceptance. Now, again, in the case of death, this is an acceptance of the new reality of having lost a loved one. We would eventually need to move to acceptance if anything unexpected and terrible truly does happen, an accident, our kids deciding not to go to college or dropping out of college, any number of scenarios that we don't want and we desperately want to avoid.
We would have to learn to adapt and cope with our new reality. But here's something interesting to consider. Even in the worst case scenario, if the unimaginable were to happen, we would eventually move to acceptance.
Don't get me wrong, it would be hard, but this is the way, the path. We eventually accept our life as it is. And it also occurred to me that if the worst case scenario that has been plaguing me lately, if that outcome were to become a reality, I would do what needed to be done.
And most importantly, I would love and be there for my child no matter what. So interesting to consider that even if the worst were to happen, that you would eventually get through to acceptance. But in the meantime, what does your reality with your child actually look like? It is quite possible that the worst case hasn't happened yet, maybe not even close.
And the worst case may never happen. In fact, things rarely ever turn out exactly the way that we thought that they would. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll turn out badly.
Think of all of the possible outcomes available for you, for your child. Ask yourself, are you living in the present moment, accepting the reality of life exactly as it is right now? Or are you stuck in a story about the worst case scenario barreling towards you and somehow trying to get to acceptance of a reality that isn't true, that may never be true? Look, acceptance of the worst case scenario may look like a better place because then we tell ourselves we would be certain. But right now, the only thing we're absolutely certain of is that we have no idea that we're not certain.
And that creates a lot of anxiety. Maybe right now, acceptance looks like acknowledging that we have these horror stories circulating in our mind and they're creating pain for us, even though they're not true. We're afraid of what might happen and that's okay.
We're just afraid. And maybe as we let go of our children and watch them make mistakes and take risks and maybe even fail, they're certainly not listening to our advice. Maybe this process of letting go and being afraid is exactly what we need to go through to get to acceptance.
Accepting our child as independent adults, independent human beings who are going to make mistakes and find their own path and successes on their own. I feel like for some of us, particularly those of us whose children are pulling away and seeking their independence in a way that doesn't feel comfortable for us, I feel like grief may be an appropriate emotion. We're letting go of our children and maybe even letting go of the person we thought or had hoped they might be.
And that's not at all to say that they're not perfect exactly as they are, but they are on their own path. They're living their life for themselves and not for us. So if you find yourself in anxiety, sometimes anger, bargaining, sadness, or even depression, look for acceptance.
Accepting and loving your child for exactly who they are right now. It's not hard if you look for it. In fact, it can be beautiful.
Just witness your child being independent, seeking their own path, learning from their mistakes. Accepting is loving what is. It doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt sometimes, but when you stop fighting the reality and when you stop believing the worst case reality that maybe that's not what's in store, you might be able to stay in the present moment and love what is right now for you and your child.
Until next time, friends.
Thanks for listening to The Small Jar Podcast. Please visit us at www.thesmalljar.com, follow us on Facebook and Instagram at smalljarcoach, and subscribe to this podcast.
Remember, you are the author of your story.
