TRAP #12 - MIND READING
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 80.
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast. We are coming up on the end of 2023, and I want to take a moment first to say thank you for listening.
This year, I committed to publishing one episode every single week, and here I am, 49 episodes later, with three more to go before New Year's. It wasn't always easy, I'll be honest. In fact, as I'm recording this episode, I'm sitting in the parking lot of the University of Delaware, in between sessions where my son is wrestling for the Beast of the East.
I realized too late that my last recording was completely messed up, so here I am, doing it again for you, because I'm committed. The bottom line is, I made a promise to myself, and I'm going to stick to it. You know, personal growth requires nothing more than a decision to commit to yourself, no matter what.
In every moment, you have the opportunity to make a decision, have your back, and do what you say you were going to do, or go back on your word to yourself. It's honestly easier to let ourselves down sometimes, isn't it? All year, each and every week, my self-imposed podcast deadline would be looming, and I would be faced with thinking of an engaging topic. It would have been easy to quit, or skip a week.
I've considered it so many times, this morning included. My brain would literally be having a tantrum. I imagine myself on the floor stomping my feet, saying, I don't wanna.
I would notice all of this. Then, I would decide to do the podcast anyway. No one was holding me accountable.
I'm not getting paid to do this. I would hope that some of you listening are getting real value out of these podcasts, and maybe you'd be a little disappointed if I skipped a week. But the biggest reason I've allowed my tantrums and kept up with my weekly podcast is because I've made a commitment to myself to build this business and to impact as many lives as I can.
How willing are you to make this level of commitment to yourself? It can be hard to make the initial commitment, but it's definitely hard to stick to it. And we all have evidence from our past of times when we've let ourselves down, time and again. It can feel easier to let ourselves down ahead of time rather than go through the effort just to feel disappointed again.
But consider this, the upside of making a commitment to yourself is that it helps you grow, to evolve to that next version of yourself. In our life with kids, it's been so easy to put ourselves last, or to assume that because we feel exhausted and overwhelmed in this life raising teens, that we don't have it in us to try something that isn't comfortable. But even simply the growth that comes from showing up day after day, week after week, taking very small steps each day that build up into bigger steps over the course of a month and a year, that growth, that personal growth, that's what we've been helping our kids do for the past 20 years.
Are you willing to consider that this growth and evolution is available to you too? So 80 episodes in, close to 55,000 downloads, listeners in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia. My friend, I am not a professional podcaster. I am a mom like you who loves her children fiercely and who is always trying her best.
I've mastered self-coaching tools that have drastically changed the relationship I have with my teenage sons. I've also drastically changed the relationship I have with myself and my ability to have my own back. I've created peace and joy in my life.
I've shed habits that have been holding me back for years, and I'm grateful to you for being on this journey with me and reaching out to tell me this podcast has helped you. I am also infinitely grateful to my clients who have trusted me with their hearts and innermost thoughts, for believing that peace and confidence and the ability to rise above anxiety, guilt, and sadness is possible for them too. It's extraordinary what our minds can help us accomplish, and this is the work I do in my 10-week coaching program, Mom 2.0, where we take the work of this podcast deeper, and I show you step-by-step how to learn and master the skill of managing your mind so that you can overcome limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck and decide on purpose how you want to show up in your life with your kids, your partner, ultimately with and for yourself.
As we approach the new year, I invite you to share this podcast with other friends who are struggling with their teens or approaching the empty nest and unsure of how to move forward. Let's empower each other to create more of what we love in the new year. One of the topics we've been exploring over the past few months on this podcast is the mindset traps we face as moms of teens on this crazy road to the empty nest.
Think about these mindset traps as the thought loops we get caught up in because our brain is largely unsupervised. We have 6,000 thoughts each and every day. That's four to five thoughts each minute.
The majority of these thoughts are automatic and negative in that these thoughts are defensive, stemming from a mind that's viewing the world as a dangerous, risky place, and we're actually lucky that that's true. Our primitive minds are scanning our environment and circumstances for danger and are ready to raise the alert at a moment's notice, and then we react. And that was super helpful when our babies got a hold of something dangerous when they were little or were about to roll off the changing table.
We were able to act quickly to avert danger or injury. It's also incredibly useful if you're driving and someone cuts you off, or when something falls off the counter and you're able to grab it before it hits the floor and shatters. But we're not actually faced with life or death situations on a day-to-day basis, and yet our primitive minds are still poised to keep us safe and comfortable.
I'm convinced that our minds actually prefer to have something to work on, something to puzzle over. In my life, I've conquered quite a few challenges from breaking bad habits, losing weight, building this business. Our minds always want to find the danger, keep us from going outside of our comfort zone.
So it's like you have to constantly be aware of how your subconscious mind is coloring your world in a way that may not actually be serving you in your daily life. So today I want to talk about a mindset trap where our brains are focused on our teens or other people in our life looking for danger, trying to keep us comfortable and safe. Let's talk about the mindset trap of mind reading.
Now this isn't just about us moms, these traps. All of us fall into mindset traps. But I think it's helpful to explore how these traps manifest themselves for us as moms with teens as we prepare for them to leave the nest.
Feel free to listen to these episodes in any order if this is the first one for you. So far we've covered the mindset traps of catastrophizing, all or nothing thinking, labeling, perfectionism, validation seeking, and many more. So mind reading involves making assumptions about what other people are thinking or feeling without concrete evidence or direct communication.
Honestly, I think it's even possible to mind read when someone actually has directly communicated with us. But here's what's funny. When I say mind reading, it's easy to see how this mindset trap can lead us to misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
But when you're in it, when you're in a relationship with someone and you have a thought about what they're thinking or feeling, it can be impossible to see this as a trap. It's like we get it intellectually but then we respond irrationally with a firm sense that we're right or justified in our thinking. Why do we do this? Well, we've talked about the motivational triad where our primitive brain wants us to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy.
Well, as humans, we have a need for social validation and approval. Think of it from an evolutionary perspective. Being cast out of the tribe meant death.
In contrast, being part of the pack creates in our minds feelings of safety and also the pleasure of connection. When we're mind reading, we're looking for cues to determine what the other person is thinking, whether they approve of us, whether they're responding to us. When we read signals that our brain interprets as positive, we feel positive emotion.
Of course, we're also reading other people for signs of rejection or criticism. Our brains want to avoid emotional pain or discomfort, so they're scanning the people around us trying to anticipate negative thoughts or judgments. Then, of course, our subconscious mind tries to conserve energy by relying on shortcuts and quick judgments and assumptions.
Mind reading acts as a mental shortcut by allowing us to make these rapid assumptions about complex social situations. I was preparing for this podcast and I stumbled on another podcast on the Huberman Lab about understanding emotions. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist out of Stanford, and he has some fascinating episodes exploring the science behind the intersection of brain behavior and health.
It's fascinating because while my podcast is focused on the mindset aspects of behavior and emotion, he takes a scientific approach. In this particular episode, he had invited Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, an expert on the science of emotions, to discuss this topic with him. As I listened, here's something incredible.
Dr. Barrett first underscored this concept we've been talking about, that our minds are constantly taking in thousands of bits of data in our environment and trying to make sense of it all. When it comes to emotions and how our minds interpret them, we've tended to believe a theory first put forward by Charles Darwin in 1872, where he proposed that certain facial expressions are universal across human cultures. He identified a set of basic facial expressions that he considered universal, where basically irrespective of culture, we would recognize these facial expressions as indicative of particular emotions.
There's been much scientific debate on this topic, and what Dr. Barrett shared was that based on her extensive research, there is no evidence that facial expressions can be interpreted in a universal fashion. Instead, she shared that the way people move their faces in response to emotion is highly variable. She gave the example that when people scowl, like they furrow their brow, studies show that they are actually angry only 35% of the time.
So while clearly frowning does correlate with anger a third of the time, if you see someone frowning, it means that they're angry only one third of the time and 65% of the time they're experiencing an entirely different emotion. So all of this really flies in the face of what we've all taken for granted in terms of how we read facial expressions and body language of the people in our life. That's not to say that there aren't some clues that allow us to predict or at least build a hypothesis around what someone's thinking and feeling based on their facial expressions and their body language.
And of course, we're not just observing our world in terms of facial expressions. We're also taking into account the context of the situation and certainly the words people say. All of this provides more data that we try to interpret to get an indication of what another person is feeling.
We might also take into account how well we know someone and maybe what they've expressed to us in the past. We might have a broad understanding of the categories of challenges in their life. Our minds are these incredible supercomputers trying to sift through all of the data we accumulate, both that which we've collected in the past and now in our present interactions with people.
Our brains assimilate all of this data and this leads us to build these hypotheses about what's happening with the other person. And look, this is an incredibly useful skill. Think about the opposite.
Like if we were completely turned off to the emotional state and well-being of the people in our lives, first of all, I think we would be living in a painfully disconnected world. Because part of the reason we create love in our own mind is because we think about other people we love as a whole being. And a big part of that is their emotional connection to us.
How we've observed them respond to us and interact with us. The way that we've observed them demonstrate their feelings for us, which we've interpreted as love and connection. People don't need to tell us time and time again that they care for us because we know from their actions or the accumulation of their past actions that they care about us.
Think about it. Our teens may not be going out of their way to show their affection for us now, but there was a time when it's very likely that they did. And the memory of that connection may create a sense of loss for us now, but it also perpetuates the love we have for our kids now.
The bond we've created with them over the course of their lives is something that can withstand the turbulence of the teen years. But consider what life would be like if you had no way to interpret the positive emotion and affection someone else had for you. The skill of mind reading, this interpreting the emotions and thoughts of others without them having to say anything, it's a beautiful skill set, but it can also be an incredible trap.
Because these assumptions we make about what other people are thinking and how they're feeling lead us to then have our own emotional reaction. And if we're wrong about what's going on with the other person, then our emotions and the way we react in response to our emotions might be totally inappropriate for the situation in front of us. Now let me give you an example.
Say your teenager walks in the house and they don't say anything and they go to their room. If that was the only set of data in your mind about your teen, this one instance of them walking into the house and not saying anything, you probably wouldn't read too much into it. Maybe you'd think they had a long day, but you wouldn't necessarily take it personally or get overly worried about it.
You would just collect that data point in your mind. But it's also likely as your brain continues to scan your environment for danger that you would pay close attention to your teen the next time you saw them to gauge whether or not they were still quiet or had returned to what you would consider normal behavior for them. But let's say it happens again later that night and again the next day.
Now you've got multiple data points where you're taking into account times when they don't say anything and they go into their room. Notice how our immediate assumption is there's something wrong and we need to find out what it is. Remember, our brains are constantly analyzing our world for risk and danger.
And as a mom, our sphere of emotional well-being includes our children's well-being for the core reason that when our kids are in pain, it's very often almost impossible for us to disassociate with that pain. At minimum, we're going to wish our kids weren't in pain, which might create feelings of sadness and empathy in us. But on top of that, in addition to sadness, we're often having the thought that this is a problem and I need to fix it.
Or we start catastrophizing and our minds start spinning that the problem is only going to get worse. Yet so far, all we really know is that we have a few data points where a teen comes home without talking and then goes to their room. It's a helpless place to be to observe a change in behavior in our kids and not be in the know about it.
I think about my son who's at college and how many fewer data points I have when it comes to what's going on with him. When our kids are away, we can magnify the few pieces of data that we do receive from them over text or over the phone. And we can tend to really overthink those clues because our minds are desperately trying to fill in the gap to either give ourselves permission to relax and let go of the anxiety or to find out what the problem is and fix it so that we can feel better, so they can feel better.
Notice how either way, it's about us getting rid of our anxiety and emotional pain. It's very likely you've been in a similar situation with your teen. You think something's wrong, so you first go to your teen and try to get them to put your mind at ease.
Everything okay, honey? Did something happen? Sometimes you'll get some information, often you won't. Some of our kids will tell us a lot, but often we don't get the type of information that allows us to check that anti-anxiety box we're looking for. And so when our teen doesn't put our minds at ease to let us think that everything is okay, then we start doing research and problem solving.
If they haven't given us information, we might start checking their grades online or calling a friend to see if they've heard anything. We're on the lookout for clues. You can start to see how in absence of a clear understanding of the problem, we start to create scenarios in our mind with whatever data we're able to accumulate.
Like say there's a girlfriend involved and she hasn't come by recently. Or you do happen to see a low grade and now you're concerned there's something wrong at school. It's like we've become these crazy undercover detectives trying to find the problem so that we can try to understand what's going on.
But how do we actually know that our hypothesis about the problem is right? Earlier in this episode, I talked about the reliability of facial expressions. But did you know that the words people say are not even necessarily a reliable indicator of what's going on with them? They could be lying. They could just be trying to get you off their back.
In other cases, our kids could be exaggerating the problem because they just are in an emotional state. Whatever words we hear, it often sounds very serious. For example, let's just say that your teen says to you, I'm depressed.
So these words are going to put us in high alert. But even still, we only have one more piece of data. Is this depression a minor level of sadness or malaise? Is it seasonal affective disorder related to the seasons where you're just craving more daylight? Do they need to talk to someone? Do they need medication? Even if they tell us what they think is wrong, we're still left with the need to hypothesize about the scope and magnitude of the problem, essentially to try to read their mind to diagnose the problem so that we can fix it.
This is the bottom line, my friends. We read minds so that we can try to alleviate our own emotional pain. We're looking for clues so that we can control the situation and feel better.
So what are some of the characteristics of mind reading? Well, we often assume the worst, focus on the negative. This might be assuming there's a problem or assuming that the other people are thinking negatively about us. As you can imagine, this creates feelings of insecurity and self-doubt and anxiety.
When we mind read, we can also project our own fears and insecurity onto other people. With our teens, if we think that they're rejecting us or shutting us out in some way, we then read into their behavior to find evidence to support that belief. We also engage in confirmation bias where we're looking for evidence to support our beliefs.
So for example, with our teens, if we think that they're rejecting us or shutting us out in some way, we then can read into their behavior to find evidence to support the belief that they're rejecting us. We might overanalyze non-verbal cues like facial expressions and body language, assuming they mean more than they do, or just assuming we know what they mean at all. And with all of this, as we engage in confirmation bias, we're also overlooking any positive cues or feedback.
The way we think creates our emotional reality. And so if we're feeling anxious, hurt, or rejected because of an interpretation we've created based on someone's behavior, body language, or facial cues, then we're going to act from those feelings we've created. If we're anxious, we might go into fix-it mode, trying to control the situation to feel better.
If we feel hurt, we could close ourselves off, shut down, and not want to engage. I think it's always important to be mindful about how our emotions drive the way we show up in our lives. We respond to our emotions by reacting, resisting, or allowing these feelings, the latter being one of the most powerful but difficult skills to master.
We've been taught to believe that the circumstances of our lives create our feelings. And with this mindset trap, it's the behavior or the affect of the person we're observing that we blame for our feelings, whether anxiety, rejection, or anger. But the truth is, it's always our interpretation of the circumstances of our lives that creates our feelings.
And so what happens if our interpretation is entirely off-base? What if the way we're perceiving the reality of the situation is only partially accurate, or maybe not at all accurate? A complete exaggeration of a small or non-existent problem. Our subconscious minds interpret our world, looking for danger, and then create the urge to intervene and fix the problem so that we can stop feeling anxious and afraid and hopefully avert whatever danger is ahead of us. That skill becomes a trap when we're not aware that that's what our minds are doing.
Because what most often happens is because our brains have generated this hypothesis about what's wrong and what we need to do to fix it, now the trap is that we believe our own story without question. The opportunity here is to become aware of that story your brain is concocting about what's happening, rather than fueling the emotion that comes from that story, whether that be fear, stress, hurt, or sadness. The way to get out of this mindset trap is to understand that it makes perfect sense that our brains want to jump to the worst-case scenario.
But this is one possible outcome amidst an infinite number of other outcomes or realities that are possible. Maybe we do want to be on the lookout for danger, but don't let the possibility of that one fictional reality cloud your judgment to the big picture. How everything is actually okay.
How everything is at least okay right now. How you might be entirely wrong about what's going on and what's needed. Mind reading is just one more way we create so much unnecessary pain in our lives.
Look, if there's a real problem in front of us, we will step in and do what we need to do, step by step. You don't need to be a passive observer of your life. Of course you're going to help your child when needed.
There are times when emotional pain is the reality of our lives, but when you're mind reading, you may be falling into the trap of creating unnecessary pain. Be aware of what's true and what's a story in your mind. I invite you to keep all of this in mind as you approach the holidays with your teens and other family members.
Your relationship with anyone is literally the sum of your thoughts about them. So consider that you might be basing the relationship you think you have with someone on a story that may or may not be true. This can often close you off to possibilities for connection because you're so focused on what's wrong rather than what's right.
Be aware of what's true and what's a story in your mind.
Until next time friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think my friend.
