MINDSET TRAP #14 - THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
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 90.
Hello, my friends. Welcome back. Today, I'm excited to tackle the last in the series on the mindset traps of the empty nest straddle.
This is the 14th trap and it is by far my favorite. And when I say favorite, I obviously mean the one that challenges me the most. I know I'm not the only one, so I'm excited to share this trap with you to round out the series.
Today, I'm covering the trap of the illusion of control. This truly is at the heart of the empty nest straddle. When we're torn between feeling the need to help our kids be safe, happy, and successful, and then on the other hand, the powerlessness of actually being able to help them with any of these things.
Power. Control. These are not words that we like to associate with motherhood.
In fact, if your child has ever accused you of trying to control them, I'm willing to bet you've gotten immediately defensive. I'm not trying to control you. I'm just fill in the blank with something related to help you be safe, happy, or successful.
We're just trying to help. Honestly, if we could conquer this mindset trap once and for all as a species, I think we'd capture the key to eternal peace and happiness. I'm not even kidding.
But in the meantime, most of us don't even realize that we're falling into this trap. So forget peace and happiness unless everyone does what we want them to do all of the time. Since this is the last in the series, let's do a quick review.
Mindset traps are patterns of thinking or even mental habits that our brains engage in to help us stay safe, to maximize comfort, pleasure, and mental efficiency. Generally speaking, these are really good things. There's no reason to experience pain if we don't have to, right? And who wouldn't like a bit more pleasure and efficiency in their life? Now, while I'm covering in this series how these mindset traps impact us moms in the empty nest straddle, every single human on this planet falls into these traps all of the time.
It's just how our brains are wired. It's also helpful to remember that our teens and others in our lives fall into these traps. So while it's incredibly powerful for us to take responsibility for the way our own minds engage in these traps, the more adept we are at recognizing these traps, we can begin to better appreciate how others in our lives might be falling into them as well.
Not necessarily so we can accuse them of falling into these mindset traps, but more so that we can have empathy for how those we love are experiencing their own lives, often on autopilot. Now, our brains are incredibly powerful tools, but when unsupervised, these mindset traps can lead us to make poor decisions, to react to others or to treat others in ways that are counterproductive, or even worse, in ways that damage our relationships. These traps have a direct impact on our emotional well-being, and so it stands to reason that if we can become aware of and even break free from these traps, that we can become so much more in control of our emotions, deciding on purpose how we want to feel and which emotions we want to allow in our lives.
But just because the results of these traps can be problematic, it doesn't mean that there is actually a problem with our minds. So many of us seek therapy or medication because we think there's something wrong with us when we feel anxious or sad, and sometimes therapy and medication are required to help us overcome past trauma or manage medical diagnoses. But there is a point many of us get to, even after having processed the past and gotten medication, where we're still left with our minds falling into mindset traps.
And these traps truly can keep you from moving forward in your life. Another way to think about these traps is that they create limiting beliefs, not because of who you are, but simply because of the way your brain is processing and interpreting the circumstances of your life. So before I dive into the control illusion, I'm going to go through the first 13 traps really quickly as a review.
And please feel free to go back and explore any of these past mindset trap episodes in any order. And honestly, even if you're not sure one applies to you, I invite you to check out each trap and see. One of the most challenging part of these traps is that we don't even realize we're falling into them.
We just think our beliefs about our life are true. So here goes mindset trap number one, confirmation bias. This is noticing facts or circumstances that reinforce what you already believe.
Our brains can literally discount or even fail to register information that doesn't support what we believe. Another way to think about it is that our brains find what they're looking for. So if you think your teen is unhappy, you will only notice their behavior that supports this belief.
Our brains do this automatically. So unless you pay close attention to your thoughts, you can end up reinforcing limiting beliefs that you have about your life in a way that keeps you stuck and may even create conflict. What's so interesting about this trap, and this will come up time and again as we go through these traps, is that our mind's unconscious effort to avoid pain actually creates more pain for us.
Mindset trap number two, catastrophizing is when we mentally magnify the potential negative consequences of an event or circumstance. I think it probably goes without saying that this type of worst case scenario thinking creates a lot of anxiety for us. But when it comes to our kids or other important parts of our lives, it isn't always that easy just to look on the bright side.
Similar to confirmation bias, catastrophizing is another way our minds try to avoid pain by imagining what could go wrong and then trying to mentally find a way to fix the problem or prevent that terrible thing from happening so we don't have to feel pain in the future. But in doing so, we create pain. Are you beginning to see why these mindset traps are so important to understand? Now on to mindset trap number three, validation seeking.
This is when we look for external validation, approval, or recognition from others. Now of course we want to feel appreciated and recognized. We want to feel a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives.
It makes us happy to feel this way. The reason this is a trap is that we can think that we can't create these positive feelings without the external feedback or reinforcement. This becomes really important to us as moms because for some of us, we've become so used to feeling validated by our children when they're younger and by our role as a mom, that feeling of being needed, that we can feel like we're losing this validation as our kids grow up and eventually leave the nest.
If this is something you struggle with, this isn't at all an indication that there's something wrong with you, but rather that your mind is falling into a trap. The trap is thinking that you can't create these feelings of validation with other people to give you permission to do so. The fourth mindset trap, the comparison trap.
This, like so many of these mindset traps, is one of the ways of thinking that we engage in that we don't even realize we're doing. Our brains make comparisons and judgments about everything and everyone in our lives, and we honestly just think we're observing the truth. One of the very first exercises I do with my clients is to ask them to tell me about what's going on in their lives by sharing only the facts, absolute truths that they could prove in a court of law.
It's actually really hard to do this at first because we're so used to including as facts things like, he was rude or she was being mean to me, he's not as motivated as other kids in his class. We've observed our lives and we've made these judgments, comparing things to others, comparing our lives to our own expectations. Our brains instinctually believe it's safe for us to fit in, so of course we want to avoid the pain of unmet expectations.
But again, this trap leads us to quite a bit of disappointment, conflict, and insecurity. Mindset trap number five, all or nothing thinking. This is when we view situations in extremes.
We think things are either entirely good or entirely bad with no middle ground. Interestingly, this kind of all or nothing thinking, sometimes people will call it black and white thinking, actually can make our brains feel safe. It can feel like it's a relief to know that even if one of the choices or possible outcomes is terrible, we gain a temporary illusion of control or certainty by knowing that that's possible.
Our brains would rather be certain about something terrible than uncertain. Isn't that crazy? But also not crazy. This is our brains doing exactly what our brains are meant to do.
Similar to the trap of catastrophizing, when we fall into the all or nothing trap, we go into fix-it mode to try to avoid this perceived terrible thing or problem. And again, in doing so, we create even more unnecessary pain and anxiety for ourselves. Now, I'm purposely going through these quickly as a bit of a review, so I encourage you to go back and listen to these past episodes if you haven't already.
It is possible to break free of all of these traps, and this is the process I teach in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. So let's move on to mindset trap number six, perfectionism. The funny thing about this trap is that it's really not about being perfect. As moms, we set the bar for ourselves so incredibly high, never giving ourselves credit for doing our best and actually being pretty amazing.
When I explored this in the podcast episode on perfectionism, I talked about how even living up to the phrase good mom seems almost impossible at times. But here's the amazing thing. The real reason that we set the bar for ourselves impossibly high is because it gives us the illusion of safety.
It's actually how we try to gain control over our circumstances. If we can just say and do the right thing all of the time, we think we can avoid pain. Only we're never quite able to meet this perfect threshold, and so we feel the pain of disappointment and self-judgment.
How is it possible that on autopilot, our brains work so hard to avoid pain only to create more pain? How is it that we don't see this for what it is? The next mindset trap, number seven, personalization. I also like to think of this one in the context of our lives as mom guilt. The real definition of personalization is when we attribute external negative circumstances to ourselves.
Really, when we think that we're the to blame for things that are completely out of our control. Another way you can think about personalization is when we take things personally, even when they have nothing to do with us. Now, moms of teens can be particularly prone to the mindset trap of personalization because there are so many unique challenges and changing dynamics of parenting as our kids grow up and pull away.
There's just so much about our lives that is out of our control, and yet we take responsibility for all of it. Once again, this mindset trap relates to the illusion of control making us feel safe. Because if we're the ones to blame or at fault, then it stands to reason that we can just fix ourselves, and then we could fix the problem.
But if you've ever blamed yourself for something going on with your teen, you've probably experienced for yourself that feeling guilty almost never improves the situation. It honestly just makes us feel terrible and even more out of control. The eighth mindset trap I've explored in this series is the identity crisis.
Put simply, this is when we struggle with the sense of loss of identity during life's transitions. For example, when we move from being a mom with kids at home to the empty nest, we start asking ourselves, who am I if my kids don't need me as much anymore? What's my purpose? Similar to validation seeking, this trap involves us thinking that our identity comes from things or roles outside of ourselves. That somehow our purpose is dependent on how we choose to spend our time, or how successful we are, or worse, how successful our kids are.
None of this is true, but it's fascinating that we've never been taught this. In fact, it's a trap that's often reinforced in the media and the way we idealize success and accomplishment. But again, this trap has nothing to do with whether or not you're worthy or capable of finding meaningful purpose when your children grow up.
What it's really about is understanding that you are the only one who can create your identity. The trap is the powerlessness, which is all created by your mind, and not at all the truth. Speaking of what's true, the ninth mindset trap is being ruled by emotion.
This is when we think that our feelings represent the truth, that our feelings are evidence that there's a problem. Like when someone does something and we feel hurt, it seems so logical to say, I feel hurt, therefore what that person did was wrong. In fact, it's what we've all been raised to believe, that other people can hurt our feelings.
But here's the truth. Just because we feel something does not mean that our interpretation of what happened is true. Of course it feels true to us, but if there were 10 people in the room observing the behavior of this person who we think hurt us, we'd all have different interpretations.
This mindset trap isn't about talking ourselves out of our feelings, but it's about taking responsibility for how our thoughts and our interpretation of our lives are actually what creates our emotions. Understanding this, I've found, is the most powerful skill. If you do nothing else, go back and listen to this episode on emotional reasoning.
I believe it's number 74, the ninth mindset trap. This is a big one and the cause of so much emotional powerlessness, all in our brain's interest in keeping us safe. Mindset trap number 10.
Labeling is when we assign a typically negative label to a person or a group of people, or we label ourselves based on a particular behavior, trait, or characteristic. For example, if our teen has a messy room, we might label them lazy or irresponsible. Similarly, the 13th mindset trap I covered in this series just last week, overgeneralization, is when we draw broad conclusions or assumptions about a person, a situation, or an experience based on limited evidence or a small number of instances.
So labeling and overgeneralization are related, but there is a subtle difference. If we're labeling, we're consciously assigning a word or a phrase to a person or a group of people. With overgeneralization, we're making much more subtle and automatic assumptions or conclusions about what this behavior we've observed means.
So if we were to label a teen who didn't clean up their room, for example, we might label them lazy or irresponsible. But if we were in the mindset trap of overgeneralization, we would then conclude that our teen would always be lazy and irresponsible, and that this was going to have negative implications for them later in life. And again, these traps are our brain's way of being efficient and trying to avoid pain.
But these traps create pain for us again, and I can't say it enough, because understanding these traps is so powerful. But when we act on our assumptions or perceptions about our lives that are generated from these mindset traps, and we don't question them, we create so much pain and conflict for ourselves. Okay, I'm getting down there.
Mindset trap number 11, fear of the unknown. Now, this is related to catastrophizing. Again, our brains don't like to not know what the future holds.
Thinking about what's to come can create anxiety and dread, but it's actually so fascinating that we never know what's to come. Literally never. Our brains just think that we do when our lives are fairly predictable.
We assume that things will just continue to go on as they are. But when we face transitions, we can find ourselves afraid. And then our minds want to try to fill in the blanks and predict what will happen so that we can find safety and certainty.
This is just one more way our minds create pain inadvertently in order to avoid pain. Now, this last mindset trap I'll cover in this review is the mindset trap number 12, mind reading, which is making assumptions about what other people are thinking or feeling without concrete evidence or direct communication. Our minds are constantly scanning our environment for information.
And of course, we want to find information that makes us feel happy and safe. But our minds are also looking for information to avoid emotional pain or discomfort. So our brains subconsciously does this by scanning the people around us to anticipate negative thoughts or judgments.
Once again, if we can just read people's minds, we could anticipate problems and fix them and avoid pain, right? You can see how so many of these mindset traps have the same instinctual motivation. Now, I covered trap number 13 over generalization with labeling. So this brings us to the final mindset trap number 14, the control illusion.
I purposely saved this one for last. And I want to point out in case you missed it, that every single other mindset trap had an aspect of us trying to control the world so that we can feel better. Every single one.
And all of these traps work together seamlessly without our conscious awareness, in our brains' desperate and instinctual effort to keep us safe, to help us avoid pain and to seek out pleasure, and to be as efficient as possible. So the illusion of control is a mindset trap where we believe that we have more control over other people, situations, or outcomes than we really do. This has pretty significant implications for our relationships with our children and everybody else in our life.
But with our kids, we've been trying to keep them safe, to help them be happy and give them the tools to be successful for their entire lives. It is, at this point for us as moms, a well-ingrained habit. And so of course we want to do whatever we can to help our children achieve these things.
I think back to when my boys were little, how much control I thought I had over their safety, happiness, and success. In reality, I probably had the most control over their safety for some period of time because I didn't let them out of my sight back then. I established rules and tried to keep them out of harm's way.
But even then, there were times when they got hurt. Even riding a bike involves risks. Such a perfect analogy, you can't learn to ride a bike without risking a fall.
We encourage our kids to do this despite the danger, but then we still run alongside the bike to try to do everything we can, for as long as we can keep up with them to avoid them having a nasty fall. But now that my boys are older, I have zero ability to keep them safe. Zero.
I know you want to argue with me, but ultimately it's true. If they want to do something unsafe, they will. They'll find a way to get around rules, or they'll just discount all of my advice.
If they refuse to take precautions, they put themselves in danger. There is literally nothing I can do about that anymore. Now, don't think I don't still try.
I still offer friendly reminders. There's probably not one night that my boys go out that I don't call out, be safe, drive safely, call us if you need us. But these are just words.
These words can't keep my precious boys safe. I hope somewhere along the way I taught them healthy boundaries and ways of approaching their lives that will make them think twice before they do something risky. But I have zero control over this anymore.
How much emotional energy do you put into trying to keep your children safe? How much time do you spend thinking about rules and boundaries? And remember how this relates to the other mindset traps we've explored. Catastrophizing, fear of the unknown, all or nothing thinking. We imagine everything that could go wrong in an effort to find some control in the face of powerlessness.
Because it's so hard for us as to accept that we're actually powerless to control our kids and their safety. And I don't at all mean to suggest that you should just throw up your hands and do nothing. Tell your kids good luck and be done with them.
I'd like to think that we still have some influence. Our kids do still care about our opinions of them, even if they don't show it all the time. They don't actually want us to be disappointed in them.
And if they really thought about it, they don't want to be unsafe either. So the trick here is getting out of the mindset traps of control and catastrophizing so that we can rationally, reasonably approach setting boundaries and consequences with our kids in ways that are instructional and helpful, rather than punitive and vindictive. There is no one right way to do this.
But I would offer that you are much more likely to figure out what is right for you and your family if you're taking action from a place of peace and confidence, rather than fear, anger, and anxiety. It's a totally different energy because our emotions are what drive our actions. Now let's talk about making our kids happy.
You may not be worried about your teen making unsafe choices, but it can feel just as threatening to imagine that our children are unhappy. Whether your teen is struggling with true depression, or if they're just having challenges with friends or other relationships, maybe moody and not talking to you, whatever the scenario, it is so hard to see our kids in pain. It seems impossible to feel okay when our kids aren't okay, right? And here's the thing, I'm not going to tell you to look on the bright side when your kid is unhappy.
There is not likely to be one mom among us who wouldn't experience some emotional heartache when seeing her child in pain. But what is really powerful to notice is how much we try to make our kids feel better so that we can feel better. And I'm not saying again that you do nothing.
If there is something you can do truly to help your teen, to cheer them up, go for it. I don't know about you, but I've encountered countless times when my boys don't want me to cheer them up. They don't want my advice, they don't want me asking what's wrong, they don't need me to make them feel better.
Actually, what they really don't need is for me to need them to be happy so that I can be okay. What they need is for me to love them and be there for them no matter how they show up. And the thing is, I know you love your child unconditionally.
So think about what it would be like to just love your child, whether they were happy or sad, angry and moody or cheerful and bubbly. However they show up, the truth is you love them. Maybe the most powerful thing you can do for them is to know that you don't need them to be anyone other than who they are for you to feel love for them.
The more I do this, the more I find that my boys are willing to open up to me on their own terms, not because I need them to. I cannot control my children's happiness. So it goes without saying I cannot control my children's success.
For so long it's been our responsibility to help our kids and prepare them for that time when they're launched into the world. But well before they actually leave the nest, they can stop wanting us to tell them how to live their lives. So much of the conflict we have with our teens ends up being centered around differences and how we think our kids should be approaching school and their other responsibilities versus how they're actually approaching those things.
How often do you find yourself overgeneralizing what's going to happen in the future with your teen because of what they're doing now? They don't apply themselves in school now, so they may not be successful in college. They don't seem to want to get a job now, so how will they ever get a job? My friend, it would be so nice to have all the mental boxes checked so that we could feel like we've done everything we can to help our kids be successful. Once again, it seems like we can't be okay unless our kids are okay, safe, happy, successful.
We can be so mentally and emotionally invested in trying to make our kids be safe, happy, and successful. Is it about control or is it about love? Such an interesting question, right? Because on the one hand, you love your kids, so of course you want them to be safe, happy, and successful. I'll be the first to admit I still do things to try to help my boys with these things.
But the difference is when my boys aren't happy, when they're not successful, I know I can't force them to be these things. I know I have no control. And to be honest, it's a relief.
The pressure of that responsibility, as if my boy's not being successful or happy somehow implies that I wasn't a good mom or that something terrible would happen. None of that is true. In fact, sometimes failure is required, and unhappiness is a part of life.
My boys are living their lives, and that is going to include disappointment and sadness and hurt. That is life. That's certainly true for me in my life.
So instead of arguing with reality and trying to make my boys fit an unrealistic mold of perfection, I get to love them through their disappointment and sadness, even when that means they don't want me involved at all. I've been focused on our kids, but this principle, this lack of control applies to everyone else in your life and so many of the circumstances of your life. If you were to give up the illusion of control, if you were able to observe your mind falling into this mindset trap and free yourself of the responsibility to control that other person just so you could feel better, think about how much frustration, anger, and anxiety you could free yourself from.
Your mind wants to argue with me that if you give up trying, then you're going to have to face the reality of feeling terrible. And sometimes that's the truth. If my boys are really sad, I'm going to feel sad.
And that's okay. That's life. And honestly, just processing the sadness I might feel when I observe that my boys are sad is easier than also dealing with the anxiety of trying to fix everything in my life and not being able to.
The worst thing that can happen is that I experience an emotion. And sometimes the truth is I'll feel sad or disappointed. I can handle it.
I don't have to fix it. And just think about how powerful it is to love the people in your life without having to fix them either. There's so many ways these mindset traps relate to control.
Our brains would rather be certain than uncertain. And so they control this inner narrative we have about our lives so that we can control our own certainty. We organize information in our brain so that we can know through confirmation bias and labeling and overgeneralization.
We think we can fix what's wrong if we know what it is. And if we're the one to blame through personalization, then we try to fix ourselves in order to fix the problem. We might feel like we need to control others to feel better through validation seeking and emotional reasoning.
We might think we need to do the right thing so we can feel better through the traps of perfectionism and comparison. It's so fascinating how all of these mindset traps are interwoven and almost all have to do with some type of control so we can feel more safe, more happy, more comfortable. I hate to break it to you, but you do not have the power to control other people's emotions or their actions. The trap is when you THINK that you have control.
But here’s the good newa. You have the power to gain perspective over the way you perceive your life. You have the power to manage your emotions. You have the power to decide how you want to think about your life. How you want to show up in your life. This is actually quite a bit of control. It’s powerful. But it’s also a skill set that many of us have never learned. And this is exactly what I teach in my coaching program Mom 2.0.
Let go of control of your teens and others in your life and open the door to a whole new level of power over your own life and emotional experience.
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.
