MIDLIFE MINDSET TRAPS - INTRO PART I - SEEKING COMFORT
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 134.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Small Jar Podcast. As we head into the new year, I'm excited to bring you a new series on mindset traps. I did this series well over a year ago, and as I've had the opportunity to really explore this work with so many of my incredible, beautiful, and brave clients, I've learned so much about how these mindset traps play out in so many different areas of our lives.
So I'm looking forward to sharing all of that with you. I've also seen so many of my clients experience these beautiful breakthroughs and their ability to find peace and agency in their lives. Look, life is an evolution.
We always have the opportunity to learn and grow. For me, finding this work started with simply getting curious about why I was struggling in my life. I had so many blessings, and yet, I felt frustrated and dissatisfied.
The only way I had ever learned to handle my anxieties and frustrations was to try to change the people or the circumstances causing that emotional pain. And sometimes that works. But more often, you can be left feeling even more frustrated when you can't change those other people or the circumstances.
So for me, the power of mindset work and understanding these mindset traps is that you find the emotional strength and agency to create the experience of your life that you want without relying on other people to do what you want or needing life to go your way. This is freedom, my friends. And in this new series, I'm going to show you the mindset traps that you might be tied up in without even realizing it.
And I'm going to show you a path to set you free from those traps. This is the work I do with my clients in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. And I'm excited to give you a taste of this in this upcoming series. So all of us experience this journey towards the empty nest a bit differently.
Some of us start to feel it as our kids struggle or experience social challenges or test boundaries as early as middle school. Honestly, for me, it started when my boys were in middle school and I started realizing that they were already starting to create an exciting life apart from me. And meanwhile, I was feeling left out, resentful that my big excitement when I got home from work was laundry and cleaning the house.
As much as I absolutely loved my role as a mom, I felt like I needed something more. Some of us struggle because our teens or young adult kids push away or seem to make us feel irrelevant. After everything you've done for them, you can feel like all they want to do is be apart from you.
And I've experienced that pain too. Then there are those of us who don't truly struggle until our kids actually leave the nest. You can feel like you're losing a precious connection, having to let go of the beautiful purpose you've loved as you've raised your kids.
To be honest, others of us struggle as our kids get out of college, as we're honestly ready for them to be independent. And sometimes they're the ones who don't seem ready. Sometimes it's hardest with the oldest, that firstborn who leaves, and other times it's hardest when the baby leaves.
You might be having a hard time because you feel so deeply connected to your child you can't imagine your life at home without them. Or you could feel miles away from your child even when they're in the next room, because they work so hard at pulling away. Wherever you are on your journey, know that there isn't one right way to navigate the evolution of your role as a mom.
But also, this work is actually about you and not your child. The fact is, as our kids approach and enter adulthood, there is very little we can do to influence them other than set healthy boundaries with them. And even that is limited in scope.
What leverage do you really have other than the amount of financial support you give your child? Truly, no matter where you are on this journey and in what way you might be struggling to both let go and find yourself, the path forward is all about you and how you show up in your life. This is of course about making decisions and choosing your approach to your life and the people in it, but those decisions are ultimately driven by your mindset. You can either make decisions from a place of pain and powerlessness, or you can make decisions from a place of peace and confidence, trusting yourself and having your back about those decisions.
I've created The Small Jar to be a place where you can find self-compassion and curiosity, to deeply understand who you are and how you experience your life as a mom and as a woman, so that you can decide on purpose how you might like that to evolve as you move forward in your next chapter. In my work, I've noticed that there are three parts of our emotional experience that can feel really challenging as our kids grow up. What we want is to feel at peace, connected, and purposeful, but instead what we often experience is anxiety or frustration in place of peace, hurt and resentment in place of connection, and feeling sad or lost in place of purpose.
The simple truth is that our kids are growing up, and in many ways we realize that we're on a fast-moving train where we can't stop time or control or even influence many aspects of our kids' lives. Life feels out of our control and uncertain, and so we feel anxious. Our kids pull away or move away, and we feel disconnected, and throughout this whole transition we can begin to grapple with an identity shift that we have no idea how to navigate.
What is my purpose if I have to let go of one of the most meaningful roles of my life? This is a time I like to call the emptiness straddle. Your child isn't quite launched, or you're not quite settled in your next chapter, but you see it coming, and it feels like a long uncertain road ahead. When I think of the emptiness straddle, I have this image in my head of a cartoon character holding onto a platform with one foot, while the other foot is literally being dragged in the other direction by an escalator or some moving object, like Wile E. Coyote being stretched between two points.
You can literally feel caught in this in-between phase. There's no question that life is changing, but the question I want to explore with you is, how can you empower yourself to create peace, connection, and purpose even as you navigate the uncertainty of so many parts of your life or your kids' lives? The key to understanding the answer to this question is to learn about how your very beautiful mind sometimes creates emotional pain in a way that's not always productive. Over the next few months, I'm going to dive deep into helping you understand the sneaky thought patterns that can keep you stuck, feeling anxious, and lost.
These thought patterns are mindset traps. Some examples include things that you're likely familiar with, like catastrophizing, perfectionism, validation-seeking. Beyond the anxiety these traps cause us, one of the other huge problems with mindset traps is that many of us tend to think that they're a sign that there's something wrong with us.
How many times have you heard someone say or maybe even said to yourself, I'm a perfectionist, or a people pleaser, or I always go to the worst case scenario? We talk about it as if it's an identity, a fatal flaw in our character that makes this type of thinking either inescapable or something wrong with us that we need to fix. In this series, I'm going to challenge those assumptions. Consider that mindset traps have nothing to do with there being something wrong with you.
In fact, these traps are a sign that your beautiful mind is working perfectly, exactly as it was designed to do. Before we dive in, I want to highlight for you the profound benefits of understanding mindset traps. When you start to recognize and understand these patterns of thinking, you can experience several powerful shifts.
First, you create emotional clarity. Quite simply, you understand why you feel the way that you do. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by painful emotion and also feeling like you don't have a way to feel better unless you can make everything in your life feel better, you deeply understand where your emotions are coming from.
This emotional clarity also allows you to respond and show up in your life with intention rather than reacting to or feeling stuck in emotional pain. The second benefit of understanding mindset traps is that you gain the strength to let go of unnecessary emotional pain and find peace. Once you truly understand mindset traps, you start to see your anxiety and frustration as something you can observe and then even release.
You develop the skill of recognizing these thought patterns and seeing them as a habit that you can unlearn rather than an indication that there's something wrong with you. For reasons I'll explain throughout this series, mindset traps are our brain's way of keeping us safe. They actually play a valuable role in our basic survival.
But you'll also learn that these same traps aren't always as necessary as our minds think that they are. And once your mind connects those dots, it can become surprisingly easy to drop these unproductive and painful ways of thinking. The third benefit of understanding mindset traps is that you are able to make decisions from a place of intention, from emotional strength rather than powerlessness.
You're able to feel confident in yourself and your decisions, confident in your choices about how you show up in your life. And think about the impact of that on your relationship with your kids as a start. Often when we show up from a place of fear or frustration with our teens, we show up in a way that needs them to do something different.
We need them to change their behavior. We often don't trust them to make the right decisions or we threaten consequences without enforcing them because we're often worried about so many things we're not even sure where to start. In other ways, we may look to our kids for validation, needing them to text us back or spend time with us.
And none of this is a judgment. There are times when we've all hoped that our kids would do something different so we could feel better. By the way, we're moms.
It makes perfect sense that our emotional thermometer is tied tightly to our kids' well-being and their actions. But this is your opportunity to question, how can I let go of needing my kid to be someone I want them to be just so I can feel okay? So imagine the powerful impact of allowing your kid to be exactly who they are without needing them to be different, but also having the confidence in yourself that you can be who you want to be as a mom and as a woman without needing your kid or your life to change. I'll tell you from my own experience and from the experience of my clients, the impact of this mindset shift is a profound deepening of the relationship you get to have with your children as they become adults.
Because my friend, the relationship you have with your child is literally all in your head. The way you think about your child impacts how you feel about your child and your relationship with them. Even when your kid is pulling away, you get to feel your unconditional love for them.
So emotional clarity, freedom, and confidence, peace, connection, and purpose. This is what's available to you when you understand the mindset traps that might be keeping you stuck in anxiety, frustration, and purposelessness. Before I jump into mindset traps, I want to introduce a foundational concept that will underpin every mindset trap that we discuss, and that is the motivational triad.
So the motivational triad is a foundational concept in psychology and neuroscience that explains the three primary drivers of human behavior. These three instincts underpin human evolution and they're responsible for helping the human race survive, quite literally. But these instincts also shape how we think, how we feel, and how we act in our day-to-day lives.
So here are the three instincts. One is seeking pleasure. Our brains are instinctually wired to pursue activities and experiences that feel good or rewarding.
This instinct encourages us to seek out food, relationships, and activities that bring us joy and fulfillment. It's also why we crave connection and validation and comfort. The second instinct is to avoid pain.
This instinct drives us to steer clear of anything that feels threatening or uncomfortable or unpleasant. It's a survival mechanism designed to protect us from harm, whether physical, emotional, or psychological. This instinct can manifest itself as fear or anxiety, or it can make you reluctant to take on risks.
The third instinct is to conserve energy. Our brains want to make things simple and efficient. This is why we crave routine and our brains create habits that minimize our effort.
We like familiar patterns and sometimes these patterns are helpful to us and sometimes they're not. In other words, sometimes we develop what we call good habits or bad habits. But these habits say nothing about who we are or what's wrong with us.
They're simply an indication that our brain is trying to make life simple by learning practiced behavior in a way that makes it easier to repeat. Our brains don't want to put in unnecessary effort and so they instinctually prioritize ease over complexity, comfort over pain. So let's dive into this a bit more because it's actually fascinating.
These three basic instincts help to survive when we were living in caves, but they also help us and motivate us in our everyday lives. They're not bad instincts. Seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, being efficient.
It sounds like common sense, right? So it's important to recognize that these instincts are helpful, valuable, motivational tools. Except for when they're not. So for example, seeking pleasure motivated our ancestors to pursue activities and resources essential for their survival.
They were motivated to seek out food. They're also motivated to seek out social bonds. Being with other people not only gave our ancestors the pleasure of connection, but it also gave them protection from predators.
It made them more successful in hunting and gathering food because they worked collaboratively. They could also help each other raise their young and the pleasure of sex had the effect of perpetuating the human race because people are motivated to have sex because of the pleasure of it. Now think about how beautifully the human body has been designed.
Essentially designed to ensure its own survival because there are hormones in our body that actually reinforce our motivation to seek pleasure. These hormones, or neurotransmitters, create the physical sensation of reward and satisfaction in our bodies. And this actually encourages us to repeat behaviors that trigger the release of hormones like dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, and GABA.
So let me go through each of those real quickly to talk about what they do for us. Dopamine plays a central role in creating our motivation to seek pleasure and the reinforcement of our learning and habit forming around finding pleasure. So when we anticipate or experience something that's pleasurable, our dopamine levels increase.
In fact, you actually start to feel pleasure before you engage in a pleasurable activity because of the anticipation of it. This is really how it plays this role in motivation because dopamine causes us to seek out pleasurable activities. It's released before we even do that thing.
Endorphins, in contrast, are released when you're doing those pleasurable things. So when you're exercising or laughing or eating foods that you like. They also create a feel-good sensation that helps you cope with stress and discomfort.
Endorphins are connected to pleasure-seeking because they boost the positive feelings we experience while we're doing something pleasurable. So we want to repeat those activities again. A third hormone that plays a role in our motivation to seek pleasure is serotonin.
This hormone regulates your mood, happiness, and overall well-being. Things that increase serotonin include being with other people you like or care about, sunlight, physical activity, and even certain foods. When our serotonin levels are high, we feel good about our choices and our actions.
And this again reinforces those behaviors that increase serotonin levels. So it's like a self-reinforcing hormone. Oxytocin is called the love hormone because it's released when we're hugging or feeling connected to someone.
This hormone strengthens feelings of trust, attachment, and connection. And as you can imagine, it plays an important role in reinforcing the bond and connection we feel with our children. Finally, the hormone GABA promotes relaxation by calming the nervous system and reducing anxiety.
Activities like meditation or yoga stimulate GABA production, which of course reinforces our desire to do those things which create those calm feelings. Okay, so clearly our biology and our hormones like dopamine and serotonin play a critical role in creating feelings of pleasure, those sensations of pleasure in our body. And so based on this, you might be inclined to think that if your feelings are being driven by hormones, that's one more thing out of your control.
And look, at this time in our lives, when other hormones like estrogen and progesterone are also going haywire, if not leaving our bodies entirely, you can literally feel like a victim to your hormones at times. But here's my philosophy, and this is really at the heart of what I do in my coaching program. We need to be very clear with ourselves about where we have power and where we don't, where we have an opportunity to make a decision, and where we need to let go.
And so that's why understanding mindset in relation to the motivational triad, and even the physical hormone structure that supports it, is so powerful. Because mindset influences how we experience pleasure, and often how we feel it. So here's what I mean.
The release of hormones like dopamine and serotonin is largely automatic. They're triggered by things like eating food you love, achieving a goal, or some positive social interaction. However, the intensity and the frequency of the release of these hormones are influenced by how we interpret and respond to our experiences.
And this is where mindset comes into play. You can think of your mindset as essentially the way you think about or interpret the world around you. And this has a significant impact on how you perceive pleasurable experiences.
And here's why. Your thoughts shape whether you perceive something as rewarding. For example, two different people might complete the same task, but one might be thinking, I'm proud of myself, while the other person could be thinking, I should have done better.
Here's the fascinating thing. The person who thinks I'm proud of myself is going to release much more dopamine than the other person who thinks they should have done better. In other words, dopamine is released in response to positive thoughts.
Mindset directly affects the brain's hormonal reward response. You can even think about it this way. You might like savory foods while I could prefer sweet foods.
My brain is going to release dopamine when I eat brownies while yours might not. It's a matter of preference, perception, and interpretation. In other words, mindset.
Your brain is simply reinforcing and rewarding the actions and behavior that you have decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, are rewarding. So, mindset impacts how you perceive rewards or pleasurable activities. Mindset also impacts your anticipation of pleasure.
When you think about good things that are to come, when you anticipate joy or even savor the moment you're experiencing right now, your brain releases more dopamine. Anticipation and focus. Being present.
It's all about how you're thinking about the future or the present. This is mindset. So, a positive mindset might involve being aware of even small pleasures and this focus is amplified by the release of pleasurable hormones.
In contrast, if you're stuck in a negative mindset, stuck in worry or frustration about something going on in your life, you may actually miss or downplay opportunities for pleasure. Let's say you're surrounded by people you love but all you can think about is that one conversation you had that was worrying. You might miss the positive interactions going on around you and then you also miss out on the serotonin and other hormones that could be amplifying those moments.
In the same way, if you accomplish something but think it was hard or you didn't do a good enough job, your brain literally won't release dopamine as a result of accomplishing that task. But if you reframe the situation, thinking the task was challenging but an opportunity for growth, even giving yourself credit for what you were able to accomplish, even if there's still work to do, your body will release dopamine and you'll experience feelings of increased satisfaction and accomplishment when you do overcome the challenge. This really begs the question, what's in control? Your mind and your mindset or your hormones? Think of it this way, hormones create the sensation of pleasure in your body.
That's a physical experience. But your mindset or your thoughts about a situation determine which activities and experiences trigger those hormonal responses and how strongly you feel about them. Earlier I talked about how the motivation to seek pleasure helped our ancestors seek out food and companionship.
While we certainly live in a much more sophisticated society now, the motivation to seek pleasure, that first of the basic instincts of the motivational triad, this motivation to seek pleasure is still very much a part of our day-to-day lives in a way that supports our well-being. This basic motivation makes us want to build relationships with people. It motivates us to set and achieve goals.
We're geared to want to learn and grow and contribute meaningfully to our families and in our communities. Said another way, we're motivated to want to find purpose and meaning in our lives. The desire to seek pleasure also motivates us to engage in self-care.
We want to relax and manage our stress and engage in healthy activities like exercise or hobbies. Again, this motivation to seek pleasure is really beneficial. And as we talked about before, while hormones reinforce our desire to participate in these activities, being connected in our relationships, seeking out purpose and self-care, our mindset drives how we think about what's pleasurable and relaxing for us.
How many people do we want in our lives and what does connection mean to us? How do we want to contribute in our lives? What do we like learning? How do we prefer to relax and take care of ourselves? All of this is mindset. But in the same way mindset and our instinctual motivation can reinforce positive, productive behaviors and activities, our mindset and basic instinct to seek pleasure can also drive less productive and even stress-producing behaviors. This can play out in ways where we seek temporary relief in the pleasure of food, for example, or we can start to rely on things outside of us for pleasure or for comfort.
For example, we might seek pleasure through the approval of others. You seek external validation. With our kids, we can look to them to do what we tell them so we can feel like we're doing a good job as a parent.
Or you might want your kid to show their love in a certain kind of way so you can know that they love you back, to feel validated as a mom. And look, it makes sense that if your teen says, I love you, or if they achieve something you've worked hard to help them with, you get to feel a sense of accomplishment and worthiness. This feeling makes sense.
The downside is when you become dependent on this external validation to feel worthy or valuable as a mom or as a human being. Because look, if your teen pushes back when they become independent in their lives or just don't meet your hopes and expectations in some way, if you're relying on them to fill that need for validation for you, you're likely to be in a lot of pain if that validation doesn't come. You might feel unappreciated or anxious and then respond in your interaction with your teen in ways that might come across as needy or controlling.
There are so many other examples of these mindset traps and how they relate to the basic instinct to seek pleasure. Avoiding difficult conversations like discussing boundaries, setting impossibly high standards for yourself or your teen, believing that the only way you can feel at peace and a sense of relief is if everything meets your standards. Even catastrophizing can be related to pleasure-seeking because you can seek the pleasure of relief from avoiding danger.
Or even the act of problem-solving, the illusion of control that your mind perceives when you're thinking, I can actually do something here. These mindset traps are not a sign that there's something wrong with you. As I'll go into in much more detail, these traps are actually perfectly reasonable when you take an honest look at them.
Difficult conversations aren't fun. It feels great to achieve goals. And you only do that by setting goals and standards in the first place.
And there are many times when you do solve problems. And so the last thing I want to tell my brain is that it shouldn't be on the lookout for danger. If there's a danger in my life that I can avoid, sign me up.
Even with mindset traps like validation-seeking and catastrophizing, we do feel pleasure in those moments of validation or relief from the danger averted. And guess what? In these moments, our mindset is reinforced. Our body is releasing hormones to cement these associations and behaviors.
This is our brain working perfectly as it's meant to work. The problem is that relying things on outside of us for pleasure is often fleeting. The sources of pleasure are unpredictable or temporary, out of our control.
And so understanding this connection between the motivation to seek pleasure and mindset traps can empower you to shift your focus from external validation or control to internal validation and self-trust. You can also start to recognize when you're pursuing short-term comfort at the expense of long-term growth. It's also valuable to mention here that sometimes unraveling these mindset traps involves learning to tolerate some discomfort as part of meaningful growth for you and for your team.
For example, finding compassion for yourself that you want to avoid having a difficult conversation with your team, it makes sense. And maybe it's worth understanding this discomfort as a means to empowering yourself to feel confident to have these conversations anyway, setting boundaries when necessary. My friends, this is part one of the introduction to mindset traps.
And I want to take some time here because I think one of the most important aspects of understanding mindset traps is truly understanding how rational and normal it is for your brain to fall into traps like validation seeking or perfectionism. This isn't a diagnosis or an indication that this is your identity or a sign that there's something wrong with you. Understanding how normal these traps are is the key to setting yourself free from them.
Here's a personal example for me. I have always been a high achiever. And clearly, based on the conversation we've having today, I have a mindset that values achievement and when I achieve goals my body clearly reinforces these wins with a lot of pleasure hormones. It’s a habit. It motivates me to pursue big goals, but also to write out lengthy to do lists each day so I get to experience a dopamine hit when I check things off.
I refuse to judge this about myself, because I actually can see how this mindset has benefited me throughout my life. But here’s the downside: my brain can fall into perfectionism. With any goal, in any situation, certainly with my daily to do list, there is always room for MORE...more achievement...getting more done... I am prone to falling into the trap that I’m never done. That it’s never enough, and this mindset trap creates stress and anxiety for me.
Of course it does.
This doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me. The only problem when I fall into this trap is that I haven’t decided what’s enough. That’s literally it. Unless I make this decision proactively, my unconscious mind will think it’s never enough. Understanding this about me, in fact, having compassion for myself about this natural, habitual state of my mind allows me to laugh when I find myself in an overwhelmed never enough state of mind. I can simply step out of this trap by telling myself "I literally HAVE TO do nothing." Now I get to do decide on purpose what’s enough.
My friend, I’ve covered the first basic instinct – our motivation to seek comfort – and in the next few episodes I’m going to cover avoiding pain and making things simple. Then, I’m going to dive into how all of this plays out in specific mindset traps.
As you let this week’s episode sink in, I want to invite you to explore three questions:
1. What do you think brings you pleasure or comfort?
2. How has the motivation to seek this pleasure helped you in your life?
3. And how has it caused you pain or kept you stuck?
Create a chart, and for each thing that brings you pleasure, ask yourself how that’s been a positive and a pain point in your life. You can explore your role as a mom, your relationship with your kids, food, career, anything. In fact, explore a few different areas and see what comes up for you.
1. What do you think brings you pleasure?
2. How has the motivation to seek this pleasure helped you in your life?
3. And how has it caused you pain or kept you stuck?
And here’s one more invitation. Join me in my "Letting Go So Your Teen Can Fly" Masterclass. This class is all about letting go of mindset traps and the impact of this is a deep understanding of your emotional experience, the ability to break free of mindset traps and let go of unnecessary pain, and a confident and more powerful relationship with yourself, and even with your teen. You don’t actually ever need to let go of your children, but there are things you can decide to let go that will lead you to create more peace, connection and purpose in your life.
So see you in the masterclass. And stay tuned for this podcast series. Mindset traps are perfectly normal, my friend. Consider there is absolutely nothing wrong with you if you feel stressed or anxious. You just haven’t learned how to take charge of your beautiful and habitual primitive brain. These are the tools I teach in my 1:1 coaching program, Mom 2.0.
My friend, creating joy, peace and purpose in this chapter of your life can be as simple as stepping out of a mindset trap. I look forward to showing you how.
Until next time.
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.
