MIDLIFE MINDSET TRAPS - INTRO PART II - AVOIDING PAIN
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 136.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Small Jar's podcast series on mindset traps. Really, the focus of this podcast series is to help you break free from the anxiety and stress of this time of life as we launch our teens and approach our next chapter as moms. So today I'm going to dive into what we think is creating stress and anxiety, and also, in fact, what's making it worse.
But first, let's dive into the facts. Well, first and foremost, our kids are growing up. Time is marching on, and that is just the reality of life.
They're moving towards a time when they are going to leave the nest, and ultimately to, we hope, lead productive and independent lives. How interesting is it that we signed up for this? In fact, we've been consistently focused on this goal of helping our kids self-actualize for two decades, plus or minus, depending on how old our kids are. We've found so much purpose in this goal, in raising our kids, and yet for some of us, actually accomplishing this goal seems to lead to pain.
And look, what you've probably observed in your interactions with other women, or even what you see in social media, is that some of us are thrilled to enter the empty nest and embrace the change with enthusiasm, and others of us see it as a painful time of having to let go. Both realities are normal and valid. The only difference is the way we think about the transition.
Do you think of it as an opportunity, or do you think about it as a period of life that's less meaningful than the stage of life where you've been actively raising and parenting your kids? There is no right or wrong answer here. Just notice what's true for you. And while the fact might be that you're approaching or already in the empty nest, the way you feel about it is going to be driven by your perspective.
At the same time, there is our kids' experience. Between puberty and up until our kids' brains fully mature, which doesn't happen until they're 25 years old, by the way. So the stretch of over 10 years involves an unbelievably rapid evolution of our kids' brains.
The prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that governs decision-making and impulse control, develops so much more slowly than the limbic system, which is really the emotional control center of the brain. This means that our kids naturally have stronger emotional responses, that they take risks, and prefer being around their friends rather than us. During the teen years, our kids' prefrontal cortex, which helps them plan and problem-solve, this part of their brain develops but much more slowly.
So if you're struggling with your teen as they take risks, or spend more time with friends, or don't seem motivated in their life in some way, consider that this could all be part of their natural progression as a human being, just a part of the way their brain is evolving, evidence of their brain's normal development. This isn't to downplay the stress of helping our kids through these changes, or having to interact with a teen who's highly emotional or pushing us away, but it is interesting to notice how we can tend to think that this behavior shouldn't be happening, when in fact, based on the normal evolution of the brain, one could also quite reasonably think that whatever's going on with your teen, that's exactly what should be happening, and that it's all about them and their brain development, and not about you and your parenting. It's not until our kids are 18 and through the time when they're 25 that they begin to refine their executive functioning skills like long-term planning and emotional regulation.
Even during this time, our kid can be prone to prioritizing short-term rewards and pleasure over long-term consequences. So if your kid seems to be partying too much and not taking school seriously, even when they're in college and beyond, just something to consider. Perhaps this is simply a season in their lives, a normal aspect of their development.
But still, here we are as moms trying to navigate all of these changes, while understanding that what your kid might be going through could be absolutely normal. That doesn't change the fact that you want to show up as the best way you can to support them through all of that and guide them toward a more productive and engaged approach to their lives. I am a firm believer in the concept that we moms are always trying our best.
That might not always look elegant or perfect, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, because sometimes my best has looked like nagging my boys or getting really angry when they don't listen. And in those moments, that was my best. My intentions were good.
I wasn't trying to be a nag or someone who loses my temper. And so the truth is, my best in those moments was to react, to try to accomplish my goal, whatever it was in that moment. But ultimately, to help guide and support my kids.
It's never been anything other than that. Which is why I say I've always been doing my best, even when it's looked like a hot mess. So this series is really about shifting our perspective, acknowledging how we truly are doing our best, but that often our own emotional pain and our reactive responses to those emotions These responses can be driven by our goal to support and launch our kids, but even more by what it means for us when it feels like we're failing to achieve this goal.
As I talked about last week in part one, our brains are instinctually driven to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. This is called the motivational triad, and it truly drives how we react in so many situations where we're in emotional pain. Seeking pleasure could involve wanting to have a connection and a positive relationship with our teens.
This isn't a bad thing, we're instinctually driven to want this. Avoiding pain with our teens can look like wanting to help our kids avoid failure or their emotional pain. We can want to shield our kids from negative outcomes, and again, of course we want this.
Not only do we intellectually want this, we're instinctually driven to avoid pain in this way, and we've been practicing doing this with our kids for decades. It's a well-worn habit at this point. And finally, the last part of the motivational triad is to conserve energy.
This manifests itself in a lot of different ways, but when it comes to parenting, it can actually lead our brains to going to default responses like frustration, for example. Because it's easier for our brains to have a default response than to have to think through how to respond in every single situation. And again, if you notice that you have one particular way of responding to your teen when they're in trouble or struggling, whether it's worry or anger, consider that this is perfectly normal, a sign that your brain is working exactly as it's meant to work.
This is exactly why I wanted to take a deeper look at these mindset traps, and particularly the role of the motivational triad. Because when I talk about us always doing our best, this is really at the heart of what I'm talking about. Our brain is designed to respond, to seek pleasure or comfort, to avoid pain and conserve energy.
And so often, although we don't give ourselves credit, our best is truly responding from this instinctual place. And let me take this one step further, because our mindset around parenting, the way we perceive our kids and their experiences, the way we perceive our own role in that and our ability to navigate whatever challenges are in front of us, also our own desires about what we want and we need in our life, all of this, this perspective that we have about our lives is what creates our emotional experience of what we consider to be safe and what we consider to be dangerous or painful. When we think some situation in our lives or with our teens is causing our pain or has the potential to cause pain, we are instinctually going to be motivated to avoid it.
Of course we are. And also, thank goodness we are. This basic instinct has kept our kids alive and thriving for years.
But think about the importance of this instinct even now as our kids are growing up. This desire to avoid pain motivates us to protect our kids from things that can legitimately harm them. And it also supports their growth.
I mean, clearly ensuring our kids' safety is critically valuable. The truth is our teens need boundaries. They need someone looking out for them, telling them what risky behavior looks like, someone who enforces rules, someone else who tells them frankly that they care if they get hurt or in danger.
As I mentioned before, our kids are going to be prone to risk-taking up until their mid-twenties. They're going to be highly influenced by their peers. They aren't practiced in assessing the true risks of a situation.
So we are that angel on their shoulder reminding them to be safe and to make the right choice. And avoiding harm isn't limited to physical safety. We also guide our teens by encouraging healthy decisions around friendships and screen time, how they apply themselves in school.
We teach them values and guide them toward self-awareness. There are consequences to bad decisions, and because we see these consequences more clearly than our kids, we can serve as a guardrail against them experiencing a whole host of long-term challenges. I've mentioned in past podcasts that our brain functions like a sonar when it comes to our teens.
We constantly scan their behavior, the way we think they're feeling, and the choices that they're making. And we're also constantly assessing whether or not we think these actions and behaviors are safe and appropriate. On the plus side, this means that we're going to notice if something is wrong with our kids.
We see warning signs early. We're on the front lines, standing at the ready to help our kids. And if we see signs of danger, we're not going to wait to step in.
We're going to offer our support and even professional help when necessary. This is so valuable, my friend. I'm not sure I even want to go down the rabbit hole of thinking about how many dangers with my kids I've helped them avoid over the past 20 years because of my ability to see danger and take steps to help them avoid it.
Thank God this is true. So it's really important to take a moment here to recognize how important and valuable this instinctual motivation to avoid pain is in our lives, but even more so in our role as moms raising kids. So many women will come to me telling me they worry too much or it catastrophizes, and they seem to think of it as evidence that there's something wrong with them.
But this is simply how our brains were designed to work on autopilot. They're geared to help us survive. And that is actually a really good thing.
So this series is designed to challenge the assumption that there's something wrong with you if you worry. While I'm going to be spending a lot of time talking about how these instincts lead us to fall into mindset traps, the first very important takeaway here is that these mindset traps have nothing to do with there being something wrong with you. They are simply evidence that your beautiful mind is working perfectly as it was designed to do.
Now, last week, I spent some time talking about the hormones that reinforce our brain's desire to seek comfort and pleasure. So today, let's explore the hormones that motivate us to avoid pain. First and foremost, let's talk about cortisol, our body's stress hormone.
Cortisol is released by your adrenal glands when you're in a situation that you perceive as dangerous or stressful. This word perceive here is really important. Because again, our brains are like sonar, taking in our surroundings and our kids' behavior.
And the brain makes a judgment about whether the situation is in fact dangerous or out of line with our expectations. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that's true of pain too. We might all agree that certain situations are dangerous, drinking and driving, for example.
But our brains can also perceive danger in situations where we see our kids unhappy, if they're not doing well in school, when they lock themselves up in their room and they don't engage with us. That's not to say that there aren't real risks to these situations, but our perception of that risk level is going to be highly individual, based on our own history with the situation, based on our own risk tolerance, all sorts of factors, none of them good or bad, but simply the compilation of all of our own experiences and needs as the lens through which we view our lives. I've worked with women who have shared that they worry that their child isn't social.
They worry about their child feeling lonely and isolated. Sometimes they'll be comparing their child to other kids or even their own childhood experiences. And through this lens, they perceive that something isn't right.
In other words, they perceive pain or danger. So when our brain has made this judgment, our bodies release hormones like cortisol. And this hormone in particular prepares your body to react quickly to danger.
In the case of our teens, this triggers a stress response to try to protect them. In these situations where we perceive danger or stress, our bodies also release adrenaline, which gives you energy and heightens your focus. And then there are hormones that I talked about last week, like dopamine and oxytocin, which also play a role here.
Because of the connection and bond we have with our kids, which is reinforced by these hormones, dopamine and oxytocin, we're that much more instinctually inclined to want to avoid danger and negative outcomes for them. Again, this heightens our inclination to want to protect our kids and protect our relationship with them. So again, this physical response, these hormones are underpinning and enhancing our natural instinct to seek comfort and avoid pain.
But you can also see how when our brain's perception of danger is heightened, and particularly when we're thinking about potential dangers in a way that may not be productive, like when we're catastrophizing or focused on worst-case scenarios, our bodies are also responding with these hormones, which of course leads us to feel this overwhelming stress response in our bodies. So just consider how powerful your mindset is in creating your emotional pain and experience, and how that presents as an emotion in your body. This is why I've found the tools of self-coaching so transformative in my life, because I can't change my brain's instinctual desire to avoid pain.
And frankly, I wouldn't want to dull this instinctual response because of how often it has saved me and the people I love from danger. I can't even control my body's fight-or-flight response when my brain instinctually perceives danger. It's that knee-jerk response that you feel when you're presented with new information or you see something that you don't like.
But I have learned to stop in these situations when I notice my stress response being activated. I can stop and ask myself if there truly is a danger I need to avoid. Because asking this one simple question activates your brain's prefrontal cortex, that decision-making part of your brain.
You can actually learn how to tap into that decision-making, that higher level of your brain, to serve as the adult of what you can even think of as your toddler brain, your very primitive brain. It's like tapping into a skill set where you supervise your own brain, ultimately deciding how you want to think about your life. Now, mindset is the way you think about or interpret the world around you, and this drives what you perceive as dangerous, how you perceive right and wrong based on your values, and also how you perceive whether or not your teen is on the right track.
This is all a function of your expectations and what you think should be true, and then your brain measuring the reality against your expectations. This is all mindset, my friend. This lens and your perceptions influence your experience of peace and also anxiety about the circumstances of your life.
Mindset also relates to your anticipation of danger or pain. Your brain doesn't simply evaluate your life based on the circumstances that exist right now, in this moment. It's also constantly assessing what might be on the horizon.
So your brain creates perceptions about the future and what it thinks is likely to happen, and these perceptions can also fuel our current pain and the way we want to try to avoid future pain. So I've talked a lot about how the instinct to avoid pain is natural and even at times very helpful, but now I want to touch on how it can also lead to less productive reactions on our part and definitely more anxiety and stress in our experience of life. This instinct to avoid pain can lead us to prioritize short-term relief of pain over long-term growth and well-being.
I'm not actually a huge fan of the phrase, no pain, no gain, because I think it can lead us to think that growth requires an unnecessary amount of pain. But at the same time, learning does require some degree of failure. Someone can tell you how to make friends or how to do a math problem or really how to approach any new situation.
And sometimes we do get lucky and do that thing on our very first try, but more often than not, we experience failure or disappointment when we try new things. That friendship doesn't work out. We get the math problem wrong.
We don't get the result that we'd hoped for. That is just life. But because there are so many areas of our kids' lives that are evolving and new, frankly, a lot of ways that our own lives are evolving and new, there is a lot of potential for pain and failure.
So our instinct to avoid pain can lead us to want to shield our kids from failure or to want to keep them from the pain of struggle. I've had many women say to me, I just want to keep them from experiencing the pain that I did. This instinct can cause us to want to overprotect, maybe even micromanage our kids.
We might feel like we have to monitor their behavior or control their choices so that they avoid mistakes or consequences. And let's be honest here, we want to avoid our own pain too. We don't want our kids to experience pain or failure, but ultimately we don't experience their pain.
We experience ours. And we want to feel safe. We want to avoid our own pain.
And my friends, all of this makes perfect sense. In truth, I think many of us are onto ourselves to some extent about all of this. We see ourselves having a hard time letting go.
We tell ourselves that we worry too much or we nag too much. We feel exhausted, frankly, from our overthinking and overanalyzing. But at the same time, we can feel like we can't let go of that worry, even that fear that we're still not doing enough.
We can feel torn between wanting to give our kids the chance to build resilience, but also fearing the risk of imposing them to unnecessary failure. We see how our nagging leads to eye rolling, even at times how it creates conflict with our teens. But at the same time, how can we just let go of the responsibility we feel to help guide our teens? We've heard the parenting experts or the principal at the school encouraging us to let our kids struggle, to give them independence.
People talk about trusting the process. It all sounds like really valid advice, except for the reality that it is so much easier said than done. This is why I'm spending so much time here, really exploring the connection between our motivation to avoid pain and our mindset.
Because my friend, this is the key to trusting yourself, to make the decisions that are right for you and your teen about how to move forward. I truly don't think there is one approach that works for everyone. Even with my own two boys, I found that they both have different needs.
They've both had different struggles. My approach to parenting them has even been different. And so if it's true, even in our own families, then all of us, with all of our children, just imagine how many million unique situations can exist with our kids and how there truly isn't a one-sized-fits-all approach.
There isn't one right way. But understanding this connection between our motivation to avoid pain and our mindset offers profound benefits for us as moms as we approach how to raise our teens and even how we approach our own transition to the empty nest. Really, one of the most powerful benefits of understanding this connection is that it empowers us to trust ourselves to make decisions about how to navigate moving forward.
My friend, the power to supervise your brain, learning how your mindset impacts your emotional experience, and most importantly, understanding the difference between your brain's instinct to avoid pain and those moments when you actually need to make a decision to do something to avoid pain, and maybe most importantly, when you don't. This is all so incredibly powerful. Look, when we can discern the difference between when our fear is warranted and ultimately when our worst-case scenario thinking is just an instinctual and natural pattern of thinking, this awareness gives us the power to step out of the unnecessary stress and anxiety.
It gives us the power to not react emotionally when that response isn't helpful or productive. And consider how this can also positively impact our relationships. Because no matter how emotionally erratic our kids' own moods we can remain a safe and calm presence, taking responsibility for our own emotional well-being and safety, rather than relying on them to meet our expectations so that we can feel okay.
What I see with my clients is that when they're able to take responsibility for their mindset, they're very clear about what they want to do. When we take action from love and confidence rather than fear or anger, we're in so much of a better decision to know when it's necessary to step in and when it's more appropriate to take a step back. Your decisions become intentional instead of reactive.
I think even just this message, that our instinct to avoid pain is so normal and natural, I think even this message alone is so important for us to hear and internalize. Because consider how much compassion this realization can allow you to have for yourself, knowing that your instinct, even to catastrophize, isn't driven by some personal failing, but rather a very normal, natural human instinct. You're not broken.
There's nothing wrong with you. You're just a mom always doing her best who wants to avoid pain. Of course you do.
So this is part two of the Introduction to Mindset Traps, where I'm exploring the background of why it's actually rational and normal for your brain to fall into these traps like catastrophizing and all-or-nothing thinking. Understanding how normal these traps are is the key to setting yourself free from them. So last week I covered the first basic instinct, our motivation to seek pleasure.
This week I've covered the motivation to avoid pain, and next week I'll cover the motivation to conserve energy or really to keep things simple. After that I'm going to start diving into each of the 12 mindset traps that our very normal brains fall into, how that impacts us in our lives as moms with teens approaching the empty nest, and most importantly, how to break free from these traps. So here's an exercise for you to explore as you let this week's episode sink in.
Ask yourself these three questions. Number one, where do you try to avoid pain in your life? Number two, how has this instinct to avoid this pain helped you in your life? And number three, how has it also caused you pain or kept you stuck? You can explore your role as a mom, your relationship with your teens, anything, whatever comes up for you. Be sure to notice how this instinct to avoid pain has actually helped you as much as the alternative.
My friend, helping you understand your unique lens and the way that might cause you to fall into particular mindset traps, this is the work I do with my clients in my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0. Reach out, book a call with me to explore how your mindset may be holding you back from what you really want in your life as a mom and as a woman embarking on her next chapter. I'll tell you exactly what's holding you back and how Mom 2.0 can help. But here's a spoiler.
What's holding you back isn't something that's wrong with you. And what will set you free is a simple set of tools that will open up a whole new level of peace, confidence, and connection in your life. My friend, trusting yourself to be the mom and woman you want to be is as simple as breaking free of a mindset trap.
I look forward to showing you. 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.
