WHEN LIFE GETS HARD
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 140.
Hello, my friends. This week, I wanted to take a moment to do a podcast that's a bit of a break from the Mindset Trap series that I've been covering over the past few episodes. And part of the reason I wanted to do this is because I think it can be really valuable to take a step back and reflect on how these tools, or really how understanding Mindset Traps, translates into improving the quality of your life and your journey raising and launching kids and as you approach the empty nest.
I remember when I was first introduced to the concept of Mindset Work. I think I made the assumption that it was all about looking on the bright side. I mean, you listen to influencers like Tony Robbins, for example, and his messages sometimes on the face of it can sound a bit like you've just got to flip a switch and make your life better.
He's known for saying things like, every problem is a gift. Without problems, we wouldn't grow. And the only limit to your impact is your imagination and your commitment.
And look, I really like Tony Robbins, so this isn't at all to disparage his work. But I also get it when it seems like it's a bit too simplistic. Like Mindset Work is just supposed to involve thinking happier, more positive thoughts, and that somehow this will translate into more powerful results.
And look, on a very simplistic level, it's actually true. Look, if your mindset is positive and determined, then you're going to feel better and take action in a way that you might not do if you have a more negative or ambivalent mindset. The problem is that creating a positive mindset really isn't as simple as flipping a switch and changing your mind.
Because quite frankly, your brain calls bullshit on the things that you really don't believe. And that's just the truth. Over the past few episodes, I've talked a lot about the motivational triad and how we're instinctually driven to keep ourselves comfortable and avoid danger.
But when it comes down to it, this isn't just an instinct we have. We also intellectually don't want to be in pain or to be exposed to danger. And so there are these different layers of how your brain perceives the world.
On the one hand, there's this primitive, instinctual response that we have to the circumstances of our lives. But then there's the rational, thoughtful interpretation we have of our lives. And this often reinforces our instinctual responses in a very practical and understandable way.
So I wanted to take a step back to talk about some real-life applications of how this works. I thought I would share some examples of how this has actually worked in my life. I think about the start of this podcast.
To be honest, the early episodes when I launched in 2002 really focused on me trying to get my head around my relationship with my boys, and honestly also my relationship with myself and who I wanted to be. I've loved being a mom, and having these boys in my life has been such an incredible gift. But it's also been the greatest challenge of my life.
A lot of that has to do with me caring so much about the outcome for them. I've deeply wanted to be successful in my role as a mom because I feel like that's meant that it would reflect on them and make them successful. But the truth is, and I don't know about you, but sometimes I haven't felt particularly successful as a mom.
And when my boys entered the teen territory, I felt challenged in a whole new way. For me, it had a lot to do with me thinking that the stakes were even higher in high school. The potential risks also felt greater.
There was so much I had no control over, and my boys were creating lives that I wasn't a part of. Like so many moms, I was trying my best all of the time. But the truth is, my best often felt to me like it wasn't good enough.
There were times when I lost my temper. I'd get frustrated when my boys didn't listen. I'd second-guess myself around the boundaries I was setting.
There were times that I felt like I was pushing on a string, trying with all my might to help support or guide my boys, but also feeling like I was getting nowhere. On top of that, during this time, I was grappling with what I wanted in life. I think there's this interesting shift that happens as your kids get busy with their lives and you start moving towards the empty nest.
You realize that the time and effort you put into raising your kids is now available to you in a way that almost feels uncomfortable. I mean, parenting just takes up so much mental and emotional space. And suddenly, your kids aren't around to be parented as much.
They have plans or activities. You're not even sure if they're going to be home for dinner most nights. On the one hand, you can think that you must have more time to be able to do something else.
And yet, you find yourself still investing that emotional energy into worrying about your kids. How are they doing? Are they okay? Are they being safe? Are they taking advantage of all of the opportunities in front of them? It's a hard habit to break. And it's a habit, in fact, that many of us aren't sure we want to break.
And so this podcast for me, particularly in that first year and a half, gave me the space to work through a lot of the emotions I was experiencing. In last week's episode, I talked about the emotional rollercoaster of this time of life, really the mindset trap of emotional reasoning, feeling at the mercy of your emotions. And it also relates to having your emotions be the drivers of how you actually perceive your life.
This, my friends, is also a habit many of us have. And whether we feel at the mercy of our primitive instinct to protect our kids or our more rational perception that this is our responsibility and we have an identity around this purpose, all of these layers of our minds drive the emotional experience we have in our lives. And it actually also drives the way we respond to that emotional experience.
There are some parts of the transition to the empty nest that can feel really hard. For each of us, that might look a little bit different. What I want to invite you to consider is that I don't think it's helpful for us to start telling ourselves that it shouldn't be hard or maybe more to the point that it isn't hard.
Back to my comment about Tony Robbins, if some part of the transition to the empty nest feels hard to you, whether that be something related to your relationship with your kids or to your own experience as you think about what lies ahead for you or whatever specific challenge you're facing, the work isn't to look on the bright side and try to convince yourself that it's not hard. I'm here to tell you that for me, there have been parts of this experience that have been really excruciatingly hard. And for my clients, in so many different ways, it's also been hard.
And so if you're listening and feeling like life with your teens or as you transition to the empty nest is just hard, if you feel like there are some parts of your experience as you raise and launch your kids that you just wish were different, I see you. You are definitely not alone in that experience. And the work I do, my goal with this podcast and most definitely with my clients is not to talk you or anyone into just changing their mind about how hard this can be.
It's to give you the tools to be able to understand your particular experience of hard and show up to that experience for yourself and for others in your life, to show up from a place of peace and confidence rather than defeat, uncertainty, anxiety, frustration, sadness, and overwhelm. And let me also say that feeling peaceful and confident doesn't mean that the problems go away. But when you're able to create these empowering emotions, you're in such a better place to be able to meet the challenges of your life with grace.
One of my coaches recently said to me, yes, it's hard. Life can be hard. The circumstances you're facing, they can be difficult and you don't have to change your mind about it.
But the question you might need to ask yourself is, what do I want my experience of this hard to be? For many of us, that doesn't feel like a choice. Our emotions feel like they're happening to us, good and bad. We give the circumstances of our life credit for our emotional experience, or we give it the blame.
We think our kids make us feel loved and purposeful. We also think at times they make us feel hurt and unappreciated. We think the looming empty nest makes us feel sad and uncertain.
The work isn't to tell ourselves that that isn't true. It's to take responsibility for how we are unconsciously creating an experience where it's even harder than it needs to be. I want to share a story about the most painful experience I've had as a parent.
This was during a time when my oldest son got involved with his first relationship. At the time, he was 17. This is something we want for our kids, right? That they find someone who cares for them and that they feel the validation of knowing that they're worthy of someone else's love, someone who chooses them.
So at first, I was really happy for him. But very quickly, things started to take a turn. Now, the story is really about me and not about my son.
So I'm not going into the details about what was going on. But really, what I started to see wasn't good. At first, it was just late nights on the phone.
But then it started to seem as if the time he was spending on the phone was impacting his focus on school, impacting his other relationships. I tried to talk to him about it, but he pushed back. Now, up to this point, my son had been an incredibly loving, open, and obedient young man.
He was hardworking and responsible. There was so much about his experience growing up that, quite frankly, made me feel really proud. If you wanted to paint a picture of all of the things that a child would do that could make you feel like you'd done a good job as a parent, to be quite honest, this kid made me feel that way.
I was just so proud of him. And I feel this way about both of my kids, but the story relates to my oldest. So my son was in this relationship.
And keep in mind that as I was going through the situation at the time, I didn't actually know what the dynamic was between my son and this other person. I didn't know what my son was experiencing until much later. And to be honest, I probably only now know half the story.
But what I saw going on in my son's life wasn't good. I remember there was one moment when he called me out for something in a way that he had never done before. He wasn't mean exactly, but the way he was looking at me, it seemed to me that he was accusing me of something that he was absolutely convinced that I had done, something I hadn't at all intended or intentionally done.
But he looked so convinced and disappointed. And my friends, when I tell you I lost my mind in that moment, I wouldn't be lying. I was so hurt and angry and upset.
I've had a number of clients tell me about the pain they experience as their kids pull away. It's like you can have this really close relationship with your kid until a certain point and then somehow, for some of us, it feels like our kid becomes completely shut off, not wanting to spend time with us, locked in their room, maybe even being pretty mean or dismissive. This is tough to take as a parent.
You adore this child. You've poured your heart and your soul into loving and raising them, and all of a sudden, they push you away or tell you that you've done something wrong. It's hard not to feel hurt by that.
Hard not to feel rejected and maybe even angry. When I was going through this experience with my son, I know more than once in my mind I said to myself, after everything I've done for you, I'm not proud of this, but my friend, this is what was going on in my mind. And at the time, I had coaching tools.
So one would think that if it was available to me to just flip the switch and make everything okay with mindset work, that that would be easy for me to do. But here I was in this moment and I was angry. And this was relatively early on in my son's relationship with this person.
And so things only got worse from there. In the first few months, I was in a state of denial. I really didn't want my son to be pulling away.
I didn't understand it. It didn't mesh with my view of who my son was. I kept thinking that I needed to get him to come back to himself.
So I tried all the things that any one of us might be inclined to do in this situation. I tried to reason with him. And there were times when we would have conversations that I would feel pretty good about.
But then other times things wouldn't go the way that I hoped. So then I found myself waking in the middle of the night, my head spinning, trying to think of new ways to approach the situation. What could I say that would make him hear me? I had so many fears.
Everything from worrying that my son would give up on his academic potential to starting to see him pull away and fold into himself in a way that I didn't think was healthy. I also started to think that I was losing my son. In short, the situation was terrible.
I actually sought out a therapist because I felt so anxious and frustrated. And I thought maybe I needed a level of support that transcended the coaching tools I had at my disposal. I spoke to a number of therapists who honestly weren't helpful.
I think there are a million excellent therapists out there. I just happened to find a few duds at first. But then I found one woman who came highly recommended.
And she was really the first to validate my fears about what was happening in this relationship with my son. The red flags weren't just a figment of my imagination. But she also said to me, he seems to be trying really hard to pull away from you.
I started to argue with her. I wanted to blame the other person he was dating. I couldn't imagine that my beautiful, loving son would be choosing to cut himself off from me and his family.
But the hard truth was, my son was choosing this experience. He was in love. And this relationship was opening his eyes to a whole new world.
And it probably wasn't surprising that he was starting to question who we were and how he had been raised and what all of that meant in terms of who he wanted to be. This therapist actually coached me to see how my perspective about the situation wasn't wrong. But I was also only seeing my perspective.
And I was making the whole situation about me. One for my son. This was only all about him.
This slight shift in my awareness didn't make the situation any less hard. In fact, I think what it did was shift my emotional experience from anger to grief. Because at first I was making it about me and how I was being rejected.
How it wasn't fair and he shouldn't be doing what he was doing. But then as I understood how this wasn't about me, I was left with loss. This narrative in my head was that I was losing my son.
I have never in my life experienced such pain. For a period of about six months, I would take long walks every day and I would just cry. I felt so devastated.
Here's the thing. There was no world in which I could convince myself that facing the situation wasn't hard. There was no looking on the bright side that was available to me.
But using the mindset tools I teach my clients, I was able to acknowledge how hard the situation was, but also to decide how I wanted my experience of that hard to be. My first decision was quite honestly to let go of blame. It wasn't easy.
I wanted to blame my son. I definitely wanted to blame the person he was dating. And of course, I had a whole list of reasons in my head why I was at fault as well.
But the blame was only creating anger and resentment for me. It was doing absolutely nothing to bring me closer to my son. In fact, it was having the opposite effect.
So I had to be honest with myself about my thoughts about my son, how they were so focused on how he shouldn't have been doing what he was doing. Anger was readily available to me, but so was love. And from a place of love, I could see my son was doing the best he could.
He had fallen in love for the first time and he was trying to navigate a difficult relationship. And none of that was about me. As I leaned into love, I saw so clearly how he was struggling and alone.
And there was nothing I could do to reach him. But as I came to this realization, I also made the conscious decision to keep the light on for him. I had to trust that this beautiful young man would find his way.
I even remember saying to myself more than once that even if the worst happens and he really does leave the family because that's where my head went, that I would always be here when he was ready to come back. I remember listening to Byron Katie coach someone on something very similar. Someone's son didn't want them in their life.
And I remember Katie saying, if my child doesn't want me in their life, that's a gift I can give them. Man, that is an incredibly selfless statement. One that seems inconceivable, but also totally available when you really think about it.
In those dark days, I didn't have a choice about my son's path. But I absolutely had a choice about whether or not I held on to unconditional love as my guiding force. I had the option to decide that no matter what, I would love my son and welcome him back into my life with open arms.
Even though I still had to process my grief, the loss I was feeling about the relationship I thought I would have with my son, I still had to do that work. But without the blame and the resentment and the anger, the pain of my grief was so clean. It was all love.
If I didn't love my son, I wouldn't feel grief. My friends, wherever you are on your journey, whether you're struggling with relationships or purpose or feelings like anxiety and sadness, wherever you are, whatever your flavor of hard right now, I wonder how you might allow yourself to acknowledge the hard. I think there are two ways we avoid doing this.
We either tell ourselves it shouldn't be hard. Maybe we look at other people and we think, well, this doesn't seem to be hard for them. I must be doing something wrong that it's hard for me.
We basically beat ourselves up and tell ourselves there's something wrong with us, that we're having a hard time. So that's one way we avoid the hard. The other way is that we create blame.
We obviously blame ourselves, but we also blame other people. We blame the situation because it has to be someone's fault. Think of this in terms of what we've been talking about in the context of mindset traps.
We instinctually want to avoid pain and danger. We want to find comfort. We want to keep things simple.
It feels counterintuitive to open yourself up to the hard parts of life. Your brain wants to run, to shut down. No thanks.
I'd rather not have to feel this pain. But notice when you push away your pain by telling yourself it shouldn't be happening or when you blame yourself or others for the pain, basically reasoning that if you or other people were just better, that you wouldn't have to experience this pain. All of this only creates more pain, doesn't actually solve the problem of the pain.
In my coaching practice, I've worked with all kinds of women. Women who struggle with their kids in middle school as they start facing insecurities and social challenges. I've worked with moms who have kids in high school who are struggling academically, with their social lives, with mental health or chronic health conditions, with drug use.
I've worked with moms whose kids shut themselves up in their room and rarely engage with them. I've also worked with moms who've loved being moms, who felt so validated in their role. And as they shifted to the emptiness, they saw only loss and sadness.
I've also worked with moms who have launched their kids only to worry that their kids aren't yet independent. Then they struggle with setting boundaries, not wanting to enable their child's dependence. My friends, I've worked with grandmothers who are still grappling with these challenges.
The point is each of us might be facing a different set of circumstances. And my friend, I want to tell you that all of it can be hard. The truth is if you're facing a situation and it feels hard, that's what's true for you right now.
Doesn't matter if other women seem to not have to deal with this particular challenge. And by the way, whatever your challenge, I guarantee you there are many moms who are going through the same thing right now. It doesn't matter if other kids seem to be more connected to their moms when yours isn't with you, or that other women seem to embrace the empty nest and you only feel a sense of dread.
Other people's experience of life is irrelevant. You experience your life through your emotions. And whatever they are, they're valid.
But my invitation to you is to consider that there's nothing wrong with you that you're experiencing this. It's not your fault, and it's actually not your kid's fault or other people's fault either. Call it life, whatever it is, life is going to bring us challenges.
And right now the challenge in front of you is your work. What do you want your experience of this challenge to be? There may be some emotions you simply need to process. These are the emotions that you can't talk yourself out of.
For me, that emotion was grief. As I thought about losing my son, losing the relationship I thought I had with him, there was no other way for me to feel. And as hard as that was, I didn't fight it or make myself wrong for feeling it.
In fact, I loved myself through it. I so deeply understood why I was feeling this pain that I was able to honestly be my own best friend through it. But my friends, there were many, many other layers of pain that I was able to let go because I decided that they weren't serving me.
I let go of anger and resentment and guilt and shame and resistance. It wasn't easy. I spent quite a bit of time with my coaches understanding these layers of pain, understanding my perspective of the situation, really understanding the mindset traps driving my pain.
My friend, in the early stages of this experience, I had fallen into the illusion of control. I was validation seeking, all or nothing thinking, catastrophizing, mind reading, overgeneralizing, taking the blame. You name a mindset trap, I can tell you exactly how I had fallen into it.
And none of that meant there was anything wrong with me. You don't have to convince yourself what you're going through isn't hard, but it is really valuable to consider that this hard isn't your fault. It's not a sign of your weakness or that there's something wrong with you.
Even if you do see in yourself tendencies around catastrophizing or perfectionism or whatever mindset traps most reflect your experience in times of stress, this is not a sign that there's something wrong with you. You simply have never been given the tools to break free of these traps. I was recently talking to a client and as we've been working together, she's grown in so many powerful ways.
But the truth is, as we level up in life, we find new challenges or new opportunities for growth. Sometimes we don't even look back to see all of the ways we've grown because we find ourselves so focused on the obstacle in front of us. And let's face it, there are also certain ways we approach life that are really sticky, almost habitual go-to ways of thinking or ways of being that like habits can feel really difficult to break free from.
This could be our tendency to fall into people-pleasing or to feel anxiety when there's something going wrong or a driving need to fix situations. This particular client was telling me that she knows exactly who she wants to be, but she doesn't quite trust herself to lean into this new version of herself. In fact, as I'm saying this, I think there are going to be a handful of my clients who think I'm specifically talking about them because this actually comes up a lot.
This question of trusting ourselves, notice that that's another layer of hard. On the one hand, you can know intellectually who you want to be or how you ideally want to act in any given situation. But when it comes down to it, sometimes when you're triggered in a situation, you default to those old ways of thinking and being.
I think sometimes we get to the stage of life and we think we're above growing, like it shouldn't be hard anymore, that we don't have the energy to fight for ourselves and our potential anymore. And look, I get it. When you're facing these hard parts of life, it can feel exhausting.
We're not 20 years old anymore. But I also can't help but look at my boys and see how hard they're working for their dreams, how hard they're working to try to figure out who they want to be in life. Are they just naive to the challenges in front of them? Or do they somehow believe in their own potential more than we do as we get to midlife? For me, as I continue using my coaching tools to level up my own experience of my life, I'll be honest, life can still feel hard at times.
And look, life happens. Circumstances come up that you don't want. Your gut reaction is going to be, no thanks.
But I have learned how to trust myself to meet these challenges in a whole new way. I trust myself to step back and make a decision about how I want to respond, really who I want to be. And in fact, even beyond meeting the challenges of my life, I find that I'm able to look at the opportunities ahead of me in a way that empowers me to choose a new kind of hard.
In so many ways, I've been stepping out of my comfort zone. I've taken on new opportunities for growth and personal development. And you can do this without doing something as dramatic as launching a new business.
Those versions of hard that you choose can actually be incredibly exciting, even though they inevitably also involve some fear along the way. Breaking through that fear and self-doubt and believing in myself again, that is a gift I keep giving myself year after year. And I see my beautiful clients doing the same, believing in their potential, believing in the possibility that they can step into who they want to be if only they had a few more tools at their disposal.
For me, these tools have given me the power to trust myself to be the mom and the woman I want to be. And as I think back on that painful time with my son, I am so deeply proud of how I showed up for myself and also how I held space for my son by leaning into unconditional love for him. I kept the light on.
I held on to my connection with him even as he needed to pull away. And miraculously, he came back to us. It wasn't overnight and it wasn't easy, but he learned the lessons he needed to learn.
And actually, so did I. I learned the power of unconditional love, not only for my son, but for myself. And when you lean into this, you trust yourself to navigate the opportunities and challenges of your life, whatever they may be. This is the skillset you can learn in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. Life can be hard.
This transition, raising our kids, transitioning to the empty nest, it's not easy. But who do you want to be in this experience? It's a choice you can make, but you don't have to do it alone. My friends, I'll be back next week with another mindset trap.
And in the meantime, don't wait to invest in yourself and your personal growth. You have the power to decide who you want to be. And I'll show you how to use it.
Check out my coaching program, Mom 2.0.
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.
