Our downsizing continues. Someone bought our treadmill, so that’s another big item that’s no longer cluttering up our basement. And I’m glad it’s going somewhere it’ll be used. I liked it a lot, but it’s not practical for me, and won’t be until all the kids are in school. We’ve since joined a gym anyway, and I’ll be getting cardio workouts on the bike.
Today I had a good session with my sometimes therapist. I did a bunch of work with her years ago, and have since seen her only once in a while when I had something up. Right now it feels like I’m in big seas, and the waves are building, coming thick and fast. Issues having to do with parenting, with how I relate to people close to me, with how I handle my professional and family life are all big and important, and so it feels like a good time to have a few sessions in a row to help me do this learning with support and more effectively. It’s a big shift. In my moments of fear it seems like I have to learn how not to be me. But I know that is not true, that instead I am working on shifting learned responses that have their seeds in my very early life and family of origin. And that is ok. It really is a universal issue.
I know what I want, which is to find more and better ways of getting a needed healthy distance from the internal and external issues and circumstances to which I have strong emotional responses. I personalize things too much, which means that sometimes I get more mad or sad or ashamed than is particularly useful or warranted. And of course, parenting is full of situations that challenge me in that area. The relentless nature of parenting also means that there is very little time to process, and that makes it harder to step back and engage my internal objective observer. One thing I need to do is take more time in the moment, though. To ask for it, give myself permission to have it, and to leave the room if necessary.
One thing we talked about in the session was Hazel’s growing tendency to focus on the negative. We have a new tradition of sharing our favorite things from the day while I’m nursing the babies at night. Hazel has often begun with a complaint or story (often a seemingly made-up story). So, my therapist suggested that we separate our sharing into positive and negative. We tried that tonight, and in fact added another layer, which was negative followed by suggestions for moving forward. It was very successful. When it was her turn for positives, Hazel said she’d really enjoyed our neighbor coming over for a bit tonight while Ted had something he had to do, and that she’d liked playing “Go Fish” with him (Ted) too. When it was her turn for negatives, she said that it had been hard to listen to the babies crying all day. (Emily is teething, and pretty upset.) I asked her if she wanted suggestions for how to deal with it. She nodded, so I said that sometimes what I do is just say out loud what’s going on and how I feel about it: “Wow, Emily’s crying a lot, and that’s hard to listen to.”
Hazel: “Yeah, and sometimes I cover my ears, or leave the room.”
Me: “Those are great ideas!”
Hazel: “You could do that too!”
Me: “Well, I often can’t leave the room, because I have to take care of the babies, but if I really need to, and I can, I do.”
Hazel: “And sometimes I tell them, ‘No, no, no, no, no crying.'”
Me: “Well, that’s not your job, honey, but I’m glad you have so many other ways to take care of yourself. It’s better to take actions to take care of yourself than to try to make other people change their behaviors to take care of you.” And then I laughed and laughed, and added, “Mary.” Ted laughed too. Hazel asked why.
Me: “That’s my issue too, and I’m still working on it.”
Then we sang and read, and Hazel was calmer than she often is. And then it was bedtime. Emily was out like a light, no crying at all. It took Joanna took 20 minutes to calm down. We did help her a bit, but it seemed to us that she was clearly testing the new boundaries: “Waah, waah” silence, “waah, waah,” silence, slightly complaining cooing/talking, “waah, waah,” silence, etc. She was able to calm down and go to sleep. They’re both learning, and I feel good about it because we’re providing a loving environment, but also having faith and confidence that they can get this. And they are.
And so can I.
CelloMama 
That’s my issue, too. 🙂