From Controlling to Caring

Aug 19, 2022 | Anxiety, Control, Easygoing, Meditation, Over Responsibility

What is the Difference Between Caring for and Controlling our Loved Ones?

My client, whom I will call Trish, has an adult daughter, Dawn, who is overweight and at risk of developing diabetes. As a loving mother, Trish is naturally worried. She knows that if Dawn had a better diet, she would be healthier and happier, which is what Dawn says she wants. Watching Dawn eat fast food and empty-calorie snacks is upsetting, and Trish shows her displeasure with subtle comments like, “I wonder how many grams of sugar are in that?” When Trish has Dawn for dinner and her daughter asks for a second serving of dessert, Trish will ask, “Why don’t you wait a few minutes and see if you’re still hungry?” She does other things like sending Dawn articles on healthy diets and diabetes prevention. She cares deeply about her daughter and wants her to be healthy and happy. But what she’s doing isn’t helping.

Caring Versus Control

Imagine that your hand is an open heart. It reaches out to the other person, palm open.  This is caring, open, tenderhearted, and compassionate. You can offer help, but your hand is open, so you let go of the outcomes. They may take in what you say, they may ignore it, or they may reject it. Caring is trusting that the person you love is in charge of their own life and their happiness and health are based on the choices they make for themselves. When we care for someone, they usually feel loved and supported.

When we care for someone, they usually feel loved and supported. 

Now imagine your hand is a tight fist, your reach out to the other person, grasping on to them, trying to fix them, attaching to what they do or don’t do. Your fist represents you trying to protect your heart just as you are trying to protect them. This is controlling. When we control someone, they usually feel judged and defensive.

When we control someone, they usually feel judged and defensive. 

The Courage to Care

When we care deeply for someone, we will feel fear; this is inevitable. We want them to be happy and free from suffering. We become frightened when we see them do something that may cause pain. This fear presents a fork in the road; we can go down the path of caring or the path of control. If we choose the path of caring, we keep our hearts open. To care, we must be willing to allow our hearts to break, which takes tremendous courage.

On the other hand, control is an attempt to keep our hearts from breaking. We try to get the other person to make the right choice, so we don’t have to feel the pain of their suffering.  But the truth is, we are not in control of others. It is hard enough to make choices that support our own health and happiness and impossible to do so for others. Either way, we will experience heartbreak in the end, and in the process, we often alienate the ones we love.

3-Steps to keep your heart open.

Trish chose the path of caring for her daughter.
The first step was identifying her values and what she was aiming at. She chose Peace, Connection, and Acceptance.

Second, I had her identify the mindsets that would support a caring stance. She came up with:

“It is more important to enjoy my precious time with my daughter than trying to control what she eats; this gets in the way of my relationship.”

“She already knows what I think, this might influence her choices at some point, but I can’t control what will happen.”

 Third, she needed to accept that anxiety she felt as something to be allowed rather than acted out on.

I made Trish a meditation to help her allow her anxiety. If this is something you struggle with, click on either the video below or this link to listen to a 5-minute meditation that will help you keep an open heart with the ones you love.

My Mother Drives Me Nuts!

Nov 23, 2021 | Anxiety, Easygoing, Holidays, Over Responsibility, Social Anxiety

Coping with Difficult People This Holiday Season

This is what my client Andi told me this week. Like so many others, she is very grateful that she will be able to get together with family and friends for the holidays this year. Last year had its own set of stressors, but it had fewer frictions that naturally occur during holiday get-togethers. Whether it’s friends or family, there are always people who rub us the wrong way.

What triggered Andi was when her mother suggested how Andi could do things just a little bit better. These suggestions were particularly distressing when it came to her parenting. Just this week, when her mother was over for dinner and her son was having a meltdown, her mother said, “When you did that, I would put you right in your room!.” At that moment, Andi felt like putting her mom in her room, not her son.  Instead, she snapped at her mom, telling her she did not want to hear it. Her mom looked hurt. Andi felt even worse, thinking she was not a good enough mom or daughter.

Andi’s goal for therapy was to be more patient, loving, and compassionate with her mother at Christmas. These are beautiful goals, but they are not realistic.  The gap between how we think we should feel and act and how we do, causes more stress, shame, and blame. We cannot just will ourselves not feel triggered by friends and relatives. But we can learn to respond to our triggers differently.

Expect and Accept you will get triggered. It helps to realize that it is normal to get activated. When we expect this to happen, we position ourselves to respond to our triggers differently.

Learn to relax rather than react to your triggers. When we get triggered, our bodies contract, and we tense up. By practicing labeling our feelings and training ourselves to relax our bodies, we become much less reactive.

Rehearse ahead of time. A powerful tool we use in cognitive behavioral therapy is called imaginal exposure. By picturing upsetting situations, we can generate similar feelings and sensations when they are happening in real-time. By practicing relaxation during an imaginal exposure, you are much more likely to remember to use them at your next get-together.

Listen to this imaginal practice at least one time before your next planned gathering. Be patient, loving, and compassionate towards yourself! Becoming less reactive takes time.

Whose Fault Is This Anyway?

Sep 2, 2019 | Easygoing, Monkey Mind, Over Responsibility

I love a day alone at home. I can tune into myself, find my own rhythm without any sense of obligation or accountability to anyone but me. Personal time at home is something I need. It doesn’t happen as often as I like because my husband works primarily from home, but last weekend Doug was scheduled for a job that would take him away. I’d have all of Sunday to myself. I’d been looking forward to it all week—secretly, because if Doug knew just how much I cherish my time to myself, I thought it would hurt his feelings.

We had a lovely Saturday together and we were feeling close. Then that evening Doug realized he’d been mistaken, he wouldn’t be flying out until Monday. Now we could do something together, he reported cheerfully.

UGGGGGH!, My day to myself was snatched away! I couldn’t have hidden my disappointment if I tried. The intimacy we’d been feeling vanished, replaced by a mutual disappointment with each other. I was disappointed with the loss of my personal day, and resentful of Doug for his mistake. Doug was disappointed that I didn’t want him around. He said he would spend as much time away on Sunday as possible to give me time to myself. He didn’t complain, but to me, he looked sad and dejected. And that wasn’t the kind of personal time I wanted, nor the way I wanted to get it.

Instead of enjoying my personal private Sunday, I was haunted by a whole bunch of yucky thoughts and feelings—disappointed that I was not going to get the day I had envisioned, guilty that Doug’s feelings were hurt by my disappointment, angry that I “never” get much time to myself, anxious that this conflict made me feel separate and alone, and confused, wondering if my desire for alone time was reasonable or not. Was I to blame for Doug’s hurt feelings? Was it selfish of me? Or was it his fault for messing up his schedule and for failing to give me enough space?

Despite my raw feelings and confusion, I knew in my heart that when we blame ourselves for our desires, or blame others for getting in the way of our desires, we are assuming the stance of victim, a powerless position from which personal growth is impossible. I knew that wasn’t me. I didn’t want to merely survive this Sunday, I wanted to reclaim it. But how?

I had a strong urge to try to retreat. I could apologize, and find something we could do together to bring back a feeling of connection. But was that an any better answer to the dilemma than laying blame? Where was my urge to fix things coming from? Was it from an expansive and loving place or was it fear of losing connection?

The answer, I knew, was fear. Instead of trying to smooth things over, I committed myself to move towards my values of honesty, my own health and happiness, and courage to stick with my alone time even though it may be hurting him. This was my personal responsibility to myself. That Sunday turned into a day of practice. I practiced saying what I wanted. I practiced allowing my feelings of guilt and anxiety and anger to wash through me without acting out by accommodating Doug or blaming him. I practiced my expansive mindset, reminding myself that If Doug is upset with me, it does not mean I have done something wrong. He has a right to his feelings, and I have a right to mine. And I practiced honoring my higher values of Self-Acceptance, Authenticity and Courage.

Last Sunday was not the day I had been looking forward to all week, a precious day of personal time. But in retrospect, it may have been something more precious. A day of personal growth.

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