The New Girl

Memoiries.

So, I have this kind of Mental Glitch (one of many, I know,) in which I consider what the content of my Memoir would be, if I was to write a memoir.

[Don't you do that, too?]

I've read lots of memoirs and I love them. But, then again, I find even the most mundane details about someone else's life very interesting. (If you've ever been stuck next to me at a cocktail party and I've [grilled you for an hour] asked you 2, 457 questions about becoming a CPA, you're not alone!) So, it's like Memoirs and I were destined to be BFFs. The thing about memoirs, though, is there is generally a topic that the author chooses to highlight, a wacky childhood, a crazy-time period of life, getting past the crazy-time period of life, experiencing a significant health crisis, recovering from a significant health crisis, being close to someone during a crazy-time period or a significant health crisis, traveling through the time/space continuum or WHATEVER.

I mean, here's the crux of my repetitive thought: which part of your story (or mine) is unique enough to be documented, printed and published for sale?

I suppose I could slant the post and the thought process toward the direction of racking up *meaningful experiences,* as to be more "qualified" to have a life fit to be documented and shared in the form of a memoir. But I'm not. If my long history of cocktail party [interrogations] conversations about others' lived experience has taught me anything, it's that everyone has interesting parts and their willingness to share them is directly proportional to how interesting they are overall (to me.)

Writing about your life, deciding to share your story in any capacity takes a certain amount of bravery, I think, and sharing it in print (with a hard or soft cover) takes bravery and discernment. How do you decide what to share? How do you come to the conclusion that others need to know about that part of your life? Also, as an aside, how do you remember your life in enough detail to make your story not only interesting but accurate?

I'm struck by two things with regard to memoirs: 1) The significant recall of the authors and their ability to reconstruct time-lines and 2) I can't remember the second thing. (Haaaaa.) (I wish I was kidding.) The thing that makes memoirs a thing, I suppose, is their dual nature. They are incredibly detailed individual stories, which resonate with countless others--it's the universality, the ability of mass numbers of strangers to relate to the story, that gives memoirs their power, their appeal.

Like everyone [who's been through therapy] who lives an examined life, I frequently sift through the memories from various times in my life. And then, for a second, I wonder which of those times (if any) would make an interesting memoir [just like you do.] 

My list waxes and wanes (and I really do have trouble remembering) but here's what I'm scraping up as I sit here typing:

-Growing up the daughter of a depressed mother.

-Growing up the daughter of an obese mother.

-Growing up the daughter of an immigrant father.

-The experience of being an older first time mother.

-The experience I had when TLNG was a baby and how if affected me, my mental health, my marriage, etc.

-The experience of those five weeks during which my mother died.

-The story of my long-term girl friendships.

-My experience working in a community in which I was a minority.

 So, tell me. What are yours?

LET'S DISCUSS.

 

 

In Case You Thought You Were Scarring Your Children The Most.

This morning, I caught my Pretty Much Totally Potty Trained son in my closet. Pooping in his new pajamas. Sans underwear. Yes, yes. Lets all observe a moment of silence for the brand new pj bottoms.

I, erm, handled the situation [like a reptile] in such a way that, how should I put it? My child might remember until [the therapy couch] next week or so.

Here's our [first of many, I'm sure] conversation on the topic:

The Boy: Hey, Mommy! Member when I pooped in my pants?

Me: Yes, I remember.

The Boy: That was not good, when I pooped in my pants.

Me: No, it wasn't really good.

TB: That was BAD, when I pooped in my pants.

Me: (omgINeverSaidBad) Welllll, it wasn't really *BAD,* it just wasn't...great.

TB: I'M VERY SORRY I POOPED IN MY PANTS, MOMMY!

Me: [Insert your own witty ending here because I'm all balled up in the corner, rocking back and forth, baaaaaaack and forth.]

Just Say Yes.

Once, when I was in a clinical supervision meeting with a bunch of other mental health professionals with whom I worked, I rolled them in the aisles with a joke I made about a theoretical support group for adults with social skills deficits. The joke wasn't about having a support group, because, there's no joke there. Living as an adult with issues that affect your ability to make or sustain relationships is trying and difficult and there are lots of things for these folks to overcome. In case you don't have a lot of first-hand experience, here's a little, tiny bit of background (so you can understand my joke, yo.)

Children and adults who have difficulty with social skills are often "their own worst enemies," when it comes to the finer points of dealing with others. They are frequently ridgid thinkers, often inflexible and have difficulty changing their minds enough to make (sometimes even basic) compromise possible. So, it can be challenging for them to establish and maintain intimate relationships as they get older. Successful, fully functioning adults often enter therapy for something unrelated, and find themselves diagnosed with these deficts, which then explains lots of things about their pasts.

So, (yep. That was all background for one joke. I'm baaaAAAAaaaaack.) SOOO one of the psychologists said, only half in jest, "You know, we should start a dating service."

And my joke was that I thought we should also get them t-shirts made, emblazoned with the big, bold, logo:

.

JUST SAY YES.

 

~~~~~~~~~

A while back, Liz from Mom-101, wrote a post about an unironic argument about lollipops. (LONG LIVE THE INTERNET!!) The post itself was fun and funny. But, as is the way of Liz's posts, it also percolated in me and made me think. This time, it was a kind of passing comment she made in the post which, in part, shaped the direction of the conversation in the comments. As I read through the comments, I found a community of parents who said that they often default to "No." I do it, too. And as parents, there are lots of reasons for it. Some nos are necessary, having to do with safety, security or punctuality. If I'm being completely honest, though, a lot of the nos I have for my children could be yeses, if only.

If only:

I could get the living room picked up first.

I hadn't just picked up the living room.

They weren't already dressed in regular clothes.

I wasn't in the middle of making breakfast/lunch/dinner.

It wasn't so cold/warm/wet/sunny outside.

I didn't want to look at my twitter feed/facebook/email on my phone.

It wasn't so messy.

It wasn't so early/late.

They could ask without whining.

I would just slow down and let them 'help' me.

These aren't earthshattering news flashes. It's not an alien concept, I know, you can most likely relate. I'm trying not to judge myself harshly. I don't find guilt ("mommy-type" or otherwise) to be very productive. But when I examine the whens and whys of my nos, the common theme generally boils down to one thing:

My own anxiety.

So, it's not a social skill deficit, but my own anxiety that makes me rigid, inflexible and unable to change my mind. Anxiety makes me say no without really considering. 

After all, I have a lot to do. All parents do. It doesn't matter if you are a mom or dad, or if you work from home, outside the home, stay at home, whatever. Taking care of other human beings is a lot of work. So, when I'm making breakfast and trying to unload the dishwasher and make my tea (FFS,) and get the snack for my daughter's backpack and get people's clothes on and their teeth brushed, all to the tune of the two kids whining and bickering in the other room, when my son rockets into the kitchen and head-butts me in the hip, while sucking his thumb and holding his wubby, and mumbles, "Hode me, Mommy," it's all I can do not to push him down and step over him to get to the refrigerator. So anxious am I to get us all out the door on time, to hit my caffeine quota, to put just onnnnne more load of laundry in the washer. As it is, I offer a sympathetic, "I can't, right now, baby, I'm _________," as I twist by, sidestepping him, continuing on to the next item on my to-do list.

Think about that for a couple seconds.

When I think about it, what I'm left with is this: I'm so busy and anxious about the job of taking care of them that I'm missing opportunities to actually care for them. To show them love and care and comfort. To stop my spinning and doing and fixing and making and picking up toys and clothes long enough to pick up an actual, real life child who is asking me to. To show them what is really true, they are more important than the laundry, than the dishes in the dishwasher, than even my tea.

These days of chocolate-smeared hands gripping clean pants are fleeting. Of course we all know this to our bones but it's so easily forgotten in the crush of chores to be done. There will come a day, too soon, where there will be no more requests to be held. Laundry, on the other hand? Not so fleeting. This is my kids' childhood. It's happening right this very second. They only get one and it's now and the clock is ticking.

And so, this is what I'm doing.

Every time I want to say no, I'm going to pause, take a deep breath, count to five and then answer. I'm going to try to say more yeses. Sometimes, of course, there will be nos. I'm not talking about letting my kids run naked outside. I'm not swapping out my brain for another brain. But, really. The laundry isn't going anywhere, while the child is slowly receding from my kids, a little bit each day. Soon there will be none left.

(So, I'm also going to, without fail, pick up a child who asks.)

In an instant, this time is going to live only in memories and, well, most of the great memories come from the times we say yes. The times when we're brave enough, flexible enough and compromising enough to say yes. Yes to the mess, yes to the ice cream before dinner, yes to the "help" offered with the baking, yes to the playing in the rain, yes to painting on the driveway and yes to after-lunch autumn leaf collecting.

What I don't want to have to remember is loads of moments like this:

Nimbly sidestepping an affection-seeking boy because I needed to get to the fridge to fill his water bottle.

 

Fat. And Skinny.

I went to pick them up from the gym's kids' club and my daughter looked at me, smiled, and out of the blue said to me, "I want to be fat, Mom, not skinny.*" At the sound of that sentence, my head spun and I looked at her and she had the nervous grin she gets when she's testing the waters, gauging reactions.

My heart started thumping. She has never, ever heard those two words uttered in our home. Never. Of this, I am entirely sure. Having made a conscious choice, I don't make comments, critical or otherwise, about my body or my looks or my weight--to her or others, in or out of her earshot, since becoming a mother to a daughter.

"Where did you hear that? Who said those words?" I asked, none too gently.

Sensing my intensity and upset, she froze, unsure.

I'm not naive enough to think this was never going to happen. I'm not even naive enough to think I had until middle school for it, as steeped as we are in this female-body-critiquing culture. A culture in which we feel free to assess, discuss, analyze women's bodies, their weight, their shape. A culture in which women casually and openly castigate themselves and their bodies in the presence of their impressionable children (both boys and girls,) passing to them the mantle, unconsciously, modeling the expectation and the behavior and the language.

Fat. And skinny.

*****

When I was a girl, my mom was fat. I knew this not because she looked appreciably different from the moms of my friends, not because she was disabled in any way by her size, not because other kids made fun of her or picked on me because of her.

I knew she was fat because she told me she was.

Consistently, overtly, expressly, regularly.

Not only was the messaging that she was fat, overweight, heavy, but that she was different and unsightly and embarrassing to me. I remember the sharp spike of fear, bewilderment and guilt I felt when she'd accuse me of being embarrassed to be seen with her because of her weight. I wasn't. I told that last to my therapist once and she replied, "Weren't you?" It was her way of asking me to think past a reflexive statement, perhaps a defense.

So I gave it some real thought.

And no, I really wasn't embarrassed. That had been my mother's projection. I didn't see her the way she saw herself. Even now, when I look at pictures of her from that time, she was surprisingly groovy in the seventies, with her frosted hair and her white polyester and her big glasses. She had maybe an extra 30lbs. That's it. And although she would become heavier through the years and end up morbidly obese (and truly different looking than the moms of my friends) when I was a kid, I only knew what she told me.

As confusing as it was.

****

Back in the gym, I struggled to cool down. Reeling in the tangled lines of the still-intense past and the dreaded worst-case-scenario futures, I forced myself to just be present in the moment with my 5 year old daughter, who just heard some words for the first time and was trying them out. (*Because if she's telling me she wants to be fat and not skinny, I'm thinking she may not totally understand the finer points.)

So I changed the subject and we walked to the car. When we were underway and both facing forward, I asked, "Do you know what 'fat' means? Do you know what it means to be fat?"

And her answer was, "It's not a nice thing to say about someone. A girl called someone it at recess and the teacher told us all it wasn't a nice word to say."

She had no idea.

So, we had a talk. A long talk about words and how they can have more than one or even two meanings. A talk about body sizes and shapes. About differences. About how people are built, bigger and smaller, and how we eat and why we exercise, and brush our teeth and take baths and how people look different on the outside but everyone has feelings on the inside. And we talked a little about the world.

And I had to tell my sweet girl that there are people in this world who think that if a person is 'fat', she's not smart or healthy or worthy of love. There are people in this world who call themselves 'fat', condemning themselves, in their heads or out loud.

And there are people in this world who call others 'fat', as a taunt. As a way to say, "You're different from us, you're not good enough."

Some of them are 5 years old, on a kindergarten playground.

As confusing as that is.

What Am I Doing Here, Again?

Don't worry. It's not YET ANOTHER post about how I feel like I have so much going on and so much to tell you and yet I feel YET ANOTHER log-jam in my brain and so I go on and on about THAT before I get to the real point of my...

Oh, wait.

Shit. I'm sorry.

Anyway.

Let's start over.

I have a lot cooking right now. Some on the front burners, some on the back burners but it's sizzling and smoking and if I don't pay attention to it all, it's going to boil over or burn the fuck up and well, I'm tired of this metaphor already. The point is, I'm working out consistently, laundry is piling up and threatening to take over, the toilets need to be scrubbed, I have a new job opportunity developing, I'm trying to do a professional website, my kids are crazy-insane, The Man is way less available and way more stressed due to a number of factors unrelated to any of the aforementioned issues and well, it seems I'm tired of this even when it's not in metaphor.

The working out is good. I have been experimenting with counting calories (!) using an app (My Fitness Pal) on the Ipod. It's a great app, really. It factors in your goals and activity level, giving you a STARTLINGLY LOW (at least to me) calorie limit for each day. You enter in your food intake and it calculates automatically (obviously, or it, uh, wouldn't be very effective, I suppose.) You also enter your exercise and it adds the calories burned for you to eat.

Those are some very tasty calories.

I have found the value in this experiment in a few ways. One, it just forces me to pay attention. For me, not paying attention to my physical self (not exercising, mindless eating) is the NUMBER ONE culprit. So, just applying the gentle but consistent pressure on my Will to focus on what I'm doing is, in and of itself, helpful. The second is when I started keeping track of calories, there were two behaviors that, as my dad would say, came to a screeching halt. Eating while I'm cooking or preparing food and eating from my kids' plates.

Seriously. Cold Turkey.

It's also kind of a fun little game to get in under the goal for the day. Strange fun, maybe, but fun nonetheless. 

Anyway.

The last thing I want to get into one of those horrible, internet misunderstandings that go along with weight discussions. I normally put all of this kind of thing over on Balancing The Scales but, eh, I don't know what I'm doing here or what that blog is for, anymore. Is it a food blog? A weight issue blog? Fitness slash baking blog? How INNOVATIVE!

The other stuff, I don't have time to tell you because the one crazy-insaner is hiding all her toys and then going to find them ("We're playing HIDE AND SEEK!") and the other is in his crib, bouncing up and down, up and down, waiting for me to come in there so he can immediately tell me he wants his "COARS."  (OMGCars.) (Some kind of Boy Switch got flipped and all of a sudden? It's ALL COARS ALL THE TIME.)

Vrrrrroooooomm.

 

*Do I even have to mention that this isn't a sponsored post? No. I didn't think so.

Fun Fact Friday!!

Ho ho! You thought it was dead, didn't you?! (So did I. Totally.)

- For whatever reason, (it's totally a Mental Glitch, I know,) it kind of skeeves me when a man buys a woman clothes as a gift. I know it's crazy and if your man is tuned in enough to know [what size you wear] your taste in clothes and he buys you nice little gifts of clothes, that's awesome [but for whatever reason, a little skeevy. I don't know why. MENTAL GLITCH.]

- I was once watching an episode of Giada and her cute husband came home and brought her a present, a [tiny] pair of white pants and she was all excited and was all, 'I'm going to wear these awesome [size minus 4] pants to dinner!' and I was all, 'Hm. How...sweet [and a little ookey]!'

- Once, when I was dating The Tool, he bought me an *outfit* for Christmas. I'm saying that he went to The Limited, [flirted his ass off with the first woman he could find, I'm absolutely sure] approached the sales girl and asked her to pick out an entire outfit for me. She basically pointed him to a manikin and he purchased every single thing that manikin was wearing, down to the crazy bracelet with a million little balls on it. (The bracelet was the only thing I kept. Swear.)

- Do you guys remember those? The days of Pearls on Steroids? An over-crowded strand of whatever with all kinds of jingling and jangling?

It kind of looked like this, only mine was shades of bronze, copper and brown:

 

- When I was a surly pre-teen, my mom got me 'The Sweater' one year for Christmas. Jazzed as I was to get clothes for gifts back then, this sweater...it was..tragic. It was black and its front was host to a bazillion strawberries.  The strawberries were connected by a vine. On each cuff was a detail, two little berries. The sweater was expensive and well made and my mother looooved this sweater and her disappointment with my, uh, [incredibly rude and ungrateful contempt for it] reaction ensured this story remained one of the Golden Oldies in our family. You know, as in,  'It was like a STRAWBERRY SWEATER...' for any situation in which you were disappointed or disappointed someone else or when you badly misjudged another person's likes. So, it wasn't a total loss. That [horrible] sweater.

- Later in my teen years, a guy who *liked* me bought me a coat. A fucking fox fur coat. I have no desire to flip this into a judgmental, paint flinging, FUR IS MURDER, comment clusterfuck. I don't really care if you like fur, if you wear fur, if you sleep with a fur comforter, if you have fur lined gloves or undies. Whatever you do is your business and I could not be honester when I tell you I don't care. I just, you know, don't wear fur. And although I knew this guy, and he knew me, this gift was nothing short of Crop Circle Sized Sign that we were Never Ever Going To Be BFFs and that omg, he was a little, er, craaazy (not because it was fur but because it cost so fucking much and what the hell, dude?) (He actually DID turn out to be crazy, too, so.)

- He dropped the present off or had it delivered or something, because he wasn't there when I opened it. I was in the living room with my mom, my sister and my friend, I think.  When I moved the paper back and the soft, silky, silver fox fur became visible, my mother sucked her teeth and blew out a low whistle and chuckled. I swear, as she walked back into the kitchen, I heard her murmur under her breath, 'That poor sucker.'

- I never wore that coat but neither could I figure out what to do with it. It sat in my closet for years and years. And years. AND YEARS. When we went to clean out my dad's house (so weird to call it my dad's house. It was my mom's house, too. And mine and my sister's. So, the family house, then.) I found that coat in the closet, along with a GREEN MINI SKIRT. Made of SUEDE. omfg. Whaaat? I put them both into a bag and donated them to The Goodwill.

- I hope the same person buys them both. And rocks them OUT. At a costume party.

 

 

Kidney Beans, Pink Ties And One Big Can Of Whoop-Ass.

I don't remember much of what she said after she whirled around and shouted at the three or four of us, a few paces behind her and her two siblings.

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE HIM ALONE?!" is all I really remember her saying verbatim.

Seared into my memory, though, is the expression on her face--rattling fury mixed with broken-glass-sharp contempt.  I remember how pale her blond eyebrows looked against the crimson of her complexion and how the breeze caught some of the strands of her long, straight hair, sending them swirling around her head, as if she was electrified.

***

I am and have always been known to be a Fuck-With.  A Ball-Buster.  Cage-Rattler.  Whatever you want to call it.  I'll give you an example.  One day, when I was in high school, a popular kid wore a pink tie.  A Pink Tie.  It was the absolute height of Preppy TragiComedy and I rode his ass so hard about it, that he took it off in World History class and walked up the aisle to throw it at me.  He was laughing, though, and I put it on and wore it for the rest of the day (with my black nail polish and my braided side-tail. TFS!)

Sometimes I would tease a little and sometimes a lot.  It was humorous.  It was a way of relating.  It was my natural inclination.  I learned through the years that it was also a defense mechanism. It allowed me to connect without feeling too emotionally vulnerable.  To make others laugh was (and still is) one of the things that I do best and teasing others, picking up and playing with the little stuff that irked them a bit was one way to do that. 

My teasing was never, ever, meant to hurt anyone.  My aim was never to humiliate or embarrass someone in public or to demean them or make them feel less than. 

The funny thing about aim, though, is that even if you're really true most of the time,  you can still totally miss.

***

After my third grade year, the public school which I attended was closed.  My fourth grade year dawned with me clad in a plaid jumper with navy blue knee socks.  I remember being optimistic about the prospect of attending the Catholic school but my hopes were cast aside  like so many kidney beans out of the school lunch chili.  The kids there had been together since the first grade and they weren't taking any new customers. 

I was awkward, a horrible combination of deep, scratchy voice, false bravado, questionable hygiene and bad, bad hair.  I cried every single day before school, manifesting stomach aches and headaches that sent me complaining to the nurse.  There was one other girl from former school and when I reached out to her--a continuation of the congenial relationship that we'd had only a few months back and a few blocks away, she turned on me and pretended we didn't know each other.

I was excluded but I was never picked on.  I imagine that my acerbic wit and my speedy-if-somewhat-caustic comebacks may have been a part of what made me immune from the grisly treatment that two of my classmates received for the four years I attended that school.  I still had my neighborhood friends, who also attended the Catholic school.  They were all older than me and so even though we didn't see each other during the school day, we walked home together. 

It was during this same year that we would walk home behind the redheaded boy.  I don't recall his name.  I had a vague idea of where he lived but to this day I can't say I knew him.  I don't remember what we used to say to him.  I only remember that we used to walk behind him and tease him.  And tease him.  And tease him.  I don't remember him crying or yelling or doing anything in particular.  In fact, I don't remember any real response at all until that day his sister whirled around and opened up a can of whoop-ass on us all.

We stopped short, all of us, when she spun around, dirt and small stones crunching under her heels.

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE HIM ALONE?!" she screamed. 

There was more but the details are lost to me all these years later.  The gist was basically, 'Who do you think you are?' and it was only a matter of seconds before she spun again and stalked away, siblings in tow.

It was as if she'd doused me with a giant bucket of ice water, that's how shocked I was.  I stood, stunned silent.  I was surprised by the intensity of her emotion on his behalf and that what I experienced as a little post-school fun, he must have experienced as long-suffered torment.  To have my perception changed so rapidly like that--it caused a kind of emotional vertigo.

We resumed walking and my friends were whispering, keeping voices low in that Oh-Holy-Shit-What-Was-THAT? tone.  The boiling hot shame flooded me--filled me right up past my vocal chords--and threatened to spill over and out.  I was overcome with emotion and I had nothing to add to their conversation because even then I knew.  I knew she was right.

A few days later, I approached the redheaded boy and his sister.  I apologized for the teasing and told him that I would stop.  And I did.  Was I a bully?  I don't know.  I don't think so, not in the classic sense.  But I was definitely a Fuck-With in a bit of an emotional crisis, blowing off steam in an inappropriate way.

There was relief in giving a sincere apology and having it accepted.  And in doing better.  There was a giant lesson in the experience for me--an opportunity to reflect on my own behavior.  An opportunity to gauge the effect that my behavior had on others, regardless of my benign intent. 

 I don't know if an adult's intervention would have had the same effect on me.  It may have. 

But I still remember her face. Clearly.

The fury, the broken glass contempt.

The electrified, swirling, platinum strands of silk.

The Great Temper Experiment.

I don't remember exactly what it was that pushed the point home, finally.  Pushed it in far enough for me to act on my realization.  I had an epiphany for sure, though.  (An Aha Moment, if you're partial to Oprah-speak.)  The way that it usually works for me is this: I suddenly realize something that I've known for a long time, even maybe forever.  It's like, in an opportune moment, I really see this thing.  I see it clearly and in a way that is sudden and complete.  Like lightening striking.

How am I supposed to teach my daughter to stop screaming and yelling when she's angry, if I'm all the fucking time screaming and yelling when I'm angry?

Bzzzzt.

I have long thought that my yelling and carrying on (in the parenting realm) was related to my own upbringing and an innate lack of patience.  But included in this Not-Too-Comfortable epiphany was this, here:

It's not Lack of Patience.  It's Lack of Impulse Control.

Bzzzzzzt. Bzzzzzzzt.

When the realization hit me that my ever-increasing-in-frequency episodes of over-the-top, in-the-fucking-red-zone, aggressive-yelling were, indeed, were more about a lack of impulse control than anything else, something in me clicked.  

Initially, it was more than a little humiliating, actually.  I can only surmise that is why it stayed outside my conscious thought process for such a long time.  But a few moments after that, it started to sink in. I was impulsively acting out my anger.  And that, I needed to fix.

So, I started with a decision.  A decision that will, no doubt, sound absolutely crazy to some of you but what can I say?  It's what I did.

I decided that the following day I was just...not going to act angry.  Even if I was.  I went from thinking that in order to have fewer angry incidents, I would have to do the hard-if-not-impossible work of cultivating more patience (HA!) to deciding that even if I was pissed off, I was going to deal with it internally.  I was not going to act angry.

Or, more like it, I was going to act 'not angry,' even when I was*.

As a therapist, I am incredibly adept (most often) with keeping my own feelings to myself.  It is a skill that I have honed over the years.  I'm actually very good at it.  For me to have a feeling and act on it impulsively, professionally, would be unheard of.  I am able to compartmentalize and stash away my own feelings for my later examinations.  I mean, I worked through two hard pregnancies and the death of my mother, all the while attending to the needs/feelings/problems of my patients when I was at work.

It's not a giant stretch to bring some of that talent to bear with regard to keeping in check my anger at my 3 year old kid.  

So, I don't remember what it was that flipped the switch but I remember when it was.  It was June 17th.  It was a Thursday and I was in the doctor's waiting room with my dad, looking at some parenting magazine with a bullshit(ish) article on 'How To Get Your Kids To Listen Without Ever Having To Endure A Tantrum EVER,' when the lights came on in my head. 

And I made my decision to Act 'As If.'

The basic premise being that, initially, I would 'act as if' I wasn't angry, allowing my brain to burn some new neural pathways so that eventually, I really wouldn't be angry at stuff that didn't need to make me angry.

I started that day and have been doing it every day since.

Here are a few things I've found so far:

1)  It was easier than I thought it would be.  Once I made that decision to act in a certain way, regardless of internal, emotional experience, it gave me a framework, I think.  Something concrete to do instead of flip my shit.

2)  There were many, many times that I wasn't even really, truly angry.  My anger wasn't, isn't, *real* anger.  Not the kind of anger that is founded on some reasonable action/reaction loop, anyway.  It's an impulsive, angry reaction, out of proportion to the situation at hand.  Given 3.4 seconds, I was able to chill and realize that she's just testing or testing or possibly even testing.  Like 3 year olds are supposed to do.  In fact, if I'm totally honest, I found myself 'trying to teach the importance of certain points' via the angry tone and scowl.  As if.

3) Me simmering the fuck down, in an of itself, helped her to simmer the fuck down.  Of course, it stands to reason that when your mother is visibly angry and yelling that you, as a kid, will feel...a lot of intense emotions.  I did a little thinking about-slash-remembering-slash-realizing how I used to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing (LAUGHING!) in my screaming mother's face.  It is counter-intuitive maybe, but I found that when there was less anger from me, there was more compliance from her (which, I imagine, is due to less anxiety and impulse to be oppositional when a stark line is drawn.)

4) The Out of Proportion Angry Responses were cyclical in nature, creating a counterproductive loop and also a larger pattern of communication.  Disrupting that cycle, that loop, that pattern, has resulted in a more peaceful cycle, loop, pattern and house.

5) There are benefits to slower, longer reactions. It was an unforeseen outcome that, while trying to keep in an impulsive action, I was slower to react and thus, took a little more time to work things through.  This afforded me some opportunities to actually negotiate and stay places vs. cutting and running when TLNG was acting up.

If I were a math person, I'd be able to calculate for you a percentage of reduction in episodes of Out of Proportion Anger but in my 'just-eyeballing it' kind of way, I'd say it's been nothing short of stunning.  They say that to make a new behavior a habit takes a good 6-8 weeks.  And we're close to that.  I've had slips and I'll continue to have them, I'm sure. 

Some days are harder than others.  But it's so much easier to recognize and regroup.

And it makes me feel much, much nicer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*It may go without saying but I'm going to say it anyway, just in case.  I'm not talking about not expressing valid or justified anger/upset.  I'm not even talking about not expressing annoyance or frustration.  I'm talking about a certain level of pissivity, an impulsive acting out of a rush of exaggerated anger.  It's hard to define it, really, as it's all on a continuum.  I know it when I feel it, though.

Through this experiment, I've found that expressing even my legitimate anger/frustration/whatever in a calmer, quieter way gets better results. Makes a better loop. It's a work in progress, I suppose.  I share it as another way of working through. And to close a circle.  If you have questions or comments, I welcome them.  Don't be shy. It's not like I'm going to FLIP OUT at you. HA HA HAAAA!

On Shaping Up What's Been Forged.

For my whole life, I have described myself (among other things) as 'Inconsistent.'  I've done it here, probably lots of times.  I've done it on the [temporary] [inconsistently written] Fitness/Health Kick(ish) blog that I started and stopped and started and for which I never fucking write a post.

Ahem.

But recently, I've started to see it a little differently.  Through the ongoing process of self-awareness, I've have a few AHA Moments, recently and now, I'm wondering whether, along with (or, perhaps, in lieu of) being Inconsistent, I am also Undisciplined.  Just.  I don't know.  Lacking in whatever fundamental internal structure people have that facilitates and makes it easier for a person to remain consistent and linear in thought, attention and action toward whatever goal.

I'm not totally lacking in the fundamental structure, obviously.  I mean, I have a house and a job and close relationships and all that.  But in certain cases, it feels/seems almost impossible for me to do what I have to do to change my behavior for the long term.

As an aside: Part of my world view is that we are each born into this world with a temperamental style with various 'set points' for things like Approaching New Stimuli or a Threshold of Tolerance for things, etc. I think that certain personal traits are born-in, in other words, and work as we might, there's only a certain amount of elasticity that we're going to get in the way of behavior change in those areas.  Or, rather, there's a range of expression for certain traits--and anything outside the range is going to be more of a challenge to maintain.  Not saying impossible. I'm certainly not arguing that people can't change their behaviors.

I'm a therapist for fuck's sake.

What I am wondering, though, is how much of my inconsistency is really that I lack discipline in certain areas, as a kind of character trait, thus giving me a [fucking headache] hard time when it comes to adapting certain behaviors?

Each person has his or her own Issues to Wrestle, I'm aware of that. (For example,  I believe that an introvert can work on becoming more comfortable socially but I also believe that it may feel effort-filled for that person.  Almost all the time, especially at first.  Whereas for me, the quintessential extrovert, social interactions are usually not only stress-free but Enjoyable.)  So, I'm thinking that for me to maintain a consistently disciplined life in my Troublesome Areas may require a more or less continuous effort be applied to my will--to bend it and shape it into something a little different. Or, maybe, I can adjust my expectations and work toward realistic change in life-long patterns of behavior.  Somehow, viewing it differently makes change seem more do-able instead of just wishing I was different or trying to figure out why being consistent is just so hard for me when it seems to be so easy for everyone else.

I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud here. (Are you thinking that perhaaaaps, I should work this shit out ALL THE WAY before sharing?)

Me too.

Anyway.

Here's a list of areas that require more discipline than I typically posses to be/feel what I consider to be successful:

1) House Work.  I am not the messiest person around.  Largely 'Clean As You Go' kind of person but I am start/stop in this area and there is no denying that when I try to stay on top of it, it seems to take up ALL my free time and after a few weeks, I lapse into 'Not Noticing' until it gets, um, Embarrassing.

2) Weight Management. Oh, hell. Up. Down. Up. Down. You know. I'm up now.  So it's a thing.

3) Vehicle/House Maintenance. I have been known to let my oil changes and inspections go until the State Troopers and Oil Lube Employees knock on my door, asking me to PLEASE, PLEASE pay attention. (And you know how often THAT happens.) (One time, I got pulled over on my own block for a lapsed inspection sticker.  I pulled into my own driveway and confused the hell out of the nice policeman who just gave me a warning. TFS.)

4) Financial/Paperwork. Same as above.  Only, I think that people to whom you owe money actually WILL knock on your door, so I always get around to it in time but I let it linger. And avoid.

5) Bookkeeping.  In my job, I have records to keep and compile.  I am METICULOUS at keeping the actual records and ABYSMAL at compiling them.  You try to figure it out. I'm an enigma.

6) Physical/Medical Maintenance.  I've gone years. YEARS! Without seeing a dentist. Or a gynecologist. Or...you get the picture.  I'm back on the wagon with both, so, don't worry. 

7) Artistic Production. I don't write these days.  I don't do any real artwork, either (unless you're counting the 'crafts' I whip up for TLNG. And, uh, I wouldn't).  I don't post as often as I'd like.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I got the title for this post from an Indigo Girls song.  The full line is: I measure to what degree I can shape up what's been forged in me.  I love the imagery of that line and like almost all their lyrics, I think that it's poetry set to music.

Like Sands Through The Hourglass.

I hate getting mad at my kid The First Thing In The Morning or The Last Thing At Night.  It's not like I love getting angry at any other time during the day, but it seems especially heinous to get angry and/or deal with a red-faced, screaming three year old before my tea is even done steeping.  And, well, when my girl is going to bed...who wants to be mad then?  I don't want to be impatient, counting the seconds until I leave the room to go and finish what's waiting for me in the kitchen.  I want to send her to sleep with warmth. With love. And some measure of comfort.

***

Sometimes, the baby gets overtired and wired and has a hard time settling down to sleep.  And by hard time, I mean it takes more than the usual 2-3 minutes (literally, I KNOW) of bouncing on the yoga ball to put him out.  On those occasions, he doesn't fuss, he just wiggles, blows raspberries on my boobs, makes constant eye contact and busts into a huge-ass grin when I look back at him.  It's hard to be irritated at that, you know.  Even though the hard nights are still rarely, RARELY, more than ten minutes of bouncing and humming, I still feel restless, a little. Itchy for him to relax. Itchy to end my day.

***

These days, with my daughter, it seems that I am a Mostly-Full Cup of Irritation and it doesn't take but a little bit extra to have me brimming, threatening to overflow and make a giant mess all over the place.  There have been tantrums.  And hostility.  And tantrums.  And acting out.  And difficulty coping.  And...tantrums.  It's not totally clear to you which one of us I'm talking about right now, is it?  That's deliberate.  In my brain, my logical, intelligent, knowledgeable brain, I understand what she's going through, being three.  My brain understands the hard work of this difficult stage.  The pushing, pushing, [fucking nightmare] pushing against the boundaries has to happen.  The trying everything despite massive evidence that should dissuade, the freshness, the goofiness, the exploring emotions and options and alternatives--all of these are necessary. These are things that my brain knows.  But somehow, for some reason, my brain seems somewhat...detached from the process that usually begins with my daughter's ridiculous (and totally doomed) request and ends with me cleaning up the Irritation-Overflow Mess with a mop of my own regret.

***

When my son is wriggly and wiggly and can't get to sleep, I hold him extra tight.  I wrap him in my arms, like a human swaddle blanket, holding his head and chest snug against my body.  I hold him and bounce and hum 'Lullaby and Goodnight.'  He struggles at first and I hold, I contain.  I surround him, support him, make him snug.  When he strains against me, I hold extra firm.  And in about 35 seconds, his eyes close. And his muscles relax.  I feel the weight of him. The heft.  I hold his entire body in my arms. I bounce him for a minute or two more, looking at his sleeping form.  I realize that these days are numbered.  One day, he will be taller than I am.  He'll have whiskers and smelly shoes.  I look at him, quiet and peaceful, snuggled up against me and I ache for the day that he won't fit there anymore.  I try slow down and soak it in. 

***

When my girl goes to bed, she dismisses her father first and asks me to sit on the floor so we can 'Talk About Our Day.' I reach through the bars of her crib and stroke her hair or her soft, soft cheeks.  She sticks her arm through and we hold hands.  Lately, we talk a lot about the time outs or the times I felt angry during the day.  The things she did that set me off.  We talk about the other stuff, too.  The good stuff.  The fun stuff.  She wants me to stay a little longer.  I have to go and clean the kitchen, I tell her, when our time is up.  And when I close the door, in a hurry to get the rest of my work done, I think about how these days are numbered too.  The days of tantrums and irrational requests meant only to provoke and test, the days of three will give way to preschool at four and then movies in the theater with popcorn at nine, and then, before I know it, to driving her friends around at seventeen.

***

When I'm all the way done and the kids are both asleep, I think about them.  I miss them.  The idea of them has a spectacularly lush quality that can sometimes be lost in the day to day life that is caring for them.  But these days, one after the other, are gone.  Past.  So, I try to remember that.  I try not to be so itchy.  I try to empty my cup and do my best to slow down.  To relax against the snug restraints of this day to day life.