Tag: #highlysensitiveparent

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New is scary…. everything is so fucking scary

I’m thinking back to Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic, and how much it helped me to change my perspective on fear.

I am in a space right now where things are scary again. I am learning many new skills with understanding the business of solar and how to present numbers and designs to clients. I am so not a numbers gal. This is really intimidating for me. You come out of the gate needing to understand how to present information to people. And I am so literal and it is so important to me to be honest. I am finding if I don’t fully understand something and am trying to explain it as if I do it feels incongruent in such a way that I completely freeze up. So lately I am doubting my ability to close the deals so to speak. This is called a Welcome Call in my world. I mean I know that the District Managers can’t close my deals forever.

So here is what I am trying to do. I am trying to think back to my level of fear before I knocked my first door. The very first day that I tried I sat in my car driving around for hours trying to get enough courage. I texted Courtney lots of times of how afraid I was, and how I couldn’t do it. And she just kept telling me I was so brave, until I was forced to believe it myself. When someone believes in you so thoroughly you have no choice but to rise up to that blessing. She is my blessing. So I knocked. It ended terribly. The woman was beyond rude. And yet I went skipping down the steps with glee at the fact I had mustered enough courage to even knock this first door.

It did not get easier as soon as you would have thought. The next day I got up enough courage to knock three doors and by the time I was done I needed a serious nap. In between each one it probably took an hour to muster the courage. My heart pounded in my chest when I knocked and I hoped they wouldn’t come to the door. When they did I stuttered and stumbled. These nights when bed time came I passed out fully clothed on the outside of my bed. I was too tired to even undress. Now that I am reflecting on this I am thinking in one perspective I could wonder what is wrong that this isn’t easier. I could be nasty to myself. But when I am looking right now I feel like a warrior. Because this is my real experience with this and I am still going. That is the only thing that matters is that you still try. With parenting, with relationships, with learning something new. The only thing that matters is you keep squaring up with your fears. You don’t let them drive the car, they have to come along to keep you safe and aware, but they don’t call the shots.

So 20 days into my 60 day trial period where I have to prove myself I have 4 out of 10 welcome calls. One more and I get to attend a cruise to the Bahamas, and if I get all 10 then Courtney gets to come with me. I love a good challenge so this is fun for me and keeps me feeling alive and engaged. Why not?! It’s the challenge, and the small incentive challenges within the challenge that makes it fun for me. I have always enjoyed being challenged. That is kind of comical if you knew my life, because if I am not challenged from an outside source I will create my own, setting them up like a track of hurdles at a meet. I make pole vault sized hurdles, and then expect myself to get over them as if they were just jumps.

And because I believe I can I do.

The fears nipping at my heels the entire time. You aren’t made to do this. You don’t understand ALL the info you aren’t an expert yet, so you’re going to look stupid at a closing alone. You will stumble and get nervous because these people are intimidating, and think you’re out to screw them over, and if you’re afraid that’s what you’re doing without knowing it, you’ll fear being insincere. If you don’t put everything into one thing then the rest of anything will fall apart. I’ve cut back on my hours of the stable employment that I LOVE to grow myself.

But did you hear that? I did it to grow myself. If I am going to help others grow, my continual self-growth is crucial. Staying fresh and engaged. Again I will think of my hero Elizabeth Gilbert and her style of writing. The fact that before she writes a book she will spend 3-5 years immersed in researching everything about the topic, and then like training for a marathon she quarantines herself with her love, a delicious tryst versus being caged. She shows up dressed and ready early in the morning to commune with her writer’s gift and she creates works that her reader’s love. I want to find my groove with writing, and to do that I need to buy some time, and to buy some time I’m going to need some more money and a space that I feel as if I can commune in.

Our baby is the size of a raspberry this week. 7 weeks and 2 days (ish), it has a tiny heartbeat and looks like a little hunched over tad pole. We get to see it again at the end of this week, and I am wondering when we “graduate” to the normal OB, and who we will pick for that special special task of helping us deliver our baby in a way that feels best for us, and keeping him/her safe until that point.

I have so many questions. I always have so many questions. It used to be annoying to others and I always knew that. Now more and more I see it for the gift it is. To stay curious and open is to be engaged in our lives. I want always to be this way in my life.

There is a work truck outside that has interrupted my morning commune with myself, and I am none too thrilled about it. I’ve tried to do what I can to drown it out. I want my Nature and quiet at the colony in Woodstock. I am still trying to figure that out, as I stash the cash to be able to purchase it. Will I be able to take THAT RISK. When I have that kind of money. Should I not put it to my student loans or a down payment on a different home? So many things need to come before that.

Shouldn’t I be able to write anywhere? But that just isn’t true. Right now I write in the bath tub to drown out all other enough, and in certain ways as you might imagine it isn’t ideal. I want to walk in the woods and have that unique meditation. I think I will have to make friends with the space I am in. Know it well enough that nothing new is spiking my interest before my attention will relax itself enough to produce writing. I need a spiritual space where I feel accepted and alive. I felt that way there. I also felt that way at Omega. I must answer this dream. I must.

So to be able to answer people’s questions and know what I am doing this will require some studying and learning and rehearsing. So I am not frozen in the moment. Truth be told I am probably more interested in all the human aspects of people once i am in the door. So many of them are widows and recently lost a loved one, or new and starting out.

That is what I am interested in, not if I can close the deal.

Such a large portion of life is discovering who we are and who we are not. We can do a great many things that can be taught, but do we want to is the question? For me I have no other choice but to strive for tasks that light me up and make me present. Counseling does that, and yet I still need to stay fresh and learning new things. And I never liked that to be only one thing. I am learning so many things about people from being in their homes and having the challenge of challenging them about a new and scary concept. A new way to source their energy. Tired and overwhelmed people who just don’t want to bother with something new whether it’s a better idea or not.

Anyway that’s another blog post I think. So I’m just here learning new things each day, preparing to turn 38, wondering what I’ll be like as a mom this go round, being in awe and radical gratitude of my capabilities….

Learning is life..

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Money, Divorce, Stress, and Highly Sensitive People

There has been some improvement on the battlefront, but the war has taken a toll.

It’s a humbling experience to realize how many things there are always still to learn, no matter how far you have come. I’m in one of those growth phases right now. My iron will keeps me fighting until I have to surrender and it’s when I do that the real change and healing can happen. The exact thing we avoid, the breakdown. Due to all the what if’s and self criticism and fears, we stay trying to bear down and white knuckle it, until our bodies fail.

For me my body giving out under stress has been a big part of my recovery. I’m experiencing tremendous amounts of stress right now and I want to describe from the point of view of the mental health counselor that is supposed to have all these answers, what this feels like.

This feels like shortness of breath, heart palpitations, painful flushing, feeling like I might be getting early onset Alzheimer’s (lately I’ve been using the wrong words for things), stomach problems, self-esteem problems, extreme fatigue, frequently tearful, overwhelmed even more easily than usual, heartburn lots of heartburn, feeling out of it, trembling, and the list goes on…

When you begin to fantasize about jail as a simpler alternative to everyday life, you know some back to the drawing board brainstorming is necessary.

It’s only now that I can look back on situations I have experienced with kindness, or what I might have tried. I wouldn’t have known then what I needed, and now that I can see with new perspective, I see what an impossible order. And how being hard on oneself is such a dangerous thing.

Once again being divorced is a hard thing for everyone, and to not be hard on oneself because of it.

The stars aligned and schedules cleared (after some controversial tactics that once again open me to criticism), and this morning we did what is always needed and we talked. We somehow avoided the many land mines that can end any attempt at conversation with another blowout. Tread carefully, but still be able to talk about difficult things, but don’t be unkind.

How does anyone ever get through this intact?

Money is the root of all evil and in divorce it’s particularly complicated. As life changes demands change, and children do what children do, they ask for what they want and what they need. And the parents have to figure out what to say yes to, what to say no to, and everything in between. There are so many complicating factors. People who get along and love one another often have hard times agreeing about finances in the best of circumstances.

Now take people who have opinions more than understanding and don’t have a good level of communication. The result I’m sorry to say was, “ask your mom, and mom says “ask your dad”, and the kids hear the stress and want to shrink into a corner and avoid that at all costs.

So in my Highly Sensitive teen son’s case, since like me, he can barely tolerate the discomfort of someone he loves, he decided to try and solve this by taking on the world himself. Suddenly he became like a 40 year old man trying to raise a family and pay bills in his stress level, and all this was happening inside of him.

Folks I cannot stress enough to you that what you see on the outside, especially with adolescents and young adults is often falling short of what is really going on. I’m a therapist and I missed it. I let the face value behaviors make me react and tell a story. I’m not a therapist at home. I’m a human with blind spots, and short comings, and everything I came with from my beginning.

Highly sensitive people are highly conscientious, and they often know ahead of someone else what the need is. When they attempt to accommodate this without the right tools and understanding things can get difficult.

The thing I have found most important in life is to be able to talk to each other. So we can find out what’s really going on. So we don’t say harmful things, so we don’t make decisions we will regret later. So we don’t hold onto pain, and a limited story, and then suffer unnecessarily.

So this morning that’s what we did, and we are now that much closer to understanding and hopefully to a more peaceful home environment. To be able to be our loving sensitive selves more of the time.

🤗💜😍

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The Great Room Cleaning Stand-off

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

My seventeen year old son is brilliant, kind, generous, sensitive and anything a parent could want in a child. However lately we have reached a place where we do not see eye to eye, and I am wracking my brain to crack the code on this situation.

To give you some background I could be described as middle of the road when it comes to cleaning. My wife and I do not fight over household chores. We generally ebb and flow with effort in this department and when one of us ebbs, the other tries to flow. We do this dance fairly seamlessly unlike the resentment filled arguments with past lovers. We came into this both having thought through the complexities of the situation, and choosing to be grateful we have the other, all bags included.

We don’t ask for made beds, or color coordinated sock drawers. We understand that if our room becomes cluttered at times when we are exhausted or extra tired that this will happen with kids sometimes. Our expectations are that things are sanitary, somewhat kept up with etc, and that every couple of weeks you do a deep clean. Sweep, mop, vacuum dust kinda deal. That maybe 2 times yearly you go through all the crap that has amassed, and your clothes and see what you need and what you don’t. And for the love of all that is holy change your bedding at least every two weeks. For obvious reasons :p

About a month ago give or take I noticed that my son wasn’t eating hardly anything but fast food, potato chips, and gummy candies from where he works, Trader Joe’s. These empty containers could be found tucked behind the bed, in drawers etc. The regularity of showering diminished, the laundry piled up, pay stubs cluttered everywhere. The room took on an unsettling odor. And even the smallest task seems to appear insurmountable to him.

I chalked up this struggle to ADHD, as his computer had already been removed from his room so he could get into some kind of organizational routine. So we tried Vyvanse. Thus far the room isn’t clean and his mood is worse. He has new behaviors of lying, being more verbally aggressive, and placing all blame for his current predicament on me.

He got into my phone and read text messages he shouldn’t have, and I’m quite sure this breach of boundaries is the largest culprit of held anger. If you read something out of context and put it through your own fears and emotions it can be a deadly weapon. The result a poisoned relationship. As highly sensitive people it is hard on both of us that this is dragging out in this way.

As a child I wasn’t really raised per say. My grandparents talked at me, but they rarely followed through. And we had no structure built into any family unit. Once I reached a certain age they just often said they didn’t know why I didn’t help around the house etc. I was shamed in front of friends. They felt helpless and would say “you don’t keep your room like hers right.”

So for me I wanted my kids to not only feel part of a family, but to participate as a part of a working unit as well. This has been part necessity and part purposeful through the years. Most of the research I have read suggests children who help others and learn hard work are better off than those with everything done for them. I tend to agree based on my struggles and lack of that in my upbringing.

I know all about choose my battles and I’m confident many parents who would give their eye teeth for a child like mine would say, “just clean it he gets good grades”, or another camp who couldn’t stand the disarray and therefore would clean it out of their need.

I somehow feel it’s extremely important that he cross this hurdle on his own, and that he understands none of us are entitled to anything in this life. It is important to me my children are grateful, humble, and respectful. I was not. I can go on and on about our differences in upbringing there are many, most importantly of which is a lack of any invested parent on my end. However my behavior either way sucked, and it took me most of my life to relearn a better way. I don’t want my son to have this same struggle.

I’m quite sure the more we see the less desirable versions of ourselves in our young charges that we really become upset. And in these moments it’s difficult to be gentle and nurturing. I want to hug him and help him, and by God I also want to slap him. Such a confusing concoction of emotions.

So the stand-off is this: in an effort to not let him off the hook for accountability and responsibility that he will need in this life, and before he goes away to college, I have removed his privileges. A car we have provided and help pay his insurance on, a phone his parents pay for, etc. Now I can’t figure it out. If I were a senior and had to ride the school bus I would have that room cleaned in 2 hours flat. One swift upswing of motivation, be it rooted in anger or whatever.

Motivation! I am providing the motivation. He has dug his heels in and refused. I have bent and tried a more gentle approach after the storms calm. I had given back the car at least to get to work so he doesn’t use all his money on Uber and Lyft. Again 30 bucks for a ride or clean your room?! I bent to try and be an understanding parent. And my reward for having been a willow tree? He lied about the time he got out of work, and then caused a huge scene and protest. To which Courtney’s beloved co-worker and great friend helped defuse. It takes a village folks it really does! And we are lucky.

In all of this what hasn’t happened is him owning his behavior. He will say things like gee why would I lie? You think because I miss my friends. And that I am controlling his life. Now he is determined that he needs help, is depressed, and doesn’t know why he can’t clean his room. So his statement is that he physically can’t clean his room. Is it odd that I can’t understand this?

I have recognized he was over-scheduled with work and lots of high level courses. I can spot the signs of burn out a mile away, and he kept citing these as reasons to again break the rules. So I’ll offer practical solutions to him. I had suggested before classes began to reduce work hours and focus on school. But I won’t let him out of accountability and responsibility in the name of his emotions. In my opinion this does a person a great disservice.

I’ll meet part way. When he asks for help between one of his three parents, and a multitude of extended family, and even my ex partners who love him, he receives it.

And still nothing gives.

Stuck.

And I miss my son.

His response to this is to lay in his room, when he could have just cleaned the room and step into accountability. We each up the bar on stubborn, when what we really need is to let go….

So internet land help?! Share your experiences as a teen or a parent. How did you get through these battles and not lose your hair or your sanity?

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Parenthood is not for the faint of heart….

When I was a kid (I kind of chuckled at this, the joke is I never really was a kid) I used to love roller coaster’s and all thrill type rides. Later, probably after watching any of the Final Destination movies, it began to occur to me that these large machines were as capable of breaking as any, and I could be putting myself in danger. Let’s be honest I hit a point in my life where my imagination ran my world, and what it often told me is that death was somehow after me. So I recall after this occurred I would still try and push myself, but by the time that conglomeration of nuts and bolts reached it’s peak, inside I would want to scream “someone let me back down before something bad happens.” I would want to turn back and the only thing that usually prevented me from doing so (was probably my ego) was the fact that other people behind me were waiting and I would cause a scene. If it weren’t for fear of inconveniencing others I would have marched right back down the line and out to safety, never having plummeted.

*A present time update is that I do not ride those rides. I get dizzy, and also feel like the chiropractor is necessary after a single ride. I am officially “old” 😉

In my life currently with regard to parenthood I am going slowly up and up, imagining my impending doom, and feeling sometimes as if I want to scream, let me off this ride. When you’re a new parent you spend lots of time imagining what the heck people mean when they playfully warn you about the teenage years. I feel like I did not take those warnings seriously enough. What I have learned in my 16 years of parenting that IS comforting is that MOST everything (at least so far) is a phase, which means it does pass, you get a brief breath of fresh air, and then a new struggle will be laid out before you. Just as soon as you feel you have the parenting game figured out….. it changes. 

I used to get so scared and bewildered when caught in the moment that I could only intensely emotionally react to each part of the phase. When it was in its worst I thought I would never make it out alive, and when it resolved finally, I felt I would be safe forever. Both of those illusions can be very dangerous. The reality is that all things in life will ebb and flow, there will be good and bad moments throughout. It’s about making it through the difficult ones and how we manage that, and about enjoying the good while still knowing it will not be some constant state to try and grasp and keep forever. It’s like a flower that you can’t pluck and take with you for it will die. You appreciate that moment, take a snapshot in your mind, and buckle up for the next hurdles.

Currently my hurdles are compounded by my self-components : ADHD (this is a big one), being highly sensitive, Crohn’s Disease, Anxiety, running a full time practice doing a job that while very rewarding, can take a large tax on my available resources, which brings me to “being the type of person who constantly is spread too thin because of their sheer thirst for experience in life and inability to sit still, even for a second”, PTSD (also a big one), an ex-husband who does not really fall into the category of supportive (understatement), personal struggle with self-image including still feeling inside like I look like my 20 year old self and becoming terrified when I see my “nearing 40 self in the mirror”. I am sure there are more, but these serve the purpose for now.

At any given moment I burn at 1,000 KW hours (this probably doesn’t even make sense and I’m not going to fact check it, because if I do my thought train will leave the tracks, and my inspiration may be lost). I burn bright ok, strong and bright and I go and go UNTIL I drop. When I have dropped you WILL KNOW. If you see my drop you are most likely to be my partner or my kids. The drop can appear as ugly snoring on the couch curled up with Sig, but more often the drop appears with me being able to hardly focus on anything, and being very SHORT. Here I sit knowing I can show up day in and day out warm and friendly, an ALLY for my clients, and knowing that my children get what appears to be “the shit end of the stick”, the very worst parts of me. Writing this line even almost brought me to tears. They get me running on fumes, and we all scratch and claw and bite at one another at the end of the day.

And here is the epiphany fellow parent travelers who come across this: The great trick here is this is also what I get, “the very worst parts of them”. I said to my partner the other day in an adult temper tantrum moment, “but I don’t want to be the mom”. I came across a lovely woman on my travels to Texas. She is from Iowa and has a beautiful family that sounds like a dream. When I shared some vulnerabilities with her she said something to me, that I will keep, treasure, and now share with others. She essentially told me that our kids are for other people and not ourselves. We are home base, they come home and refuel, and pack up and go out into the world to others. I think I didn’t know, that I didn’t know, if I was ready to be home base yet or not.

When we feel safe and loved really well, our full selves are able to be present. This means also our selfish and mean selves, selves we have to learn to manage. I want to show up for my kids journey with this. *disclaimer this is not an excuse for blatant poor behavior and if you come up with some code for how to know exact lines around this please share it with me. Discerning how much wiggle room to give, and when being a parent takes priority over being a friend is a costant battle.

Children when they are young are very gratifying, they love the daylights out of ya. They give and give and give, and would fix everything if they could. Their warm light brightened the path for me to come back from years of a neglectful  and confusing childhood. My children saved me. I’ve struggled with, is this ok?, should I be guilty for this? Are they too parentified? So many things. The reality is though they are my greatest motivator, for which I would never have traveled this far. I need to keep this in perspective as I journey these treacherous paths.

So now I talk to myself as much as I talk to anyone reading…. now is my time to fully bloom into adulthood (my path with this has been affected by my personal story, and does not appear on a traditional timeline, if anybody’s really does) and to be their harbor and be patient with them while they go through the phase of selfish discovery, the phase I went through very latently. I went through it while they were young. This happened because I didn’t have the space they do with me. I have to always remember that fact. When I am lost I have to always remember that fact.

I need to find a way to reconnect with my 13 year old daughter. Some of that journey has begun by reconnecting with what my 13 year old self may have left unresolved. Some of it has a life of it’s own I can’t control. Some components I believe are genetic and temperament and some things are beyond the scope of being able to figure out. But I’ll be here keeping on… trying. Because it is what I know how to do. I don’t know how to give up. That is my one true gift. I didn’t give up on becoming a parent. I continue to become one every single day. There are always new lessons and growth to be had. The most I have ever learned in life is from being a parent.