Saying yes when we mean no

My article last week about being a mediocre mum seemed to land with people on my mailing list. Here I take a look at the kind of things that can hold a “good mum” (or “good dad”) pattern in place and have us struggling as parents. It's also relevant to just about any relationship you can think of.

From a very young age, we are given messages about what it means to be “good”. These messages come from home, from school, from media, from all around. It also seems that as young children, we want to please adults. Maybe that’s kind of a built-in evolutionary thing. We may notice that when we are “good” they are nicer to us, and we equate this on some sort of primal level with survival.

Being good can include things like letting our parents dress us when we are very small, dressing ourselves once we’re big enough, and as the years go on maybe doing the washing up, being ready at the time we were asked to, cooking the dinner, etc.

Being good might also mean not bothering a parent when we can see they are in a bad mood. Or keeping quiet about the things we notice but no one wants to talk about. Or reading the room and adjusting our behaviour so as not to annoy anyone. Being good might mean sidelining our own needs so that we can look after the needs or wants of others.

Ultimately, we might conclude that in order to be good, we need to give up on being our authentic selves.

It’s going to be different for everyone, but these are common themes that come up in the work I do, especially with parents who struggle with over-giving. And I’m not saying that anyone is to blame or that anyone could have done anything any differently. I’m saying that we are all acting on our conditioning, as were our own parents when they raised us.

Because this conditioning happens from such a young age, these thoughts that we gather about what it means to be “good” become largely invisible. They become the reality we live in. They become the lens through which we see everything and everyone. We carry them into adult life and for as long as we are living according to them, we’re likely to experience exhaustion, depletion, burnout and chronic health conditions.

We’re also likely to feel resentment towards other people, which hurts everyone, including ourselves. I know. I’ve been there. I’m still there sometimes.

My own experience of parenting, informed by these sorts of beliefs, has at times been one of trying to meet everyone’s wants and needs, while relegating my own to the bottom of the heap for “one day, when the children are older/grown up/left home”.

As my children grew older and their needs became more complex, I realised, that day is never coming if I continue parenting in this draining way.

Here are some examples of things I have done, over the years, in an attempt to be a “good mum”:

• Ignored sensations like hunger because I was so focused on my children’s wants and needs, or wanted to avoid the meltdown that might come from me saying “No, mummy can’t play with you right now because I need to eat”.

• Said yes to requests for “one more story” or “one more game” or whatever, past the point where I had anything left to give, because it felt too difficult to say no.

• Agreed to activities or playdates that were inconvenient, so as not to be the only parent who said no.

• Avoided asking for help around the house because it seemed easier to do it myself than go through the discomfort of being ignored or argued with.

I’m not saying anything about whether anyone should or should not do these things. They’re just examples of things I’ve found myself doing repeatedly to the detriment of my own health, without looking for alternatives that would be more respectful of everyone.

The thing that has radically changed all of this for me is understanding that the discomfort that comes along with saying no is not information about what I should do.

The discomfort is information about what it being believed, and it is safe to feel it.

This is still an edge for me and I definitely don’t have it “nailed”. But more and more, when I find myself feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and resentful, this is a red flag for me to look at whether I’m taking responsibility for my own needs.

I want everyone in my family to thrive. And my family includes me. It feels really uncomfortable to go against the conditioned beliefs and actually say no when it’s what I need to say. For me this has become a price worth paying, and far less painful and damaging to health and relationships than burnout and resentment.

Can you relate to any of this?

#SeeClearly #Parenting #PeoplePleasing