TRAP #10 - LABELING
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 78.
Hello, my friends. I am back to covering mindset traps. It's so funny, but spending the past few weeks on the topic of being present has actually been a bit of a mind-bender.
It's surprisingly difficult to stay present, even when you're being intentional about it. I was literally on a walk outside earlier, and for some reason, I remembered to be present. It's one of those things that I do every once in a while.
I'll just tell myself, be present. And it's an invitation to just check in. What am I feeling? What am I thinking? Why am I doing what I'm doing? So here I am on this walk, and my mind is wandering all over the place.
I had this sense of being in a hurry, kind of like I wanted to get the walk over with. Meanwhile, I'm outside. It was a bit overcast, but the air felt crisp and cool.
Not so cold that I had to be bundled up. I could smell logs burning on a fire somewhere. And here I was, rushing, completely oblivious to all of it.
I was missing the scent of the fire and the light touch of the rain. I was missing the feeling of taking deep breaths of fresh air and moving my body. I was missing all of this because I was in a hurry.
To do what, exactly? Before I gave myself the reminder to be present, my mind had been going a million miles per hour, thinking about everything I wanted to accomplish that day. Wondering if my son had remembered to go to SAT prep while I was on my walk, thinking about the week ahead. There were no real problems, and there was nothing I had to do or solve.
And yet my brain was still in overdrive. And so I give you this simple reminder to be present in your life. If you're on a walk, be present on the walk.
If you're doing dishes or folding laundry, be aware. Be awake. It can feel uncomfortable, but also, as I said last week, you get to observe your mind and then decide, is this what I want to be thinking right now? Is this how I want to be feeling? Is this who I want to be? It can be so easy to fall into the trap of these stories we tell about ourselves and our lives.
And so let's keep going with the exploration of mindset traps. Today, I want to talk about labeling. This trap involves giving labels to yourself or to other people based on specific behaviors or characteristics.
I actually think this is a fun one to tackle on the heels of Thanksgiving and as we head into the upcoming winter holidays. Just to recap, I've been doing this series on the mindset traps we fall into as moms of teens as we approach the empty nest. We're on trap number 10, believe it or not, and there are a few more I have left to cover.
So far, we've tackled perfectionism, catastrophizing, validation seeking, confirmation bias, all-or-nothing thinking, and many more. So let's get into labeling. What are some examples? Well, in families, there's the black sheet.
This is often a label we give to the family member who is, at least by the family's standards, not going with the flow. It could be because of some bad behavior they've exhibited in the past, or it could simply be because they're wired differently or misunderstood, or maybe they just don't want to be forced to come to family events on Sunday. Often, there's someone in the family labeled oversensitive because they might react strongly to criticism or suggestions, even when well-intended.
There's the responsible one, someone who's tended to step into organizational roles in the family. Then there's the lazy one, the absent-minded one. We can even give these titles in kind of a loving or joking way.
We don't even mean any harm by it. It's just who that person is, right? But if you've ever been on the receiving end of one of these labels, you've likely experienced some of the downsides. I think it's definitely true, as we've grown up in families with siblings where we earned these nicknames in our teens or 20s, and now here we are, still defined by individual traits we may or may not have even had 30 years ago.
And let's face it, the way we see someone, the stories we tell about others, or more to the point, the labels that we put on people, have consequences. That person who was labeled the black sheep by the family in his teens because he didn't fall in line with the rest of the siblings, maybe he just chose his own path and was then considered disrespectful and not supporting the family. That label tends to stick.
It can influence the way siblings perceive each other, and even worse, can make the person who is or was called the black sheep feel like everyone still treats them that way 30 years later, even if that's not the way people are truly trying to treat him. The overly sensitive one might feel like they can never have an opinion or exhibit emotion without being taken less seriously. The absent-minded one may feel like they're only known for what they forget and not for what they accomplish.
Even positive labels like the responsible one can backfire because now everyone just assumes that one sister in particular is going to plan everything, and so no one bothers to help. Words, labels, have consequences. Those of you who've been through my coaching program will laugh because I'm also known to say, words, words, words, when someone tells me someone else's words hurt them or piss them off.
Words are literally just words until we make them mean something, and I still stand by that 100 percent. But this only underscores my point. When words become labels, they mean something.
But what they mean and the consequences they have are all based on each individual's interpretation of that label. With each trap I've been exploring in this series, I've been sharing how our brains automatically, subconsciously, fall into these traps as a way of protecting us. They may be trying to keep us safe from danger, possibly trying to minimize pain or discomfort.
Our brains could be trying to maximize our pleasure or comfort, and also to minimize effort. Usually by minimizing the mental effort it takes for our brains to sift through the information we perceive in the world. There are three reasons our brains default to the mindset trap of labeling.
First, as you can imagine, it simplifies things. Labeling provides a quick and seemingly straightforward way to make sense of complex situations by assigning a clear judgment. It's our mind's way of sorting through the complexities of human behavior and personality to give someone a label.
Meme girl. Karen. High maintenance.
Jerk. The nice guy. When I share these examples of labels, you and I might define them in slightly different ways or have different people we're both picturing in our minds, but you kind of get what I mean.
I don't need to go into detail about what it means to be a meme girl because you probably knew one growing up. You may even know some now. And if you have a daughter, you pray that she doesn't become one or fall in with that type of girl.
If you give your daughter a warning to be careful about the meme girls, you don't even need to go into detail about what you mean with her. In fact, some of these labels have become part of pop culture. Not that I'm always on top of that.
Another example is the Karen, in case you haven't heard of it. I'm not labeling people actually named Karen, but a Karen, in quotes, is a label designated for a woman who acts entitled or demanding in a way that would be considered by most ridiculous, over the top. A Karen might be known to say, let me speak to your manager, but does it follow then if you ask to speak to a manager that you're necessarily a Karen? Ever since I heard the definition of the word Karen, I've been a little hesitant to ask for a manager for fear of being labeled one.
Another related reason labeling helps us is that it helps us avoid ambiguity by assigning people to categories. You probably remember them from high school, the in crowd, the jocks, the theater kids. For us moms, there's the car line moms, the PTO moms, the working moms, the superwoman mom.
It becomes easier for our brain to put others and even ourselves into these buckets. And last, labeling provides a temporary sense of emotional relief. You could even say that it helps gives us comfort to have a sense of control or understanding the situation.
For example, it's easier to label someone as lazy than to understand why they're not doing what you asked. It's a relief to call someone a mean girl when they do something you don't like. It's just the kind of person they are.
I also want to say, for all of these reasons, it's not necessarily wrong to label, particularly if your intention isn't to be mean to someone or even to yourself. It really can be comforting to label people or label your own group because it can provide a sense of belonging, a sense of this is who we are and this is who they are. But let's explore how labeling can go wrong when we blindly apply labels to our kids, for example.
You know, I'll be the first to agree that life with teens can be challenging. One moment we have these agreeable, loving young people who want to do everything with us and are relatively easy to interact with and seemingly overnight they change. It's not one size fits all, but at some point every kid is going to have to go through a phase of figuring out who they are in relation to their parents.
And although that doesn't have to be a bad thing, these changes can be difficult for us moms to navigate. But it's also interesting to consider that we've probably been labeling our kids for a long time. Some labels even go back to infancy.
Have you ever heard someone say about their kid, that's the way he was when he was a baby, super easygoing or colicky, as if whatever personality they had at birth is clearly on display in their teen years. And who knows, maybe there's some truth to that. But ask yourself, how did you label your kids when they were younger? Was your kid the shy child or the quiet one? Were they clingy? Maybe they were loud or more positively energetic.
Were they gifted? Maybe you didn't tell people, but you and your husband might have considered that it was true. Or did you worry that they weren't a high achiever and so you called them a hard worker? Or possibly that he's an artist or an athlete, maybe disorganized. Was your child a troublemaker or adventurous? Were they a picky eater? These labels, many of them we may even have said to our child's face, they weren't meant to be negative.
We're just observing behavior and calling a spade a spade, right? I can't help but think of how my older son has often been labeled the math kid. He did indeed love math and he still does. So maybe the label fits.
But it also came with a lot of pressure. His peers made comments and had expectations of him and how he would perform in math competitions, for example. And I'll admit that there were times when I had expectations around how he might use math to distinguish himself in the college process.
Here he was, only a teenager, and it felt to him at times, I'm sure, that his destiny was being determined by something he really cared about in middle school. These labels, even when meant as a compliment, can have sharp edges. I overheard a woman calling her son gifted.
I understood from her description of him that he's still in elementary school. This boy also has two younger brothers who the women gives different labels. Also positive, but not gifted.
It's quite possible that she never says this in front of her kids. But what is a kid to do with being called gifted by their mother? What kind of expectations are we setting of our kids when we tell them they are inherently something? And perhaps even worse, what message might she be sending to her other children by calling them something other than gifted? These things get even trickier when we talk about labeling our teens. These words really start to matter as teenagers start to grapple with questions about who they are.
I talked about some of the theoretically positive labels we can give to our teens, but more often we hear negative labels, like he's lazy or a troublemaker. Maybe she's an underachiever or he's rebellious. Again, shy, quiet, and introvert.
This in contrast to the popular teen. Do any of these labels truly describe who a teenager is? We'd like to say we're just giving adjectives to describe behavior, except when I say lazy teenager, you know immediately what I mean. You have a picture in your head of what that looks like, and now we've associated with this teenager who I've labeled lazy.
How is a teen likely to react if you tell them they're lazy? Actually, let me back up. Why would we call our teen lazy in the first place? Maybe their room's a mess or they didn't take out the trash like we asked them to. Does that make him lazy? I don't know.
Maybe they like their room messy. They have to live in it, so why is it really a problem if it's messy? And so they didn't take out the trash. Are they lazy or did they just forget? It's clearly on our list of priorities, but not theirs.
Does that imply that they're inherently lazy? The truth is our kid doesn't clean up the room, but what we make it mean is that we now have to clean up after them, or the cleaning lady has to come do more work, or it's ridiculous that we work all day and come home to a mess. We get pissed. And from this frustration, we say, you're lazy.
I guarantee you that your teen doesn't see it the same way. So now they hear you, their mom saying, you're lazy. They think, you're wrong.
I've been working hard at school and cleaning my room isn't important to me right now. And now the teen is pissed. No one feels understood or supported.
That label lazy, it hasn't brought you or your teen any closer together, and it certainly hasn't cleaned the room. How about the label disrespectful? You almost have to use a capital D for this, right? So many women have come to me telling me about their disrespectful teens. They roll their eyes.
They talk back. They raise their voice, slam doors. I get it.
It is not a fun time, but why are they doing this? I'm not even going to guess, but have you ever stopped to ask, are they going through something or are they reacting negatively to something we said? Maybe we even snapped at them first. I'll admit I've been guilty of this myself. The problem is we see our teens behave the way teens sometimes do because they have these big emotions and don't always know what to do with them.
So our kids are acting like kids and we're making it all about us. We're usually taking it personally and we're labeling the behavior disrespectful because we don't want it. In other words, however you're acting right now, dear child, please pull yourself together and stop it because that's not welcome here.
Your moods, your emotions, guess who's disrespecting who now? No, I'm not saying that you don't ever set boundaries, but when I'm met with a big emotion from my boys, instead of labeling it as something bad, labeling them as something bad, I check my own emotions at the door and I get curious. Where's this behavior coming from? How can I understand this before I cast judgment on it? Although they may not always act like it, the words we say to our teens matter. We as moms are one of the most important adults in their lives and if we're calling them names, giving them labels, it's hard not for them to internalize this to some degree.
Our kids can rebel against us when we give them a label that doesn't fit with who they think they are, but these labels can also become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you're called something over and over and over, don't you start to believe that this might be true about you? Labels can also limit personal growth, discouraging our kids from seeing mistakes as opportunities for improvement. If I'm just a lazy, irresponsible person, then how am I supposed to fix that? It's just who I am.
And finally, as you can see from some of the examples I've given, labeling can strain the relationships we have with our teens, or honestly with anyone in our lives. We are each so much more complex than a single label, whether positive or negative. One mistake doesn't make us a failure.
We also tend to deliver labels with emotional intensity. When you use a label from a place of anger or even jealousy or insecurity, these judgments carry a lot of negative weight and intention. Just think about the negative, possibly permanent impact of giving someone a label that they begin to see as an inherent and unchangeable part of their identity.
Were you ever called names in high school or in middle school? I bet you remember what they were, and some of it might still sting. Our parents probably gave us labels. Think about what labels your parents gave you.
How much did you read into them? Compare the labels they gave you with the labels they gave your siblings, or the labels you heard your friends' parents give them. Words and labels matter because we each make them matter. And unfortunately, even when you don't mean a label negatively, it can have a negative impact, particularly on our kids.
And let's put a mirror on ourselves for a moment. What are the negative labels you give yourself? Disorganized, unmotivated, impatient, stuck, anxious, codependent? What really is the upside of these labels, truly? We think we're just stating the facts, but why? Calling yourself disorganized because we have a pile of papers in the kitchen, or because we lost that permission form? Our email inbox is a mess? Welcome to the club, my friend. Do you label yourself unmotivated? Maybe because you're not sure what comes next, you don't feel like working out, don't feel like taking on what feels like the big hurdle of creating new purpose? Does that make you unmotivated? Or just someone who hasn't decided to take action yet? Do you label yourself an anxious person because you feel anxiety about your kids in the future? If you have an emotion like feeling anxious or stuck or sad or unhappy, does that mean this is who you are? The way we talk about ourselves, the way we describe ourselves, the way we even interpret the emotions that we're feeling, this all becomes a narrative in our minds that can either empower us or completely undermine our self-esteem.
We can feel inadequate or stressed that there's something truly wrong with us, that we're inherently broken or not equipped to handle our lives. The more women I coach who experience all of these negative emotions, particularly during the stage of motherhood, the more I've come to understand and appreciate how normal anxiety, fear, sadness, lack of motivation and purpose, guilt, resentment, dread, how all of these emotions are stepping stones to the next stage of our evolution. I can feel stuck, but I am not inherently stuck.
When can we start taking our negative emotions as a cue to examine our thoughts? What beliefs am I holding on to that are creating this feeling? And do I want to choose those beliefs again or consider letting them go? Words matter. We get to make words and labels mean whatever we want to make them mean, but have you examined the words you're using to describe yourself, your kids, your partner? It doesn't even matter if you actually verbalize the words. This type of thinking impacts our behavior and our expectations.
We are all so much more than a label. And even if it might be true that we're depressed or stuck or feel anxious, even if that's the reality of our lives right now, do we have to make it mean that this is who we are? Or can we acknowledge that this is a part of our experience right now? That there's a way that I'm interpreting my life that's creating these feelings? And that might not always be true. If you're wondering how to shed the beliefs that are keeping you stuck and anxious and depressed, this is exactly the process I teach in my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0. In this program, we take a deep dive into your thoughts and beliefs about your kids, your life, and most importantly, about yourself.
These thoughts define your emotional experience, and you have more control over that than you think. Words matter. Choose yours carefully.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
