THE WORRY MINDSET TYPE
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 95.
Hello, my friends. Thank you for joining me for this series on mindset trap types as they apply to us moms navigating life with teens and the transition from motherhood to the empty nest, what I call the empty nest straddle. Now, you don't need a life coach to tell you that anxiety and worry are a part of life as moms with teens.
It feels like a given that there are lots of things to worry about. And this is true even if your kid is generally a good kid. But here's the part where as a life coach, I'm going to shake things up a bit for you.
It's not your teen that's causing your anxiety. It's also not your partner or the father of your teen or your mother-in-law. It's not the uncertainty of the future or the fact that your child will be leaving home one day.
The reason you feel anxiety is because of the way you think about your teen or your partner or your future or your mother-in-law. Your emotions are caused by your perception of your life. Imagine you look at your life through a pair of sunglasses that are tinted with your own individual shade of color so that what you see is tinted just so.
Tinted so that you don't see the world exactly as it is, but through a film of color. The tint of your sunglasses is impacted by many things, your upbringing and past experiences, your values and preferences. So many influences contribute to how you view the world and there's nothing wrong with how you view the world.
But the way that you perceive the world is slightly or maybe even drastically different from the way everyone else in your life views the world. Okay, so what? Well, this perception you have of the world informs your preferences, the way you want things in your life to be. It forms your expectations, what's important to you, what makes you happy or unhappy, what you view as a problem.
Look, your mind is this powerful supercomputer that's processing information about the world around you constantly and measuring what it sees against its preferences and expectations. And when our mind notices in the world that there's something it doesn't want, then this friction, the discomfort of us thinking we don't want what we see in the world, this manifests itself as a series of vibrations in our body that we call emotion. So let's look at anxiety for a moment.
Think about how anxiety feels in your body. See if you can describe it in terms of a physical set of sensations. For me, anxiety feels like a pit in my stomach, a clenching.
I might even feel a clenching or tightness in my throat. My breathing is shallow and maybe strained. It feels like there might be something sitting on my chest, a weight.
My heart could be beating rapidly. I might feel sweaty or clammy. If I were to describe it in terms of colors and shapes, I would say it would be dark, sharp, hard, unyielding.
None of these sensations are pleasant by any means. But as I've spent time with this feeling, really practicing the art of allowing emotion, even anxiety, I've found comfort in realizing that while the physical sensations of anxiety aren't pleasant, they're also not necessarily painful. Certainly not life-threatening.
For me, when anxiety has been a problem are those moments when I fight against it. Almost this feeling of, this shouldn't be happening. You panic.
These physical sensations can be intense enough that they actually reinforce in our mind that there's a problem. If you've ever woken up in the middle of the night and started thinking about a problem that makes you anxious, the more you think, the more you start to feel these physical sensations of anxiety, and it can almost spiral downward. We can take this as evidence either that there's really something we should feel anxious about, or evidence that there's a problem with us that we feel this way.
For some of us, these physical symptoms can take over to the point where it seems like the only solution is medication. And I want to honor that some of these symptoms aren't just all in our heads. You may be in perimenopause, menopause or postmenopause, and so your hormones are fluctuating or just no longer present.
In menopause, the decline in estrogen impacts serotonin in your body, and this neurotransmitter helps you regulate mood, emotions, and sleep. And so it's no surprise that one of the impacts of this is the potential for increased irritability, anxiety, or even depression. These hormonal changes also impact the balance of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine.
Again, these neurotransmitters play a role in regulating our mood. Does it strike you as unfair that these hormonal changes hit us at the exact same time we're experiencing life with teens and all of this uncertainty and transition? I mean, come on. Hormone replacement therapy is one option that many women are increasingly looking to as a solution to this problem that Dr. Mary Claire Haber refers to as estrogen deprivation.
HRT involves supplementing some combination of estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone to stabilize hormone levels and alleviate symptoms of menopause. To add to this, estrogen therapy can prevent bone loss and reduce the risk of osteoporosis, as well as cardiovascular disease, and can also play a role in maintaining cognitive function. It's also important to note that research in the 80s reported a link between HRT and some cancers, particularly breast cancer.
But more recent and thorough studies, including large randomized controlled trials through the Women's Health Initiative, have suggested that this risk is relatively small. I don't offer HRT as a recommendation, but one area to explore if you feel you're interested in options to alleviate the physical symptoms of menopause, including the sensations of anxiety. Where many of us have tended to go is to antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, which do offer short-term relief from the symptoms of anxiety.
The downsides of these medications include drowsiness, impaired cognitive function like memory problems, and most notably, physical dependence. The risk with any medication is that your body can become accustomed to the medication and then requires it to function normally. Again, this isn't a commercial for anti-anxiety drugs, nor is it a warning against it.
But just food for thought as you explore all of your options when it comes to the anxiety you might be feeling about your life. And I'm certainly not an expert on HRT or prescribed medications, but I want you to consider that whether you go the route of HRT, medication, or nothing at all, or even if you turn to wine or food or other buffers to dull the negative emotional vibrations in your body, no matter what you turn to, you are still left with your mind. Medication may dim the physical symptoms and HRT could help you with mood regulation, but at the end of the day, you are still going to have to live your life and your mind is still going to be processing the circumstances of your life through your tinted sunglasses.
Your teen is still going to be doing what they're doing. The other people in your life are still going to be doing what they're doing. And the future is still going to be uncertain.
In other words, no matter what you take to manage the symptoms of your life, you're still going to have to live your life. So what I want to really dive into with you today is how to approach your life in a way that takes control of what I call the worry mindset. Now, when we're talking mindset, I want to distinguish between two different parts of your brain, the primal brain or your amygdala and your prefrontal cortex.
The primal brain's job is essentially to keep you alive. You can think of this in the context of three basic goals that you seek pleasure, like food and shelter, that you avoid pain, that you avoid things that might put you in danger, and that you conserve energy. So the amygdala receives sensory input from other parts of the brain which sense what's going on in your environment.
So let's say your brain detects a loud noise, then the amygdala will immediately detect a potential threat, then triggers a rapid fear response that basically bypasses the need for conscious awareness. We don't even have to think about protecting ourselves, our brain triggers this response automatically. So this fear response we often call fight or flight, the amygdala releases adrenaline and cortisol, which physically prepare us to either fight or to flee.
So it's amazing that our brains and bodies can react to threats in such an immediate and powerful way. But there's a downside, particularly in our lives today, when we're not constantly confronted with life threatening dangers. The problem is that our primal brain acts so quickly without us really thinking.
And so before you know it, you experience a rush of adrenaline and cortisol. And this can exacerbate our feelings of anxiety about a situation. So let's take an example, if someone you knew were to jump out at you unexpectedly, the amygdala would automatically trigger this fear response.
But the moment you saw that the danger wasn't real, you would feel a sense of relief. But in the meantime, your body would have already released cortisol and adrenaline. So you would feel this lingering physical impact from the shock of the jump scare.
But what you most likely wouldn't do is keep thinking about the jump scare as a problem, unless you were really pissed off at this person who jumped out at you. But generally speaking, you would let it go because you had resolved in your mind the threat. In other words, your brain realized there was no threat.
Whatever lingering physical stress or anxiety you felt in your body, you would most likely allow because you would know that it was the false alarm that caused that feeling of stress in your body. But what happens when the threat isn't something that you can resolve right away? And this is where I think we end up as moms in the empty nest straddle. The buzz of an underlying threat seems to be constantly present.
Whether you're worried about your teen's safety, their happiness or mental health, maybe they get bad news and you're standing on edge to see how they'll take it, or they're not doing what you think they should be doing and you perceive that this is going to have consequences for them. There are so many ways we can perceive danger. And the danger, as I touched on in the last episode, the primer on mindset traps, the danger is the potential for emotional pain.
I can't tell you how many of my clients share with me that when their kids hurt, they hurt. I can't say that I'm any different. It can feel like our emotional well-being is biologically attuned to the well-being of our children.
And thank God for that maternal instinct. Our motivation to avoid danger and seek out comfort has extended to our children. And as a result, our kids have emerged from childhood having avoided as many dangers as it was physically and mentally possible for us to have prevented.
We were even able to sweep away their emotional pain a good amount of the time. If they were sad, a hug from mom would work wonders, feeling not a cookie or a distraction. How many of us wouldn't do anything to access that magic, instant cure for a teen's disappointments, their loneliness and hurt? Only this instant cure isn't available to us anymore, either because the hurts aren't as simple or because our teens don't really want our hugs and assurances that everything will be okay.
So if we aren't in a position to take away our teens' pain, both the possibility of real physical pain and danger and the prospect of or reality of their emotional pain, where does that leave us? Essentially, we find ourselves as moms of teens in a state of powerlessness. We used to be super moms, able to take away our children's pain and discomfort. And now it's like we've lost our superpowers.
We can't take away the hurt that our teens are experiencing. And as a result, we can't seem to let go of our own pain, our anxiety and our worry, our sadness. So let's go back to our primal brain, the amygdala, the part of our mind that's motivated to help us avoid pain.
I love this part of my brain. Honestly, of course, I want to avoid pain, both physical and emotional. Who among us would proactively sign up for pain? I even like to think of this part of my brain as a young version of myself, a toddler version of Jennifer with big eyes filled with tears, looking up at me saying, I'm scared.
How can I not love her and want to help her? Just as I loved and supported my boys when they were young enough to want to be held, to want my reassurances. At our core, we just want to be free from pain, to be safe, and at peace, maybe even happy if we're ambitious. Although most days when I used to struggle with my boys, I remember being willing to settle for just peace.
I had a really powerful talk with my son who's in college the other day. And he was talking about friendships and his major, and even questioning if he chose the right college. In the past, I would have tried to reassure him and take away his anxiety over his choices.
We want to try and convince our kids that it's all going to turn out okay, but they shouldn't worry when at the same time we find ourselves falling into the same mindset traps. It comes down to this perception we have that if we make the right choices, do the right thing, go on the best path, that somehow we'll find that elusive peace and happiness we so desperately want in our lives. The fundamental thought error that we fall into is that we think there's something outside of us that can create these feelings of peace and happiness.
And because we have in the past found peace and happiness and attributed these feelings to things outside of us, we've reinforced this belief that the circumstances of our lives have to line up to be just right in order for us to feel that peace and happiness. Now, as I listen to my son's concerns about how he's going to spend his summers and which major he's going to choose, I know in my heart that ultimately, whatever he decides, doesn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things. Do the decisions we make point us down a particular path and might shape our future? Yes, absolutely.
But do these choices necessarily determine our peace and happiness? It might seem like a theoretical question, except there is an answer. No matter what path you choose, you still have to decide that this path is the one that makes you happy. And you also have the power to decide the opposite.
But as we stand at this point in our lives, when so much is changing, we can also fall victim to the mindset traps that create worry and anxiety. So much is uncertain for our children, and for us. And uncertainty is dangerous, at least when it comes to our primitive brains.
We subconsciously think that not knowing what the future holds, and also not having control over certain decisions that might determine the future, the infinite possibilities for the future, these all contain a high risk for emotional pain. So what do our brains do when they perceive danger in uncertainty and lack of control? Well, they want to be certain. And they want to try to regain control.
So there are four particular mindset traps that come into play here. And these are catastrophizing, all or nothing thinking, fear of the unknown, and emotional reasoning. These four traps together I put into the worry mindset.
And here's what's going on broadly with all four of these traps. Our minds create anxiety in an effort to avoid pain. It sounds counterintuitive, actually, but it's very real.
The way our brains perceive the circumstances around us when we sense that the future is unknown, or that choices that we have or our teens make today could have consequences, our brains perceive danger, and then go into overdrive trying to find solutions. The most powerful example of this is that middle of the night thinking I talked about earlier. You know, you wake up in the middle of the night and you start thinking.
It could be as simple as thinking about everything you want to get done the next day. Or maybe you start thinking about a negative interaction you had with your teen. Or you think about whether they studied enough for their exams.
Or you wonder if things will work out with their friends. You wonder if you've done enough to help them be successful on their own. Maybe you start thinking about your kids being gone and wonder if you have what it takes to find new meaning and happiness in your life.
We can judge all of this as idle worry. We even beat ourselves up for not being able to let all of this go, particularly when this means that we waste precious hours of sleep and wake up the next day feeling exhausted. But have you considered that all of this worry is your mind trying desperately to find solutions? Notice how hard it is to let go of the thoughts creating worry.
Once you start down that path, your brain doesn't want to let it go because these thoughts represent risks and possibilities to avoid that risk. So for example, if you start thinking about how your teen seemed distant when she got home and didn't want to talk about why. You don't know what's going on, but your mind wants to find certainty.
So you brainstorm possibilities. Does it have to do with her boyfriend? Or maybe that friend who's always being mean to her? Maybe she didn't do well on that math test. Your mind might even start crafting solutions for each of these scenarios.
If it's the boyfriend, maybe I should convince her to just get over him. She can do better. Or if it's the math test, you might think you should email the teacher or get your daughter extra help.
Notice how creative our minds can be, even with absolutely no information about what's really going on. Our minds would rather know than be stuck in the dark. So we try to manufacture certainty.
Even if that means we entertain multiple possibilities, and then try to find solutions to all of these problems. Or maybe you know or have a good idea about what's going on right now, and it's not good. Maybe you discover your teen is experimenting with drugs.
Or they could be really struggling to make friends, maybe struggling in school. Your teen could be really open about the challenges they're facing, and now you have this information. And all of this spins into stories in your mind about how much worse things can get.
You know that your teen, and by extension you, feel terrible right now. But it can only get worse. This type of thinking only exacerbates the urgency we feel to fix whatever's happening right now, so that we can avoid even more pain in the future.
Whether we're combating uncertainty or real problems right now, our brains also want to simplify. And one of the ways they do this is by thinking in extremes. When there are only two choices, one good and one bad.
It's much easier for our brains to contemplate clear and straightforward scenarios rather than having to get our heads around an infinite number of possibilities. We can think about the future and fall into the trap of thinking that there's only one right answer or choice, if we could only figure out what that is. Or if we think we already know the right path and it's a matter of choosing that one or else.
It's interesting to consider that our brains actually feel safer and more comfortable with limited, even binary choices. And these choices can actually keep us from seeing the full breadth and beautiful possibility of how many different ways things can actually turn out really well. But when we find ourselves exhausted from this anxious, worrying feeling, we try to convince ourselves to let it go, to be optimistic that it will all work out.
And the reality is that if your mind is in overdrive, trying to problem solve around these uncertain outcomes or risky circumstances, we can't just tell our brains to stop. Because in addition to your brain wanting to be safe and certain, when we notice ourselves feeling anxious, we can use that as evidence that there's a problem. And look, if we're feeling anxious and attribute that emotion to something outside of us, specifically in this case, the uncertainty of our future or some current situation that we believe is challenging or risky, then the only possible solution our brains can come up with to let go of that anxiety is to change the circumstances.
Either to create certainty or to eliminate the current risk. And look, if we could change all the circumstances in our lives so that we would never have to feel anxiety or emotional pain, well, it actually sounds great. But would we really even want that? One of the most basic, primal fears that we have in life is that we or someone we love will die.
We want to avoid this at all costs. Except this is inevitable. And let's just say we did all somehow live forever.
Would our lives be as precious? Would this time we have with our kids at home be as special if they never left home? These are clearly hypothetical, somewhat rhetorical questions, because of course our lives are finite and our kids are most likely going to leave us. Actually, we even want this for them, as painful as it might be to let them go. So what if we could create some compassion for our primitive minds? That small girl within each one of us who wants desperately to avoid pain and to stay safe? Of course she does.
But also, as adults, with that part of our brain that can actually plan and supervise, our prefrontal cortex, we know that hiding from life is actually not living. If we wanted to avoid the emotional pain of motherhood, one option could have been for us to not have kids. Would any one of us go back and make that choice? I don't think any of us would.
So here's the opportunity, my friend. Understand the mindset traps that make up the worry mindset. Understand the underlying motivations that cause you to perceive your life through a lens of avoiding emotional pain.
And when you see these traps for what they are, it's like you can recognize them, even when they're happening to you, and step out of them to decide to create peace, rather than anxiety. As I talked to my son the other day and listened to his worries and how hard he was being on himself, I saw my mind coming up with solutions. I saw my mind catastrophizing.
I saw my all-or-nothing thinking. The fear of the unknown. My emotional reasoning.
I saw it all, kind of like the cartoon thought bubbles floating over my head. I saw these thoughts and I said to myself, of course you want to take away his pain, love. Of course you think that if you take away his pain, then you can let go of your worry for him.
I want to take away his pain. My pain. But you know what I want even more? What I really want is for him to experience his life.
I want him to build the skill of taking ownership of his choices. I want him to build the confidence of making decisions that feel right to him, and even being willing to change course when he changes his mind. I want him to question who he wants to be, and to find those answers on his own.
I want him to become the man he's meant to be. And there is nothing here that I need to fix. Growing up is a lifelong journey.
It's one that you and I are still on. And one of the most powerful lessons I've learned is that there is no choice, no person, no outcome that can make me happy and help me find peace without my permission. It's always me who creates these feelings.
So why wait? Why tell myself I need things to turn out a certain way in order for me to find peace? And also, why tell myself that I'm not capable of feeling sadness, disappointment, even anxiety? Maybe all of this is just a part of life that there is nothing for me to fix. So here's my invitation. If you haven't already, go to my website, www.thesmalljar.com, and take the Mindset Trap Type quiz.
The Worry Mindset is one of four Mindset Trap Types. If this mindset type resonates with you, take a listen to the companion Small Jar Podcast episodes on Catastrophizing, All or Nothing Thinking, The Fear of the Unknown, and Emotional Reasoning. Worry often feels really important.
If we could just be certain, eliminate risk, pick the right answer, then you could avoid pain, right? Except you're left feeling terrible right now. The solution isn't to force yourself to let go. It's to find compassion for your worry mindset so that the worry lets you go.
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.
