TRAP #1 - CONFIRMATION BIAS
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 65.
Hello, my friends. So I am back from college move-in and I am just blown away by the experience. In a 24-hour period, I think I experienced just about every emotion under the sun, multiple times, sometimes at the same time.
I would feel love than grief, excited than anxious, helpful and unwanted, overwhelmed and bored, happy and lost, pride and panic. The word bittersweet doesn't actually begin to cover the landscape of my emotional experience, and it seems it's all exactly as it should be. Although I found myself feeling many uncomfortable emotions during the hectic, exhausting and exciting day, I was also present to the reality that this experience is the privilege of motherhood.
There was always going to be a time when I had to let my boys go, and I guess, good news, I love them so much that the letting go isn't easy. I want to also share that I absolutely know for myself that I would not have been able to be fully present through the highs and the lows, really comfortable with the discomfort of the day, without all of the work and support I've gotten over the years from my own coaches and the work I've done on my own self-coaching and everything I've learned about my own mindset work. Because this motherhood business is not for the faint of heart.
This is emotional work, and we invest so much of our hearts and love and effort and everything we are into the endeavor of raising these beautiful human beings and then launching them into the world. So, of course, we have human emotions about all of it. If we didn't care so much, it wouldn't hurt so much.
We feel this pure love and can also feel a pure grief during the many years of transition, beginning when our teens start to pull away, through the time when you have to give that final hug as you walk away from their college dorm or their new apartment. Frankly, even as I say this, I know there will be many more goodbyes ahead of me with this same child every time he comes back home and then leaves. There's so many little and big goodbyes, but this one felt like a big one.
It felt like that moment when you're about to go over the edge of the roller coaster. My stomach dropped for a breathless second. I looked at my husband and I could even see it in his eyes, a little disbelief.
Are we really walking away? Are we really leaving our son here? So even leading up to this moment, I've been doing a lot of work on my relationship with myself. And so I've learned from my own experience and see it so often with my clients as well, that on top of the love and the grief we experience through all of these transitions, in whatever ways these come up for us in our own families, that on top of the love and the excitement and the grief that we so naturally experience in these transitional moments, we have so many other feelings. And these feelings, particularly the painful ones, can almost feel like they're wrapped up in this overwhelming ball of emotion that frankly just leaves us feeling stuck and lost and uncertain about how to move forward.
It's like the sadness and the grief become even more weighty because we're facing these other painful emotions that we don't know how to fix. I can't tell you how many times women have come to me saying, I feel like there's something wrong with me, that I'm not able to handle this better. And this among women who are mentally well and have been champions in their family, loving mothers.
So if this mirrors your own experience, whether you already have a child in college or are getting ready for that journey, or frankly, if you have older children, honestly, I've worked with women who are grandmothers. This is work for all of us because believe it or not, whether your challenge is finding purpose and joy and peace in the empty nest or finding peace and connection while your child is still at home, this work is about your relationship with yourself. So we start there.
In light of this, I thought it would be helpful to do a series of podcasts on the mindset traps that we can fall into as we move through this transition of raising our teens and the road to the empty nest. And I think it's important to recognize that these mindset traps are available to all of us at all stages of our lives. In fact, I was inspired to do this series in part because my son, my younger son, is actually really into mindset work already.
In fact, I often joke with him that he's my life coach because he has just a beautiful ability to say the right thing that somehow shows me something I couldn't see for myself. So we were talking, I think he was driving himself to work with me still in the passenger seat. In New Jersey, you can't get your license until you're 17, which is a huge bummer for him, but actually kind of a gift for me.
So my son is also into fitness and nutrition, and he has seen another podcast about these mindset hacks. And in fact, as I looked into it, I realized how universal these traps are. Now what are mindset traps and why do they matter? Well, let me start by saying that our brains actually are incredibly powerful, efficient tools.
And so these traps aren't actually an indication that there's something wrong with our minds, but rather that our minds are just doing what they're designed to do, which is to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and to be efficient. This tendency of our brain is referred to as the motivational triad. And if you think about it, these three goals, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and being efficient, have played a critical role in our evolution and survival as a species.
This motivational triad has not only ensured that we were motivated to eat and have sex to procreate and avoid predators and threats, but it's also the reason why humans are constantly innovating the world around us to provide more pleasure, less pain, fewer threats, and more efficiency. From an innovation standpoint, you can already imagine that this is both good news and bad news in terms of the incredible and terrible things man has created. For example, we're motivated to find cures for diseases, but we're also motivated to design weapons.
We're back to the yin and the yang of the beautiful and the terrible. On a much smaller and intimate scale, the motivational triad can work within each of us to create both positive motivation and negative motivation. You can even think about it in the context of our mind trying to be efficient.
In our lives, our brains are always trying to take shortcuts, and sometimes these shortcuts don't serve us. In fact, these shortcuts can lead to distorted perspectives about our lives. You know those tinted sunglasses that I often talk about, that each one of us look at the world through a pair of glasses with a tint based on our own values and perspective.
But these mindset traps can also make our lens or perspective even more distorted. And so it's helpful to understand this tendency of our minds, and remember that this is actually our brains working exactly how they're meant to work. It's just that we haven't learned how to supervise our brains.
Over the next few months, I'm going to explore a number of the common mindset traps we can experience and how they apply to us moms during this transitional stage of our lives. From catastrophizing to validation seeking, each of these traps hold the potential to affect our emotional experience and the results we create in our lives. So today I want to focus on the first mindset trap, confirmation bias.
Now this trap is a cognitive bias that refers to our brain's tendency to try to find what it's looking for. Said another way, our mind is constantly seeking, interpreting, and remembering information in a way that confirms its own pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. So as we go about our day, we have a natural tendency to notice, remember, and give more weight to the information that lines up with what we already think is true.
And we can actually then even overlook or downplay information that doesn't align with what we already believe. Now on top of our mind's tendency to find what it's looking for, to support what it already believes, our brains also tend to focus more on the negative. This is sometimes called negativity bias.
And again, this negative focus has had an evolutionary benefit because it helped our ancestors survive. Because our brains are attuned to look for negative stimuli like threats or dangers. Then they're able to help us avoid these dangers and even plan how to protect us from those dangers in the future.
In today's world, this negativity bias doesn't protect us from predators, but rather makes our brains focus on negative circumstances, thoughts, and emotions. Okay, think about how these two biases work together in our minds. Confirmation bias makes our brains look for information that supports what we already believe.
Then negativity bias causes us to focus even more on the negative information that confirms whatever it is we fear or want to avoid. So as our brains constantly seek out negative information to support their own pre-existing view of the world, we're literally reinforcing our own beliefs by paying selective attention to those facts in the world that support those beliefs. Talk about an echo chamber in our own minds.
Now my friends, this is our minds working perfectly. Nothing has actually gone wrong here. Our brain is just seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and trying to be as efficient as possible.
But when we're not aware of our brain's tendency to do this and how it might be wreaking havoc on our emotional experience, this is where we run into trouble. Now before I dive into some examples, I want to say that you get to believe whatever you want to believe about your life. Seriously, if you tell me that your teenager is lazy and disrespectful, I'm not going to argue with you.
If you say your husband doesn't appreciate you and he's the reason your marriage has failed, I'm not here to tell you you're wrong. But mindset work is an invitation to understand what we create for ourselves in our lives when we don't take the time to understand our own biases and the distorted perspectives that we might have when we look at our lives. And again, this isn't about you being wrong.
This is about you being intentional about what you believe. So let's go through some examples. One problem that women often come to me with is they feel hurt or frustrated that their teen is pulling away from them.
So one example that actually comes up quite a bit, and I'll be perfectly honest, I've seen it in my own home. Our teens sometimes take their meals into their room rather than eating with the family. Now if your belief as a mom is that your teen is pulling away in ways that you don't want, this desire or this belief that you don't want them to pull away will naturally create some anxiety or frustration for you.
Sometimes moms express this as an expectation, as in my kids should be eating dinner with us and they refuse. So then the mom is more likely to feel a sense of frustration. Other times moms express that they feel hurt because their prevailing thought is the teen doesn't want to spend time with the family.
So whether the mom is feeling frustrated or hurt, one of the ways confirmation bias can manifest itself here is that if we believe our teen is pulling away and that one of the ways that they're doing this is to eat in their rooms, then we're going to be looking for that behavior. So for example, every time the teen eats in their room, it's one more fact that goes into the arsenal supporting the belief that the teen is pulling away. So each time this behavior is seen, once again we think, there they go again, they're rejecting us, we're not supporting the family.
So again, I want to reiterate this isn't about disagreeing with you if you believe your child is pulling away. In fact, it could very well be that the reason our kids want to eat in their room is that they would rather eat there. I mean, that's the reality, right? Whether it's because of us or because of homework or because of whatever's going on with them right now, we can know that what they want to do is eat in their room and not eat with us when that's what they choose.
So here's something interesting. Sometimes when this comes up in coaching, I ask my client to observe their teen throughout the following week and I ask them to actually count the number of times their teen eats in their room and then count the number of times they eat with the family, like literally keep track. What often happens is that my clients will report back that the teen actually ate with the family at least as much as they eat in their room, if not more times.
So let's just say it's 50-50, 50% eating with the family, 50% eating in their room. What I want you to notice is that when we're viewing our teen through the lens of belief that they're pulling away and they shouldn't be, then our cognitive bias has us literally focusing on the times when they don't eat with us and discounting the times when they do. And ultimately, here's why this is a problem.
The way we perceive the facts of our lives directly influences how we show up in our lives. So in this example, our perspective could be that our kids are doing something that we don't want them to do. And on top of that, we might make their actions mean something about us or about them.
For example, we see our kids taking their food into their rooms and we interpret their actions as disrespectful or hurtful. If it happens once, maybe no big deal. But the more they do it, if our underlying thought is that this action is hurtful or disrespectful, then every time they do this thing again, the belief is even more solidified.
We're confirming our own bias. And our bias, the thoughts we have about the situation, create feelings of hurt, anger, or rejection. And so from these feelings, we literally can show up in a way that rejects our child back.
Think about it. Whatever parallel example you might have with your teen, something they've done that's frustrated you to no end. And each time they do it, the evidence mounts, confirming whatever poor behavior or personality defect you think they might have.
And of course, let's add in the weight of the responsibility we feel to fix our kids, right? How do you show up when your actions are fueled by anger and hurt? Do you take the time to try to understand what might be prompting their behavior, to understand their perspective? Or do you react to your anger or hurt to get them to see your perspective? If whatever's coming to mind right now leaves you feeling regret or even a bit of shame, I'm right there with you. I'll share a personal example because again, let me make this clear. I'm on this journey with you.
I'm just as susceptible to these mindset traps as any of us. So a while back, my oldest son was a relatively new driver. And where I live in the first year after you get your license, you get a provisional license where you can't actually drive after 11 PM.
I have to be honest, I love this law. This actually meant that in the first few months of my son getting his license, his curfew ended up being earlier than my younger son's just because if he wanted to drive, he had to be home by 11. I wasn't at all mad about it.
So everything was okay at first. But then all of a sudden, night after night, it seemed he was coming home after curfew. By the second week, I was literally beside myself.
I couldn't sleep. I will ashamedly admit, I would refresh the Find My iPhone app at 10.30 PM repeatedly until he left wherever he was. I would eventually text him.
He wouldn't always text back. I'd call. Sometimes he picked up.
If he didn't pick up, I would literally ping his device so he couldn't ignore it. Yes, my friends, I was a basket case. Now you probably have all sorts of questions like how late was he and why wasn't I setting boundaries and enforcing consequences? Why was I letting the problem get to this level of hysteria before I took control of the situation? Well, in large part, part of my reaction was because this son is a really good kid.
Like so good. He'd never really broken a rule until all of a sudden something seemed very different. Before this moment, I considered this son the kind of young man who would never have broken curfew.
And if he happened to be running two minutes late because of some legitimate holdup, this was the son who would have called ahead so we didn't worry. So it started with him being a few minutes late. First time, no big deal.
But then it kept happening. It wasn't actually even the fact that he was late that was the problem, although this was the issue that I focused on. The problem was really that something about my son seemed to have changed overnight, and I didn't think it was good.
I fixated on the time he'd get home, and the more he came home late, the more evidence I would have collected that something was wrong. I also noticed, or at least my perception was, that he didn't really care about being on time. And no matter how many times I reiterated the importance of him not only of respecting the state-mandated curfew, but respecting me and my worry about him when he didn't call and didn't get home on time, no matter how many times I tried to communicate this, it just didn't seem to sink in.
His behavior wasn't changing. So in one of my less proud moments, I lost it. In the phase of my perception that I had lost all control of my son, I lost all control of myself.
I waited for him to come home one night. He was late, and so I sat out on the front steps just waiting. He finally pulled in.
It was probably only 15 minutes after curfew, and I let him have it. I told him his behavior was unacceptable and that he was being disrespectful. The conversation did not go well.
There may be a few among you listening that are judging that I handled this poorly. I would agree with you. But I also think there are far more among you who are listening who are not thinking of me at all, but are also thinking of a time when you experienced one of these blow-ups with your teen.
A situation where you walked away exhausted, ashamed, and feeling even more disconnected with your child. Getting back to the subject of mind traps, how was the situation with my son an example of confirmation bias? Well, when I saw my son coming home late repeatedly, my brain raised the alert that there was a problem. Now there's actually quite a bit more background to the story, but the bottom line is that my brain saw a problem with my son, and I made the problem about me.
I saw his behavior, his lateness, as a sign that he was disregarding some significant concerns I had about how he was choosing to spend his time. And the more he came home late, the more I took his lateness as a sign of disrespect. The more I observed he seemed to be not particularly apologetic, and his behavior didn't change, my mind just reinforced and confirmed its own bias and intensified my feelings of hurt and rejection.
Look, in those moments when you start to notice that your teenager is not only pulling away, but even seems to be rejecting you, talk about tapping into a fear I didn't even know I had. How could this beautiful person who had always been so loving and responsible be turning into someone I didn't recognize? But can you believe that I was so afraid of him rejecting me, that I rejected him? I rejected him by focusing on the fact of him missing curfew as the biggest problem, rather than a symptom of something more significant going on with him. My brain saw the curfew as a huge problem, and so I focused on that, each time reinforcing my belief that he was rejecting my authority.
I was hyper-focused on these facts, paying selective attention to the thing that represented the problem to me, when I missed so much more. My mind downplayed the times he got home early or on time. I made a big deal about 5 or 10 minutes, not giving him credit for being pretty close.
I missed the opportunity to check in and ask him what was happening, if there was something else going on with him. I didn't trust that he was doing his best to navigate a very complicated situation, and I was only making it more difficult by not being a safe place. On the one hand, hindsight is 20-20.
If I had known then what I know now, I would have shown up as a completely different mother. And let's face it, even if I had come to my son at that time and asked him with love and openness, what's going on, love? Is everything okay? I don't know if he would have been able to open up to me at the time. And look, we also have to set expectations and enforce boundaries with our kids.
When my son came home late, I absolutely did and believe I should have enforced consequences. But when I did, I communicated those consequences from a place of fear and hurt, rather than calm authority. I reflect back and I think, what might have been different if I had said to my son when he came home late the third time, hey love, I'm noticing a pattern that concerns me.
I want to check in to see if everything's okay. I also want you to know that this curfew is important to respect, and so here's the consequence if this behavior continues. This approach might not have changed his behavior right away, but then I would have calmly enforced the consequences.
Instead, I lost my ever-loving mind, and I closed the door to the possibility that he might come to me for guidance and support. Look, this is a very particular situation. As you face your own struggles with your teen, I'm not here to tell you how you should be guiding, supporting, or reprimanding your child.
And I also know that no matter how perfectly we show up, we can't guarantee that our kids will open up to us or change their behavior. In fact, our kids' emotions and their behavior are entirely out of our control. So in my opinion, the only way that we can hope to have any influence and offer ourselves as a safe place if and when our child needs our help or guidance, the only way we can create this is if we are intentional about how we show up with our teens.
And one of the most valuable tools at our disposal is to be very aware of the mindset traps we're susceptible to, the first one being confirmation bias. My friend, when we focus on the parts of our children or honestly of our lives that confirm our deepest fears, we not only distort our view of the reality of our lives, but we also miss the full picture. We can be so afraid of the possibility that our teen with depression will attempt to take their life that we miss the ways that they're doing the best they can to live their life.
We can be so anxious that our teen will get involved with drugs that we become addicted to worry for their future. We can be so concerned that our teen doesn't seem to have a strong friend group that we totally miss the possibility that they're learning the strength of standing on their own and being true to themselves. This is not at all to say that there might not be a problem.
In my son's case, when he was missing curfew, he was working through a big personal challenge. I was right to be on alert, but my bias caused me to miss the opportunity to see the situation objectively. And maybe even more importantly, my bias caused me to behave in a way that accomplished the exact opposite of what I actually wanted to accomplish.
If my goal was to stay connected with my son, my behavior actually served to push him away. All of this is about awareness. As a mom, I'm not always going to get it right.
In fact, as I took a hard and honest look at how I was showing up for my son, I learned some important lessons. And in the process, I think my son and I have taken a huge step in establishing an even stronger relationship. Our kids are going to mess up.
We're going to mess up. This isn't about perfection or mom shaming or raising the perfect kids. As I like to remind myself, raising kids is my curriculum right now.
And the pain I experience alerts me to opportunities to learn and grow. What is your pain with your child or in your life trying to teach you right now? Consider how your mind might be falling into the trap of confirming your own bias. What beliefs are your brain reinforcing in ways that are not serving you? As I said in the beginning, you get to think whatever you want to think about your life.
But are you perceiving your life intentionally?
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our program, mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
