HARD TO BREAK HABITS, EXPLAINED — WHAT NAGGING REALLY SOLVES FOR MOMS OF TEENS
Let's talk about why you can't just stop nagging, and other habits that are hard to break for us moms of big kids.
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest podcast with Small Jar Coach. This show is for moms of teens who are ready to let go with love, release anxiety, and rebuild connection with their teen and themselves as they approach the empty nest.
I'm your host, Jennifer Collins, a master certified coach and a fellow mom walking this path right alongside of you. You don't have to navigate this season alone. Today, we're talking about something I know every mom has struggled with.
And that's that thing that we do that we really want to stop, but somehow keep doing. Whether it's nagging your teen or finishing off an entire bag of cookies, or maybe just losing your mind when you told yourself you were going to keep your cool. It's not because there's something wrong with you.
It's literally because your brain is trying to solve a problem. So in this episode, we're going to talk about why certain habits are so hard to stop, even when you want to. Today, you're going to learn why these behaviors actually make emotional sense and how to address the real problem underneath so you can create lasting change without just using willpower.
Let's dive in. Hello, my friends. I woke up today and I was feeling so at peace.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of coaching with one of my longtime friends and coaches, someone who's been on this journey with me since I discovered self-coaching many years ago. We connected early on and developed a regular practice of coaching each other, not only to strengthen our own skills as coaches, but really to embrace our own growth and practice what we preach. This incredible coach has supported me through some of the most challenging, heartbreaking, and disappointing chapters of my life, as a mom and as a woman trying to figure out what her life and purpose are beyond motherhood.
And truly, just in every area of my life where I've had the opportunity to grow, this beautiful woman has been in the trenches with me. I can't tell you how grateful I am for her, for being such a constant source of empathy and compassion and non-judgment. She validates my emotional experience without getting caught up in it.
And she's never believed I'm anything less than capable of figuring everything out, of being that version of myself that I really want to be. This has been such an incredible gift. As we were coaching yesterday, I gave her an update on some of my current challenges, and it struck me again that having a coach is like having the best kind of friend.
Someone who is completely in step with your life. But unlike a friend, a coach isn't making any of the story you tell about them. They don't have skin in the game.
There's no comparison or judgment or, oh yeah, my kid did that too. When you talk to a coach, you don't have to worry that they'll hold those dark places inside of you against you. A coach offers this beautiful space, and this non-judgmental open space gives you permission to shift your perspective, even if just slightly, so you can start to see how the stories you tell yourself about what you're capable of and what your teen is capable of and what all of this means, how all of this creates your emotional experience.
But in building this awareness, you make the space to create something new. As my coach and I were talking, it was so fun and honestly kind of surreal to reflect with her about how far I've come in my parenting journey since we first met. I've always been the kind of mom who had incredibly high standards for her kids.
I cared and still care so much about my boy's success and their well-being. When my boys were younger, that meant I was hyper-focused on getting them into the right programs and activities, making sure they were doing their homework, setting boundaries around screen time. I had a lot of opinions about how they should be living their life.
Really, I had a lot of expectations around how they should be applying themselves. I thought that that was the job of motherhood, to help my kids be safe, happy, and successful. And look, I know I'm not alone.
This, in many ways, is the job of motherhood, to keep your kids safe, to support their happiness and well-being, and to encourage them to be productive, responsible, kind people who are capable of eventually supporting themselves. But we don't just take on this role like it's a job. We treat it like it's a mission, like a sacred responsibility.
But that also means that we define what it looks like for our kids to be okay, to be safe, happy, and successful. And then we measure ourselves and our success by that definition. We define in our minds what happiness looks like for our kids, and what it means to be kind, what it looks like to be productive and responsible, what it looks like to be successful.
And when our kids aren't measuring up to our definitions or our expectations, we often panic a bit. At minimum, we feel pressure to do something to help, to fix it. Before I found my first coach, I felt so much responsibility to support and guide my kids.
And if that didn't look like what I thought it should, I felt like I was failing. When I first discovered coaching, I was attracted to it not because I wanted to become a coach, but because I was struggling. I'd actually developed this nightly wine habit, often drinking two, sometimes more glasses at the end of the day.
I wasn't getting drunk by any means, but the wine had come to feel necessary. Like, I would tell myself, I'm not going to drink tonight. Not even necessarily because it was a problem, but because honestly, I didn't need the extra calories.
Because first it was the wine, then it was the chips and the cookies. At one point, I realized I was consuming well over a thousand calories between 6 and 9 p.m., and that was in addition to dinner. It was no wonder I wasn't able to lose any weight.
So for a bunch of reasons, it felt logical that the right thing to do was to cut back on drinking. But then, I couldn't. No matter how many times I told myself, I'm not drinking tonight, when I got home from work, I'd be pouring that glass of wine on autopilot.
So if you're wondering what this has to do with motherhood and raising teens, let me get to it. So for me, I felt a lot of shame about this habit. And you can think about any habit that you have, whether it's the way you relate to your teen or how you engage in your own life, some behavior that you wish that you could do a little bit less of.
So I was in this really frustrating stuck place when I stumbled on a life coach who started talking about drinking in a totally different way. What she shared that resonated so deeply was that the wine wasn't actually the problem. She helped me see that the wine actually was my solution.
Now, this isn't to say that alcohol isn't addictive or that it isn't a problem. But for me, the reason it was so hard to break the habit of drinking was because I subconsciously thought I needed it to solve a problem for me. Actually, wine solved a bunch of problems for me at that time in my life.
It gave me a sense of relief at the end of the day. It created a moment where I could finally let go of the overwhelm and the stress I'd been carrying, whether that was at work or with my kids. Coming home and having that first sip gave me permission to just stop and take a break.
It was almost like my brain told me the hard part of the day is over. It gave me something to look forward to, a ritual that marked the end of constantly reacting to everyone else's needs. If I'm honest, it also helped me escape some of the resentment and frustration I didn't even realize I was feeling because I was so busy moving through the logistics of life.
It felt like a reward. It actually made me feel like I had some control over how I felt. As I faced the truth of all of that, it started to make perfect sense that I didn't want to give up this habit.
When I got to the end of the day, telling myself I couldn't have that glass of wine was like telling myself, nope, you don't get to have a break. You don't get to relax. It felt more like a punishment than a healthy choice.
Facing this, realizing that I was focusing on the wrong problem was the moment everything started to change for me. The problem I really needed to solve was why was I so overwhelmed and resentful at the end of the day? I mean, if you were to look at my life from the outside of the time, you would think I had it all. A happy family, a great marriage, a beautiful home and fantastic friends, a good job.
I mean, what was there to be unhappy about? And yet, there I was, needing to numb my painful feelings at the end of the day. So here's why this story is relevant to you as a mom with a teen or adult child, no matter what your habit is. You might not be reaching for wine as the solution to the hard parts of your life, but I'm willing to bet that you're reaching for something.
Because the truth is, there are parts of this journey of raising and launching teens that can feel really painful. And as I've been talking about in the Mindset Trap series, our brain's instinct is to avoid pain. So your natural response is to try to find a way to feel better.
This is literally just how we're designed as humans. So what does this attempt to feel better look like when it comes to our teens and adult kids? Well, maybe it looks like constantly checking on their location. Or it could be trying to force conversation because it feels like the only way to stay connected.
Or it could be nagging, not because you want to nag, but because you can't stand watching them drop the ball. It could be desperately trying to set the right boundaries, or have the right conversation to get your kid to see your point of view. It could also look like trying to fill up your time to stay busy so you don't have to feel the weight of loneliness or disconnection from your kid.
Or honestly, trying to feel better can also look a lot like it did for me. Grabbing that glass of wine, or that bag of chips or cookies, or scrolling for hours on your phone. But here's the message I want to invite you to hear.
None of this means there's something wrong with you. It literally just means that your brain is trying to solve a problem. Whether that looks like overthinking, or yelling, controlling, tracking, snapping, or numbing.
All of these examples are your brain's way of trying to feel better. What I've also noticed about us moms, and something I love about us, is that we're constantly problem solving. Not just with our kids, but with ourselves.
And so we're often pretty self-aware when we're doing something that we realize isn't working. Like when we yell at our kids, for example. We do it, but then we regret it.
That's not how we want to show up with our kids. So we tell ourselves, you need to stop yelling. Ultimately, we try to fix our own behavior.
But here's the issue with that. When you don't look at the underlying problem that your behavior is trying to solve, it's really hard to change your behavior. But again, we think we know what the problem is when it comes to our kids.
The two levers we want to pull are to change ourselves and how we show up, ultimately with the goal of changing our kids and how they're showing up. So we look for answers. We want someone to tell us the five steps or the two tools or that one perfect strategy to be a better parent.
We want to know how to set boundaries that work, how to get our kids to open up, how to help them make good choices. We focus on action. What should I do? How can I fix this? But here's what most of us miss.
The action isn't the root of the problem. It's actually the feeling that's the problem. We think we're just reacting to our kids' behavior or some stressful situation in our life.
But what's really driving our response, whether it's nagging, yelling, withdrawing or obsessing, what's really driving these behaviors is an emotion. Frustration, fear, insecurity, loneliness, powerlessness, resentment. And my friend, unless we address the reason for that emotion, we are going to keep taking the same actions, no matter how many tools or strategies we try, because our actions are being fueled by how we feel.
And how we feel is a direct response to what we're thinking about our life. So let's go back to my experience for a minute. With my first coach, I saw the possibility that the real problem I needed to solve was my feelings of overwhelm and resentment.
Those were the two emotions that came up the most for me at that time. And as I really looked at these two emotions in my life, I realized that wine wasn't the only way I tried to solve for them. When it came to me trying to let go of overwhelm, what I did was I made a new to-do list.
I decided I just needed to prioritize. Also, I needed to just get organized and be more efficient. So suddenly I'd find myself reorganizing the fridge and cleaning out closets because I thought that the order would make me feel less overwhelmed.
And then when it came to the overwhelm I felt with my kids, really a lot of it was anxiety about helping them be successful. So I would Google questions about parenting and I would try to be more on top of what they needed to do. I actually had a separate to-do list for each of my boys.
Ultimately, I thought the solution to overwhelm was just to get my life more in order so it didn't make me feel so overwhelmed. Then there was the resentment I felt. And this one was a little trickier for me because it was a feeling I actually didn't fully realize was lurking there in my mind until a coach helped me find it.
But without even understanding it, I felt it. And so I reacted to it, trying to solve for it. And that looked like giving my husband a lot of shade for how he wasn't supporting me enough.
I would make dinner but I would pressure everyone into being really appreciative. If they didn't like what I cooked, I was annoyed. I'd do the laundry but then I'd complain about how much there was.
I'd tell the kids to reuse towels and I would be furious if they didn't put away the laundry I had so nicely folded and delivered to their room. The kids were still young enough that I don't even know if they picked up on my not-so-subtle hints I was giving that they were all letting me down. But I know my husband did.
He tried to be helpful but no matter how much he did, I don't know that I ever gave him credit for doing enough. Because here's the truth. It wasn't my kids' laundry or the to-do list or the state of my fridge that was making me feel overwhelmed and exhausted.
It was literally my perception of all of it. I had this subconscious painful thought that there was so much to do and I was doing everything for everyone without any help and that they were all off living their best lives and I was stuck doing all of this stuff I frankly didn't want to do. That story, that belief, was the cause of my feelings of resentment and overwhelm.
And here's the thing. It wasn't that this thought was wrong necessarily. There was truth to it.
There was a lot to do. I was doing a lot. And it did feel to me like no one was offering to help as much as I wanted them to do.
And it did seem like everyone else was relaxing and doing fun stuff while I kept running around feeling like I always had my hands full, always had something else to do. So the way I felt was actually perfectly valid. But these beliefs about my life were also what were creating my emotional pain.
The thought that I was doing everything for everyone, as justified as it felt, was fueling my resentment. And from that feeling, I was constantly irritated and short-tempered. Honestly, it was the perfect storm.
I'd get home from work, from a job I frankly didn't like at the time, and I'd be faced with a messy house and homework and having to make dinner. And it felt terrible to me. It's why looking back on it now, I totally understand why I poured that glass of wine.
To make that evening push feel a little bit better. But at the time, the solution for me wasn't to suck up the evening routine without wine and just get over myself. That felt terrible too.
Things started to change for me when a coach gave me permission to get curious about my perception, to slow down and really notice the thoughts that were creating my overwhelm and resentment. I didn't try to tell myself the thoughts were wrong or that I wasn't justified in thinking them. But I learned how to observe them with compassion and honesty, almost like holding them up to the light to really see them.
This wasn't about blaming myself or pretending everything was fine. It was about creating enough space between me and the story that was in my mind to see that just because I was thinking it didn't mean it was the whole truth. Getting curious gives you the chance to soften the certainty you have around what's happening.
And when you get really curious, you notice that your feelings make perfect sense based on what you're thinking. But then you have the chance to explore the idea that maybe there's another way to see the situation. Now, I'm not talking about forcing yourself to think happy thoughts, but rather exploring a more complete version of the truth.
For me, this was the beginning of a journey that changed everything. And not because my kids and my husband started doing the laundry and cooking dinner for me. And it was definitely not because my to-do list got magically shorter.
What changed was I started to change. The way I saw things, the way I felt, and most importantly, how I showed up in my life. My friend, we have so much more power over our own emotional well-being than we think we do.
And the beauty of this is that once you learn how to access this power, you start to show up in every area of your life in a whole new way. Responding to life intentionally rather than feeling like you're reacting or constantly getting triggered in a way that's not in your control. So much of what I thought were problems I needed to fix about my life were actually just reactions to how I was feeling.
I thought if I could fix other people or fix myself, then I could feel better. But the way I was feeling and showing up weren't signs that there was something wrong with me or even signs that there was something definitively wrong with my life. They were simply signals.
Every action I was taking made perfect sense once I understood why I was doing what I was doing. Let me explore this as another example of something we moms often do that can feel like it's an inevitable part of raising our teens. And that's the tendency to remind to the point of nagging.
Doesn't it feel terrible? Even when I'm doing it, I don't want to be. So after we do it, we tell ourselves, okay, I need to stop nagging. I'm not going to remind them again.
But then time goes by and that thing that you wanted to get done doesn't get done. And so there you are nagging again. But the truth is there's a reason we're nagging.
It's our attempt to solve a problem. And what is that problem? It's typically us trying to get someone else to do what they should be doing. In fact, it often feels like if we don't nag, then for sure that thing won't get done.
And that doesn't seem like an acceptable alternative, right? And so you end up feeling stuck between nagging, which you don't want to do, and giving up, which you also don't want to do. It's like being trapped in a lose-lose situation. But underneath that urge to remind and repeat and ultimately nag is something else.
Because it's not really about the homework or the dishes or that college application that needs to get done. It's about what we make it mean when those things don't get done. We start thinking, if they don't do this, they won't succeed.
Or they don't care enough about me to do what I ask. Or they're lazy and it means they're never going to be responsible. Notice how much pressure all of this puts on us as moms to fix it.
We don't want to settle for our kids being lazy and unsuccessful. So we nag. Not because we want to, but because it gives us a tiny sense of control.
It's our attempt to ease the discomfort of uncertainty and fear. A feeling like everything will go wrong if we don't make it right. This is what's so powerful to see.
The nagging isn't the real problem. It's your attempt at a solution. And this is why just telling yourself to stop nagging doesn't work.
Because until you really address the underlying problem, that emotion you're trying to avoid, or the fear you're trying to manage, you're going to keep feeling compelled to find relief, to do something. And for many of us, when we feel anxious or stressed about something our kid isn't doing, we can't help but nag. It gives us the illusion of control.
It lets us believe that we're doing something. But what happens when you get curious about what you're really trying to control and why? Often when it comes to nagging, it's related to the weight of the emotional responsibility we carry as moms. That fear about our kid's future, or the frustration we have when they don't meet our expectations.
Also the disconnection that comes from us trying to balance love and limits and closeness and boundaries. My friend, it's a lot. And honestly, it makes so much sense that you're doing everything you can because you're trying to solve a really important problem with your kid, even if that looks like nagging or controlling or hovering or even yelling.
You care so much. You want to get it right. You want your teen to be OK.
And you also want to feel OK. And so you try to anticipate every need and fill in the gaps when they're falling short. You try to think ahead so that they don't drop the ball.
And we do all of that. And sometimes it still doesn't feel like enough because our kids can resist or totally ignore us or they fight back or they pull away. And then we have to carry the emotional weight of that, too, because we don't want any of that either.
So notice how it all gets back to the same underlying problem we're trying to solve, that we feel terrible, frustrated and anxious and powerless. You can feel stuck in a loop of feeling terrible, then reacting to your emotions and then feeling even more terrible because your reactions weren't what you wanted them to be. But there is another way, one that starts with curiosity, compassion and a shift in how you see yourself and your life.
This is the kind of emotional work that no one has ever taught us. But this truly is the key to taking power back over your own emotional well-being, not by trying to solve for your feelings, by trying to control the world or numb your own experience, but by taking responsibility for what's actually driving your emotional experience within you. So let's try to put this into practice.
I want to invite you to think of one thing that you're doing right now that you'd really love to stop. Maybe it's nagging. Or maybe you find yourself constantly asking your teen questions that they don't want to answer.
Or you could find yourself snapping at your kid, even yelling. Or maybe you shut down and take things personally. And none of this is a judgment of these things being wrong.
But we often find that these actions don't really work in the way we intend. So once you've identified your one thing you might want to change, ask yourself, what problem is this behavior solving for me emotionally? This is really valuable to see. For me, when I poured that glass of wine at the end of the day, it wasn't really about the wine.
It was about wanting peace and relief for my life. When I nagged my kids, it wasn't because I wanted to be the kind of mom who constantly reminded or nagged her kids. It was because deep down I was scared of what it would mean if I didn't, that they would fail and it would be my fault.
These actions, the drinking and the nagging, they weren't the problem. It was my attempt at a solution, a way to manage the emotions I didn't know how to deal with any other way. This is why I feel so strongly about the Mindset Trap series I've been doing on this podcast.
These Mindset Traps, like perfectionism and catastrophizing or validation seeking, the illusion of control, they're not labels or identities that mean there's something wrong with you. They're actually all solutions, patterns of thought that are your brain's way of trying to help you. It could be your way of protecting yourself from emotional pain or seeking a little bit of comfort, maybe just trying to find a way to make life feel a little easier.
It makes so much sense when you really understand it. But also, what we often realize is that these solutions aren't actually working for us, or they create more problems than they actually solve. Once you see this, once you really see it, that's when you can start choosing differently.
So if you're stuck in a pattern of reacting to your life in ways that aren't working, whether it's yelling or people-pleasing or micromanaging or nagging, start by asking yourself, what problem is this solving for me? What's very likely is that your brain is trying to meet a very real emotional need. And once you see that, that's when you can begin to meet that need on purpose in a different way. And when you do that, you won't need to default to that behavior anymore.
Talking with my coach yesterday made me realize how far I've come in living this truth in my own life. I've grown in so many ways. And not because my life is perfect.
Not because my kids always do what I want. And that is definitely not the case. But I've learned how to own my emotional experience.
Look, I can't control what my teens say or what they do. And life can be messy. But I can take ownership of how I respond to all of it.
I've learned how to stop outsourcing my peace to someone else's behavior, even when that someone else is my own kid. I've learned how to meet my emotions with compassion instead of judgment. And that has given me the power to create more peace and confidence in my life.
And all of that means that I get to choose to show up as the mom and the woman I want to be. Not the one riding an emotional roller coaster of pain, just reacting to life and trying to make it all feel better. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, that is exactly what I want.
I just have no idea how to get there. I want you to know I hear you. But this is exactly what I help my clients do in my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0. Together, we slow down.
We look underneath the overwhelm and frustration and anxiety to understand what problem your mind is really trying to solve. This work isn't about fixing you, but of truly helping you to feel more like yourself. Like that version of yourself who you already know you truly want to be.
You don't have to keep white-knuckling against doing things you don't even want to do, but somehow feel powerless to stop. You just have to understand what's really going on for you. What problem are you really trying to solve? And when you understand this, that is when everything starts to change.
Thank you for being on this journey with me. Until next time, my friend.
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.
