EMOTIONAL OUTSOURCING: WHEN YOUR TEEN'S MOOD CONTROLS YOURS - TRAP #13 | EP. 181
Welcome back to the Mindset Traps of the Empty Nest series. This is trap number 13, Emotional Outsourcing: When your teen's mood controls yours.
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Do you sometimes feel like dealing with your teen's emotions and behavior is like being on an emotional roller coaster? If they're anxious, you feel anxious. If they're in a bad mood, suddenly you are too.
In today's episode, I'm talking about a mindset trap I call emotional outsourcing. I'll talk about why this happens, how it shows up in your day-to-day life as a mom, and most importantly, what it looks like to take your emotional power back. By the end of this episode, you'll see a path towards more peace, confidence, and connection, no matter what's going on with your big kid. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. Let me start with a story.
I worked with a mom whose daughter came home every day after school with an attitude. Okay, wait, I've actually worked with a lot of moms whose kids do this, so really I'm just sharing one example. But anyway, this woman's daughter was coming home from school, and she always seemed irritated.
She would give her mom one-word answers. She really barely acknowledged her mom. She was always glued to her phone when she was out of her room.
But in reality, she spent most of her time locked up in her room. And over the course of about a year, this felt like a big change. Her daughter used to be more open and happy, but it was like something had happened.
She tried to get her daughter to talk and didn't get much. But eventually, from the few things her daughter said and what she overheard in small conversations, she pieced together that there was some issue that she was having with her friends. Her interpretation was these girls were just mean girls, and she really didn't love the fact that she was involved in these relationships.
But most recently, this mom realized her daughter hadn't been invited to some party. Obviously, her daughter was feeling hurt and left out, but anytime this mom tried to ask her daughter about it, she just got shut down. Her daughter would say something like, it's fine, I don't care.
So in our conversation, this mom shared that she knew this was part of being a teen, that maybe she just needed to give her daughter some space. But she couldn't stop thinking about it. Should I reach out to the school about these girls, or maybe to the other moms? She wanted to try to figure out how to get her daughter to talk to her about it.
And then she blamed herself. Maybe we shouldn't have switched schools, or I shouldn't have let her hang out with these girls because they're obviously not nice. She also took it personally when she couldn't get her daughter to open up.
As time went on, this mom felt like she couldn't let it go. She was desperate to get something out of her kid to help her work through this. But meanwhile, she was totally consumed with her own hurt and anxiety about it.
You might have experienced something like this with your own big kid. Maybe not about friendships and girl drama, but some situation where your big kid was struggling, and then you found that you were too. Like when your teen is anxious about a test, and you can't sleep the night before.
Or they don't get the grade that they wanted, and you feel like you failed. Or if they're struggling to decide on some big decision, like what their major is in college, or whether or not to drop that class they're struggling with. It's like you feel paralyzed.
Like your own future is on hold until they figure out theirs. I can think of so many different examples of this. It's the habit of tying your emotional state to someone else's moods or behavior, most often your big kid's.
So if they're doing well, you feel calm. But if they're in a bad mood, you can't feel okay. Or if they pull away, you feel disconnected.
It's like you only let yourself feel okay if you have evidence that they're doing okay and doing the right thing. This is a mindset trap I call emotional outsourcing. It's when your sense of peace, happiness, connection, or confidence feels like it's dependent on someone or something else.
My friend, the reality is that all of us do this in some ways. And not just moms. But we also do it without realizing it.
We think we're just reacting to what's happening. But really, what we're doing is outsourcing our emotional well-being to our kids, or our partners, or our parents, or the circumstances of our lives. Waiting for other people to behave in a certain way so we can feel better.
Or waiting for the circumstances of our lives to align with what we want so that we can feel okay. A therapist might label this kind of pattern as emotional dependence or even enmeshment, especially when a parent's emotional state becomes overly tied to their child. And while those terms can be helpful in some clinical contexts, I don't actually think they're a useful label for most of us moms.
And here's why. Calling this emotional dependence or enmeshment can make it sound like there's something wrong with you. Like it's a flaw or even a diagnosis.
But what I've seen over and over again is that this is actually just a very human habit. I mean, of course you feel your kids' emotions deeply. Of course you want to protect them and support them and guide them.
You've spent their entire lives being attuned to their needs. So it makes sense that your brain has built strong emotional pathways that respond to how they're doing. But since this pattern also comes up in therapy, I want to take a moment to address what I perceive to be the difference between a mindset trap and a psychological disorder in this case.
So a mindset trap is really a habitual thought pattern, something your brain has learned to do over time. It's not a mental illness. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you.
It just means your brain has learned a certain way of operating that in many ways makes perfect sense. And I'll get to why in a minute. But the problem is that sometimes these habitual thought patterns end up keeping us stuck or perpetuating reactions or results that we really don't want.
So the mindset trap of emotional outsourcing is when you've unconsciously practiced thought patterns that tie your sense of peace to how your kid is doing. But the result of this is that you can feel totally thrown off by their emotions or their behavior. And there are so many reasons that this makes perfect sense for us moms.
In contrast, a psychological disorder usually involves a consistent pattern of thoughts, emotions, or behaviors that cause significant distress or impairment in someone's ability to function day to day. So for example, in a clinical setting, emotional dependence might be diagnosed if someone literally feels unable to regulate their emotions without constant reassurance. Or enmeshment might show up in a family where a parent expects a child to meet their emotional needs.
And then there's something called codependency, which is when a person consistently puts someone else's needs, emotions, or problems above their own, often to the point of totally neglecting themselves, even to the point of creating their own emotional harm. These types of disorders are also more pervasive and long-standing patterns that typically affect many areas of someone's life and many different relationships, not just with a child. So what I want to be clear about is that I'm not talking about clinical enmeshment or emotional dependence or codependency.
Something I've noticed is that many of us get to this stage of life and we're looking for help and support and working through what is honestly a very stressful time in motherhood. And so many of us turn to therapy for answers and support. And I think therapy is a very powerful thing.
But sometimes we can walk away from these sessions feeling diagnosed, like our perfectly human reactions mean that there's something wrong with us. In my experience with women I've worked with, the truth is what's happening for the majority of us is not a disorder. It's a habit of thought, a mindset we've practiced for years without really realizing it.
You've spent literally a lifetime loving and nurturing and worrying about your kid. So of course your emotions feel tied up with theirs. This way of thinking also might have had benefits when our kids were little because it caused us to be responsive to their needs.
But now that they're growing up, we need new tools, a new way of thinking to help us effectively approach the challenges of parenting in this stage of life. And giving you these tools is exactly what I'm aiming to do with this Mindset Trap series. This episode is the 13th in this series, where I've been unpacking the hidden thought patterns that make raising and launching our kids feel so much harder than it has to be.
Each of these traps is really just a habit of thought, ways our brains try to protect us. But these habits also often end up keeping us stuck. For example, in past episodes I've covered personalization, perfectionism, and the illusion of control.
The whole purpose of this series is to help you understand these patterns so you can spot them for yourself, and also so that you can have compassion for why they happen and learn how to step out of them. Because once you see them for what they are, you can start to make choices from a place of self-awareness. So this is exactly what we're going to dive into as we explore the trap of emotional outsourcing.
So let's talk about what emotional outsourcing looks like in everyday life. It can be surprisingly subtle. Maybe you feel anxious until your teen finally texts you back, as if you need that confirmation from them that they're okay so that you can feel okay.
Or that confirmation that they're responding so that you can feel connected. Or maybe you feel hurt if your college kid doesn't call, or if your teen wants to eat dinner in their room, and the story you tell yourself is that their behavior must mean something about your relationship. That you're looking for evidence of their behavior, essentially to give you permission to feel connected.
Or you might feel disconnected when your teen gives you nothing but one-word answers, as if the number of words they say has the power to determine whether or not you're a good mom, or whether they want a relationship with you. You could also be waiting to feel confident about moving forward in an area of your life, or some next step you want to take, until someone else approves of your idea, as though their validation is what will give you permission to move forward. In each of these examples, your emotions, your peace, or confidence, or sense of connection, are being dictated by something outside of you.
Problem is, when you give away your emotional power like this, you're always waiting. Waiting for that call, or the smile, or the good grade, that conversation you're looking for, or the word of approval. Waiting for all of these things outside of you, for that proof that will give you the permission you feel like you need to feel what you want to feel.
And if you've ever found yourself in one of these situations, you know it doesn't feel good. But it also can feel almost impossible not to react this way. So the question is, why do we do this? Why does it feel so automatic to tie our emotions to our kids' behavior? Let's take a look at why we fall into this trap.
Part of this answer is found in biology, and part of it is habit. Let's talk about the biology of this first. When our babies cry, our brains are literally designed to release stress hormones that give us the urge to do something about their crying.
And then, when we manage to stop their crying, and when they smile at us, our brains release bonding and reward hormones like oxytocin and dopamine that make us feel good. This biological hormonal response plays a critical role in survival, because as moms, if we didn't respond this way to our kids, especially when they're babies, they wouldn't survive. But then this response becomes a habit, because we've repeated the cycle thousands of times with our kids, noticing their distress, responding to them, and then feeling that dopamine response when we actually are successful.
Over literal decades of us raising our kids, this has become second nature to us. And now, even though our kids are older and their survival doesn't at all depend on us jumping at every sign of their distress, those same neural pathways and mental habit loops are still really strong. Which is why it can feel so automatic to react when our kids are upset, or to feel like their emotions are essentially ours.
But there's another layer to this. On top of the biology of survival, there's what psychologists call the motivational triad, our brain's instinct to avoid pain, seek comfort, and conserve energy. So when your big kid is struggling or pulling away, it feels uncomfortable for us.
So our brains think, if I can just fix what's wrong with them, then I won't have to feel this pain. And this is just a basic instinct. Instead of sitting with your own feelings of discomfort, you essentially try to control or manage theirs.
We also have a basic instinct to seek comfort. And of course, you'd prefer to get reassured that everything's okay than to sit and feeling unsure or anxious. So you look for external signs, like that text back, or the smile, or the good grade.
Because if you can get that proof, then you get to relax. Our brains also default to keeping things simple or conserving energy. And it's actually interesting to notice that it's way easier for your brain to assume your emotions are caused by what's happening outside of you than to slow down and understand what you're actually thinking and feeling.
To your brain, emotional outsourcing is like a mental shortcut. The problem is that while this connection to our kids' needs and their emotions made sense when they were little, now that they're older, this same habit of thinking can actually work against you. Because when your well-being is tied to theirs, you're left on this emotional roller coaster that you cannot control.
And I think that's one of the biggest reasons why this time of life and motherhood can feel so emotionally exhausting. In my work coaching moms, I've seen how many different ways emotional outsourcing impacts our ability to feel at peace, connected, confident, and even feeling purposeful in our life. How this impacts our peace might be the most obvious.
Because we can't relax until we know our kid is safe. Or we can't enjoy the weekend until our kid finishes that homework assignment. Or you can't stop worrying until you get proof that everything is okay.
It also shows up in our ability to feel connected to our kids. So often I see moms tying their sense of closeness and connection with their kids based on how their kids act toward them. So if they text us back, we feel loved.
But if they don't, we feel ignored. If they're chatty when they come home, we feel connected. But if they stay locked up in their room, we feel shut out.
It's like our ability to feel close to our kids depends on their behavior. Emotional outsourcing also impacts our ability to feel confident. You only feel like a good mom if your teen listens to your advice.
Or your ability to feel good about a boundary you set feels dependent on whether or not your big kid complies easily. Or you wait for evidence that you made the right decision. Like you give your college kids space to sign up for classes on their own.
But then you can't relax until they call home and confirm it's done and it's all worked out the way you hoped. In order for you to feel confident you made the right decision. Finally, emotional outsourcing impacts our ability to feel fulfilled and purposeful.
And this one comes up so much as our kids need us less and we transition to the empty nest. We have the sense that we can't feel purposeful unless our kids need us. That we don't feel like we matter unless someone appreciates us.
Or that we won't feel fulfilled again until we figure out the right next step. Instead of deciding what feels meaningful right now, we end up waiting for other people or circumstances to give us that sense of purpose and meaning. Here's the comment thread I want to invite you to see.
When we outsource our emotions, we end up waiting for our kids or for someone else or something else to give us permission to feel okay. The cost of this is truly the stability of your emotional well-being. Because when your emotions are tied to your teen's moods, choices, or successes, you're living on an emotional roller coaster that you don't control.
You feel anxious when they're anxious, or rejected when they pull away, or unsettled until things are fixed or right. And that constant dependence on outside circumstances for peace leads you feeling anxious and exhausted. Maybe even worse, emotional outsourcing can have a negative impact on the quality of the relationship we have with our kids.
Because whether we realize it or not, they feel the pressure. If they sense that they have to act a certain way so that you can feel okay, that can make them want to pull away even more. Imagine being a teen and knowing your mom is anxiously waiting for you to text back, or feeling like your mom's whole weekend is going to be ruined if you don't want to hang out with her, or if you bring home a bad test grade that your mom will blame herself.
Or imagine being a teen and feeling like if you don't want to talk, your mom takes it personally and assumes she did something wrong. Without meaning to, we can put so much pressure on our kids to prove that they're okay, or to do the right thing in our minds, so that we as their mom can feel okay. The challenge is our kids simply aren't emotionally mature enough to handle that kind of pressure.
Their brains are still developing, especially the parts that manage emotional regulation. They're just learning how to navigate their own feelings and relationships and responsibilities. So when we make them feel like they also have to manage our emotions, it can feel overwhelming to them, maybe even unfair.
So what often happens is they react to us to protect themselves. That could look like pulling away, or fighting, or lying, hiding things to avoid upsetting us. And that's not because they don't love us, but simply because the added pressure of supporting our emotions is just too much for them as they navigate theirs.
And if you're hearing this and recognizing yourself, please don't beat yourself up. Every mom I know has done this at some point, in some way, myself included. It truly comes from love, from caring so deeply that we just want things to be okay.
The good news is once you see the pattern, you can shift it. You don't have to be perfect. In fact, there are still times I catch myself doing this.
But it is possible to build awareness of this mindset trap and choose a different path. So what does it look like to do things differently? It looks like being able to stay calm, even when your big kid is struggling, and being very clear with yourself about how you want to support them and what that looks like. It's recognizing that sometimes your kid will struggle.
Maybe that's okay, but it's not your fault or your job to fix it. It also looks like creating a sense of connection that isn't dependent on whether your teen opens up to you or your college kid calls home this week. It looks like creating confidence in your own choices and deciding to have your back about them.
This doesn't mean you stop caring by any means, or that you don't still do anything you can to guide and support your kid. But it does mean that you can learn how to show up with unconditional love and support without needing your big kid to respond in the right way for you to feel okay. I know that in practice, this can feel really hard to do.
Not only because we care so much and don't want our kids to struggle, but also because this is such a well-worn habit we've been practicing for years. The truth is, most of us already know we don't want to keep living on this emotional roller coaster. But knowing it and actually changing it are two very different things.
These patterns are also so practiced and automatic that it's hard to even catch yourself in the moment, let alone shift to a different way of being. This is where coaching makes all the difference. Because coaching gives you the tools to see your thought patterns clearly, to really understand why you react the way that you do, and to practice new ways of showing up.
You don't have to figure this out on your own, and you don't have to keep repeating these same cycles. This is the work I do with moms inside my Mom 2.0 coaching program. Together, we identify the traps that keep you stuck, and I teach you the tools to shift into a new way of thinking so that you can create more peace, connection, confidence, and purpose in this chapter of motherhood.
Imagine what it would feel like to not have to live at the mercy of your teen's moods or their behavior, to know how to feel calm and steady no matter what. The empathy we feel for our kids is a beautiful thing. It's what allows us to connect with them, to support them when they're hurting, and say, I get it, I'm here for you.
It is such a beautiful and powerful thing when we can be the one person in our kid's life who offers unconditional love and support. It's like, no matter what's going on in your life, my dear child, whatever struggles you face, I am going to be here, no matter what, to hold your hand and cheer you on until you get through this. Every single one of us deserves to have that one person in our corner.
And it could even be that you yourself have never had that one person in your corner, and you're trying so hard to give that to your child. What a gift. But just consider that this mindset trap of emotional outsourcing is different from empathy.
It's not just feeling with our kids in the sense that, of course, when my kid is struggling, I'm going to feel sad or uncomfortable about that. Here's an example to think about. With empathy, if your teen is anxious about a test, you can say, I get it, calculus is stressful, but I believe in you.
With emotional outsourcing, that same teen being anxious about the test makes you lie awake in the middle of the night, worrying about whether or not they're going to do well, waiting to feel better until your kid comes home and says that they did okay. I know it's hard to find that line between support and needing to fix, between empathy and what feels like entanglement. But there is a path that already lies within you, and all you need are new tools to tap into it.
Because the truth is, your peace, confidence, and connection always come from inside of you. You've just practiced the habit of waiting for permission to create it. You don't have to wait for your child's mood, their choices, or success to tell you you're okay.
You get to create that for yourself. That is where your real power lies, my friend.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
