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Mindset traps of parenting teens in the empty nest. Trap number two, all or nothing thinking, finding peace in the gray. 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. Have you ever noticed how motherhood can start to feel like one big test? As if every moment is measuring whether you're getting it right or getting it wrong. One day, everything feels calm, and your kid seems happy, and you can breathe.
And the next, something changes. A bad grade, a bad mood, a bad comment. And suddenly, your brain goes straight to the worst case scenario.
It's like there's no middle ground. Either things are going well, or everything's falling apart. Here's what I want you to know.
If this sounds familiar, there's nothing wrong with you. You just have a very human brain, a brain that craves certainty, that wants to protect you and the people you love, by sorting life into clear categories. Success or failure.
Right or wrong. Good or bad. In this series, I'm continuing the mindset traps of parenting teens in the Empty Nest series, where I explore the hidden thought patterns that keep so many of us moms stuck in worry, guilt, and frustration.
Today, we're talking about the all-or-nothing trap. That mental habit that convinces you that peace will come once you have everything under control. But what if peace doesn't come from control at all? What if it comes from learning how to trust yourself, no matter what's happening around you? Because no matter where you are on this journey, whether you're guiding teens through high school or learning to let go as they leave home, you have far more power to create peace than your brain wants you to believe.
So let's dive in. Hello, my friend. As I was thinking about raising my two boys, particularly during those years when they were teens at home, but even now that they're in college, there are so many times I notice my brain going to this place where there are only two possible outcomes.
The one I want and hope will happen, or the absolute worst-case scenario. The version of life for my boys that I'm striving to help them achieve, and the version that, quite frankly, looks like disaster. I remember when my son was in middle school, struggling with friendships.
I wanted so much for him to find his people, to feel that sense of connection and belonging. At one point, he told me, I've never had a best friend. I wasn't even really sure that that was true.
But in that moment, of course, it was exactly what I wanted for him. And hearing him say it out loud only reinforced how much I wanted it for him. So my brain jumped to the worst-case scenario.
If my son can't find a best friend, he's going to be lonely. He's going to be depressed. He's going to struggle when he gets to high school.
Then we got to high school and I started focusing more on my son's grades, what that path to college was going to look like, and how my boys could put their best foot forward. Especially with my oldest, I remember being hyper-focused on grades for every test, what classes he was taking, the summer programs I wanted him to get into. It felt like the options were either get the good grade, get into the program and succeed, or fail and miss every opportunity I thought he was working toward.
Going through the actual college application process only magnified this for me. Both my boys picked the schools they wanted to get into and they applied early. And in doing that, they set themselves up for the biggest possibility of disappointment they had ever faced.
And at the time, it felt like the options were either get in and be successful, or don't get in and feel devastated. And even now, watching them navigate college, I noticed my brain wanting to go right back to that same binary thinking. Either they're going to be successful, happy and moving their lives forward, or they're going to be miserable and stuck.
There's nothing in me that wants to accept these worst-case scenarios, but my brain is really good at coming up with them. We focus so much energy on avoiding those outcomes, trying to help our kids understand the importance of making good choices, or staying motivated, being the best versions of themselves. But it feels like there's a really fine line between guiding and supporting your big kid, and desperately trying to help them avoid those worst-case scenarios.
Because they don't feel made up. In fact, at times, they can feel very real. Especially when the evidence in front of us seems to support that they're likely.
Like the disappointment in the college process, when the acceptance rates at some schools are so low that failure can seem far more likely than success. So our brain is really good at coming up with these terrible what-ifs. And we might even see our minds going there.
But what we don't take as much responsibility for is our vision of what success looks like, and how even that possibility in our mind is inherently flawed. Because our version of success, just like our version of the worst-case scenario, it's something we've made up in our minds. It reflects what we value, what we want, and what we think should be true, especially for our kids' lives.
But think about it, just like with the negative outcomes, there are a million different possibilities for what could actually happen. As I look back over my boys' lives, the past 18 and 20 years, I've seen this play out again and again. I fought so hard against my vision of the worst-case scenario for both of them.
And I fought just as hard in service of what I thought was the right answer, the way I thought things should be. But in so many cases, I'd even say in the majority of the situations, neither the best nor the worst case is actually what happened. Isn't that fascinating? We put so much energy into trying to predict the future, to create one outcome and avoid the other.
And yet, despite all of our efforts, life unfolds the way it unfolds. And if we really look back, it most often looks nothing like either outcome. Yet somehow, even though we have lots of evidence in our life that would seem to point us to being wrong about predicting what's going to happen, it seems like our brain's default way of predicting the future is all-or-nothing thinking.
So let's talk about what's actually happening here. All-or-nothing thinking is a mental habit where our brain sorts everything into extremes, success or failure, good or bad, right or wrong. It basically creates a situation where there's no middle ground, no room for other possibilities.
The hard part is that this way of thinking often feels like clarity. It feels safe to believe that there's a right answer, a correct way to do things. Now, when you really think about it, of course you know that there are many possible ways to go about anything.
And you know, or at least you'd like to believe, that the worst-case scenario isn't really likely. But have you ever noticed how your brain loves to go to these two binary possibilities first? To the right way and the wrong way, as if it's as simple as one or the other. Think about how often our brains offer these types of stories.
If my kid is thriving, I'm doing okay. If they're struggling, I must have failed. Or if she's not making good choices right now, she never will.
Or if he doesn't know what he wants to do, he's going to be lost forever. And this is actually one that comes up in coaching a lot. If they don't learn how to pick up their room now, they're always going to be messy.
It sounds funny when I offer these thoughts out of context. But actually, these types of thoughts are so typical. Now or never.
Success or failure. Good or bad. It's this constant measuring and self-judgment.
And it actually keeps us trapped in a lot of pressure and anxiety. Because notice how in all of these thoughts, there's no consideration for the reality that, as humans, sometimes the path to growth looks like struggling. And sometimes we're just working through our emotions.
Sometimes we're happy. Sometimes we're sad. But where we are now doesn't define where we'll be in a year.
Or even next week. And that's true both for us and for our kids. So why do our minds default to this all-or-nothing way of thinking? It's not because we're doing anything wrong.
It's truly because our brains are wired for survival. Our primitive mind is constantly seeking safety and certainty. And when life feels unpredictable, when our big kid is struggling, or when they're doing something we don't want them to be doing, our brain goes into protection mode.
It wants a quick answer to the question, are we safe or are we in danger? Are we succeeding or failing here? You can think of all-or-nothing thinking as your brain's shortcut to safety. In reality, life is actually complex and emotional. But your brain deals with this complexity by sorting situations into neat categories.
It's really a false sense of simplicity that gives us this illusion of control. Because if you can just do everything right, if you can say the perfect thing, and make the right decision, and anticipate every problem, then maybe you can prevent pain and heartbreak and disappointment. Yours and your big kid's.
But the problem is life doesn't work that way. Because even if you say the right, perfect thing, it doesn't mean the other person's going to react in the right, perfect way, the way that you want them to. And even if your kid does all of the right things, it doesn't mean that their life is going to unfold perfectly.
All-or-nothing thinking is essentially convincing us that perfection, or doing things right, is a path to being safe and happy. But instead of protecting us or guaranteeing our safety and happiness, this type of thinking keeps us in a constant state of vigilance and stress. Because even if we were to do everything perfectly, which is an impossible standard, we still don't have control over how life happens.
And so interestingly, we do our best, and it's never enough. So then we feel as if we're never enough. It's so easy for us to measure our worth as moms based on how our kids are doing, or how calm and patient we manage to be when we're dealing with them.
If our kid is thriving, we feel this sense of calm and relief, validation even, that we're getting it right. But the minute that they struggle, or we react in a way that we don't like, we go to the place where we label ourselves as bad moms. We turn those moments of struggle or imperfection into evidence of failure.
And like all of these mindset traps, this default way of thinking goes back to the motivational triad, those three basic instincts that drive our instinctual human behavior. To avoid pain, seek comfort, and to conserve energy. Our brain wants to avoid pain, so it treats uncertainty like danger.
Again, these false binary outcomes, either good or bad, give us a false sense of certainty, which is actually our brain's attempt at trying to escape the discomfort of the inevitable uncertainty of life. In the same way, our brains also want to seek comfort, so they grab for a quick relief, and again, certainty. That thought that you're working toward one positive solution feels more comfortable than not knowing what to do or where you're headed.
The brain would rather hold on to a black and white story rather than sit in the tension of maybe, or I don't know. And finally, our brains want to conserve energy, so they simplify everything. The nuance of real life, where things are both hard and beautiful, messy and meaningful, holding that reality requires a lot of mental and emotional effort.
And so to save energy, your brain actually just collapses the complexity of life into two scenarios. When you put all three of these instincts together, avoiding pain, seeking comfort, and conserving energy, it actually makes perfect sense that our minds would fall into this trap. All or nothing thinking is just our brain's misguided way of trying to keep us safe.
And my friend, my mind does this all the time, and I'm guessing yours does too. And I see the same dynamic happening with so many women I work with. I was just talking to a new client the other day who has been really trying hard to stay patient with her son, but he seems to refuse to do anything she asks him to do.
She described to me how she reminds herself to be patient, and sometimes she's successful, but it's like the frustration builds and builds, and eventually she just explodes on her son. She told me, I blow up and I feel like I'm right back to square one, undoing all of the progress she thought she'd been making to try to get through to her son. Every time she raised her voice or got frustrated, her brain told her she was failing, and she came to me feeling like she was a terrible mom.
Another mom I work with shared that her daughter had just graduated from college and was struggling to figure out what she wanted to do next. She hadn't been successful in getting a job after a number of interviews, and this mom felt like her daughter wasn't being proactive enough about trying to get that job. So this mom felt compelled to check in, asking her daughter if she'd applied to more jobs that day, or if she'd heard back about getting an interview.
Her brain was convinced that if she didn't keep her daughter on track, that she'd never make it on her own. Or let's take a slightly different example. I worked with another mom who fell into all or nothing thinking about her own dreams.
For so long, her job was being a mom, and the demands of her family still took up a considerable amount of her time. But she was also looking ahead to the time when her kids would leave home, and she wanted to start finding time for her own passions again. But the responsibility she felt for her family made her feel guilty about carving time out for herself.
It was like her brain had convinced her that it was either her family or her, as if both couldn't exist together. So her default answer was to give up on her own goals because she couldn't see a world where she could balance both at once. And in this example, too, she was creating a worst-case scenario in her mind of what it would look like to try to juggle two things at once.
Basically, she thought she'd have to do both of them badly. It was like she was envisioning both letting down her family and not being successful in pursuing her dreams. So the answer felt like she had to either give up on one or the other.
These women all face different challenges, but they all point back to the same pattern. Our brain trying to create safety and certainty by making life simple. Either or.
Success or failure. Right or wrong. But here's the thing.
This all-or-nothing thinking ends up creating more suffering because it puts this pressure on us as moms to chase a version of reality that doesn't exist. We also put so much energy into fighting a version of reality that may never happen. And just think about the heaviness of carrying around these worst-case scenarios as if they're likely.
It's like walking through your life carrying this heavy weight, rehearsing pain that hasn't even happened yet. You wake up already bracing yourself for something to go wrong. And because you feel like you're constantly living in this fear, you feel all this pressure to stay on top of it, to stay one step ahead, constantly scanning for signs that the worst-case scenario might come true.
I remember going through high school with my boys and just waiting for that shoe to drop, waiting for the bad grade, or waiting for the failure. And then every interaction I had with them, particularly with my oldest, it was like, did you study? Did you do well on that test? As if my reminders and worrying were somehow going to guard against that worst-case scenario I had in my mind. And meanwhile, I was already living in the pain of it.
It felt so real to me that it might as well have been true. So when you think of it this way, is this binary thinking really keeping us safe? But here's the problem. All this vigilance.
It feels necessary, even loving, like our responsibility as moms. Because of course you want to protect your child. Of course you want to make sure that they're okay.
But what we don't realize is that in trying so hard to protect everyone from pain, you end up living in pain right now. The pain of worry, and this pressure, and this feeling that you are never doing enough. This is the cost of all-or-nothing thinking.
It convinces you that somehow peace will come once everything is certain. Once you've solved the problem, or fixed the behavior, or prevented the disappointment. But certainty is an illusion.
Because life will never be something you can fully control. There's always going to be another challenge, or another unknown. Another situation that doesn't go as planned.
So even when you think you've finally solved one problem, your brain just finds the next one to worry about. And that's the trap. Your sense of peace and well-being keeps getting pushed further down the road.
Always depending on everything being just right. Which means you never get to feel at peace. So how do you overcome all-or-nothing thinking? The first step is truly awareness.
And this is really what I want to offer you with this series on mindset traps. Because you can't change what you don't see. And what I've found in my own experience of learning these coaching and mindset tools, is that being able to observe your mind, the default stories and interpretation of life that it gives you.
Learning to see these stories and even to question them, is an incredibly powerful skill. So I want to invite you to just notice. Observe when your mind offers you a story that sounds like either everything's fine, or it's all falling apart.
Or if this doesn't happen, then everything's gone wrong. I've failed. My kid has failed.
Good or bad. Right or wrong. Either or.
Anytime your brain wants to offer you only two solutions, that's your cue to notice. Your brain is trying to protect you. To simplify the uncertainty of life.
It's a fascinating thing when you start to see the thoughts in your mind as something separate. Something observable. Because you can see it.
Your mind gives you these binary outcomes. You see the all or nothing. And if you're able to take a step back from it, and most importantly, not to judge it, but to get curious about it, that's when your higher brain, the part of your brain that can plan and rationalize, that can manage more complexity and nuance, you can actually tap into that part of your brain to notice how your primitive brain is oversimplifying the situation in an effort to keep you safe.
That's when you can start to acknowledge, right, there are more than two options here. And I want to remind you of something really important here. Mindset traps, like all or nothing thinking, have nothing to do with there being something wrong with you.
If any of these mindset traps mirror some aspect of your experience or how you show up under stress, that doesn't mean that this is one more way you're broken or doing it wrong. It's simply a sign that you, like me, like the rest of us, are human. These mindset traps are simply a function of the way our minds work.
They're automatic and protective patterns. The brain's way of solving problems, the brain's way of trying to solve problems and find solutions, and just keep you safe. And very often, these ways of thinking become habits.
And like any habit, they're not necessarily bad. It's just that when we take a step back, we often see how they're not actually helping us. In fact, more often than not, they're just keeping us stuck in stress and anxiety.
So rather than judging yourself for falling into mindset traps, I think it's valuable to remember that there are solutions your brain is offering to protect you and to make life feel safer or simpler. And look, if the solution works, fantastic. Sometimes simpler is better.
But if this default pattern of thinking is keeping you in stress, desperately trying to avoid a worst-case scenario while fighting for one equally limited version of what success looks like, this is the time to take a step back and get curious. Because at the heart of worst-case scenario thinking is this assumption we can have without even realizing it, that we won't be able to handle that worst-case scenario if it happens. Our brains aren't just afraid of something bad happening.
They're afraid that we won't be strong enough to deal with it if it does. But if our big kid struggles or if life doesn't go the way that we hope, we'll somehow fall apart. But this is also not true.
When you look back on your life, you can probably see evidence that you've already faced hard things. Heartbreak, disappointment, loss. And somehow in every situation, you've made it through step by step.
Even if it looked messy, you figured it out. So it's fascinating that the real fear here isn't really even about the situation. It's about how we doubt our own resilience.
And my friend, this is exactly why I created my coaching program, Mom 2.0. Because knowing what's happening in your mind is only the first step. Real change happens when you learn how to build trust in yourself again. In Mom 2.0, we work together to identify the exact thoughts and patterns that create your stress and anxiety.
And I'll teach you a simple process to break free of these patterns. This process will help you break free of limiting thoughts, regulate your emotions, and make intentional decisions about how you want to show up in your life. Having these skills empowers you to believe that you can handle life as it comes.
You get to stop fighting against imagined worst case scenarios. And even free yourself from fighting for a limited version of success. And instead, empower yourself to meet life with strength and confidence.
Knowing you are always the one in control of your emotional well-being. You don't have to fight reality and make it look a certain way so that you can feel okay. You can create that within yourself.
And in Mom 2.0, I'll show you how. You can learn more about the program through the link in the show notes. My friend All Or Nothing Thinking tells us that safety comes from control.
From getting everything right. From making sure nothing goes wrong. But real safety, real peace, comes from trusting that you can handle the circumstances of your life however they unfold.
You have more power inside of you to create this than you think. Until next time. 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.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
