THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I LOVE (AND HATE) THE HOLIDAYS” | EP. 204
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nestness 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 had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from. Because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
We're fully launched into the winter holidays, and I keep feeling this sense of being torn between feeling genuinely excited about the holidays, having the boys home, enjoying time with the people I love, and then also feeling totally overwhelmed by how much I think I have to do. The logistics, the decorating, the gifts, the events, and the obligations. And all of this comes on top of normal life, which is already incredibly full and busy.
As I've been thinking about it, mentally preparing myself for the holidays, I've noticed this feeling of cognitive dissonance, this realization that I'm holding two conflicting beliefs at the same time. And those are that I love the holidays, and on the other hand, there's a small part of me that actually hates the holidays. You know, there's so much incredible marketing around this season, this illusion that the holidays are supposed to be this beautiful, magical time.
And in our minds, I think we really do believe that that's the goal. We imagine ourselves having fun and feeling connected, taking in the joy of the whole experience. And then on top of that, you add the desire to show the people you love that you care about them.
And then, of course, there are all the people in your life who, whether out of obligation or expectation, you also feel you have to pay attention to. The word that keeps coming to my mind is overwhelming. It's this pressure to create this beautiful, magical holiday reality.
When I became a mom, the holidays took on a whole new meaning. I mean, when I was younger, I was totally selfish and self-centered in my experience of life, and definitely over the holidays. But once I became a mom, it's like I wanted to curate this special experience for my boys.
There's something so magical about seeing the holidays through your child's eyes, because for them, it really is magical. I wanted to create all of these beautiful traditions for them, and I loved it in so many ways, anticipating their joy. I think that was my favorite part, thinking of the possibility of my boys being completely blown away and excited and in the moment.
And there were actually so many times when my vision for what I wanted for the holidays actually came to life. Their little faces really did light up at times. I remember one Christmas Eve in particular, my father took jingle bells outside and rung them at a certain hour, and my little one literally jumped out of his seat screaming, we have to get to bed before Santa gets here.
Somehow motherhood has given me these little pieces of heaven, these cherished moments when you pour your love and intention into a moment, and you get that reflected back to you. But I'll be honest, even then, I felt so much pressure to make all of this magic happen. And it didn't always go the way that I wanted.
I tried to create a tradition where we would sing a Christmas carol every night as we tied a ribbon on a calendar for Advent. But more often than not, there were tears because the boys didn't want to do it, or they were fighting in the midst of it. And I don't think that there was one time when we visited Santa where the boys were excited.
It was more like, why are you asking me to sit on the lap of this creepy old guy? There were also plenty of times when the boys opened their gifts and immediately threw them to the side and looked at us like, what else is there? So I felt these high highs, those fleeting moments when the magic I was trying to create actually worked. And also plenty of other moments where I was totally let down, that despite all of my efforts, the magic I was trying to create didn't happen. More than anything, I realized how often I've taken on this responsibility of creating this magic at my own expense.
But now my boys are older, in college, and there's definitely no more Advent carols or sitting on Santa's lap. And the boys are actually in no way expecting me to create magic for them. In fact, I think they're just excited to get through their exams and get home to have a break from the stress of school.
And yet here I am, in the empty nest, anticipating the boys coming back home for the holidays, and I still somehow feel this pressure to create the magic. As I sit here thinking about it, I realize, especially now that my boys are grown up, every part of this pressure I'm putting on myself to create this magical holiday is entirely my choice. Every single thing on my list is actually a choice I'm making.
And yet there's a big part of me that doesn't feel like I can choose differently. You know, it's funny, for years I sent out a holiday family card. And I'll be honest, when the kids were younger, part of the motivation was that I wanted a family picture every year.
So under protest, I would drag my boys to meet up with a photographer at the beach. And it was always a terrible experience for everyone. But yet somehow the photographer would pull out one amazing shot every single year, and that became our Christmas card.
But now that they're older, it's almost impossible to orchestrate that photo. And even though we do have plenty of pictures of the four of us, well, at least random selfies of all of us, I've started asking myself, why am I doing this? Why am I bothering with this Christmas card? I mean, honestly, no one cares if they get my card. Or maybe I should say, no one would care or be upset if they didn't get my card.
So when I really try to answer the question of why I would send a card this year, my brain keeps going to an answer that starts with, I should. And I realize that's what's driving a lot of my stress. These shoulds.
I should send a holiday card. I should decorate the house. I should make sure everything's clean before people come over, even before the kids come back home.
I should get my friends gifts and my neighbors a gift, my co-workers, my tennis instructor. I should bake holiday cookies, even though no one in the house eats them but me. We have in our mind this long list of logistical shoulds.
But then on top of that, there's another layer of shoulds. The shoulds about how we think we should feel. I should be present and happy.
I should feel connected to my kids and the people I love. I shouldn't feel overwhelmed or frustrated because it's the holidays. I should be having fun.
So on top of this pressure, we feel an enormous amount of guilt and disappointment when we don't feel joyful and connected over the holidays. And all of this is just the pressure we put on ourselves. There's also the pressure that comes from other people.
Because let's face it, people in our lives do have expectations of us. Our in-laws, our parents, our extended family, co-workers, people who invite us to holiday parties, the people who expect a holiday tip. There are so many ways that are subtle and some not so subtle that people let you know that they expect you to show up in a certain way.
And yes, it's always a choice. But sometimes it feels like it's a choice with consequences. Because making the wrong choice means letting people down.
You feel this weight of other people having opinions about what you do or don't do. And that seems to pile on even more pressure and guilt. Because it's not just the shoulds we put on ourselves.
It's the stories we tell about what other people expect of us or how we think they'll feel if we let them down. All of these stories in our heads, what we think we should be doing, what we expect the holidays to be like, what we imagine other people expect from us, how we think we'll feel, how we think they'll feel, and what we think they'll make us feel. These stories carry an incredibly heavy weight.
Because this is what creates this feeling of overwhelm, especially during the holidays. And look, there are certain undeniable circumstances we're facing in our lives. What people say, the invitations we get, the people in our life and what they're doing or going through, the precedent that's been set in the past.
But what we don't often realize is that it's actually the interpretations we have about all of these facts that create our stress. We actually have a choice about how we respond to all of these shoulds and expectations. And I'm not saying that the right choice is to let everyone down or just say, forget it, why bother, and not do anything.
But what I'm talking about here is ownership. Owning that we are actually the ones making the choices. But what we often do is that we blame our choices on other people's expectations.
We essentially try to manage everyone else's feelings, wanting them to not feel disappointed or annoyed with us. In fact, just wanting everyone to be happy and get along. But without realizing it, we take on so much responsibility for all of this.
And yes, so much of this comes from love. But also, a big part of it comes from not wanting to feel the discomfort of someone else being disappointed with us. So what we do is that we anticipate their disappointment and try to take responsibility for preventing it.
Because if they feel let down, we make it mean we did something wrong. And my friend, I think you know in your heart that taking responsibility for other people's feelings is an exhausting job. I mean, if the measure of our success is everyone else's happiness, is it really any wonder that the holidays feel so stressful? Because it's not just the logistics we're taking responsibility for.
We're carrying the weight of everyone else's emotional experience. And the truth is, this is something that you don't actually have the power to control. I released an episode last Saturday about radical acceptance.
About understanding what's in your control and what's not. And here's where radical acceptance becomes so powerful. Because taking ownership of your choices isn't just about acknowledging that you're the one making decisions about what you do and don't do.
It's also about accepting the limits of your power without making that mean anything about you. It's saying, I can choose how I want to show up here, but I can't control how anyone else feels about it. I mean, the truth is, you can do everything perfectly, and people are still going to feel the way that they feel about it.
And instead of fighting against that reality by taking on all of these obligations and saying yes when you really don't want to do those things, instead of giving in to all of this pressure and these expectations, you can learn to see it for what it is and embrace your power to make decisions that are authentic and in alignment with who you want to be. But that also means understanding that you can love other people deeply without taking responsibility for their emotions. Here's something that might be a little uncomfortable to admit.
Because if we're really being honest, it's not just that we're trying to make everyone else happy. We also have expectations about how other people should show up so that we can feel happy. And look, it makes so much sense.
We want to feel connected to the people we love. We want to feel valued and appreciated like we matter. We want people to notice our effort.
We want our kids to be grateful. And we want our partners to help without being asked. So what our minds do is they tell us that if they show up the way I want them to, then I'll feel happy.
If they appreciate what I'm doing, then it will all feel worth it. If they could just open up to me, then I can feel connected. If they're happy, then I can relax.
Without realizing it, we're outsourcing our emotional experience to other people's behavior. And I want to say that this is actually totally normal. My friend, we all do this.
In fact, I think we were raised in a society that taught us to respond to each other in this way. I mean, it goes back to us growing up on the playground when people would say, did Johnny hurt your feelings? We truly think that other people have this power over us to give us happiness and to take it away. But the truth is, this is also why our emotional experience feels totally out of our control at times.
Because not only do we take responsibility for other people's happiness, we also make them responsible for ours. And that creates this circular loop where we're constantly looking to other people for reassurance. Do they look happy? Do they seem grateful? Are they having fun? And if the answer is not really, then our brains go right to, well, then that means I failed.
Or worse, that they are failing me. And that's when we feel disappointed and even resentful, especially over the holidays. Because here we are doing everything for everyone and they can't even say thank you or offer to help.
In fact, no one even notices everything I do. We carry these invisible emotional contracts in our head. I'll do all this work and make the holidays special.
And then in return, you'll feel a certain way and act a certain way. So that then I'll get to feel a certain way. I mean, if we were truly making every single decision, if every single piece of our effort that we put into the holidays was simply about what we wanted, we would never feel that down.
Because we wouldn't be doing it for the thank you or some specific emotional response. And I don't say all of this to suggest that you should just be selflessly taking on all this work and not expect a thank you. But what I am saying is this, when the success of our effort is tied to someone else's reaction, we set ourselves up to feel disappointed.
Not because the people in our lives are doing anything wrong necessarily, but because we've attached our emotional payoff to something we can't control. We think we're frustrated because no one said thank you. We think we're hurt because no one offered to help.
We think we're resentful because people aren't showing up the way we wanted them to. But what's really happening is that we made an effort and now we're holding our breath, waiting for someone else to acknowledge it, to tell us it matters, to give us the right reaction so that we can feel the way that we want. I mean, it's actually no wonder that we feel so let down so much of the time.
Because even when people love us, they can't read our minds. In fact, they are caught up in their own minds about what they want and where they are in their lives. And this is especially true for our kids.
My friend, this is why there are parts of the holidays that we dread. Because we invest our time and our energy and also our hearts, our hopes, our sense of worth into making the holidays special. And then we wait to see if anyone validates all of this effort.
But I want to give you some really good news. Because your happiness is not created by how anyone else behaves. People can absolutely contribute positively to your experience.
In fact, if they show up the way you want them to, wonderful. But at the end of the day, the way you feel comes directly from the way that you perceive your life, your perspective about how all those other people show up in your life and what that means. And realizing that, really owning it, isn't about letting people off the hook.
It's about letting yourself off the hook. Because the unintentional pressure you may be putting on other people is really just another version of the pressure you're putting on yourself. When you let go of the idea that other people need to behave a certain way for you to feel a certain way, something shifts.
That's when you gain the power to create a holiday experience where you are in charge of your own peace and connection and even joy. So much of our stress and pressure during the holidays comes from believing that everyone else's emotional experience is in our hands and also that our emotional experience is in theirs. And neither of those things are true.
Even now, I see my brain going to that default setting where I think, if I plan everything just right, if the house looks a certain way, and if I show up perfectly, then everyone will feel good. And then on the flip side, I think, if everyone else shows up the way that I want, if they're grateful and present and happy and want to be together, then I'll feel good. But what I've come to understand is that this default setting of our brains is built on a total misunderstanding of where our emotions actually come from.
How we feel doesn't come from the circumstances around us, not the decorations or the food, or even how people around us behave. Our feelings come from the way we think about all of it, always. What's so powerful about owning your emotional experience is that it frees up so much mental and emotional energy.
Because if you can drop the responsibility of managing other people's emotions, you actually gain the power to show up with more presence, more authenticity. And the irony is that this is actually what creates the conditions for the holidays to feel magical. Not perfect, but real.
And that's actually where the magic is. Not in the fantasy of your life, not in the performance. The magic is in the truth of your life, in owning your experience and letting other people have theirs, in showing up to your life with love instead of pressure, and allowing other people and yourself especially to be human.
My friend, you get to decide how you want to show up in your life. You can also decide to open your eyes to the beauty of what is in your life, not what you wish it to be, but what it is right now. My friend, if you're tired of feeling like you're carrying the emotional weight of everyone around you and exhausted from trying to do everything right, if you're ready to feel more confident and at peace, this is exactly what we do in my Mom 2.0 coaching program.
In this program, I teach you the skill of emotional ownership in a way that transforms how you show up, not just during the holidays, but in every part of your life. You're welcome to learn more about the program through the link in the show notes. My friend, you actually have more power than you think.
Not the power to control everyone else's feelings or emotional experience, but the power to decide how you want to show up in your life. And when you take ownership of your emotional experience, everything becomes lighter and clearer. And that, my friend, is where you'll find the real magic over the holidays.
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.
