MINDSET TRAPS OF PARENTING TEENS AND THE EMPTY NEST—TRAP #13: EMOTIONAL OUTSOURCING—HOW TO STOP RIDING THE EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER WITH YOUR BIG KID | EP. 293
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 quickly your mood can change based on how your kid is doing? They call sounding happy and you feel great.
They're struggling, pulling away, or upset with you. Well, now you're struggling too. Today, I'm continuing the mindset trap series with a trap I call emotional outsourcing.
I'm going to show you how to recognize when you've made your peace dependent on your kid being okay and why that creates so much anxiety for us moms. And how to let your kid have their own hard moments without feeling like you have to go down with them. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. So my oldest just came home for a quick visit from school. He was on a retreat with the songwriters group only an hour away.
So he came home for dinner Saturday night. And I could tell almost as soon as he walked through the door that he had a lot on his mind. He's a senior in college.
So all of those, what happens after this questions are starting to feel very real for him. He doesn't know exactly what he's going to do, or more specifically, who's going to hire him, or where that job might be, where he'll live. And on top of all of that, he wasn't feeling well.
So there he was, home, sick, carrying all of this uncertainty about his future. And I noticed myself watching him, thinking, how's he doing with all of this? Is he okay? Is he more worried than he's letting on? Or is he doing everything he needs to do to open doors for himself? Because I noticed there was part of my mind thinking that maybe the worry was getting in the way of him being as proactive as maybe he should be. And look, part of this is simply being his mom.
I love him. And of course, I want him to feel supported. And of course, I want him to figure out his path.
But I could also feel that familiar pull to try to solve some of it for him. Because if I'm really honest, it was a part of me that wanted him to feel better. Because I wanted to feel better.
I wanted a little reassurance. A little, I've got this, mom. I'm fine.
So I found myself looking for evidence that some kind of plan was forming. Because if I could hear that from him, maybe then I could set down some of my worry. If he seemed okay, then I could be okay.
And interestingly, I had almost this exact conversation with a client earlier today. She's been struggling with her daughter. And she started our call by saying, it's been a good week.
My daughter is doing so much better. She is capable of being happy. And then she caught herself and she laughed.
See, when she is happy, I'm happy. And look, I didn't take that away from her. Of course, we feel good when our kids are doing well.
It's exactly what we want for them. When they're happy or settled or excited about their lives, of course, we feel a sense of relief and happiness for them. But then, what happens to us when they're not okay? My friend, this is one of the sneakiest traps we fall into as moms.
Because it doesn't feel like a trap. It feels like love. Without ever consciously deciding to, we make our own peace dependent on how our kids are doing.
If they're okay, we can breathe a little easier. But when they're struggling or disappointed or anxious or angry with us, we're just unsure of themselves. Suddenly, we feel like we can't relax either.
This is a trap I call emotional outsourcing. It's when we start looking to something outside of us, and especially to our kids' moods and choices and struggles and progress. We look to all of that to determine what we get to feel inside.
And I think what's especially interesting about this is that most of us don't even realize we've made this connection in our minds. We're not consciously walking around thinking, my emotional well-being is dependent on my child's emotional well-being. It just feels true.
If they're having a hard time, of course we're having a hard time. If they're worried, of course we're worried. If something goes wrong in their life, it absolutely feels like something has gone wrong in ours too.
And it's interesting because there are so many different ways these beliefs show up for us as moms. Sometimes it sounds like, I'll feel better when I know they're okay. Or sometimes it's, I'll feel connected when they start talking to me again.
Or, I'll feel confident about this boundary when they stop being angry about it. If your kid is struggling, it can sound like, I just need to see some progress here. Or if they're in college or out in the world, maybe it's, once they figure out that job or the roommate or the relationship, whatever that next step is, then I can relax.
And what's interesting is that none of those thoughts necessarily sound unreasonable. In fact, they can sound completely logical. Of course, you'll feel more relaxed if your kid seems settled.
And of course, you get to feel a beautiful sense of connection when your kid opens up to you or makes time for you. And let's be honest, boundaries are so much easier to feel confident about when our kids go along with them. But just notice what happens when we make those things the requirement for how we get to feel.
Then our peace and confidence and our ability to feel connected become conditional. We're essentially saying, I can have this feeling, but only after something outside of me changes first. And that can show up in really subtle ways.
Your teen comes home in a terrible mood and suddenly the whole house feels tense to you. Or your college kid calls sounding overwhelmed. And even after you hang up, you're carrying that conversation around with you for the rest of the day.
Or your kid is upset with a decision you made and now instead of just letting them be upset, you start wondering whether their reaction means you made the wrong decision. Or maybe your kid is doing fine. They're busy and independent living their life and they don't need you very much right now.
Nothing is actually wrong, but you notice that you feel a little less important in their life. Emotional outsourcing in this case might sound like, I need you to need me so I can feel like I matter. Different circumstances, but underneath all of them is a very similar idea.
Something out there needs to change before I can feel different within myself. And I think this is why this trap can have such a grip on us. Because our kids' lives matter so much to us.
Of course we want them to be happy and doing okay. And of course their relationships with us matter. So we don't even question that these things determine how we get to feel.
And I know I've made this point so many times, but it truly bears repeating. Because it actually makes so much sense that we do this as moms. Not only do we love our kids, but for years our brains and our bodies have been reinforcing this pattern.
Think about back when your baby cried. You felt it in your body, this need to respond. You heard that cry and your nervous system went on alert.
Something might be wrong and you need to check. So then you went into problem-solving mode. And once you figured out what your baby needed and they settled down, you felt a wave of relief.
And just think about how many thousands of times, or maybe millions of times at this point, you have replayed that same cycle. Your child is distressed, your system goes on alert, you respond, they calm down, and then you calm down. This is such a powerful feedback loop.
And so in the process of repeating this loop again and again, your brain learned over and over again that paying close attention to your child's distress and doing something about it is what brings everybody back to safety. When they're okay, you can relax. And that didn't stop when they stopped being babies.
If your kid was having trouble in school, you got involved. If they were being left out, you tried to help. If they were sick, you took care of them.
For years and years, noticing that something was wrong and then responding to it was not only part of being a good mom, it was something your nervous system was constantly reinforcing. So of course, now, when your 20-year-old sounds anxious on the phone, or your teen walks through the door in a bad mood, or your college kid seems lost about what comes next, your nervous system still responds. It wants to repeat that same cycle.
Something's wrong, pay attention, do something. And once they're okay, you get to be okay. Only here's the problem.
When our kids were little, their distress really did mean we had to do something. But now, more often than not, their distress is just part of their life. I mean, the reality is, they are going to be uncertain about their future.
The future is inherently uncertain. They're also going to have problems with friendships, and breakups, and disappointments. They're going to make bad decisions at times, and then they're going to have to face the consequences of them.
They may also feel anxious at times, and sad, and lonely, angry, confused, overwhelmed. All of the emotions of the human experience, our kids are destined to feel all of them, just as we have. But because we've spent so many years interpreting our kids' discomfort as a signal that something needs our attention, it can be really hard to recognize that sometimes, nothing has actually gone wrong.
Sometimes our kid is just having a hard time. And I think this is where emotional outsourcing gets even more complicated. Because somewhere along the way, we can start to confuse our willingness to suffer alongside our kids with how much we love them.
If they're hurting and we're okay, does that mean we don't care enough? Or if they're struggling and we're at peace, is there a little part of us that thinks maybe we're being selfish? I think for a lot of us, worry starts to feel almost like solidarity. Like if they're struggling, some part of us feels like we should be struggling too, because that's how much we care. We don't want them to be alone in the struggle.
And that makes complete sense when you consider how much we love our kids. Their lives matter to us in ways that very few things ever will. But it's interesting to consider that there's a difference between empathy and emotional outsourcing.
Because I don't want the takeaway from this conversation to be that we shouldn't be affected by what our kids are going through. I mean, of course we are. If my son is worried about his future, I'm going to care about that.
Or if your daughter is heartbroken, or your kid gets rejected from the school or the job that they really wanted, you are going to feel something. I mean, we love these people. Their lives matter to us so much.
So I will never suggest that the goal is to somehow become so emotionally detached that nothing they do ever affects us. But there is a difference between caring about what your child is feeling and needing their feelings to change before you can feel okay. Just imagine your kid comes to you really upset because something's happened with a friend or a relationship.
Or maybe they're just feeling left out or lonely. And you can hear how hurt they are. Maybe they're crying or angry or saying things like, nobody cares about me or I hate my life right now.
And of course, all of that is hard to hear. Empathy in this situation might look like hearing all of that and thinking, of course this hurts. And I hate seeing my kid feel this way.
So you might sit with them and listen and tell them you're sorry they're going through it. And genuinely feel sad for them. But you also understand that their pain is something that they need to work through.
But emotional outsourcing is when their pain starts to feel like something you need to change before you can feel better. Now you're not only thinking this is hard for them. You're thinking, how do I fix this? What do I say? How do I get them to see that this isn't the end of the world? They need to feel better.
The difference is so subtle. In both cases, you care. But with empathy, you're feeling for your child.
With emotional outsourcing, you start needing your child's emotional state to change so that yours can change too. And look, let's just acknowledge that it's not fun to sit with emotional pain. When your kid is hurting or in pain, you feel your own discomfort in response.
So of course your mind is going to default to looking for a way to make that discomfort go away. And because we've practiced that habit of making that pain go away by solving for our kid's pain, of course that's where our mind is going to go first. This is a habit we've been practicing for decades.
But my friend, there is a cost to living this way. Because when your emotional well-being is tied to how your big kid is doing, you are essentially riding along with every high and low of their life. They have a great day.
You get to feel this wave of relief. They call you excited about something, and suddenly everything feels right with the world. But then the next day they sound off, or they don't call, or something doesn't work out the way they'd hoped.
Maybe they're struggling again with the same thing you thought was getting better, and suddenly you're right back there with them in pain. It's exhausting because there is never really a point where you get to know that everything is permanently okay. I mean, that's life.
Our kids are going to have good days and bad days. They're going to make choices we feel good about some days and choices that scare us on other days. They're going to have periods of time where everything seems to be falling into place, and others where they seem completely lost.
And if every one of those changes also determines how you are doing, then your emotional well-being becomes incredibly fragile. You're constantly looking for evidence. How did they sound on the phone? Did they seem happy when they came downstairs this morning? Are they spending time with friends? Did they get the grade they were hoping for? The job they were hoping to get? Are they still upset with me? Are things getting better? And this is actually what I noticed myself doing with my son when he was home.
I wasn't only listening to what he was saying about his future. I was also evaluating it. Does he sound confident enough? Does he have enough of a plan? Is he doing enough? And depending on the answer I was coming up with in my own mind, I could either feel a little better or find something else to worry about.
And this is one of the biggest problems with emotional outsourcing. Even when you get the reassurance you're looking for, it doesn't last very long. Your kid might tell you, Mom, I'm fine.
And maybe you feel better for an hour. Or your daughter has a good week and you think, Thank God, she's turning a corner. Or your kid finally calls and they sound happy and you can breathe a sigh of relief.
But then something else happens because something always happens. And now you need another piece of evidence that everything is okay. It can almost become like we're constantly checking the emotional weather in our kids' lives.
And then we're deciding what kind of day we're allowed to have based on that forecast. And there's another cost here that's a little harder to see. When our piece depends on our kid feeling a certain way, there can be a lot of pressure we put on that relationship, even when we don't intend to pressure them in that way.
Think about a kid who walks through the door clearly upset and you ask what's wrong and they say nothing. And you can tell it's not nothing, so you ask again and they say, Mom, I'm fine. But you're still thinking about it because they clearly don't seem fine.
So maybe you check in later or you try to get them talking because you genuinely care and you want to help. But from their perspective, now they're not only dealing with whatever they were feeling, they can also start to feel like they need to convince you that they're okay. And I think this happens in all sorts of ways.
Our kids can sense when we really need the conversation to go well, when we really need them to be happier or need some sign that they're making progress. They may not have the words for it, but they can feel that there's something we need from them emotionally. And ironically, that can make it harder for them to be open with us.
Because if telling Mom that I'm struggling means Mom's going to get even more worried or start asking me a hundred questions or spend the next three days thinking about it, maybe I won't tell her as much. Or if being angry with Mom means I now have to reassure her that I still love her, maybe I just pull away rather than be honest. And again, none of this means we've done something wrong.
It just helps us see the unintended cost of needing our kids to be okay so that we can be okay. Because what starts as love and concern can unintentionally turn into pressure we put on our kids. And that can make our kids feel like they have to manage not only their emotional experience, but ours too.
And there's actually one more cost to emotional outsourcing that is a little less obvious. And that's what it can do to our confidence in ourselves. Because when we're constantly looking at how our kid is doing to tell us whether everything is okay, we can also start using their response as the measure of whether we're doing okay as a mom.
So maybe you've set a boundary you genuinely believe is important, and then your kid gets angry. Suddenly you're questioning yourself. Or maybe you decide to step back and give your kid more space to figure something out on their own.
But then they struggle, and now your mind goes straight to, see, I knew I should have done more. And this can happen in the positive direction too. When your kid's doing really well, there can be this sense of relief like, okay, maybe I'm doing something right.
But then something goes sideways and that confidence disappears again. So without realizing it, we start letting our kid's behavior or their progress or their reactions become evidence for how we should feel about ourselves. And my friend, just think about how unstable that makes your confidence.
Because our kids are going to have opinions about us. Sometimes they're going to get angry at us. And they're also going to make mistakes and struggle.
And they will absolutely make choices that we don't agree with. And none of those things necessarily tell us whether we handled something well. But when we're emotionally outsourcing, we treat all of that as evidence against ourselves.
If they're angry, maybe I was wrong. If they're struggling, maybe I didn't do enough. If they pull away, maybe I caused the damage in our relationship.
And even if they're thriving, then maybe I finally get to believe I did a good job. Why do we wait to give ourselves permission to feel that? This is such a hard way to live. Because now we're not only navigating everything that's happening with our kid.
We're also constantly evaluating ourselves through their experience. And I think this is where so much of our second guessing comes from. Instead of asking, what do I believe is right here? We're focused so much on how they're reacting.
We don't just ground ourselves in what we really want to do. We start looking for some response from them that will reassure us that we got it right. And over time, this really chips away at our self-trust.
Because we've gotten into the habit of looking outside of ourselves for the answer. And when you outsource your emotional wellbeing, it becomes very easy to outsource your confidence too. And just notice how many different areas of our lives where emotional outsourcing can come up.
You can hear yourself doing it when your kid's upset, or when they're not calling, or when they're making a choice you don't agree with. You start to notice that part of you is waiting for something to change so that you can finally feel better. But I want to acknowledge that seeing the pattern and knowing how to step out of it are often two very different things.
Because in the moment, it doesn't feel like a trap. It just feels like reality. It feels like, of course, I'm anxious.
Look at what's happening. Of course, I can't stop thinking about this. My kid is struggling.
And this is exactly why this work can often be very challenging to do on your own. Because these thoughts feel so reasonable, so justified, and so connected to how much we love our kids that we don't even realize we're giving them the power to determine how we feel. So the opportunity here is for you to learn how to catch these thoughts in the moment, to notice when your mind is falling into the trap of emotional outsourcing, and make an intentional choice to decide what you want to believe on purpose, how you want to feel on purpose, instead of automatically letting your child's emotional state decide that for you.
And all of this, my friend, is exactly the work we do inside of Mom 2.0. Here's the thing. Knowing intellectually that your child's emotions are not yours to carry is one thing. But actually catching these patterns when your kid is pulling away or pushing back or when they're struggling or making choices you wish they wouldn't make, that is much harder.
Inside Mom 2.0, I teach you how to recognize what's driving your anxiety and second-guessing, how to separate what belongs to you from what belongs to your child. And then you learn how to empower yourself to make decisions from a place of confidence instead of fear. And again, this is not about becoming detached or caring less.
It's about loving your kid without carrying responsibility for every emotion and every choice and every outcome. So if you're tired of feeling like you're stuck on the emotional roller coaster of how your big kid is doing and you're ready to step off, you can learn more about Mom 2.0 through the link in the show notes. My friend, one of the reasons emotional outsourcing is such an important trap to recognize is that it sits underneath so many of the other traps I've talked about in this Mindset Trap series.
The illusion of control, validation seeking, catastrophizing, even the identity trap. So often, underneath all of these traps is the same belief that something outside of us needs to change before we get to feel the way we really want to feel. So if this episode resonated, I really encourage you to go back through the Mindset Trap series and listen to the ones that speak most directly to where you are right now.
Because the more you can see these patterns for what they are, the easier it becomes to stop automatically believing everything your mind offers you. And the thing is, this work is ongoing. Our brains are always going to default to wanting to be safe and comfortable.
And our minds even create habits around these goals. And these habits actually helped us be incredible moms to our young kids. But now that our kids are older, these habits keep us stuck in a lot of pain.
Breaking free of these traps is incredibly empowering, but it is also an ongoing practice. And life will continue to give us new opportunities to practice. I saw this this weekend as I listened to my son talk about his future.
I would love to know exactly where he's going to end up, what job he'll get, where he'll live. And I want to know that it will all work out beautifully for him. But I don't actually need him to have all the answers in order for me to feel okay.
In fact, his path is always going to be uncertain because that is life. And so, of course, there are moments when he worries or changes his mind or gets discouraged. This is the way he is going to find his way.
What if I didn't have to wait for him to find certainty before I decide that we're both going to figure it out and be okay? What I do have certainty about is that I get to be his mom through all of it. I'm here to love him and cheer him on. Sometimes to give him advice.
And sometimes I'm just here to give him a safe place to land for a few hours. But it doesn't actually help either of us for me to carry the uncertainty for him and make it my job to fix. What if your big kid doesn't have to be okay every moment for you to be okay? I've found that learning how to believe that may be one of the most loving things you can do for both of you.
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.
