ego – Restoring Justis

I’ve studied many types of communication recommended to repair relationships. They all have similarities and make sense, but these empathy-based strategies so hard to practice! Especially when those I want to use this communication with are the people I love most, the ones who share my house. I actually think I’m fairly good at some of it, but there’s evidence that I’m delusional here. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

My biggest barriers to good communication as I see them are these:

Truth-telling
Fixing
Ego

I’m going to start with ego because I work so hard on this one. I remind myself many times a day to set my ego aside when I’m communicating with loved ones. This is another example of clunky progress in my life with glimpses of success then falling back into old patterns (the theme of yesterday’s post.) I even blogged about the time I straight up asked my daughter to list my parenting qualities that she claimed were making her life hell, thinking I had my ego in check enough to handle the feedback maturely.

What happened instead was a meltdown of spectacular magnitude, the likes of which I had never seen in myself, even in the early romantic relationships of my adulthood that were so marked by drama. I totally lost my shit and flew into a rage at what felt like such an unfair, inaccurate assessment of my mothering. My eruptive response not only reinforced her poor opinion of me but gave her more reasons to conclude I’m a terrible mother. It continues to haunt me since it created such a vivid memory for her to pull up time and again as an example of my poor skills and judgment.

However, I am able to clock evidence that I’ve made progress on managing my ego. I see the tender, reciprocal affection and connection my daughter and I share and am always grateful for our many moments of closeness, even if she chooses to disregard these when she summarizes our relationship. My baby boy (now 12) has a surprisingly mature ability to check his ego and manage his communication. He doesn’t always choose to exercise this intention, but he’s clearly capable and it’s such a joy when he does; I am certain modeling this for him has made an impact.

Which brings me to a communication skill I own and celebrate in myself: the ability to see and highlight strengths and progress. Not that I don’t still see the problems, but I can consciously shift my lens and feel gratitude—after years of hard work establishing this habit. It’s not foolproof by any means, but I continue to practice!

Ah, fixing. Why can’t I just listen? Is it cultural? My husband has this problem too. For a long time, I didn’t even recognize my own compulsion to offer a solution or a new perspective. In fact, it’s the latter that I’m most prone to do. I’m so determined to shift the lens of the other person, yet I am consistently met with resistance every time I attempt this. I just have such little tolerance for a victim mindset or damning conclusions about the behavior of another—especially when that person is not present to defend his/herself, so forever I chocked this up to “teaching” perspective. But the bottom line is it’s ineffective. Maybe. I keep hoping that I’m planting seeds that will eventually bloom into some wisdom for my kiddos. My daughter is especially critical and intolerant—something I was determined to model the opposite of— and these traits are now inhibiting her ability to fully engage with life.

But the communication experts insist this approach will damage the relationship, and I’ve witnessed firsthand how “fixing” does just that. My daughter’s biggest complaint about me? I don’t listen. This initially came as such a shock when I thought of the endless hours I’ve spent in her room talking about things that are going on in her life or society at large. However, when I really started paying attention I realized I was always trying to shift her perspective or problem-solve rather than just listening. I’m practicing more curiosity because it’s a way to respond that doesn’t invalidate her experience, but man, this is a hard one! Especially when her perspective seems so dangerous to her overall wellbeing. I have some moments of success here but this takes intensely conscious vigilance and I’m far from mastering this one.

And finally, truth-telling. Ugh. So hard. Authenticity and clarity are so important to me. I can see much more progress here in my relationship with my girl (though it continues to be incredibly effortful when witnessing some of her cognitive dissonance) but for the life of me, I can’t seem to replace truth-telling with empathy when it comes to my husband. Actually, that’s not completely true. And this is going to sound defensive (another poor communication skill—getting defensive) but both Hubby and the girl hate when I try to practice empathy. I work so hard to ensure that it’s sincere, and it can be super tricky to find honest empathy at times, but I know I cannot pull off disingenuous responses.

Evidently, I can’t pull off genuine empathy either because they both shut me down every time I try. I suspect that they enjoy the conflict and have their own need to “truth-tell” and be right. I get the appeal of argument, I enjoy a good debate, and it’s taken me a good long time to realize that no one ever wins. All this approach does is cause the other person to dig in and defend their position, even contriving evidence, if necessary, to stand strong. I also know that I modeled this for most of my oldest’s life, because damn if I don’t love me a good argument (though of course, I never contrived evidence!)

Knowledge that isn’t applied is useless. Overcoming decades of ingrained communication tactics is so freaking hard, but I am trying. If I could waive a magic wand, I would have family members that were also invested in relationship repair and willing to effort through this with me. All the books, experts, therapists, coaches say that doesn’t matter, and I know that I cannot change others. I’ve seen some evidence that the strategies can work, but the way my family members respond to my attempts at empathy are not very encouraging. I can only assume that I’m actually not good at it, or my family members would not be so resistant, right? It’s becoming really challenging to sustain the effort, and I find myself backsliding more frequently into my own truth-telling, fixing, egoic communication habits.

Just processing through my current thoughts and conclusions on where I am on my journey to restore Justis (not justice. A part two post about restoring Justis is coming soon.) Thanks for listening. Drop a little empathy in the comments, would ya?

The Next Morning…

Only the boy joined me for the free (and quite good) hotel breakfast, and he didn’t eat much. A bowl of cereal (we don’t buy cereal at home so he eats it whenever it’s available) along with a yogurt. When he opened the yogurt, the whey spilled out onto his shorts and he left me (and the offensive yogurt) to go back up to the room and change.

The girl preferred to sleep than to eat. Everyone knew I wanted to hit the road early so we could make this last five hours of the trip before the heat hit triple digits. Once I returned from breakfast with the luggage cart, we (I) packed quickly and loaded the cart. The kids were at each other again the moment I woke the teen, and again, my responses were more reactive than measured and calm. I hurriedly scanned the room to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind, feeling helpless to enlist any quality assistance from my kids.

They waited at the hotel entrance with the luggage cart (her hissing at him through clenched teeth to “Stop!” playing his ukulele) while I went to get the car and pull it around to load. I popped the hatch to set something down and realized the girl was at my side having abandoned her uke-playing brother to guard the cart on his own. I hit the button on the hatch door to close it and just as it latched shut, I uttered a desperate, “Noooo!” and put both my hands on the window.

I peered in through the hatch window and just as I feared, spotted my keys sitting there amid the few stray items we’d left in the car overnight. I tried the handle, hoping I’d unlocked the whole car and just didn’t remember. I hadn’t. I checked all the doors just to confirm what I already knew. I could feel the temper tantrum boiling up and out of me, ready to curse and stomp my feet, and then I thought of my girl, standing there at my side, absorbing my energy, more than ready to tantrum with me and miraculously, I pulled it together.

Funny, as I write these posts sometimes, I try to assess myself as a parent from the reader’s point of view, and I’m often disgusted. I have to say, these last couple years of parenting have really done a number on my ego. I realize how much I judged other parents. I am someone who’s spent years consciously developing myself as a person, moving through growth philosophies, putting in the effort to adopt practices of gratitude and self-care, and consistently being able to shift my lens and reframe a situation. But I’m telling you, parenting wears a person down. It reduces me to my pre-growth self more often than I like to admit.

We hadn’t used our AAA membership in years, and I didn’t have a card in my wallet. I panicked on the inside briefly as I tried to remember if we still maintained that membership. I called my husband who assured me we were still covered and who texted me the needed info. I placed the call, then calmly, even pleasantly, let the kids know the wait would take “only” 45 minutes at the most. The boy went back up to the room, and the girl stayed in the lobby with me.

Feeling true relief at how easy it was to remedy what initially seemed like a disaster, I cheerfully acknowledged this out loud to my daughter while she sipped the glass of grapefruit juice I’d fetched for her from the breakfast buffet. Her energy shifted along with mine (albeit briefly) and she even helped her brother pick up the thirty or so round, bouncy ammo balls that spilled from his Nerf gun when he pulled it out of the recently unlocked hatch (Love AAA!!) to make room for the luggage. He didn’t think it was funny, but it was hard not to laugh as the little yellow balls bounced all over and in every direction of the covered entrance to the hotel. We eventually retrieved every ball.

Once in the car and on the road, when I held out my hand and demanded their earbuds, the cranky resistance returned. If you missed the back story, here’s Day One when I had resolved to “fight this battle.” This day I could reframe it as “hold this boundary.” I mean, really, are the war metaphors really helpful?! I offered several alternatives to isolated listening including all of us sharing a podcast of their choice, but the girl continued to resist for the first two hours. Her brother and I visited quietly while she tried to sleep. Eventually, after she finally decided to grab a bite to eat (Whew!), she suggested The Adventure Zone podcast.

Both the kids have been listening to this Dungeons & Dragons podcast on their own; she’s completely caught up on the latest campaign, but we jumped in where her brother is in the episode sequence, near the end of the first campaign. I had to be filled in on lots of back story and it took me almost two episodes to feel like I had a clue what was happening, but I did eventually find myself caught up in the plotline. So much so that we had to circle a bit after arriving to our ultimate destination so that we could finish a compelling story arc as we wrapped up this part of our road trip.

Tag: ego

Why can’t you just listen?!

Roadtrip Day Two