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Tending Your Corner

7/30/2016

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There are days when I read the news and feel afraid. I want to gather up all of my beloveds, check to make sure all of the windows and doors of my home are locked tight, and hide out until the world becomes a recognizable place again.

I don’t think I’m the only one.

I know from my studies in the holistic health field and from my work as a life coach and massage therapist that an interesting thing happens when you (and everyone else) feels fear. Fear stimulates the fight or flight response (getting physically ready to face your enemy or run like crazy) and then certain parts of your brain don’t work so well. 

When I’m afraid, I can’t think clearly, my logic and reasoning abilities flee like smart critters from a raging wildfire. I know that fear compromises my prefrontal cortex, the executive director/head honcho in my brain. So, instead of making calm, clear decisions, I’m scatterbrained, nervous, and reactive. When I’m afraid, I’m listening to the more primitive part of my brain, the one driven by habits and patterns engraved on my DNA over centuries.

The fight or flight reaction is triggered in various ways, like from … 
• Scarcity – When you’re looking at your minuscule bank account balance alongside your bills or when you’re afraid you’ll lose your job and know that there are so few good jobs available;
• Safety – When you or a loved one feels emotionally or physically threatened, like when another driver cuts you off while on the freeway, nearly causing an accident; 
• Stress – Which can come from events that may seem insignificant, like feelings of helplessness or loneliness, but can produce a profound fight or flight reaction.

I've seen this response in my children. You might have seen it in your own, too. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until a person is in their mid-20s, so toddlers – and teenagers – careen into fight or flight mode quickly. Threaten to take a beloved item away as a consequence for bad behavior – like a toy from a toddler or an iPhone from a teen – and your child's behavior will revert fast and furious into the lower brain, often called the reptilian brain: “That’s mine! I want it! You can’t take it!” Your toddler might react by hitting or biting. Your teen might stomp off to his room and slam the door.

When our brains launch into fight or flight mode, we perceive everything as a threat. It’s similar to Abraham Kaplan’s Law of the Instrument: “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

The Law of the Instrument, I’ve discovered, works in the opposite way, too: the more actions I take to feel safe, the less safe I feel. 

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I can’t conquer fear by turning off the television, shutting out what scares me, or hammering down what feels unpredictable and unfamiliar in an attempt to make the world feel less scary. I can only move forward by embracing what I feel.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” ~ Nelson Mandela
It takes courage to move into a different way of thinking. In this time when there are so many incidents that pull me towards fear, I’ve started easing my stress in different ways. I pulled everyone in my family out of the house on a Wednesday morning to go on a hike, supported a neighbor when she needed to talk, offered to help friends in my online and real-life communities – all activities that author and UCLA psychology professor Shelley E. Taylor fits into a stress response category she calls “tend and befriend.”

Taylor’s research, which she wrote about in her book The Tending Instinct: Women, Men, and the Biology of Nurturing, describes how women are more likely to respond to stress by nurturing the people around them (tending), and by building and supporting their community (befriending). Soothing children, calling a close friend, or offering to help a relative in need are ways women tend and befriend when stressed. These behaviors release the hormone oxytocin (called the love hormone because it increases the feelings of bonding and connectedness) which counteracts the flight or flight response, eases fearfulness, and reduces the negative consequences of ongoing stress.


In times of fear that drive us to fight or flee, we need to have the courage to tend and befriend, to love and rise above fear.


“Be soft,” writes Iain Thomas, the bestselling author of I Wrote This For You. “Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”


​By tending to your corner of this world, you do more than believe in its beauty. You make it so.
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Shining the Light on What's Keeping You Stuck

7/26/2016

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Are there too many what ifs on your path to happily ever after?

• What if the baby gets sick and I’m back at work full-time?
• What if my son won’t stop crying when I’m at the gym?

• What if we need the money for something else and I’ve spent it on this training?

• What if take this job (take this class, take this volunteer opportunity, take this vacation) and I’m unhappier after spending all this time, effort, money than I am right now?


The what ifs can be like an avalanche of heavy rocks in your way.


But what if you didn’t have to move them all?


What if your what ifs were just stories your brain was telling you to keep you safe (but stuck)?


There’s a part of our brain that author and life coach Martha Beck calls your lizard. The lizard feeds on the stress hormones of your primitive brain, telling story after story, all filled with what ifs.

​All of the stories your lizard tells have horribly ever after endings.


“The entire purpose of your reptile brain is to continually broadcast survival fears – alarm reactions that keep animals alive in the wild,” writes Martha Beck in her book, Steering by Starlight. “That makes sense if we’re hiding in a cave somewhere, but when we’re home in bed, our imaginations can fixate on catastrophes that are so vague and hard to ward off that they fill us with anxiety that has no clear action.”


It’s easy to believe the worse case scenarios and stay home, stay stuck, stay unhappy, stay hidden in our cave – but at least you know you're safe, right?


But staying safe isn’t always sound advice.


And your lizard’s what if stories may never, ever happen.


The first step to getting unstuck is to shine the light on the what ifs that are blocking your path and out them for what they are (scare tactics), so you can keep going.


At The Well-Crafted Mom's mini-retreats this month, you’ll discover how to not get stuck in your lizard’s stories. And we’ll decorate mason jar lanterns (a simple project using glue and glass beads) so you’ll have a pretty little reminder of how to shine the light on what's keeping you from moving forward on the path to your happily ever after.

Only six spots left for August! Register here.



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Love What You Love

7/19/2016

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There are so many things to bicker about on a family camping trip: from loading up the borrowed truck to finding the best place to set up the tent; from my driving (and his directions) to how to divvy up the blankets when the temperature at night dropped to an unpredicted low (and my son was wearing my fleece jacket since he forgot his own).

Bill and I couldn't agree on anything.

It was painful - and a big clue that there was something bigger going on with me.

Bill and I have been working more closely than ever over the last six months. Recently, we scheduled a free call to jump start a new venture we've been considering - leading workshops for couples. This first free call (which was supposed to be last week and was rescheduled to July 21st) is called "What to do When You Don't Agree." 

On our camping trip this past weekend, I woke up early Saturday morning, quietly climbed out of the tent, but then couldn't get the camp stove to work. Frustrated (because I really wanted a warm chai tea after shivering all night), I grabbed my backpack, warm hat, and gloves and took a walk down to the lake. It was a beautiful morning. The lake was still. The geese along the shore reminded me of my favorite Mary Oliver poem Wild Geese.

... you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

I would love to be the person who could work with her spouse, collaborating closely on a day-in/day-out basis. I'm not. I've discovered that I don't compartmentalize well. I can't separate the driving-me-nuts co-preneur from the love-you-to-the-moon-and-back husband.

When Bill and I bicker, we're not fighting about whether the entrance to the tent should be facing the trees or facing the neighbor's campsite, who let the yellowjacket in the tent, or whether there's enough ice to last the weekend or if he should get more. We're fighting because there's too much left unsaid.

So I said it: I told Bill yesterday that I don't love working with him. I can help, advise, edit, share insights and information. I can support, approve, and make suggestions. But collaborating on creating content for a new venture - especially when he's so busy with his other responsibilities - is too much to ask of our marriage. Luckily, he agreed.

"Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again." ~ Henry Ford.

So I'm beginning again. I'll be hosting the free call on Thursday - solo - to talk about what Bill and I have learned about what to do when we disagree, sharing advice and insights, not only from all of our successes, but from our failures, too. I hope you can join me.

Thursday, July 21st, 1:30 p.m. (Pacific)
Register here

Hugs!
Kathleen

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Making Room for Yes

7/13/2016

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My husband Bill and I are holding a free call for couples to share our ideas for what to do when you don’t agree. I must have left my brain in another room when I originally scheduled the call because I put it on the calendar for the same week that I was hosting two moms’ gatherings; the same week when the boys weren’t enrolled in a camp (which is when my mommy guilt runs rampant with the amount of screen time they have); the same week that Bill was incredibly busy with baby sign language responsibilities (he’s always incredibly busy with baby sign language responsibilities); and the same week that Bill, the boys and I are getting ready for a big camping trip. 

In preparing for the call to help couples learn how to stop bickering, all Bill and I did was bicker.

Bill and I decided that we were trying to cram too much in one week so, after lots of deliberation, we’ve rescheduled our free call to next Thursday, July 21st at 1:30 (Pacific time).

Postponing the call feels like I’ve messed up. I don’t like asking people to make changes to their plans. It’s hard to acknowledge that I can’t do everything. In situations like this, I realize that I’m not as far along in my recovery as a perfectionist as I’d like to be – my expectations of myself still get in the way of my happiness.

When I suggested to Bill that we put off the call for a week, he said that making this choice made him feel so much lighter. And I feel better, too. I can tell by how my body is reacting that this is the best decision. The easing of tension in my neck and shoulders tells me that postponing the call is a yes.

I’m taking my own advice.

I’m working with a coaching client right now who, after years of doing a physical job that she loved was faced with a physical injury that meant she couldn’t do her job anymore. In my last coaching conversation with this client, I pointed out that starting over was like building a wardrobe beginning with an empty closet. She didn’t have to weed out what didn’t quite fit or what she never really liked but had invested a lot of money in. She could fill her closet with the ideas, experiences, and activities that felt like yeses.

It feels like a yes for Bill and I to change the date for our free call to get ready for a new way of working together. We hope you can join us (and if you can’t, we’ll record the call so you can listen to it later). Register for the call or to receive the recording here: http://www.thewellcraftedmom.com/free-call

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    The Well-Crafted Mom

    About

    I'm an author, certified life coach, and certified massage therapist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband (William White of Happy Baby Signs), and our two sons, plus a rescue poodle, and a tabby cat that rolls over and fetches.

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