Tomorrow is actually my blog post day, but I want to reflect a bit...
I still go to the dentist near my dad's house. Until 2 years ago I'd just use it as an excuse to stop by and visit. He died the day before my dentist appointment in Feb of 2020. I went to the dentist the next day as I didn't know what else to do. Then I went over to his house and cried.
Since then my dentist visits, especially the winter ones, are sad.
Today I was back for a cleaning. This made my next appt not until April. I got off the typical timing because when I was supposed to go this summer I had Co-Vid, and they didn't have another opening for a long ways out. As I left today I thought about how not having a winter appointment anymore lessens the correlation with my dad's death.
Then I decided to stop by the nearby thrift store which was always my favorite as it has great finds. Maybe there would be an end table I liked. When I scanned the new store arrangement I saw, "Bath." Hmm, I'd never think to look there. However, I just bought my fourth bath mat yesterday, and once again I am going to return it.
My bath here was depressing at first because it feels like a motel. However, the very happy shower curtain I found has helped. The shower curtain is very colorful and none of the bathmats I try look right.
I think the store had maybe 5 or so bath mats. And this was what one of them said.
I actually started to cry seeing it, and am crying now looking at it. The color still might not be quite right, but it is better than the 4 I tried before, and at $4, cheaper than all of them as well.
I don't know why exactly, but it feels like a reminder/gift from my father. It doesn't have to make sense, but something in me understands.
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Also I finished listening to Part 2 today of Glennon Doyle's We Can do Hard Things podcast with Dr. Becky Kennedy. And there were lots of quote worthy things.
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"I think kids end up listening to parents for two reasons, either they feel very connected to them and very kind of close to them, or they feel very fearful of them. And like you were saying, there are consequences to wiring fear next to love. Like there are, I could cry thinking about, there are a lot of consequences to that early on." Dr. Kennedy
"Like what?" Glennon
"Like the people we end up being attracted to later on, are the people who evoke that earliest attachment, so being fearful of someone, of someone having control over us, someone dictating who we are and what we want, our body's like, 'I know how to do this, this is what love is.'" Dr. Kennedy
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"Regulation preceeds empathy. It's always a prerequisite. You have to regulate your distress before you have empathy for someone else. We know this, whenever we are overwhelmed with feeling, none of us have any empathy for anyone in those moments, because we're disregulated." Dr. Kennedy
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"Having someone who is perfectly attuned to your needs sets you up to be looking for a partner who is always perfectly attuned to your needs, like that's not a good set up, right? Actually I think that speaks to what we are saying here, which is, the process of like misattunement and repair. Like, oh you got that wrong about me and that didn't feel good. Or you did this thing and I didn't like it.
Repair I actually think is the single most important parenting strategy, like I always think it is the thing we should get really good at. Which is both hearing from our kids about the things they are mad about and proactively saying some version of, 'I'm sorry and that was me not you," for the things we know, we find we were reactive around...Repair it always matters. It's what starts that rewiring process." Dr. Becky Kennedy
"Yes because you say that going back to your kids and repairing and saying, 'What I did was not acceptable,' you are teaching them to expect that love looks like when they are treated poorly, love looks like circling back to repair that, that is an inherent, invaluable part of love." Amanda Doyle
"Yes, yes, right that love isn't perfect. It's not the absence of misattunment. It's not the absence of conflict, but also when we don't repair with our kids. This is always what spurns me...if that experience registers in that kid's body, 'Oh well I got yelled at that was scary," whatever it was. If I don't repair, kids really only have two ways of explaining distress to themselves, when they don't have a narrative, a coherent narrative for a parent and it's self-doubt or self-blame, right? Self-doubt is, 'Maybe I overreacted to that. That wasn't a big deal. If that really happened someone would have talked to me.' And then that looks like an adult like, 'Am I overreacting, would someone else have reacted this way, would all my friends?" That's self doubt.
Self-blame is, 'If I was only a better kid that would have never happened. It's my fault. Somethings wrong with me. I'm too much. I'm not enough.' And if we wonder why adults are, such prevalence wiring for self-blame and self-doubt, it's cause in those moments it's what we were left with...
You know we can really help our kids, and we can help ourselves too. The first step to repair is repairing with yourself. Before you go saying to your kid, 'I'm sorry for yelling,' you have to say to yourself, 'I'm a good parent who yelled.' There right? 'I'm a good parent who yelled,' that does not define me. In fact I have an opportunity, as soon as my body calms a little bit, and I feel a little bit of a release, and I find that goodness inside me. I'm going to go to my kid and I'm going to do something."
Dr. Kennedy
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"That's why parents get so fragile. That's why anyone gets fragile, because they think their goodness is under attack. When our goodness is under attack our body shuts down from an evolutionary animal defense state."
Dr. Kennedy
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