I remember the heaviness.
The struggle to make it through the day.
The torture of watching my teen make choices I couldn’t understand.
Decisions I knew for sure were ruining their future, limiting their potential, and wreaking havoc on our lives.
I was trapped in it.
Lost in a state of miserable.
It was constant and engulfing.
I yearned to free myself from it.
I longed to change, correct, and fix my teen to solve it.
It wasn’t me. I wasn’t the cause or the creator of it.
Of that I was certain. It was them. All them.
This I knew FOR SURE.
And since I knew with certainty this was true, my brain would spin in endless possibilities and probable solutions to make it all better. To change my teen. To help them see the error of their ways and the choices they should be making instead.
I knew what was wrong with my teen and I knew how to fix them.
These ideas I freely shared. I offered my teen practical advice that I knew would solve the problem. I talked and talked and talked with little interaction from my teen. Clearly more force and a louder voice were needed to convince them of the error of their ways. Right? Nope. Everything I tried, nothing changed. Fixing and changing my teen did NOT work.
Clearly changing another person was impossible.
I knew because I’d tried with ALL my might.
So, we were stuck. Stuck RIGHT where we were.
Yes, this was true. This was my life.
I was miserable because my teen was miserable.
I was miserable because my teen was making me miserable.
Or was I?
This week I coached parents that are miserable.
They have teens that are making choices they wish they weren’t.
Teens that have been arrested repeatedly for smoking marijuana.
Teens that aren’t doing their schoolwork and are failing.
Teens that hide in their rooms and have no friends.
Teens that are hooked on sexting and social media.
They told me they’re miserable because their teens are miserable.
They told me they’re miserable because their teens are making them miserable.
Just like me.
Right?
No.
This is not how it works, my friend.
We only think it is because we’ve never been taught differently. I’m so glad I eventually learned the truth. The truth has set me free.
I was miserable because of me.
I was miserable because of my mind, my thinking.
I was miserable because I thought my teen should be different than they were.
I was miserable because I thought changing someone else would change me.
I was miserable because I was arguing with what was.
I was miserable because I was choosing to be.
Our teens, their behavior, their words, their choices…they’re all neutral circumstances in our lives. None of it affects us until our minds interpret it by having thoughts. It’s these thoughts that affect us. It’s these thoughts that make us miserable, not our teens.
The thoughts our minds think about our teens create our feelings. Miserable thoughts create miserable feelings. Thoughts create feelings, not circumstances. Our teens don’t have the capability to create thoughts in our minds. (LUCKILY, whew. That would be scary!) Our minds attach meaning to our teen’s words and behaviors based on our preprogrammed and repetitive thought patterns. I had programmed my brain to believe my teen choosing something I would NOT choose was “bad” or “wrong”. This belief resulted in me easily and naturally creating negative thoughts about my teen. It was these negative thoughts that created my negative feelings…like sadness, disappointment, frustration, and defeat. I avoided experiencing these feelings that felt terrible and awful with a vengeance by eating, exercising, cleaning, and crafting. I buffered the negative emotions away. Little did I know that doing so only caused them to grow.
It was this constant avoidance and resistance of negative emotion that created my state of miserableness. I didn’t just wake up one day feeling miserable. Miserableness had developed from repeated lack of embracing feeling sad, disappointed, frustrated, and defeated. Miserable is an emotion that occurs when we’ve failed to open ourselves to feeling, processing, and allowing negative emotions to remain in our bodies. To fully experience them. Miserableness is layers upon layers of unprocessed negative emotion.It grows over time as negative emotions aren’t allowed to be experienced. This is why it’s an emotion that doesn’t resolve itself easily or quickly.
Learning to reprogram my brain to think differently about my teen and their choices was what changed my life. As I educated myself and journeyed through learning, I offered myself and my teenager compassion and curiosity. I questioned everything. Purposely looked at each circumstance, choice, thought, and feeling with new eyes, with a new openness and new wondering. I continued to ask myself, “What if I’m wrong about that? What if there’s another way to see it? What if there’s a truth I haven’t yet found?” Slowly I learned to think differently and to feel differently. I embraced feeling my feelings and by doing so, miserableness slowly, slowly melted away.
In time, I became a new person.
With new thoughts.
With new perspectives.
With new understanding.
You are not miserable because of your teen.
Your teen’s choices do not make you miserable.
Your teen being miserable doesn’t make you miserable.
Do not tell yourself these lies as I did.
You limit your power and control by doing so.
You limit your ability to create change.
You limit your ability to feel better.
Choose to take ownership of your thoughts and your feelings.
If you’re creating miserableness, you can choose not to feel miserable anymore. Can you imagine that?
Let it go, my friend. Choose to let it go.
