Nobody thanks the doormat

I was out to dinner with my friend Lucy the other night. We were catching up and she was sharing about her feelings of being unsupported at home. She said that she had a wake-up call the other night when the family was playing a game and one of the questions was ‘what one word would you use to describe your mom?’. Her 13 year old daughter, Marissa, answered ‘maid’. She was hit by the realization that this is what her daughter really thinks of what she does for her. She said she was starting to feel resentful and angry and doesn’t want to just try to make her daughter appreciate her, but really wants to make a change. She gets that she somehow did this, but has no idea how or how to change it now.

The good news for my friend is that she gets that she is responsible for her daughter’s view of her. She has worked so hard to be a good mother that she created an environment where all of Marissa’s needs were met timely and competently that Marissa wasn’t required to meet many of them herself. This was ok when she was little, but Marissa is now an adolescent and has come to believe that her world is a world of low responsibility and high care. She is required to take care of her basic hygiene and schoolwork but Lucy admits to struggles with trying to make Marissa meet time schedules and needing to cue her to do simple things like brush her teeth. Marissa doesn’t have any other responsibilities as Lucy felt that she should concentrate on her schoolwork. She also said that things just went faster when she did them herself.

The fact is that we teach people how to treat us. This means everyone from our bosses to our children. What we bring to those encounters on a moment to moment basis teaches others about what we will and will not accept. It shows them how we feel about ourselves, our self-respect, our self value, our integrity, our yes’ and our no’s. We don’t even have to say much to communicate all of this, we carry it in our body language and in our presence.

In my friend’s case, what she hoped to teach her daughter through all of her care, attention and good-mothering, was that she is loved, and that she is capable of doing well in school and in life if she attends to things in the way she taught her to, i.e. meeting deadlines, finishing tasks, doing quality work, doing her best at everything, and being willing to go the extra mile. What she actually taught her was if you are loveable, and maybe a little helpless, those who love you will do for you and everything will be fine. Because Lucy was just as committed to feeling like a good mother and winning everyone’s love and respect as to being a good mother, her need for mirroring kept her from expecting more involvement by Marissa in her own care and work as her development progressed. She has never had to do chores, doesn’t have any responsibilities except to feed the cat, and most of the time forgets that.

Here are some tips I gave my friend to turn her train to martyrdom around:

1. Have a meeting with her family and come clean as the angry doormat that she has become. Show them the list of all the jobs involved with keeping the house and family running, and which ones she is doing. Let them know her feelings about them not stepping in during summer vacation, or while her husband hasn’t been working, etc. Be honest and openhearted about her desire for a more balanced family system that keeps things running but is shared more equally. Then allow the other family members to come forward with suggestions, ideas and discuss which things they would like to take on and set up a plan. Investment by all members is a key. She needs to step out of the Directors seat and allow for more input and less control on her part.

2. Seek support for her feelings along the way through groups, classes, etc.. Lucy needs to build tolerance to feeling frustrated and scared when she isn’t sure if Marissa is going to complete her tasks at home or school the way she would, or the way she thinks Marissa should. She will need to learn to find the right place in this developmental piece with her adolescent, so that Marissa can begin to learn self-discipline, self-manage and experience the joy of her own successes, as well as learn from her failures. There are many support groups available that can be very helpful in making changes in how we deal with the people in our life.

3. Marissa and her dad will need to form a different alliance as family members with voting rights, but also with responsibilities. At this point their biggest felt responsibility is to keep mom happy. That isn’t a skill set even if it is used by millions of people. Pleasing isn’t loving and it is never experienced as authentic. It is based in fear and manipulation and never in love and respect.

4. It would be very good if the family could do a few sessions of family therapy to learn better communication skills, team building and to help rebalance the power structure that is there right now. A family that wants to make a change like this often benefits from outside help. It is very hard to do it on their own with patterns that have become entrenched like these. More times than not the family just falls back into conditioned behaviors and ends up where they started.

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Have set family meetings and try and make sure that there are regular family dinners. My friend has the tendency to let her daughter occupy the conversation during dinners, and rarely talks about herself or her day. It isn’t up to others to draw us out into conversation. That is more about our own early history in our families. When we are treated like our feelings don’t matter, or are unwelcome, we learn to try and get them out through cuing. We might use body language, or silence, or looks that cue others to ask after our feelings. It is manipulative and based in fear and shouldn’t be a part of healthy communication.

21 Day Complaint Free Challenge - Pt 3 of 3 Gossip and Criticism

"Gossip gossip evil t'ing, much unhappiness it bring, if you can't say somet'ing nice, don't talk at all is my advice." sung Calypso style by Jester Hairston

This is part 3 of 3 of my blog posts covering the 21 Day Complaint Free Challenge. In the first post I talked about the Challenge, its origins, the rules (21 consecutive days without complaining, gossiping and criticizing) and my inspiration for doing it. In part 2 I talked in depth about 'complaining', its origins in our human history, what it is, what it isn't and its impact on our brains, our relationships and the world. In part 3 I will talk about 'gossiping' and 'criticizing', two of the most poisonous of human behaviors.

I played the violin in the orchestra all of my school life and each year I would play with the Honor Orchestra at Stairway of the Stars. One year Jester Hairston this amazing African-American choral composer and actor performed with us and sang 'Gossip'. The chorus is 'Gossip gossip evil t'ing, much unhappiness it bring, if you can't say something nice, don't talk at all is my advice'. I was about 10 and really didn't know much about gossiping but his song stuck with me all these years. I think it is the word 'evil' associated with gossiping. I don't think there are many people out there that are really aware that they gossip, or when they are gossiping let alone that it is more than a bad habit. But it is much worse than that. Gossip is defined as 'idle talk or rumor especially about the personal and private affairs of others.' The truth is that there is nothing 'idle' about gossiping.

Gossiping is like poisoning the village well. The gossip, hungry for attention but feeling empty of anything worthy of mention, finds narcissistic fulfillment in being the one 'in the know'. Unable to control their need for attention, they spread rumors and hearsay about other people without a thought as to the potential consequences. What they always forget is that 'what goes around, comes around'. The well that they poison with their words is the same well that they draw from. What we do, we become. If we gossip, we are gossipers. And gossipers are usually seen as untrustworthy, self-serving, and ill intentioned. Instead of the specialness they so long for, they usually end up with people angry at them.

Gossiping is never done in the spirit of seeking something good for the object of the gossip, it is always about seeking attention for the gossiper. Information that is shared through gossiping becomes coated in negativity and maliciousness and harms the speaker as well as the one spoken of. If we give in to our baser natures out of a belief that this is our only way of feeling special or important, then that is all we will ever be. A rumor-mongerer feeding of the bad choices and misfortunes of other because we don't feel we have anything interesting or noteworthy to add to the conversation. Websters defines 'evil' as "morally reprehensible: arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct." When we give in to our insecure ego's need for attention at the cost of some other person's reputation or well-being we are behaving in an evil manner.

'Criticizing' per Websters is "to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly; find fault with." Synonyms for criticize are reprehend, censure, reprobate and denounce. None of those sound positive, helpful, supportive, encouraging, understanding, loving or kind. Now, unless you are being paid to criticize, to judge the merits of someone or something and report, then you shouldn't be criticizing. Anyone. Ever. Period. No this doesn't mean you can't correct your children, or teach your pupils, or discipline when disciplining is due. What you can't do is hold yourself as superior, find fault, judge and point that out through criticism.

People who criticize have been criticized, usually a lot and usually maliciously. They grow up having swallowed a lot of judgement, ridicule, and meanness and they are unconsciously waiting for the day when they will be top of the pecking order. The best example of this is college and military hazing. Participating in the next generation of hazing makes up for what you endured when it happened to you, or, so they say. As a child we have to swallow whatever the adults in our world have to say about us. Internally we have yet to develop the ego strength to consider the source, and externally we lack the power to do anything about it anyway. As children we come to judge ourselves as we are judged and then spend our adulthood fighting that self-limiting false belief by judging others and making ourselves feel superior.

Criticizing is mean. It was mean when it happened to you and it is mean when you do it. There are at least 50 ways to express whatever it is that is coming up for you when you want to criticize and 49 of them have nothing to do with the other person. The only thing that has to do with the person you want to criticize is that they are there, in your presence, doing something that you think you could do better, faster, smarter, neater, etc. My challenge for you is this: the next time you feel that urge to 'correct' someone's something, you pause and just watch. Then take a breath and remember the last time you felt criticized and judged and what that was like for you. Did it feel helpful? Did it make you want to do better, to improve, or grow? Or did it just hurt your feelings, make you feel diminished and make you angry? Then go do something that makes you feel good about yourself, by yourself, and don't give in to the urge to do it at the expense of another person's feelings.

The 21 Day Complaint Free Challenge is a group that I am hosting on Facebook. The goal of the challenge is to go 21 consecutive days without complaining, gossiping and criticizing. There are 330 people participating and it is one of the most incredible growth experiences of my own life, and others. It is ongoing and open so please come join us in this effort to change our 'negative speak' and the world one mindful moment at a time.