The Therapy Edit - On how to love our kids well

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

If you're constantly on the go, spending all of your energy organising life for those you love, have a listen to this one!

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Therapy Edit. As I was just thinking about what to bring you for this episode, I open my phone, don't we so often do that in the spaces. We fill the spaces with a scroll or a read or a blick through news articles. But I open my phone and I open the notes because I don't know about you. My life is pretty ruled by notes and reminders and I tend to just jot things down so that I don't forget them. And I open my notes and I must have written this kind of last night just as the kids were going to bed.

And it says to admonish the pursuit of doing it. all in the name of love is an act of love itself. And I think I wrote that on reflection, probably as the kids were watching CBBs, about how much I do, do, do, do, do in the name of love, how much I set my standards in a certain place in the name of doing it well. In the way that I just constantly envisying my self around the house in pursuit of providing a nice environment that I can for my family. You know, how often I put my own needs aside, how often I put my own needs aside, how often I prioritize other people, other people's feelings, other people's needs, the admin, even sometimes just over my own needs and feelings. And how I do that all that comes

from a place in my heart of wanting to love well. And I think as I ran around sorting stuff out, probably cleaning the floor down, sorting stuff out for the next day as the mornings are just so chaotic, getting everyone ready for school, getting everyone out of the house. You know, my kids were sitting on the sofa and they were watching TV in those moments before they went to bed. And as I was doing all of that stuff, clocking up the old steps on the, on the Apple Watch, I was thinking, I'm doing it all in the name of love. I'm doing it all out of the best intention, the best place. My kids are sitting on the sofa.

They are sitting there together. And what do they need? What would they benefit best from? Probably more of me. Yet here I am doing in the name of love. When actually those people that we love, the people that we are so often doing the doing for, probably just want more of us to be.

and I think I'm not alone in the fact that I have learnt that to love is to do, to love is to give, to love is to prioritise, to love is to be sacrificial, to love is to aim high, to love is to want more for those that you love, and to often then be the one that is trying to get that more for them, trying to facilitate that for them, to admonish the pursuit of doing it all in the name of love, is an act of love in itself. I've spent so long pursuing the doing,

thinking that is being loving. And it is, isn't it? I mean, we have to do the stuff. The stuff has to get done. But when we do it in the name of love, I think sometimes I'm bawling myself that actually to stop pursuing that so fiercely would enable me last night

to have been sat with them on the sofa, to be with them but instead my learnt love is in the doing and I often although I have spent so much of my life not thinking about the end of it sometimes I find it really helpful these days just to consider what might I look back on and wish I'd done more of and we know this we see it in the Pinterest you know the Pinterest squares and the Instagram squares and we see these quotes and they say you know, we're never going to look back and wish that we had worked harder, worked more. We're going to look back and wish that we had been more. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want to get to the end of my life to make these reflections.

I don't want to get to the end of the life to regret that I hadn't been to sat on the sofa more, that I hadn't been with more than being around doing. That is very philosophical, isn't it? But I think I just read that little sentence and it just kind of hit me afresh of in the pursuit of doing it all in the name of love. Being able to pat ourselves in the back and say that we have done our best.

Perhaps it's just taking us away from being, from being with those people that we are working so hard to do it for. So what am I going to do with this? I think it's just trying to reframe and relearn what being loving is when I think about when I most feel loved. It's, you know, it's that quality time normally, isn't it? It's that time when you can connect with someone when they're sitting with you and you're

having that conversation or you're just being with them and you just feel like you're accepted in their presence. That's when I feel really loved, knowing that I could say anything and they would just be open to it and that they would probably be supportive and they might challenge me a little bit, but normally out of the best intentions. It's that being with, it's that richness of just company and connection. Now I can't give my family company and rich connection when I'm running around at 100 miles an hour doing all of the things in the name of love. So I think it's just that reminder, it's that reminding myself in those moments where that huge part of my brain is like,

This is love. This is love. It's the doing. It's the doing. It's the ticking things off the list. It's the it's the organising and the sorting and that needs to be done. But sometimes might there be opportunities that arise calling me to slow down and stop and be, to connect, to be with, to be that company, to be the one on the sofa in the presence, rather than being the blur that is darting around in the background. Sometimes I read a news article or they hear a story from a friend maybe something in their own life and it just whips me back. It whips me back. And it's often around loss, isn't it? It's often around tragedy and it's those things that just whip us back to what matters most. We want to rush home. We want to get our kids and we want to hold them.

and I think perhaps so often in the doing, in the loving through doing, it's that almost avoiding that connection because it makes us feel vulnerable. The more we love, the more sometimes we recognize our vulnerability. Sometimes when we are really with someone and we really love them, we then just, we become aware of all of the vulnerability that comes with that, the potential, the potential for bad things, the potential for the heartbreak. and it can pull us away from that connection, which is actually far more loving than the doing.

So it's not like I'm never going to do the jobs. It's not like I'm never going to, you know, clean the floor, tick the boxes, sort the lunches out, do the washing. But I think I just want to become aware of those moments where there is more choice than I feel, where my natural response is to be loving through doing. and remind myself that actually sometimes to put that aside is an act of love in itself because

it enables you to be. And I don't want to wait for the bad news and the tragedies and the end of my life to look back and wish that I'd done less doing and more being, that I'd love more through company and presence than through clean floors and organised diaries. So yeah, there's my little reflection for you. I think it's just about, as I always say in social media, I so often finish post saying, not all of the time, but more of the time. I'm not going to do this all the time, but more of the time. I just want that little prompting reminder, that little reminder that sometimes to admonish the pursuit, to give up, to put aside the pursuit of doing it all in the name of love, is an act of love in itself.

Instead of relying on the news of the heartbreaks and the sad stories to whip me back to those things that matter most, I want to be doing that in my own mind. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it practically to remind myself, maybe I'll draw something on my hand or set something as a screen on my phone, as a prompt. But actually, you know what sometimes the awareness of how we are believing that we are loving best and how we are believing that the doing is the love and how often it takes precedence over the being, priority over the being, is enough in itself to prompt us to recognize that in some of those moments there are choices to be made. Not all of the time, but more of the time.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review. You can find more from me on Instagram, Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books called Mind Over Mother and Know Your Worth. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.