April '24 in the SMP
Playing a Different Game
Emotions. They’re messy. Often they’re uncomfortable, even painful. We’ve come to believe that life isn’t meant to be uncomfortable and messy. We tend to think uncomfortable and messy is bad or wrong. Once we judge something as bad or wrong, we think we shouldn’t be experiencing it.
But what if every time we experience uncomfortable or even painful feelings, it’s an opportunity to learn something new about ourselves and develop our capacity for this messy thing we call Life? This is the beauty of orienting to our circumstances according to the Stoic tenet of “The Obstacle is the Way.”
Typically when we feel the discomfort of emotions we’ve culturally labeled as “negative” such as sadness, anger, boredom, guilt, confusion, etc., we assume there’s something wrong with us and we’ll do just about anything to stop feeling them. We ignore them, push them away, and get really good at distracting ourselves with endless tasks, a continuous stream of content input, or even substances.
Have you considered that these emotions exist for a reason? That there’s nothing wrong with you for having them and that they’re actually important information about how and where your life is going? That there may be a hefty cost to avoiding, ignoring, or numbing them? Might it even be possible that our feelings are a crucial source of information about our best next steps on our Life path, if we know how to interpret and use them as sound navigational tools?
You may already know the importance of turning toward such uncomfortable sensations to learn what information they’re trying communicate to you. If you’ve discovered this and have ways that support you to do this in a healthy and productive manner, please share what works for you in the comments!
Many of us understand this, but are unsure what it actually looks and feels like. For the most part, we humans let our emotions drive our behavior rather than recognizing when we’ve stopped being in charge of ourselves. Even if you have experienced what it’s like to bring consciousness to a moment that you originally meet in the grip of an emotion, and you’re able to give that emotion some space and make a choice about how you respond to a situation, this way of being in the world is a practice that takes much effort and awareness. (Unless you’ve taken up residence in a monastery or somehow reached a rare state of enlightenment.)
But if you commit to developing your capacity to do this, you reorient to Life’s challenges–and even the most difficult of circumstances become an opportunity to develop something new in yourself, discover what you’re capable of, and increase both your resilience and your compassion for your fellow humans.
People who reorient in this way still experience those painful emotions, but the pain takes on a new meaning which makes the feelings more tolerable. Once you come out the other side of something excruciatingly painful and destabilizing aka a “dark night of the soul”, there’s a certain sense of stability and confidence that you’re now fully in charge of your experience. (Not of what happens in your life but of how you experience it.) Many ancient wisdom traditions recognized the power in orienting to life in this way, but modern times would have us addicted to comfort and safety.
How different would Life be if anytime you felt emotional discomfort you recognized it as an invitation? Now you’re playing a whole new game.
This public service announcement was inspired by the most recent episode of conversations with stoic mamas along the way, What doesn’t kill you… in which S. Bee returns for a conversation about menacing dream figures, finding ways to have a healthy relationship with our emotions, and what it means to flourish even amidst all the craziness that surrounds us in today’s world.
April ‘24 in the SMP Community Center
We’re following up the philosophical exploration of last month’s theme, A Compassionate Lens, with a focus on self-compassion/self-care for the month of April. Resources and prompts are shared to help us better understand what self-compassion is and what it looks like in practice, and members have been invited to share how they take care of themselves, as S.Bee says in our conversation linked above, “in deep ways.”
We’ve already collected a number of helpful ways for moms to create loving self-care practices, but it’s well-known that with whom we choose to hang out will have much influence on how we feel about ourselves and whether we’re living a life true to our values and dreams. If you’re ready to be part of a warm, supportive community of moms (of trans-identified kids) that feels nourishing, you can fill out the application to join or go here for more information.
Attachment Matters
Rose (of True Believer fame) and I have launched a podcast that explores the Neufeld Model of Attachment (developed by Dr. Gordon Neufeld of Hold on to Your Kids fame).
Together, we "dive into what (attachment) is, what it isn’t, what it relates to, what it can mean for parenting, and how it can help us explain the current state of things...Both of us found ourselves entangled in the world of gender ideology, following very different routes to get here. We share a passion for the attachment framework as a way to understand and fulfill our roles and responsibilities as mothers in these oh-so-strange times."
Here are links to the first three episodes (currently only available at The StoicMom Project Substack. To be notified when new episodes publish, be sure to subscribe):
Episode 1: How we got here we talk about how we got here, both in conversation together, and in our stories with this material. We also begin to talk about how attachment factors into the larger picture of how we all got here.
Episode 2: Playing the Long Game we talk about the primal attachment emotions to pay attention to as we move through this material. Rose links attachment to maturation, and describes the first three stages of Neufeld’s 6 stage model of the development of attachment. The important concept of bridging gets defined, and hopefully, we make clear that it’s never too late to grow up.
Episode 3: The Generous Invitation In this episode, we revisit what to do with “the impulse to fix” and we touch on the way our culture uses leverage to drive behavior. We also explain why we might want to extend abundant grace to our children, Rose introduces the last three, more vulnerable stages of attachment, and we define Neufeld’s concept of collecting.
To wrap up…
You may have noticed that the ratio of written to audio content here at the SMP has flipped recently. Without a support team to edit and produce the podcasts, these tasks take a good chunk of my time to make ready for publication. I do strongly encourage making some time to listen to these conversations with resilient, wise mamas whose stories and strategies may inspire you!
I also continue to invite professionals who I believe have expertise that can help you regain solid ground and reframe this circumstance in a way that supports you to learn and grow from it. At the end of this month, I’ll be interviewing parent coach and educator, Vashti Summervill. She’s the author of the new beautiful and highly relevant book, Letters from the Wilderness of Modern Parenting. As usual, members of our online community will have the opportunity to submit questions for Summervill in a follow-up Q&A.
Alright, the still-very-occasional-where-I-live sunshine is calling (more like screaming for) me so I’m going to shut this screen down and go lavish some self-care on me!