Feelings - when the other half goes out for the day.

My husband and I work from home, so I'm very used to us both being in the house at the same time. However, it doesn't mean we necessarily see each other much during the day - he works in his office and I look after our toddler. We might cross paths at mealtimes but that's about it, so I'm used to being on my own with our toddler.

Today my husband left to visit his parents - a 6 hour round trip excluding stops, so he's going to be away for a full day and I found all sorts of distressing feeling surfacing the moment he left. It's not that my day is going to be particularly different to usual but just knowing he is not in the building has left me feeling desperately lonely, with a sadness that brings me close to tears.

This is a great chance to practice acceptance. I started by using the observer self to view my own emotions and then did a bit of objectifying feelings - looking at where the feelings are in my body, what size and shape they are, what colour and texture and then moving on to allowing those feelings to be there, breathing into and from them and expanding space around them. They didn't go away, that's not the purpose of the exercise, but I knew that they would move on in their own time and in the meantime I've eased some of the tension I had been building up around them.

Why did all these feelings emerge today just from the idea of my husband being away from the house, despite it actually making little difference to my day? Well it's understandable if I consider how my husband is a safety net for me if things go wrong during the day, so that would be a very natural source of worry. Also, the mind doesn't like change to the routine it is comfortable with and there could be an element of the prehistoric mind warning against letting a member of my group leave. So it is very reasonable that these feelings arose, I have no control over what emotions appear, but thanks to some simple ACT tools they didn't end up ruining the rest of my day.

The Mind - I Love...

     My mind surprised me today with a simple sentence out of the blue. It said “I love being a mummy.” What surprised me most is that this was the first time my mind had said this to me unprompted. I've been a mummy now for nearly two years and it has been amazing - there is no doubt in my mind, despite all the inevitable ups and downs, I absolutely do love being a mum. But my mind, doing what minds do, tends to always emphasise the negative. I've lost count of how many times my mind has told me that “I hate being a mummy”, “I don't want to be a mummy anymore”, “I'm a bad mother” etc. This is why it was such a pleasant shock to hear the opposite today.

     So why is this? Why does my mind always barrage me with negatives rather than bolster me with positives? Well it goes back to our 'stone-age minds’. Back in prehistory our minds evolved to be a very effective don't-get-killed device. It was useful for our ancestor’s minds to warn them of dangers - the stone-age man who is wary of potential predators when outside was far more likely to survive than the man whose mind always tells him “I love being outside”.

     Now, in the present day, our minds carry on this legacy in the form of negative commentary. That's why the mind far more often says things like “I hate being a mummy” than “I love being a mummy”. It's trying to ensure our safety by going on and on about things we find difficult, and being a parent is difficult, incredibly rewarding but at times so very difficult. 

     So next time your mind is giving you a hard time just thank it - “thanks mind” - it is just trying to do it's job after all!