A Little Backstory to Speed Things Up
When I first started therapy back in 2021, my original focus was to figure out how to facilitate a relationship between my kids and my father, all while simply maintaining a sense of peace.
Without diving too deep for the sake of this blog post, my relationship with my father has been a rickety roller coaster my entire life. Growing up with a father who was diagnosed with bi-polar, depression, addiction, alcoholism, and anxiety, along with showing, on his worst days (because everyone has bad+good days!), character traits of compulsive lying, manipulation, abuse, anger, aggression…life was extremely difficult in his presence. I knew this side of him and it was frequently on display. But somehow, my children brought out the best in him. Since my parents were still married, my father was an active part in our lives. So I moved forward with therapy looking to find a way to maintain distance to keep my peace, but also, allow my children to build a relationship with him (you know, the trickier parts of raising children that nobody talks about!). However, I was very vocal from the start that the day they saw this ugly side of him, they would not be around him.
Flash forward, and it has been almost a year since I have last spoken to or seen my father- along with our children. And while my heart aches at times for my children, our lives are at much peace. I have long forgiven my father and I empathize for the demons he deals with on a daily basis. But the simple fact is, there is no helping someone that doesn’t want the help.
What I Learned in Therapy
As I began to dive into this part of my life story with my therapist, he was shocked to learn my profession at the time. From the middle of high school, I knew I wanted to be a special education teacher. Not only did I want to be a special education teacher, but I wanted to work primarily with older students with emotional/behavioral struggles. And for nearly 9 years, that’s exactly what I did.
When my therapist learned this about me, I remember him laughing. But in the most uplifting way. He told me that the irony in it all was groundbreaking and that I took one of the most negative experiences in my life and ultimately turned it into one of the most positive of experiences.
I could have lived out the rest of my life holding onto a negative mindset towards my experience growing up. I could have used all that I went through as an excuse to treat others the same way, repeating awful cycles. I could have held a stigma or distain towards individuals who are not yet ready for help. I could have lived with a grudge for seeing, hearing, and feeling the things I felt. But, I didn’t. Instead I took all of those experiences, mustered them up, and trained to help others out of those situations from the jump. My career as a special education teacher brought me so much joy. Watching my students change their thinking, their behaviors, their emotions, even one small step at a time, was one of the most rewarding moments in my life- I am so grateful to have been a part of each of their journeys.
Reframing Your Mindset
In the three years that I went to weekly therapy, one of the biggest outcomes I took from it all was the ability to reframe my thinking. That skill takes so much practice and it’s something I will never be perfect at. But reframing my mindset, focusing on solely what I can control, changing negative thoughts and feelings on certain situations, has helped me through some very difficult times. Some statements I often use to reframe my thinking:
- What am I gaining or learning from this situation?
- Count my blessings. How could this situation add to them?
- What is out of my control in this situation? Can I do anything to change it?
- What can I control?
- Is this situation worth my time and energy?
- Is this something I’m willing to put hard work into?
All of those questions leave a situation within my control. It allows me to take from a situation what I want and trash the rest. It reminds me that my external world is wildly out of my control and to focus on the internal.
Practice: Reframing My Mindset
So you can see exactly how I reframe my thoughts, if I’m answering those questions honestly about my experiences with my father, these would be my answers:
- I am gaining a deeper understanding and empathy for others who struggle with emotional/mental/addiction/etc. I am learning how to advocate loudly for myself and my children and how to hold to my boundaries guilt free. I have also gained an understanding of the type of parent I expect my children to have.
- My blessings are that I have a healthy, happy family. And above that, a happy, healthy marriage. Nobody in our family struggles with the challenges he does and that, in and of itself, is a blessing.
- All of it is out of my control. Someone else’s behavior and actions are not within my control.
- I can control how he interacts with my family and what that looks like. I can choose what that looks like, guilt free, in order to keep my children safe.
- Helping someone who is not ready for help is not worth my time and energy. I have others who need my time, energy, and attention and are ready to accept it. So I will put my time and energy there.
- For three years, I did. It is no longer a situation I am willing to work towards. And that is okay! I can say that I tried.
All of those answers leaves me feeling at peace with where I stand at this moment in my life. While my relationship with my father no longer exists at this time, I can still move forward taking away many positives from him and that roller coaster ride. Dwelling on all of the negativity from it would only drag me down and my only plan in life is to continue to rise further up. And as cheesy and cliche as that may sound, it’s the truth.
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