Midol, Part 2
My daughter and I would get into these really bad fights when she was a young adult and I was in my mid-50s.
We’d be yelling at each other, talking over each other, and getting really ugly with each other. Both of us focused on defending ourselves and wanting the other to not only see our side of the situation and leave our their own opinions behind.
Later, after we were exhausted from crying and feeling incredibly hurt and hurtful, one or both of us would reconcile. Neither of us wanted to fight and both of us felt so crappy afterwards. We’d recognize that we were most often coming at the situation with the same goal in mind, but starting from different positions with neither of us wanting to be wrong or misunderstood.
Me being the mental health professional with years of education and experience, I felt overly confident and very incompetent at the same time. I’d think… “How could I, knowing what I know about human behavior and change work, actually wind up in such ugly situations? And do it all the time?? And why isn’t my daughter seeing this knowledge in me?”
Simply, she’s not my client. Holy crap, how many times I’ve heard, “Stop counseling/coaching me!” And she was 100% right.
In the heat of the moment, when I’m reacting to situations, it’s not “Master’s Degree Helen” talking, it’s “Little Survivor Brain Helen” defending herself. This wasn’t work, this was personal. This was life. It’s times like this who we are academically separates us from who we are emotionally.
In my last podcast and blog, I shared about my experience with my mom telling me, “You’d better get some Midol before you drive him away.”
💡 Holy crap, I figured out that what I was doing with my daughter was exactly (from my perspective) what my mom had been doing with me. My mom couldn’t handle her emotions surrounding my misery. She was driven to shut me up so she didn’t have to hear me and feel the pain, and driven ensure I didn’t end up alone. In the moments with my daughter, I was shutting her down for the same reasons – I couldn’t handle her emotions – the negative ones as well as the positive ones. The positive emotions she was experiencing were the harder ones for me to handle.
Fast forward to current.
In all of my BS and MS degree courses, I never learned what I learned from specialized NLP in Hypnosis and EMERGE training, the see-hear-feel of everything we experience. I learned to go into the unconscious mind, to the 90% or more of the brain’s activity. The place where we react from.
It was mind-expanding to recognize that I was, as I now refer to it, “Midoling” my daughter. What she was bringing to me was painful FOR ME. I needed her to stop causing my pain. So, in the same way my mother was Midoling me by getting me to relieve desperation and aloneness symptoms, I was attempting to get my daughter to stop talking by trying to get her to my way of thinking. Fact is, what was going on was something inside me that I didn’t want to face. I didn’t want to see it. It was causing me great distress.
How many times do we experience something that really “gets on our nerves?”
Well, those nerves are the “feel” of the see-hear-feel going on inside of us that we need to recognize. Ah, but the feel. That’s painful. So we stop the other person or situation from causing us pain.
What my daughter was evoking in me was a whole plethora of emotions. So many feels. I love my daughter. I think she’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She’s smart, she’s evolved, she’s strong, and she makes so much sense! She has brought me through many changes kicking and screaming…well not necessarily kicking, but certainly screaming. It’s the changing where I find the source of most of my internal pain. Because, often she’s right, and I’m wrong. And that causes the pain that I need to stop by getting her to shut up.
My first a-ha came within weeks after Jim (the love of my life) died, Katie was 17 and had her first boyfriend. She was happy, I was miserable. I felt like someone had ripped out my heart with a shovel. I was even more miserable because I knew that I worked her whole life to be a different mother to her than my mom was to me.
I recognized that my pain surrounding her being who she is is a side effect of my breaking a family pattern. No wonder people don’t want the next generation to do better – it hurts too much. So we Midol them…get them to stop being who they are, stop listening to them, so we can stop feeling the pain they bring us. But I know a better way. I know the value of reaching my inner, unconscious mind that works so hard to protect me. This gift of learning such powerful systems of change has been a life-changer for me and for my relationship with my daughter.
So now, when I feel twinges begin to surface, I take a few deep survivor-brain-resetting breaths, and really allow myself to see-hear-feel what I’m experiencing.
What is it about what she, or anyone else, is bringing to me?
How is it showing up in me? Anger, sadness, frustration, helpless/hopeless, less than, etc.
What’s the meaning behind it for me?
What is it about what they’re bringing to me that drives my need to stop the pain I feel?
What little gremlin messages and feelings am I experiencing – guilt, fear, envy, jealousy, inferiority, superiority, etc.?
By uncovering the messages my body is actually screaming at ME, I make sense of it. And I use wonderful techniques to resolve and clear it from my survivor brain. I’m no longer in a place where I need to Midol her…or anyone.
If you are Midoling someone, contact me. Allow your mind to see-hear-feel what it would be like if you were no longer feeling in conflict. Let’s find out what’s going on and resolve it for you.
