• Common challenges facing parents and kids right now. (2:50)

• The impact these challenges are having on parents and how self-compassion can help. (5:10)

• The most common mistake parents tend to make that actually doesn’t help us parent or feel any better. (7:46)

• A mantra to use when other people’s social media posts make you feel like they and their kids are somehow holding it together and smiling. (8:15) 

• What to do when our tendency to compare and feel inadequate creeps in. (8:43) 

• My own memory of my response to my three kids when they were little and used to complain about the dinner I was cooking. (I hadn’t thought of this in years!) (13:35) 

• The self-compassion break for parents that you don’t have to close your eyes for and that you can practice right in the midst of your loud, messy life. (14:07) 

• Why the research shows it’s okay for parents (and kids) to NOT do all the things sometimes and just play. (21:19)

• A practice to help parents (or people!) who feel like they’re grasping for control in these uncertain times to find some much-needed resilience. (22:45) 

Michelle [00:00:00]

Hi everyone I’m Michelle Becker. Welcome to the well-connected relationships podcast. This podcast is Episode 5 and today we’ll be talking with Dr. Susan Pollak about self-compassion for parents in challenging times. Dr. Susan Pollak is a psychologist in private practice in Cambridge Massachusetts. She’s a longtime student of meditation and yoga who’s been integrating the practices of meditation into psychotherapy since the 1980s. Dr. Pollak is co-founder and teacher at the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge Health Alliance and the president of the Institute for meditation and psychotherapy. She’s also co-editor of The Cultural Transition and a contributing author of Mapping the Moral Domain Evocative Objects and Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, Second Edition She’s the co-author of sitting together essential skills for mindfulness based psychotherapy and the author of a new book self compassion for parents nurture your child by caring for yourself. That’s a lot of accomplishment. Susan welcome. It’s really a delight to be with you today.

Susan [00:01:11]

Thanks. So much for having me. It’s a total pleasure!

Michelle [00:01:16]

So this is a topic as you know that I’m quite interested in and I know you are as well. And we were talking the other day and you were telling me some things about that you’re hearing from parents right now during these challenging coping times. What are the challenges facing parents right now?

Susan [00:01:35]

Well Michelle, they are really intense so I see a lot of parents in my clinical practice and I’m also surrounded by parents in fact my son just had a baby a few days ago. So I I feel like I am really immersed in what it means to parent right now and what I’m hearing from people especially with COVID is that this is endless and this is not sustainable and this is breaking people. A lot of people are talking to me right now about how hard it is to think about sending their kids back to school. Are they endangering themselves or their extended family or the teachers by having kids go back to school? Yet if they stay home and try to do online education. You know are are the kids learning anything? So it’s a real dilemma and often what happens with working parents is they feel like they have a choice between bringing in a paycheck or you know being a parent that you can’t do both right now. And schools have really served the function of holding children and you know of course providing social skills and education. And you take that away and it is a huge loss. You can’t expect a five or six year old to be able to have the discipline to be on Zoom for hours when it just doesn’t happen.

Michelle [00:03:33]

Well I was just thinking you know in my neighborhood I’m also hearing a lot from parents who are who are working parents. Both parents are working and they’re supporting their children on Zoom and they just feel like they go from full time job to full time job — well actually, I think they’d like it if they could go from one to the other but it’s like two full time jobs simultaneously. It’s really challenging for them.

Susan [00:03:57]

It’s really challenging because they’re literally doing double shifts and if they have to be out of the House to work there’s no one at home with the kid. Yeah you know so it really is an impossible situation. 

And the kids are lonely and angry and feeling deprived. They miss having peers they miss having friends. They miss stimulation. So I think it’s not working right now for anyone. 

Michelle [00:05:01]

Yeah. So what effect do you think it’s having on the parents themselves. And I know you have some ideas about how self compassion might help parents get through this challenging time.

Susan [00:05:14]

Exactly. I think the impact it’s having on the parents is they are totally exhausted, wiped out. Hearing, “this is not sustainable.” I can’t do this. You know I’m not an octopus with many arms. Know I can’t even own myself. So I think people are feeling overwhelmed and anxious and depressed and wondering when this will end, and how it will end. So and I think that is where self compassion is so important because parents have a tendency to beat themselves up and be really critical and say, oh well if I had more energy or if I were more competent or if I were stronger or you know if I had language skills and was a mathematician and a scientist maybe I could homeschool my kid and do my job and again it’s all impossible and too much. I was speaking to one colleague parent the other day and she said I am literally working two shifts. I am with my kids in the morning and especially gets more complicated if you have two or more trying to help them with their lessons. And then I have my own work. So she said I’m constantly up til 2:00 in the morning and probably sleep deprived.

Michelle [00:07:00]

Right yeah. It’s a challenge. It’s definitely a challenge for parents for sure and in ways that I’m not sure we’ve seen before at least as a culture as a whole.

Susan [00:07:13]

I don’t think we’ve ever seen this before in any culture because there’ve always been extended families or school as far as we know historically there’s never been a situation where you know mothers had to work and educate their children.

Michelle [00:07:35]

As so I completely agree with you. So how how could parents support themselves with a self compassion practice. What kinds of, especially well anything you think would be helpful.

Susan [00:07:50]

Yeah. Let me give you a few ideas. I think the first thing and I’ll work on attitude and perspective first and then go into a few practices but I think what happens is that parents feel there’s something wrong with me about how defective. And if I were X Y and Z I would be able to manage this. 

And I also think social media makes it worse because you look at the pictures your friends are posting and they all appear to be holding it together. And there’s a line from AA that I like which is, “don’t judge your insides by other people’s outsides”. That’s because people may look like they have it all together and their kids are smiling and you know let’s say they’ve just come back from a vacation. 

“So when our tendency to compare and feel inadequate creeps in, what’s helpful?”

One of the things we can do no matter how rough the waters are, how stormy they are. Is we can be kind to ourselves. Beating ourselves up, yelling at ourselves, telling ourselves that we’re not good enough, we’re incompetent, we’re idiots doesn’t help anything. But if we can say yep these waters are really stormy, the weather is terrible. I’m doing the best I can. You know let me be kind to myself. That takes some of the pressure off. And even just taking a little pressure off can help tremendously.

Michelle [00:10:36]

Yeah. So I think what I’m hearing you say is is kind of the common humanity that recognizing that this is a difficult situation these are difficult times. We’re not in it alone. And we’re all feel like we’re failing at one thing or another or everything all at once to some degree right? Then recognizing that common humanity that this is just how it is right now we’re not just you know we ourselves are not failing. This is just the lay of the land can really take some of the pressure off.

Susan [00:11:12]

Exactly. And again, the waters are rough for everyone. 

There’s an exercise I know you offer to parents so they can offer themselves kindness. And I’d love to play it/hear it now”

Michelle [00:13:10]

Yeah. And you were talking about you know replacing this inner critic this sort of critical voice, how we can beat ourselves up, with some kindness.

“That’s such a helpful exercise for all of us when we need to replace our critical voice and our tendency to beat ourselves up with some kindness.”

Susan [00:13:22]

Exactly.

Michelle [00:13:23]

Love to hear more about that.

Susan [00:13:24]

Yeah. Well one of my favorite practices which is really easy and I’d like to think of it as, “compassion to go” is called the Self Compassion Break and this comes from the Mindful Self Compassion literature. And it’s very simple I’d love to teach it now and I’ve adapted it specifically for, for parents. So with your permission I’d love to just jump in.

So, I have made this practice accessible to parents in that you don’t have to close your eyes. You can do it while you’re driving. You can do it while the kids are fighting in the car. You can do it while you’re cooking and the kids are screaming at each other. It’s a compassion for life practice and what led me to adapt these practices to really make them parent — friendly is, after a talk I was giving practices that were short or what I considered short which is three to five minutes. And one mom came up to me afterwards and she said, “Susan, I have three kids. I can’t close my eyes. I can’t sit still. If I do, somebody is going to kill someone else. You know. That woke me up and I thought, yeah that’s right. I mean I raised two kids, I didn’t raise three kids. But yeah you know when you have kids fighting and angry, you’re not gonna be able to, you know, sit comfortably and close your eyes and meditate. You have to be on the scene. So the practices I’ve come up with are practices you can do eyes open, driving, standing up, breaking up a fight, and that you can do in virtually no time. So this is the parent friendly I like to call it self compassion life raft. I think that’s more telling than a self compassion break.

Michelle [00:16:01]

Great.

Susan [00:16:02]

Let’s let’s jump in. Let’s say Michelle that you are, tell me what you’d like try, trying to make dinner and the kids are fighting trying to drive and the kids are fighting. Tell me what speaks to you.

Michelle [00:16:17]

Yeah. You know when my children were little and I did have three they’re all grown now but when my children were little and I’d be downstairs in the kitchen cooking, they would come down and ask me what’s for dinner? And whatever I said they’d say, “Oh no I don’t want that.

Susan [00:16:36]

Yeah.

Michelle [00:16:37]

Yeah. So just to kind of a vehicle for complaining while I’m trying to provide for the family by cooking.

Susan [00:16:45]

Yeah. And I hear you. I know when I was in that situation it was like oh my gosh, do I need to make, you know, three different dinners? Yeah you know? How how can I not drive myself crazy and not everyone can be happy all the time. All right.

Michelle [00:17:06]

I got to the point where I would just say to them when they would say, “what’s for dinner?” I would say, “I’m not telling.”.

Susan [00:17:14]

You push back.

Michelle [00:17:16]

You know they were just going to complain and I was just going to make what I was going to make it up anyway. OK. So that’s the scenario, so.

Susan [00:17:24]

Well you know for all the parents and I don’t want to assume that it’s just moms who are cooking dinner. So for all the parents out there who are cooking and kids are complaining, just imagine that you’re over the stove your stirring something, you’re boiling some pasta or some rice and making a main course, kids are complaining. You can just take a breath and say to yourself, “Ah, this is a moment of stress”. And if you like if you have a free hand you can put a hand on your heart. I know you’re stirring with one hand, so that may not even be possible, but you could just pause say, “yep, this is a stressful moment.” Just take an inhalation and take a long exhalation. And one of the things that really helps, again this is based on science, helps us relax is having a longer exhalation. It really decreases stress.

Michelle [00:18:37]

I can feel that.

Susan [00:18:39]

Yes. And just a longer exhalation, we don’t have to worry about counting it, but just as you exhale let go of any of the stress you feel you’re holding; any clenching you might feel it in your jaw and your hands and your eyes, your belly just “Ah, this is a moment of stress”. And then as you mentioned a minute or so ago. This is what we call common humanity. So yep being a parent is stressful! Let’s not deny it. The more we say, “Oh I’m supposed to love cooking. I mean back in the 1950s. This is a quick aside. I was reading about the cookbook writer Meg Bracken who came up with a classic that I know my mother had called the “I Hate to Cook” cookbook And. After publisher rejected the book because they said, “oh no women love cooking!” Cooking is sacred! and felt like B.S. cooking is not sacred. And of course the I hate to cook cookbook became a best seller. But to tell yourself oh you know I love cooking and I love it when my kids are fighting because this is sacred. Let yourself have your feelings. Don’t deny them. So you can say yeah this is rough. OK? This is stressful. 

And most parents feel this way. So if you start imagining that out there someplace there are all these happy parents who just love cooking and love it when their kids are fighting you’re going to feel inadequate. OK. And that’s also not true. So it’s like yeah OK yeah. Being a parent sometimes, excuse my language, sucks. Okay. You know we don’t need to sugarcoat it. And I think the more we sugarcoat things with CovID the harder it’s going to be. And then the third step is OK, this is stressful. Most parents feel this way. Let me be kind to myself. And some people hit a block around that because if you’ve been raised in a way that you’re not used to being kind to yourself it may feel like a leap. So one of the things you could say is, “Well may I aspire to be kind to myself”. Or you know “may I work on being kind to myself.” Or maybe, “a few years down the road I will be kind to myself.” But just holding that intention of giving yourself some kindness. And again if you can you know putting a hand on your heart. Or giving yourself a hug just allowing some kindness in, even if it feels like something you haven’t experienced can be enormously helpful. And it may be feel radical. It may feel really different from what you grew up with. 

That’s OK it’s all right to try something new. So putting the steps together you can do this very quickly. So let’s say you’re cooking, the three kids are arguing, and saying, “what’s for dinner?” or “Mom I’m hungry! What are you making?” And you just take a breath. You say, “OK this is a moment of stress. All parents have stress in rearing their children. Let me be kind to myself.” And then when you step back even if it’s just for a nanosecond you can come up with creative responses. And I love your response. Which is I’m not telling you cause you you know after raising three children that would ever you said was not going to be good enough. You brought in some humor and humor can be a lifesaver for parents like rather than yelling at them. And you can see how easy it would be for you to start yelling or hit the roof like, “Nothing I ever do is good enough! What is wrong with you guys. You are so ungrateful. I worked so hard. I’m juggling two jobs. I’m not sleeping…” You can just see how you could just let go and lose it. But by bringing in a little humor like you know I’m not telling you. You get the kids curious. “Oh boy. I wonder what she’s making?” And that can cut the arguments off at the pass. It can stop the complaining because what you’re doing is a little bit fun, it’s playful and play is enormously important for kids.

Michelle [00:24:34]

Yeah. In fact is there an aspect of play that’s self compassionate that’s important for us, you know, for our children but also for ourselves. You know taking the time to play with them?

Susan [00:24:47]

Yeah and absolutely there’s a lot of research on how important play is for the development of the brain. And there’s so much emphasis now on kids doing so much on studying for tests. On doing tons of extra curricular activities, so they can get into college or succeed. But it turns out the kids who are working 24/7 all the time end up getting anxious and depressed. So play can really be a resource. 

You know if you’re feeling stressed, go outside, you know, play a board game. Play catch. Take a nature walk. You know play with the dog or the cat or the siblings. You know ride a bike. Just give yourself a break. 

Michelle

You know I think one of the reasons we forget to play is that this generation of parents in particular really feels like they have to manage everything. And certainly right now they ARE being asked to manage everything. And I know you have a practice to help parents remember that they don’t have to micromanage and control everything. What a great resilience-building practice for parents.

Michelle [00:27:11]

And resilience for our kids, helping our kids have resilience by remembering to balance the stress of getting everything done with taking breaks for play, like you’re saying you know, go outside ride a bike,

Susan [00:27:23]

Get some fresh air.

Michelle [00:27:25]

Get some fresh air you know if you can if that’s available to you, of course it’s not available to all parents or all kids but also you know how do we remind ourselves as parents to take a little bit of a break as best we can. You know the kids do go to sleep at some point. Right?

Susan [00:27:44]

We hope.

Michelle [00:27:45]

We hope yes on a good day. All right. Well it’s been absolutely lovely talking with you Susan about you know I could talk with you about this forever. But so thank you. I really appreciate you being here today. And I would just want to say thank you to you for all of your work up for being here on the podcast. But even beyond that for all of your work in the field of mindfulness in the field of self compassion in the field of self compassion for parents in particular thank goodness someone’s looking out for us.

Susan [00:28:25]

I think we need it. So thank you for doing this. And thank you for speaking with me.

Michelle [00:28:34]

Absolutely a pleasure. 

OK. Well that’s all for today’s well connected relationships podcast. Thanks for being here. I’ve got so much more in store for you in our next episode. We’ll be exploring how parents can teach resilience skills to their children. So be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.