Episode 114: Perfection Culture in Parenthood & What to Do About It with Lindsay Adams
/I don't know if you know this story yet. But if you have been with me from the beginning, then you probably know I have struggled with perfectionism and limiting beliefs, just like most of you. And this has affected how I parent. It was weighing me down and realized that if I continue to let this limiting belief and need for perfection drive the ship, it will take me away from my true goals for my children. One of my deepest hopes as a mom is that my kids will grow up knowing that they are lovable, worthy, and valued for who they are, not what they do.
But this truth that I wanted to convey to my children, is not one I always embody myself, and kids learn by watching us just as much as they learn through their interactions with us. How could I hope to teach my kids something I didn't know how to do for myself? Sure, they would be safe and held and seen in my home, but eventually they go out into the world and are exposed to cultural narratives of productivity and value and worth, and I want to be able to teach them how to walk in the world, a world that is beautiful yet hard to be in, with confidence and compassion for themselves and others.
QUESTION FOR YOU: Is this resonating? Are there hopes and goals you have for your children that you're not yet embodying yourself? If so, comment and tell me about it. I won't be able to reply to everyone, but there is power and purpose in writing something down and putting it out there!
The way I see it, the hard work of addressing our limiting beliefs and releasing perfectionism is a crucial part of conscious parenting. And so for this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast, I brought in a fellow podcaster, a mom, and a therapist, Lindsay Adams. She is a social worker and she hosts the Mindful as a Mother Podcast. She will be helping us learn the following:
Limiting beliefs and how they manifest themselves
How to address our limiting beliefs in ourselves and in parenthood
The connection between limiting beliefs and perfectionism
If you are struggling with perfectionism and looking for more support, follow Lindsay on Instagram @Linds_AdamsLCSW.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic overwhelm. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody! This is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to have a guest, a fellow podcaster, a mom and a therapist. We are welcoming Lindsay Adams. She is a social worker and she hosts the Mindful as a Mother Podcast and we're gonna be discussing limiting beliefs, perfectionism and how to relax a little bit into parenthood. So Lindsay, welcome to the show.
Lindsay: Hey!
Laura: Hi! Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Lindsay: Okay, so I'm a social worker in private practice. But I've also worked for seven years with children in the foster care system and outside of work I am my mom to three kids. I have a five, almost six-year old, and then I have twin girls that are three. And I'm super passionate about bringing authenticity to motherhood and making therapy and clinical terms super relatable to parents. And helping moms just feel like they're not alone in this mess that is motherhood. It's a beautiful mess, but it is a mess.
Laura: Yeah, it totally can be. And so, I love your Instagram account. You've got some great things on a kind of the therapy speak and making it real and usable. And I was particularly struck by how you talk about limiting beliefs because I see in the people that I work with, I see limiting beliefs about parenthood, about your kids, about yourself as a parent come up all the time. And I was hoping you might help us have a little bit of a conversation. Explain what limiting beliefs are and how they manifest themselves, how they make life harder than it needs to be. Can we chat about that?
Lindsay: Yeah, I'd love to. So to me, limiting beliefs are ingrained beliefs that we have about ourselves, other people are children that come from our own childhood or society or even just ourselves and our experiences. And they often are things that limit us from being our truest self in motherhood especially. So a lot of people like have the limiting belief that I should be ______ as a mom, right? And that limiting belief keeps people stuck and from enjoying motherhood because they're so focused on being, say we’re saying like my house should be clean as a mom. So stuck on keeping the house clean that you can't fully enjoy the journey of motherhood.
Laura: Okay, all right. And so can we talk for a second about how to identify a limiting belief. Right, so how do we know we've got one going on?
Lindsay: So, I like to think of its times when you get really emotional or reactionary to something. And you kind of wonder, “I wonder why this is such a big deal to me.” And really exiting with that and exploring with that is how we kind of notice if there is a limiting belief there. A common one that comes up about our child's behavior is if our child has a tantrum in the store, we get very reactionary to that. A lot of people get really upset.
And if you look back and you sit with it and you think to yourself, “why is that so upsetting to me?”. And it's because I have this belief that my child should behave a certain way in public. Where did that belief come from? And you can go deeper into recognizing where that came from maybe our own childhood, maybe society, maybe it's your own fear of being judged as a mom. So really just sitting with things that bring up really big emotions in us is for me, the best way I found to identify limiting beliefs.
Laura: Yeah. Another one that I hear a lot from and I don't, you probably do too, but when I talk about being playful as a parent, a lot of parents come to me and say I'm just not playful. I'm just not a playful mom. I know I should be, but I'm just not. That's a big limiting belief that I see parents come to me with a lot. So once you've found a limiting belief, what do you do with it?
Lindsay: Yeah, the first step is to sit with it and feel all the feelings that come up with it and think about where it came from and acknowledge that you have this belief about yourself and you as a mother. And then work on identifying a belief that feels more true to who you are and creating it. You can write it out even like in a workbook or a journal. So if the belief is like, “I am not a playful person.” Sit with that. Where did that come from? What does it feel like to not feel like a playful person? And then identify how you want to be in motherhood.
Laura: Okay, so one of the things too, I think like often times we have these beliefs, they're so deeply held, they feel like they're written like carved into stone. Usually there is a time in our lives where they weren't true and sometimes when I find limiting beliefs about myself, I think to myself, I ask myself, “is that true, has it always been true?”
“Was there a time when it wasn't true? What would it be like if it wasn't true? You know, if this thing wasn't true of me, what would I be like? You know, what would be my options?” You know, like just kind of curiosity, right? It just kind of wondering, just kind of playing with thoughts that you have around those beliefs like “where did that come from?”
Lindsay: Yeah, I love that. And I love even taking it deeper and challenging maybe the belief in some ways by saying, there are times that I have been playful with my kids. And I have, you know, we played on the floor together and I was engaged and playful with them or there was a time as a teenager or child that I was playful by nature. And trying to tap into what that was like for you so that you can bring it into today.
Laura: Yes, that's so critical because I think that you know, we're so hard on ourselves as moms on all of these things. And the playfulness in particular for myself, I was a babysitter for a long time, this is how I made my money as a teenager and as a college student, like a lot of money, good money. I was good at my job. I was playful. Kids always wanted me to come over. It was so much fun and I loved it. And I always thought that's exactly how I was going to be as a mom. And then I got into motherhood and the weight of it was so much more. And so, in reflecting back and thinking about this because I had this limiting belief.
I'm just you know, I was playful before, but I'm just not a playful mom. I started looking at like what were the conditions that allowed me to be playful before?
Lindsay: Oh, that’s great! Yeah.
Laura: What was it that allowed that playfulness to be free flowing from me? What allowed me to be that other version of myself? And then I started taking a look at like, okay, so if I was able to be playful with other people's kids or with my niece and nephew before I was a mom, like why does it feel so heavy now? And rather than focusing on my actual playfulness, I focused on those other things that we're getting in the way and getting those things sorted allowed playfulness to emerge again in my life.
Lindsay: Yeah. So really asking yourself, what gets in the way, what are the barriers to being playful and addressing those.
Laura: Whatever limiting belief it is. So like “no, I'm just a slob or I'm just lazy or I just don't like working out” or you know, like whatever the things are that we think about ourselves. Most of the time, I think we think our thoughts are facts.
Lindsay: Yeah. We just accept them as truth. Something I like to say to clients. I have a lot of teenage clients. But I'll say, “do you believe everything you see on Instagram?” And they'll say, “well no.” And I said,” well then why do you believe everything you think in your head? It's just a thought.” But because it comes from us, we think that it's true and we need to just accept that as truth.
Laura: Yes, exactly. Okay. So I know you also like to talk quite a lot about perfectionism. How do you see limiting beliefs and perfectionism like being related? Do you see them as related?
Lindsay: Yeah. So related. I think that as mothers, we compare ourselves to our own mothers, to people on Instagram, to people we're friends with. And we want to be give our kids the best. We have the intention of being the best mom we can be to our kids, which is a good intention. But we can be really hard on ourselves and get caught in the shame cycle when we're human, when we mess up and we yell or when we're not.
You know, I kind of use like the Pinterest mom when we're not like hand making party decorations for our kids.We’re just not organized. Our house is a mess. We think, “oh well this person's house is always clean” or I saw this person doing this on Instagram and we compare ourselves and we beat ourselves up.
So I think that's how perfectionism plays into motherhood. And I really like to challenge that and keep it real with people. Like no one's perfect. No one's house is clean all the time and we all have these unique gifts and strengths that if we acknowledge those and appreciate those and focus on those in our motherhood, those are the things that connect us to our kids. And those are the reason that we were given our kids.
Laura: Okay, so you're talking about perfectionism in kind of, it's almost like the kind of the surface level perfectionism. But I run into with a lot of my parents’ perfectionism in their parenting, like attempting to be the perfect peaceful parent or the perfect respectful parent. And they’re, it seems to me like there's a lot of fear underlying all of that that if I don't do this perfectly, I'm going to screw up my kids. I guess that's kind of a limiting belief too.
Lindsay: Right. And I think that there's a lot of like black and white thinking about conscious parenting, respectful parenting, peaceful parenting, whatever we wanna call this, right? Like I want to be the best parent and parent my kids using this perspective. And somehow that means I can never mess up and if I do, I have permanently damaged my child and they will not recover and those are kind of..
Laura: Oh, that’s kind of heavy.
Lindsay: Yeah, the shame is so heavy with that one.
Laura: And there's no other option, like there's no option, like there's no room for mistakes or humanity. It's either I'm perfect or I screw up my kids forever, right? Like there's no middle ground there.
Lindsay: Right. And what I like to tell people in that moment is when we mess up with our kids, we are showing our kids a few things. One that it's okay that they mess up. That is part of that conscious parenting and just accepting our child for who they are, that unconditional acceptance that we give them, we have to give ourselves first. And how we show them that we do that is by modeling it to them.
The second piece is we're showing them how to repair by apologizing by connecting after and having conversations. And that's such an important life and relationship skill that we need to teach our kids and that is the best way to teach it is by modeling it yourself.
Laura: Okay, so when we've made a mistake, how does repair happen? How should it look?
Lindsay: Well, I think it's going to look different for every parent. But usually I would say there's like a calm down time or a tie break. And then the parent apologizing and then letting the child express their feelings, how it made them feel. And the parent expressing their feelings. And then I like to add like some kind of connecting, whether it's like doing something together, some kind of time together, physical touch of some kind, just to kind of like repair and reset the tone for the relationship.
Laura: Yeah. I think when critical piece, so I think a lot of folks, so many parents that are listening right now, had parents who made mistakes even though they were doing the best that they could and never once apologized or owned up or took responsibility for those things. But some of us did have parents who were like able to recognize that they weren't perfect that they made mistakes, but I think even when that was happening, the excuses were laid out too.
So like I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you just weren't listening or you know, kind of the butts were put in and so then we, that's what we think an apology needs to sound like. And I think it's so important for us to recognize that that we have to, if we're gonna apologize and repair that we have to accept full responsibility. Nobody can make us be a certain way or have a certain reaction we need to really take in and leave any butts or however out of the picture, you know?
Lindsay: Yes. And that's why I love leaving the space for the child to express their feelings. I think a lot of times our parents apologized to us through just saying like I'm sorry and we were supposed to just like accept that and not be able to say, well it really made me feel this way and so like being able to sit in the space where your child expresses how it made them feel when you yelled at them and the parents saying, I am so sorry, I made you feel that way. That was not my intention. I love you preparing in that way without the butts or I yelled because you weren't listening or anything like that.
Laura: Yeah, I agree. You know, I'm still like this is something that even as an adult with adult parents, I still run into this. I still have never had a fully formed healthy apology and repair attempt with my dad ever.
Lindsay: But I mean either with my mom and I think that's how we learn what we want to do better with our own children.
Laura: Yeah. And show up differently, not perfectly but differently. So we've been talking about some pretty like big cognitive behavioral therapy terms so far. So limiting beliefs, black and white thinking we touched on perfectionism when I think about CBT I think about thought work, working with our kind of internal dialogue.
Folks are wanting to do some of that work with themselves. They know that they've got somewhat unhealthy internal dialogue going on. What are some of the things that they can do because that's part of mindfulness to write? I know you have your mindfulness as a mother podcast. So this is part of mindfulness is starting to become aware of our internal stuff and working with.
Lindsay: Yeah, so the first step I would say is to just be aware of how you're talking to yourself and the things you're saying to yourself. And some people are big like love journaling, love writing things down. If you're one of those people, I think it's great to write down your thoughts and seeing them on paper or on your phone in the notes section can be kind of shocking to see that I have been talking to myself this way and then something I love is ask yourself whether you would talk to a friend that way. Would you say these things to a friend?
Laura: Yeah, okay, so some journal pumps then for everybody who's listening, you can jot these down and put them into your notes. So just regular check ins awareness of my thoughts. What am I thinking right now? Another one that I like is what story am I telling myself right now? Or am I making this mean about me or about my child or my relationship? What am I making this mean right now? And then what will come next?
Lindsay: So I like to identify the feelings that come up from this? Like what feelings does this bring up for me? And is this something from my past? Like a feeling from my past or an event that I'm having a reaction to? Or is this like a new feeling or situation and then taking it a step further and kind of looking at those beliefs or thoughts and saying whether it's true or not, does it help me to think about myself this way?
Laura: Oh yes. Is this serving me right now? Okay. And so then if the conclusion is no, these thoughts are not helping me out right now, how do you go about constructing new ones?
Lindsay: There's like the typical cognitive reframing where you take the thought and you change it into a new thought and practicing that to yourself every time that you have that particular thought. And I love that idea. I think that what we change our thought into, we need to believe it and be relatable. So it doesn't have to be like, So if the thoughts like I'm a bad mom, we don't want to say I'm the best mom or I am, you know, I'm a good mom if you don't believe that, But you could say I have wonderful qualities as a mother or I love my Children unconditionally or things that genuinely feel true to you because you have to buy into them.
Laura: Yeah. And you can get to neutral first two and this is something that I like to teach is that it's tempting to just go all the way to the furthest positive end of the spectrum. I'm a great mom, I love my body, you know, I'm a wonderful wife, I can clean anything. I'm so good at organizing my house when in reality that's not believable, like you were saying, so getting to neutral and getting to facts like what's an observable fact.
So even going from, I'm a terrible mom too. I'm a mom is a step in the right direction. I'm a mom, I have a body, I have a house, there are things out that are, you know, that aren't in cupboards and then you can move into kind of, I'm figuring it out into just gentle er things like, you know, I'm figuring out how to be a good mom. I'm learning how to have better discussions with my partner. I am, you know, figuring out how to keep the house organized. It's something I've never done before. You know, just little kind things. It's like a ladder.
Lindsay: You're just like inching yourself in the positive direction. Yes.
Laura: Cool, okay, what other tips do you have for us? I feel like I'm like mining your brain.
Lindsay: About what?
Laura: So I mean, this process of kind of what we're talking about is growing up alongside our kids. Right?
Lindsay: Okay, so I have a tip. My tip is to always be learning and growing and working on yourself, right? Because we can't expect our kids to do something that we're not willing to do ourselves. So be reading books, be doing your own therapy, be taking classes listening to podcasts and I mean if they're already listening to this podcast, they're already doing the work right? So like just keep doing that work on yourself and it is really, really cool to see how having Children can really bring out every issue you need to work on in your life.
Laura: Yes, they are so good at that, aren't they?
Lindsay: Yeah.
Laura: amazing.
Lindsay: If you have something deep down that you have been avoiding working on your Children will bring it out in you you know, acknowledge that feel the feelings and then take that as a the opportunity to work through that issue.
Laura: Yeah. Okay, so how do you feel the feelings when you grew up in a home where you weren't allowed to feel the feelings?
Lindsay: Oh yes, great question. So and this is like super common. Some people don't even know what they're feeling because they haven't felt feelings in so long. They can't even identify like what feelings are.
Laura: Some folks were denied. The very basic education of what feelings are even the name of them, especially the dads that I work with, they typically know 4 to 5 feelings words.
Lindsay: Right? And so for that the first step would be just learning about there's a feelings wheel that has a bunch of different feelings, reading them, learning the definitions of them and then starting to recognize them in other people or in yourself like oh this is what furious looks like or this that's what disgusted looks like and it can even be in like and this is the way to teach feelings to your Children.
Also in tv shows that child looks very sad or embarrassed and it helps them make that connection. But you can also do that for yourself. And then I love mindfulness for learning to recognize where you feel things in your body. So like recognizing that every time I get nervous I have a stomach ache and then saying oh this is what anxiety or being nervous feels like for me.
Laura: It seems like always right. The first step is awareness. Just noticing and then after we noticed that there has to be this kind of accepting and allowing space so we're not going to try to move it, we're not going to try to deny it or push it down, we're just going to acknowledge and accept it.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Laura: Permission to be there. And what's fascinating too is that emotions typically last around 90 seconds. We think that they're huge. We think that we're going to drown in them especially when they're big but for the most part if we can just hang on, they don't last very long. Isn't that crazy.
Lindsay: Yeah, I like to think of it. This is very DBT is like a wave. It comes in, it peaks. It kinda crashes at the shore that's like the most intense part and then it just kind of goes out slowly and peacefully.
Laura: It absolutely does. And you know I use that wave analogy to teach my kiddos to about their feelings. And really like when it comes to our kids big feelings, it's our job to be the steady rock in the midst of the way storm of waves right that they are having these big waves of emotions and we're right there with them but just holding steady that they can kind of rage against and crash against and we're right there something they can be tethered to. Its not as helpful when we're having our own big waves and they're having big waves and the waves just start crashing up against each other. That's helpful.
Lindsay: Yes. And you have to be able to manage your own emotions in order to help your child manage there's.
Laura: Yeah. And really like how are you supposed to do that if you've never learned? That's when I mean it makes sense to me that it's hard for parents to be present emotionally with their kids. Big feelings when they aren't able to be present with their own, it always starts with us as hard as it seems.
Lindsay: And that can feel like a lot of pressure.
Laura: Well I feel like you gave us some very very good information here. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us? Where can people find you and learn more from you?
Lindsay: Yes. So my Instagram is @linds_adamslcsw.
Laura: Okay and I'll have the link to it in the show notes.
Lindsay: And then my podcast is Mindful as a Mother and it can be found on any podcast platform.
Laura: Great, well Lindsay, thank you so much for coming and chatting with us.
Lindsay: Thank you for having me.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!