Ep 10. 5 Surprising Signs You're Being a Crappy Parent to Yourself
Most of us have the tender side of self-parenting reasonably covered. The kindness, the compassion, the not being too hard on yourself. That part gets a lot of airtime.
But good parenting isn't just nurturing. There's a fiercer side to it too, and most of us are accidentally skipping it entirely.
In this episode I break down five signs you might be being a bit of a crappy parent to yourself. Not in an obvious way. In the sneaky, well-intentioned, nobody-told-me-this way.
Spoiler: I saw myself in all five. So let's just normalise that upfront.
This is also the 10th episode, and we're almost at 1,000 total downloads. Thank you for being here.
Hello, and welcome to the Trauma Nerd Podcast. The 10th episode. I can't believe I managed 10 episodes already, and we're almost at 1,000 total downloads across all of the episodes so far. For a brand new pod with no existing audience, I actually think that's pretty cool.
Thank you to everybody who's listened. I hope you're finding it helpful. I hope you find this one helpful too.
Today I'm talking about, and I'm being careful with my wording here, ways that you might not be a very good parent to yourself at times. None of us can be a perfect parent all the time, whether it's to little people or big people, like yourself. So the signs of poor self-parenting. Areas to grow. The ones I'm going into today are things I think don't get talked about very often, and I think they're genuinely missed. Anyways, I'm going to stop yapping and get into it.
The concept of self-parenting
The concept of parenting yourself runs through many psychological models. Some of the popular ones are internal family systems, schema therapy, and ego state therapy, among many others.
The core idea is that there is a part of you that represents your most grown-up self. All the approaches handle this differently, but there's this idea of your highest, healthiest, most grown-up adult self. Some people call it the higher self, the healthier self, the most grown-up adult self. Whatever you want to call it, it's you. And if you're an adult, that you is also going to be an adult.
So we're thinking about that version of you as the parent. And being the parent, you are the leader of your internal system. Parenting and leadership are kind of the same thing. Parents out there will know what I'm talking about.
This part of you is the parent, and we think about your thoughts, feelings, urges, and impulses as children. They're not children. They're thoughts, feelings, impulses, behaviours, whatever. But this is just a nice analogy to establish the hierarchy inside, and to help you relate to yourself in a healthier way.
An example of this analogy in action: let's say someone's rude to you and you feel mad about it, which is normal. You have an impulse to throw something at them. Not so helpful. You stop yourself because you know it's not okay to throw something at somebody, and you're going to make a bad situation worse for yourself by doing that. So in this context, the anger and the impulse to throw something would be the inner childlike experience. While your best self, your healthiest adult self, knows it's not okay and knows that action will ultimately be unhelpful.
Your healthy self is not impulsive and it's not reactive. That part of you can think forward to the future and weigh the pros and cons of the options before you, calmly.
Most people meet this idea of self-parenting through its more tender application: soothing yourself, validating yourself, showing yourself kindness and compassion, nurturing, caring, being kind to yourself. And while that side is very, very important, it's only half of good parenting.
The other half, I think, gets accidentally ignored. Not because it's been ignored in the theories that exist around this. I think it's because we don't know how to do it well. So we've got the tender loving care side, that's the more nurturing side of parenting. The other side has a fire to it, a fierceness, which involves taking necessary action, protecting yourself, setting limits, holding standards.
Kristin Neff has done a lot of research on self-compassion. She's got a book called Fierce Self-Compassion, and she describes self-compassion as almost a yin and yang experience. The yin is that softer, more nurturing, tender self-compassion side. The yang is the fire: the fierceness, the saying no, the protecting yourself from harm, setting boundaries, motivating necessary change.
If I'm watching my son at the playground and a stranger approaches him and tries to lure him away with candy, you're not going to see a nurturing mother in response to that. I'm going to go running and tackle this guy because that's my mama bear. The claws come out. There is a fierce, loving protection side to love. And just as much as we need to demonstrate both of those with our children, we need to do it for ourselves too.
So now that I've grounded you briefly in these concepts, I'm going to give you five signs that you're maybe accidentally being a bit of a crappy parent to yourself. Or, a nicer way to put it, areas to grow if you see yourself in these. Just a spoiler alert: I saw myself in all of them at times. So let's just normalise that.
Sign 1: You can't discipline yourself
This is such an interesting one that so many people miss. The crux of this is often about choosing what's easiest or most immediately gratifying over what is actually in your best interests.
Life is full of things I don't want to do. I don't particularly want to pay bills. I'd rather keep all my money and buy things I want. I didn't want to do eight years at uni and get a six-figure HECS debt. But I did it because it was in my best interest. I wanted a financially secure future, job security, and to work in a field I was genuinely passionate about. That required a lot of discipline.
Discipline that keeps you on track, delivered with respect and without criticism or contempt towards yourself, is loving. It would not have been very loving to myself if I'd really wanted those things for my future and gone, "eh, too hard, I don't want to do it."
I don't let my son eat chippies for every meal, even though he would happily do it. He has some chippies as a snack but otherwise has regular, healthy, balanced meals because I need to impose discipline because I love him. That's what we're talking about here.
Some signs of poor self-discipline: you don't follow through on what you say you're going to do. You can't set goals and stick to them. You choose what's easiest rather than what is in your best interest.
The solution: learn to do what is in your best interest over what is quickest or easiest. Learn to discipline yourself so that you can delay gratification and achieve your longer-term goals. You'll be happier, you'll have the things that you want, and life will probably be better for you.
Sign 2: You let yourself off the hook when you've genuinely messed up
Making excuses and dodging responsibility for your own behaviour is not kind to yourself. You are throwing away your agency. People with an internal sense of control over their lives tend to fare much better than those who externalise it.
I call it "it's not my fault-itis." I think this ultimately gets modelled by our caregivers when we're younger, either by parents doing it themselves, or by parents who always made excuses for us, so we never had to face consequences or take accountability.
The solution is to learn to take accountability for your stuff. The immediate part of that kind of sucks, but it's so much better in the long run. When you take responsibility, it gives you the power to change things and do better.
I remember in my early 20s having the realisation that my behaviour, my life, was entirely on me. No one's coming to save you. They might. But do you want to pray and hope for that, or do you want to empower yourself and take action to change your life?
My immediate reaction to that realisation was anger. Then feelings of despair. But I let those feelings flow and accepted them. And on the other side, for me, was hope. Because I thought to myself: if it's on me, I can do anything. I can take action, make decisions, do whatever I want to change my life and make it better. I actually want it to be on me. This is a great thing.
Sign 3: You use shame or aggression to motivate yourself
Research shows that shame and self-attack are poor quality motivators. Do they work? Kind of, but in the same way harsh criticism works on a child: through fear.
Kristin Neff's research is clear that self-criticism does drive action and motivate us, but it's at a cost. It also breeds fear of failure, performance anxiety, and procrastination, and makes you much more likely to give up on things before you even start. On the contrary, self-compassionate motivation motivates change far more effectively.
When you flog yourself to get moving, you usually land in the worst spot of all: still not doing the thing, and feeling terrible about yourself.
The solution: motivate yourself using self-compassion, kindness, and respect. If you're not used to that, head to Kristin Neff's website, go to Guided Practices, and try the fierce self-compassion break or the fierce friend meditation. They might give you an idea of what that can actually look like.
Sign 4: You shame or judge yourself for your feelings
When you respond to your emotions with judgment, shame, or anger, you're stacking an additional layer of distress on top of the first. The research is very clear on this. Accepting your emotions without judging them predicts better psychological health. Judging or resisting your feelings makes it worse. It's not neutral. You have the original feeling, and then you bolt shame, judgment, or frustration on top. You're adding distress to distress. It's pointless, it's unhelpful, it makes you feel worse, and it keeps you stuck.
The solution is to respond to your feelings without judgment or shame, and learn to validate your own feelings instead.
A simple self-validation equation I learned: I feel X because Y. For example: I feel upset and disappointed because I was planning to go for a bike ride and have time to myself, and now there's a storm and I can't go.
That's it. No judgment, no shame, no justification. Your feelings just are. You don't need to justify them.
Some other self-validation statements worth trying:
"Anyone would feel X in this situation."
"It's normal to feel X."
"If I had a choice, I would choose not to feel this. I'm not making a decision, I'm having a genuinely hard moment."
"It's really hard feeling like X."
If this is new territory, the book The Happiness Trap, based on acceptance and commitment therapy, has brilliant strategies for learning to accept and be non-judging towards your feelings. I highly recommend it.
Sign 5: You stay in environments that compromise your values and standards
"Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future." It's a simple statement, but it's profound, and the research supports it.
If you're around people who drink to excess, normalise dysfunction, have no drive, have no ambition, and your standards and values are the opposite, there is a serious risk that your standards and values will erode to match where they're at. Behaviours are contagious. Healthy behaviour is contagious, but dysfunctional behaviour is contagious too if you stay around it.
Behaviours spread through social networks. How much you drink, smoke, exercise, and what you eat are all really socially influenced. When you spend more time around friends who do Pilates and go for runs every weekend, you're much more likely to do Pilates and go for runs every weekend. When you spend heaps of time around friends who get super drunk every weekend and spend the whole weekend recovering, you're much more likely to do that too.
If that behaviour is inconsistent with your values and standards, staying in that situation is not good self-parenting.
You don't necessarily need to cut your mates off. Maybe you do, if the behaviour is bad enough or it's harming you to an extreme degree. But definitely limit your exposure to those environments. That is an act of self-protection. And self-protection is love.
Signing off
Those are my five. Areas for growth if you notice them, and areas I think are underappreciated as self-parenting. I hope that was helpful.
I'm really looking forward to doing more work in this space. Sign up to the mailing list if this resonated.
We've just hit 10 episodes. That is so exciting. I was going to end at 10, but I've got a bonus episode that's going to make it 11. Then Season 1 will be done, and I'm going to take a break, because it's actually been quite difficult to come up with a podcast episode every fortnight with a full-time job and a two-year-old.
Thank you for being here. Subscribe, review, help me out. And I hope to see you next time.