Are My Thoughts Controlling My Behavior?

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A few years back-pre baby, pre marriage – a boyfriend of mine and I went to visit my best friend in Denver. Somehow we ended up in this crazy weird all year long circus/carnival/amusement park – think weird Rob Zombie movie strange. At said park there was a concrete bob sled you could go on- totally dangerous, totally scary looking, and totally something we wanted to try. Shockingly it was closed due to safety concerns (Shocking, I know). But when going up there my boyfriend at the time said something of the sort like, “You all can go on this, I don’t want to ride on it, get injured, not be able to work, have to be on crutches, etc etc etc.” He apparently was a fortune teller/forecaster/deliverer of doom and absolutely knew that if we got on this terrible concrete ride we would get hurt and we would not be in good shape.

Fast forward a few years and, yes, I have begun to do that. I am not as cautions as this, but I definitely catch my thoughts and fears affecting my actions. The reality is every time I see Addy going outside to play or running in the house I want to wrap her in bubble wrap to make sure nothing happens to her.  “When does this crazy worry go away?”I asked my friends. Oh good, never.

So I began thinking about a training we held at the clinic for local therapists based on anxious parents- parents being anxious about their kiddos getting hurt doing every day (and not every day things). I started to go into my ‘busy mind tool box’ and think of calming things.  The presenter at this conference was great – she imitated her son to say something like (in super fast boy talk) “We went outside and there was this scary snake and we all ran up a tree, and we were so scared and bBilly almost fell out of the tree but he didn’t and we held on and William cried and we all were screaming and we finally got down and it was so cool.

Man, its hard to not be a scared momma all the time. I want to wrap Addyson up in bubble wrap every time she walks around anywhere. The reality there isn’t enough bubble wrap in the world to protect kids all the time. I won’t be there every time she falls on the playground, every time she gets in a scuffle, anytime she (gasp) gets her heart broken, or anytime that things just don’t go her way. And the reality is, sometimes life is rough and there is no way in the world we can stop the world from turning and hurts to happen.  And you know what, it stinks that we can’t stop things from happening.

And you know what, it is okay to be scared. But it is also okay to tell yourself to settle down. As a therapist -and as a person – I’ve learned that your thoughts direct your feelings, your feelings direct your behavior and your behavior reinforces your thoughts.  Actions direct your beliefs and your beliefs direct your actions. Example – oh my gosh look at Baby A getting up on that slide, that makes me a little bit nervous. What if she falls, what if she X,Y, Z…(thoughts/beliefs). I’m feeling pretty darn anxious right now (emotions). I’m sweating, my head hurts, my shoulders are practically touching my ears (physical), I sit and worry and get so scared that I take her down off the slide (Behavior).

That’s a lot going on there for a little tikes slide adventure. So, what I’m continuously learning to do is to stop those thoughts when they happen. I say – okay, self, calm down. Is she safe (ish), has she been on a slide before, am I ‘forecasting’ what may happen, am I ‘fortunetelling’ of what might happen, am I the deliverer of doom of something that 90% of the time won’t happen.

So, in reality I would not approve of Addyson EVER getting on a cement roller coaster. But, she’s a kid. A slide, some dirt, and, yes, even some scrapes, are going to happen. And I’m okay with that. Am I going to be nervous? Of course. But I’m going to try my hardest to use every tool in my tool box to make sure my nervousness doesn’t stop her from being just a kid on a (non cement) slide.

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