LGP week one day 4

Remind yourself, whomever is in charge of my feelings is in charge of me. Take back your power by owning your own upset. to own your own upset say to yourself, "Each day, each hour each moment, I choose the sounds I want to hear, the sights I want to see, and the actions I want to focus on"

When you are upset YOU have a problem. your upset is a signal to you. you need to use one of the Powers of self control before you do anything else.

this is a toughy for me... I have to think about it some more.... I feel conflicted by do I really have a choice of what I am seeing? so I choose to have my children screaming at me and I cant do anything about it right now?

but I guess as Crystal gave in the other thread about choosing to keep nursing or dealing with the toddler.... I guess it is a choice. its hard sometimes to wrap my brain around.

the other think I was thinking is about what Crystal said about "victim" mentality. I guess I always thought about that as someone sitting in therapy and blaming their mother for everything that is wrong with them or whatever... like these big sob stories.. but I havent thought of it in the little daily things.

anyway...

[Winkie]

"your upset is a signal to you" -- that jumped out at me. When I'm upset, I really need to work on *stopping* & thinking the situation through, instead of just reacting first.

[MarynMunchkins]

So that means the fact that I shut myself in the office instead of yelling was ok?

Use the Power of Self-control before you do anything else.. that's the part that jumped out at me.

What other thread? sounds interesting.

ETA: oh, I see them now.. I'll have to go back and read.

[DogwoodMama]

I do believe we have emotions for a reason... I don't think it is wrong to have an emotional reaction to something, but agree that we need to exercise the power of self-control & stop & think first... it is the opposite of the "victim" mentality, but I believe it can also be a signal that we need to take it to God right then, especially if we are feeling weak or overwhelmed...

This reminds me of the Serenity Prayer...
"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

I know that when I am upset, sometimes I can change the situation, but many times I can't, and not letting my emotions "run me" makes bad situations better...

[MidnightCafe]

Originally Posted by BetsyPage

I do believe we have emotions for a reason... I don't think it is wrong to have an emotional reaction to something, but agree that we need to exercise the power of self-control & stop & think first... it is the opposite of the "victim" mentality, but I believe it can also be a signal that we need to take it to God right then, especially if we are feeling weak or overwhelmed...

This reminds me of the Serenity Prayer...
"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

I know that when I am upset, sometimes I can change the situation, but many times I can't, and not letting my emotions "run me" makes bad situations better...

I totally agree!

I also think it's sort of silly to say that I always choose what I will hear & see. Sometimes that's true. I sometimes choose to say "no," to DD when I know she's going to scream. But I don't have any control at all over whether I hear the ice cream truck driving by. I *can* control my response to the ice cream truck, but not whether or not I hear it. (By the way, my response it NOT usually to want ice cream, but to complain about how loud & obnoxious the truck is! )

[Close2MyHeart]

Originally Posted by Winkie

"your upset is a signal to you" -- that jumped out at me. When I'm upset, I really need to work on *stopping* & thinking the situation through, instead of just reacting first.

I need to work on this too. That same thing jumped out at me! Lately I've been getting upset easily. I know it's because of the , but I still should be able to control it!

grr I just had a nice post and I think midnightcafe and I hit submit at the same time, and mine got deleted.. o well it was probably too boring anyway

but I still should be able to control it!

I dont think its about controlling being upset. at least thats what Im learning. I guess thats something I always grew up with 'control your emotions" degrading "emotional women" (not from my family- from the church). and it seems the more I tried to control my emotions and control myself the worse I got. its like the dont think about the pink elephant and thats all you think about.
I grew up thinking I am stupid for crying, I am bad for being angry... so I would try to "control" them and stuff them. try to look happy all the time. I am learning its not about that, its about what am I choosing to do with these feelings. Am I going to make everyone around me miserable because I am feeling bad?

After ds was born I spiraled down into bad health, mentally and physically (although tied in together). I honeslty dont think I would have been able to read this book and go through this in the health i was in. I was almost incapable of it. So at the same time, I do understand how being sick/ pregnant, hormonal can have a big affect on your behavior.

anyway...

[DogwoodMama]

I agree, it's not about controlling your emotions. I *think* it's more about controlling your actions when you are experiencing "big feelings", really. I mean, we all experience anxiety- or anger-provoking situations, and in psychological terms, it is not considered that heathy to deny that. It's really all about how we express and cope with those emotions. There are many different coping styles out there, and some are more effective and psychologically healthy than others. I *believe* the author is trying to encourage things like reframing, seeking support and solutions, being proactive, rather than being reactive, and expressing emotions in physically and verbally non-productive or abusive ways.

I actually have conducted about 40 interviews and coded over 100 interviews of families discussing anxiety- or anger-provoking situations, and how they handled them, both individually and in the context of their families. We scored them along several dimensions using a coding scheme that we developed to capture how open they were about the emotions they experienced, how well they solved the emotion-provoking problem, and how they expressed those strong emotions. The purpose of the study was to examine how family coping styles was related to children's emotion regulation... it's really quite related to what the author is talking about.

[ArmsOfLove]

In "Boundaries" Cloud and Townsend talk about upset being a signal that a boundary is being crossed. That has been my experience. Sometimes that means I have to proactively prepare a way to protect my boundary the next time (or that time) and sometimes it means I have to choose to lay down the boundary until I can do something about it (usually what happens when nursing unless it's an emergency )

[MidnightCafe]

Just wanted to clarify that when I said, "I can control my response," I was speaking of controlling my actions/behavior in response to something...not necessarily controlling my emotional response. I think that's what the book is getting at. You can say, "I feel angry/frustrated/sad/overwhlemed right now & that's ok." Then you can decide how you are going to act.

I'm having a really hard time controlling my response to a situation at work. Maybe BetsyPage can help me with this? I wrote a document with a LOT of detail in it. I then get a response back from another department with 7 pages of comments to it (and this person has reviewed & put in his comments on 4 prior occassions). A lot of his comments are really stupid and askign for really stupid clarification or something I feel strongly that shouldn't be in this document I produce. And yet I have to go through his 7 stupid pages. Each time I read another thought, I am getting angry. I have taken a number of breaks, but I have to get through this. Help?? How do I stop getting annoyed each time I read another stupid comment?

[Tengokujin]

I think I am having an "ah-ha" moment here . Emotions happen. We own them as our own,call them what they are, and choose how to respond to the triggering situation. Problems occur when we try to "control"--actually deny or push down--the emotion. Am I right here?

I was reading further in the book where she talks about getting confused between what we are feeling and what we are thinking. That's me!1 I realized that my pattern has been to try to tell myself through thinking that I "shouldn't" feel a certain way. Well, I have already done the emotion part--best to just accept that and decide how to respond.

Cloud and Townsend talk about upset being a signal that a boundary is being crossed

This is an interesting thought. And also the comments about it being harder to control emotions when your hormonal. THat is TOTALLY me right now. I'm 7 weeks pg with all the sickness, nausea, exhaustion, and emotionality that comes with it and I have been a bear lately. I feel like I have totally regressed in my GBD efforts.

I think the problem is that my tolerances are a world away from what they used to be, but I haven't moved my boundaries to accomodate that, and so the boys are constantly crossing over the line of what I can rationally deal with. After something happens, I've been sort of focusing on the fact that I'm supposed to be a good Mom and a "safe place" for them even when I don't feel good, which is true. (where's the emoticon for "guilt"?) But I'm thinking that I also need to recognize my temporary limitations here and enforce boundaries sooner and more proactively--knowing that my patience and ability to cope is going to run out more quickly than usual.