Latest / The Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans Podcast / The Oddness of Feeling Embarrassed
Transcript
- Heidi: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Raising Intelligent Emotionally Intelligent Humans Podcast. I'm Heidi Lindemann, I'm your host. I'm a single mom by choice to two little ones. I'm a therapist. Love IFS, internal family systems. I love feelings, talk about emotions a lot, spend a lot of time in the emotional realm with both myself and my kids. And on this podcast, I tell stories. Real stories. Real moments that really happened in my life. Today I want to talk about a moment where I actually felt embarrassed, which is not a common experience for me. So my kiddos every Tuesday when a my older one has a an appointment with a speech therapist. This particular Tuesday another speech therapist joined us. So there's two speech therapists to a CF myof myofunctional might be getting that name wrong. If that approach could help my kiddo a little bit more, which I think it's going to. I was excited for that. But this meant that there was an extra therapist, a new person being introduced to my kiddo, and she sometimes is she takes some time to get comfortable with new people. Okay, so we did our whole speech therapy thing. We did that whole thing. We are leaving, which often leaving speech therapy is is tough. It can be a challenge to get them to get their shoes on, to walk out the door, to cooperate with me. To not run around. And this day. after getting their shoes on like a couple of times because I put one kid's shoes on and the other one took them off. And then I got that other kid's shoes on and the other one took them off. I was flustered, but also staying f relatively calm. And we walk up into the front waiting room. Both of them are running. They start running around in circles around the waiting chairs. People are sitting in the waiting room. My little one starts screaming loud. There's also laughter. They're laughing, running away from me, running away from each other. But then screaming sometimes in a fun game, but sometimes also in in a way of I didn't like that you just grabbed me, sister. Don't do that again, sister. But just screaming, not actually saying anything. While they're doing that, I'm also trying to talk to the receptionist, the person who schedules, so that we can flip the therapist that we're working with to have a better to have different skills that my kiddo needs that the therapist we were working with didn't have. So I trying to get that s shifted and scheduled that while they're running around, trying to get them to stop screaming or running so loud, trying to like, hey, why don't you go read the book or go color the pictures? Cause there's there's a little area there that has a little table that has there's coloring books and ri books you can read so that it gives kids something to do. This is a place that sees kids with all different types of abilities every day, all day. That's what they do. They help with speech therapy, occupational therapy, feeding therapy, physical therapy. So they've got a whole lot of kids who have all kinds of needs. They're not A place that doesn't understand kids who have, say, ADHD or are loud or have big feelings or intense behaviors. That's what they do all the time. And this is the place This is the moment that I feel embarrassed. What? But it was true. I did not like them yelling. How in big their f their yelling was and how much they were ya running around in the waiting room. I didn't like it. And I felt embarrassed. I felt like I might be being judged by parents in the waiting room. I don't even know who I was concerned about, but I was like, Ooh, that's really loud. It was like ear piercing kind of loud screaming. It's like, my god, these are my children. I don't know how to contain them right now. I can't. I don't know what to do. So eventually after I would get the schedule figured out, I grab I tell them it's time to leave. It's we need to walk out the door, let's go. And it was my younger one who was having a harder time, which is different. Usually my older one's having the harder time. My younger one was very clearly having a harder time. She was screaming louder. She was trying to get away from me more. She was Mm. I want to instigating, that's not the right word. She was trying to really get my older one to do more s things, which then escalated. She was like escalating things. So I go and I pick her up and I take her and I walk out without my older kid. But there's a bench right outside the front door. And I put my little one on it and I say, We need to leave. It's time for us to calm down. We're gonna sit here for a moment. And then I tried to pull out some kind of emotion regulation game. I was doing deep breathing when I was holding her. And then I said, What colours can you see? What do you see out here? I see some grey rocks. You're sitting on a bench. I named a couple of things. She didn't really say much. She did start sucking her thumb. And she wasn't screaming. And I said, Are you Can you come with me to go get your sister? Can you walk with me and we can go get her and bring her out? And I was able enough to get her. And to go get my older one and walk them both out. The fact that a part of me felt embarrassed was the reason I actually went and picked up one of my kids and brought them outside. I have no idea if that was the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do. It was the only thing I could think of doing. It is extremely hard being one person when I have two kids who are both big enough now that I can barely I i I could technically carry them both, but if they're both flailing around. and not wanting me to, I could not carry them both at the same time. And I can't carry them both for a very long time because I'm just not that strong. Physically. I'm just not. And I was just trying to do whatever I could to get the yelling, the screaming and the really intense fast movement to stop. It's like I need you to stop. Running inside and screaming inside the waiting room. I brought her out and then I go get her sister and I get her sister out and we're both outside and I'm having them sit at the right outside the door. There's this big old bench. Sitting in the bench. I'm like, okay, we need to get in the car. I need you to w use your w your feet and I need you to walk you can run if you want to to the car. And then I need you to get in the car and get in your car seats. Do you think you can do that? And I don't remember what they said actually. Not sure if they said yes or no. I was also I was very focused on where we needed to go. Home. To get food. It was dinner time. And to get them their intense emotions out of the parking lot. My little one didn't seem like she's gonna be able to do that. So I am carrying her and I asked my older one to come to the car. My older one goes behind, walks towards the car, and gets almost to the car. She walks to the car actually does walk to the car. And then she keeps walking past the car and she's standing in the rocks at the end of the parking lot. And I was like, Okay, whatever. And then I'm trying to physically get my little one and she's squirming and moving and she's getting really big, so it's like it's Very hard to hold her when she does this. Squirming like a lot. And she's like, Just bump me down. I'll get in the car, you bump me down. I was like, Okay, okay, okay, I'm gonna put you down. I need you to put get in the car. Why'd I think that was gonna work? Yeah, she said so. I put her down. Outside the door of the car. Tell her to climb in. And she runs away over towards her sister who is now further away in the rocks on the side of the parking lot. No, she's there next to the side of the building. And now they're running down the building. They've never gone that far before. There are some bushes on the right side. The building's on the left side. There's it's a big rock area. And they're running down there. And at some point I start screaming and yelling, Stop. You need to stop. Cause they were getting potentially if the little one kept running, I was getting to the point where I would not be able to run fast enough to catch her. And she's my main concern. as far as eloping or running into places she shouldn't be running into. She will just go do whatever she wants to do. And I needed her to not run so far that she got to the place where she was running into the the road that was on the other side, which is a very, very, very busy road. Not a very busy road, it's a very fast road. You go forty five miles an hour on that road. It's the frontage road. but it still was quite a distance to that road. So like she was she was safe. But I was getting to that feeling like she wasn't actually safe. And I was yelling, Stop! That's not Safe. I need you to stop. They did stop running, and they hid in a bush. They were laughing. Which means they were dysregulated. And I walk over to them, I get over them like this is not safe. It's not safe to run away from me. Very clearly holding my little one, telling her it's not safe to run away from me. You need to stay with me. I look at my other ones, tell her the same thing, You need to stay with me. When I tell you to come, you need to come. It's not safe. Pick up the little one. I tell the other one to come with me. she half listens, half cooperates. Not great. But I pick up the little one, I don't let her down. She keeps telling me to put her down. I'm like, No, you have shown me you can't do that. And I put her in the car. And I have to hold kind of hold her a little forcefully to get her to and buckle her in. I'm like, I'm going to buckle you in right now. You need to stay in the car. I need you to be buckled in. That's where you're going to be safe. I get her buckled in. I go get the other one. Pick her up. Can't remember if she was screaming or kicking or doing anything. And I get her in the car. And then we go home. Once we were driving they did settle a little more. I Do not know how else I could have handled that situation. I think I handled it fairly well. But the fact that a part of me was embarrassed is really hanging with me. Especially with the where and the place I was that I was embarrassed at, that I was at a place with staff members, therapists who work with this kind of stuff all the time. So I'm sure my kids have not been the only ones who have been screaming and running around in the waiting room. But I really felt embarrassed. I felt this sense of like one, I wanting them them to stop because of the part of me that feels embarrassed of like what you're doing is showing people that I I don't know how to contain you, that I'm not a very good parent. I feel embarrassed that people are looking at me and hearing how loud you are. Maybe somebody commented who that's really loud. I said it for sure. Ooh, that's loud. Can you bring your voices down? I need you to use your inside voices. They didn't listen. All the things I told them they weren't listening and I think that increased the embarrassment that like I'm saying so much to them. And it doesn't look like any of it has an impact on them at all whatsoever. It wasn't until I I physically picked up my little one and took her outside that anything shifted shifted even a little bit. And that part of me that feels embarrassed. I think it's important that I let that one know that. I feel that. I sense that. It makes a lot of sense to be embarrassed. And I also know that I was doing the best that I could and there wasn't really a whole lot. I mean sure there could've been all kinds of things there's all the coulda shulda wudas, coulda's, whatever. But in that moment I actually did pretty well. And to r let the embarrassed part know that It's okay for me to have hard moments too. that I am s a good mum and sometimes things are hard. Sometimes I don't know exactly what to do. And I'm just doing the what feels like the best thing. It's not even really the best. It's not even the best. It's just that it feels like it's the it's the only thing that comes to mind in that moment to do. And I think there's another message that I have for myself if something along the lines of No matter what how people look at me, what they think about my parenting skills. I know that I am in this for the long haul, for the Hmm. Big game and that. Shifts and changes take time and that I am building on w as much emotional intelligence in these little girls as I can. And that I see it in many times. And s it's not gonna be every time. There's gonna be times that they are not gonna be able to regulate themselves. Just not gonna happen. They don't have all the skills yet. But that doesn't mean that I d am doing something wrong because they have big feelings. And it doesn't really matter what other people think or see or experience. I just do the best that I can. Yeah. Mm, the thing that Dr. Becky often says of you're a they're a good kid having a hard time. I feel that often for myself. And I think that's a reminder that I need right now. That I am a good mom. And sometimes I'm having a hard time. I am a good mum. And it's okay to have hard times. And you're a good mum. And it's okay to have hard times. That's what I've got for that story. If this resonates with you at all, if you can think of another momma as I'm talking about this. Maybe a mom who's had a similar situation, or maybe a mom who feels embarrassed often. Send it to her. Let her know that you care about her, that she matters, and that what she feels makes sense. And it's okay. And she's loved and matters too. Yeah. That's what I'd say to her. Alright, mamas, thanks for listening. I hope you tune back in for another story next time. And until then, may you be blessed, Mama.