How to Thrive When You’re Torn in Multiple Directions

I dropped off my parents at the airport yesterday morning. They were visiting from the UK. (If you’ve been following my mum’s miraculous journey through Covid, you can read about the latest blessing here).

They had an early morning flight and dropping them to the airport saw me wake up at 2 am (!). It was worth it for that one last hug and kiss!

I got home around 4 am and went back to sleep and woke up to see the kids before school and then went back to sleep so I could get enough sleep to function through the day of work I’d planned and had been building up whilst hosting my parents.

 At 10.30 am I got woken up from a deep sleep to multiple phone calls. It was my son's school. He had broken his finger whilst playing basketball and had briefly fainted from the shock.

My husband was in a meeting, so I got dressed, grabbed a handful of snacks (not my first rodeo with a hungry teen breaking a finger..try 5th - we clearly need to upskill on preventive measures!), and hopped in the car. 

We recently moved to a new area and fortunately, we haven’t had to find too many emergency departments, so I decided to try a new one, one that specialises in children. 

We ended up in an emergency for 7 hours. Whilst waiting, in between x-rays and updates on where we were in the queue to be seen by the emergency doctor, we played a few two-player games on my son’s phone, including chess, checkers, and air hockey. He won every round! 

I had left my phone in the car and it was going to be a 30min round trip to walk to get it because the car was parked so far away, which I didn’t want to risk if we got called to see the doctor. 

As time passed, I noticed my thoughts start to spiral, “why was this happening again?”, “why can’t he be more careful”, “I really wanted to catch up on a chunk of work today.” I noticed my throat tighten, my shoulders tense and my head feels heavy. I felt annoyed and frustrated and wanted to express it in a way that I knew I would regret. This was not an unfamiliar spiral and one that repeated when I felt torn in different directions. 

The self-leadership skill I call the Emotion Diffuser kicked in and I felt my shoulders relax and my head clear as I returned back to the here and now. 

How many times a day or week do you feel torn?

In the first instance when we feel torn, it’s important to acknowledge how we are feeling and that then allows us to deal with the situation we are in with the presence of mind. And it’s in the presence of mind that we make choices about what we say and do that feel aligned for us. 

My son noticed my frustration and asked if I was okay. I felt aligned to say, I had a lot of work today that I had planned and I’m feeling frustrated that I won’t be able to get to it today and I’m glad I can be there with him. 

If I hadn’t been able to choose my response and had reacted with my initial thoughts, I may have been embedding beliefs that he is a nuisance and disappointing. The reality was that he had had an accident and was dealing with it the best he could (which was with courage, humour, and resilience). 

It’s not easy to step back from how you are feeling in the moment as a parent and it’s a vital skill to enable us to consciously build our children’s beliefs about themselves and feel good in the way we are taking the lead. 

In parenting, it’s not the situations that happen to us, but the skills we have to respond to what’s happening to us that enable us to truly thrive. 

Here’s to you thriving! 

From my heart to yours, 

Dina