Unpacking Expectations: Letting Go of Who you Think you Should Be

Why this work is important:

·         Expectations inform many facets of our lives

o   our relationships with our kids and partners, family and friends. 

o   Drive our goals, motivations and behaviours as we move about our world

o   Sense of self, worthiness and identity

o   They operate in a place we more often than not are not aware of-unconsciously

Expectations are formed from our ongoing interactions with the world around us.  These begun right from the beginning of life and continue to evolve and change with new experiences.

From these experiences and interactions with our world we develop reference points- belief systems that determine how we think about ourselves and how we should be interacting with the world around us.

Expectations look like judgements towards yourself and others, or experiences.  They show up as projections that are placed on the people around us, especially our kids, family, and close friends.  They evolve into a sort of confirmation bias, reference points that we are constantly in search of evidence to support.

Expectations give us a false sense of control and certainty in our lives- lending us the belief that we can predict outcomes, like the behaviour of our children, ourselves or our partners.  These become limitations and barriers - creating rigidity and reactivity.

This may have become apparent to you at the beginning and throughout this time of COVID- when our expectations of how we think our world should be- are taken right out from under us and we are left in a frantic frenzy of fear, anxiousness, and frustration or shutting down and numbing out.

Identifying Warning Signs: When we have placed expectations on ourselves and others around us

·         Increase in frequency and intensity with feelings of: resentment, anger, frustration, overwhelm, disappointment, ambivalence, doubt, reluctance and even hopelessness, like what’s the point?

·         Comparison and not feeling good enough

·         Presence of social anxiety, performance anxiety and symptoms of depression or burn out

·         Any statement that contains SHOULD or SUPPOSED To “I should be able to…”

The Goals in exploring expectations are:

·         Expanding our awareness- welcoming forward the unconscious beliefs we hold about ourselves and others- how those beliefs in turn impact the patterns of interaction in our world

·         Increase flexibility in our thinking and behaviour

·         Another tool to build resiliency

·         Strengthening the ability to mindful and present

Before we begin: Grab pen and paper

I invite you to bring yourself into a mindset of curiosity, compassion and courage.  Turn inward and bring those qualities forward- notice how you feel when you are in that headspace, how your body feels.

Now that you have welcomed those qualities in we can begin:

This work is to focus on expectations and you- not your kids, partner or career- those facets can come later, but I am sure they will show up in some of this work.  Honour whatever shows up- give it space and acknowledgment

The first statement to reflect on tonight is:

I’m expected to be…

Following that I invite you to ask yourself:

How would you live your life if no one was watching?

Titles and Facets of life

You can use the different titles or roles you have in life to help you to begin unpacking expectations:

As a mom, I am expected to…

As a wife, I am expected to…

As a woman…

With my parents, I am expected to…

In my community, I am expected to…

With this health condition, I expect my body to…

I expect myself to…

Work, career, socially, culturally, gender roles

*When things start to come up- see if you can identify where they came from, which reference point or points did it originate from?

*How do these expectations that have come up inform your sense of self, identity?

*Does this expectation fit into who you are, right now? Connect back to first question: If no one was watching…

Increasing awareness around expectations doesn’t mean you have to toss them all out the window, you can do that too.  But you can now be more intentional in how you interact with the expectation, creating more flexibility and resiliency in your day to day life.  You can choose which ones you want to place on yourself, take on- but also reminding yourself that expectation doesn’t not equal predicted outcome. 

Connecting expectations with values, morals, and ideologies on how you view the world results in keeping the ones you. Below are the links for a great values activity (1st link is instruction, 2nd is the printable card sort).

https://motivationalinterviewing.org/sites/default/files/valuesinstructions.pdf

https://www.guilford.com/add/miller2/values.pdf?t

My hope is that if you continue to explore and unpack expectations as a practice, you will welcome a greater sense of ease and knowing in being you.

Let's Talk about Fear

I would like to talk about fear, and I suggest you talk about fear too. During these exceptional times many of us are struggling with the uncertainty of what life looks like for us now and what does that mean for our futures. Faced with this uncertainty fear can take hold. What is unknown, not understood, or expected is unsettling to most of us in our society. We have built our lives around us to ensure that we are confronted with as little uncertainty as possible, lending us a sense of control. However, the uncertainty has always been there.

I would like to comfort you by saying, we were made for this. Our survival as human beings has been built on uncertainty. We have evolved and adapted to tremendously uncertain environments. Now is the time for us to connect with our innate capabilities for resilience and adaptability. But first we need to address our fears.

What are you feeling most fearful of right now?

What is the feeling of fear? Label it- terrified, fearful, numbing, petrified, panicked, alarmed, scared

Notice where you feel it in your body- what does that feeling feel like- tightness, heat, tension, prickly, numb

What does that mean for you, or your family, your community?

How do you know you are in fear? What does your behaviour look like? We either become mobilized (fight or flight) or petrified (freeze).

It can be helpful to write these things down, or even better talk to someone about it. Give yourself the mental space to unpack your fear, as scary as that might be. Acknowledge and accept the fear you feel so that you can move more intentionally throughout your life now, without fear being in the driver’s seat. In turn you might notice you have a greater tolerance for stressful situations and even an increased sense of ease and confidence in the face of these uncertain times.

Take care,

Veronica

The Importance of Rest and Play for Managing Stress, and Creating Balance and Connection

This time of year, transitioning back to school can be downright crazy for a lot of families.  We shift from summer where we spend a bit more time having fun, connecting with friends and family, and spending more time outside to a full tilt schedule of school, afterschool activities, personal obligations and work.  Structure and routine are great, and for the most part people and families thrive with some level of structure and routine in their lives but when stressful moments arise in our lives, we depend on our routine to distract us from whatever that stressful issue is.  We find ourselves as parents scrambling for the mental and emotional capacity to deal with the stressful issue and realize we are already functioning at capacity; we have no tolerance left for coping in distress.  This is where rest and play come in.

What is Rest and Play?

Rest is truly a time to do nothing.  It’s a blank spot in your timetable to stop, reflect and just be with you.  It is also a time to sleep, its true we need sleep.  Rest can be a 10 min break to sit outside at work, it could be a few minutes to sit on the couch at home without turning on the TV, checking your phone or going on the computer.  It can be a short nap, just to recline and close your eyes.

Play is to do something just for the fun and enjoyment of it, with no goal or expected outcome.  When we are in play it opens us to being present and it invites us to experience joy.  For everyone play will look different, it might be reflected in your hobbies and interests or the relationships you have in your life.  Play can be activities you do on your own but are also great when we can do them with other people in our lives.  When we share in play we strengthen connections with our kids and partners, in turn deepening our bonds as a family.

Why Rest and Play are important?

Rest and play provide us the opportunity to clear our heads, process emotional experiences and sort our thoughts.  Although we might not be directly focused on the processing and sorting of thoughts, quite often it happens indirectly.  Play inherently makes way for creativity and innovation, strengthening our ability to problem solve and navigate difficult decisions.  Including more play in our lives also encourages us to be present and experience positive emotions like joy and amusement, which in turn help to balance our lives when we are going through difficult times.  During rest and sleep our brain is able to process with less influence from the cognitive functions that are active throughout the day, also giving that cognitive part of our brain a break.   When we get sufficient rest and sleep, we also increase our emotional resiliency, giving us a greater capacity to cope under stressful situations.

What gets in the way of rest and play?

So why do we keep ourselves from rest and play? For everyone it might look a little different but for a lot of us we value productivity.  Being a productive person means getting things done, when we get things done we see that as an achievement.  We lead busy lives, in part because we value those achievements so to make time for rest and play would mean we would need to value our own wellbeing.  Sometimes slowing down is worth more than finishing a task and to play would mean we could allow ourselves to experience joy.

Making space for rest and play, if it isn’t easy to fit into your schedule, needs to be intentional.  It needs to be looking at your day and making time to play even if it is just 10 or 20 minutes, taking a rest at work  or in your car because you are having a hard time focusing and find yourself questioning how you are going to get through the rest of the day.  Even taking a few moments to do nothing is a great place to start when it comes to rest throughout the day.  Start to make a list of things you like to do for fun, ask the rest of your family to do the same and see if anything overlaps- these are the things you can do to play together.