I recently read an article about ways to be kinder to yourself in 2020, and one strategy was to “cultivate more casual, low stakes friendships”, which the sociologist Mark Granovetter calls “weak ties.”
I have experienced weak ties as a key contributor to my improving happiness and well-being over the past few years. It’s easy to underestimate the impact of these weak ties, but they are a relatively easy way to make a big impact on happiness.
When faced with a decision between one course of action and another, the motivation can make as much difference as the actual choice you make.
Leaving a job, confronting a loved one, telling someone how their actions have affected you – these are not always easy, and can sometimes lead to pain.
But each of these can be done out of spite or out of love.
Leaving a job can mean thumbing your nose at your employer and saying good riddance to the aspects of the job that led to finding another role elsewhere.
Or it can mean acknowledging your needs, how these aren’t being met in your current role, and being grateful for everything your current role has taught you, as well as leaving the place better than you found it.
Staying in a job where you’re unhappy could create discontent, building tension and dissatisfaction for you and your colleagues, or a nasty competitive environment where you spend most of your energy proving why others are wrong, rather than .
Or it could mean appreciating what is good about where you are, seeking to bridge differences and make the workplace better for colleagues and customers alike.
The decision – should I stay or should I go? should I try to talk to them about it or pull away? – isn’t always the most important factor. The motivation behind a decision is both the ‘why’ you do something, and dictates the ‘how’.
And that makes all the difference.
I recently spent my first week without my husband to co-parent our two boys with me. While he was visiting some of his family in the US and having a short holiday for a week, I’ve been home, taking care of the boys, keeping house, and working my job.
I’ve always wondered how I’d fare, as I’ve been fortunate enough that neither my husband nor I ever travel overnight for work, so we’ve always been in it together.
One thing that surprised me was that it was easier than I had imagined it would be.
Of course, it’s a bit like the woman in the Pulp song Common People: I’m fully aware that spending a discreet time period as if I were a solo parent is not the same as being on your own with no end in sight. I still doff my cap very much to all the solo parents out there.
But being a solo parent, even for a finite time, meant that I had to be on it, every evening. There would be no one to tap in to help with bedtime or doing the dishes. My evening routine changed and had some surprising benefits.
And yet…in some ways, I found the experience enriching and has given me so much that I want to incorporate in my normal, happily married, co-parenting life.
Many of us will experience depression in our lifetimes. And it sucks. I’ve been there myself.
And many more of us will not only experience it ourselves, but will experience living with or loving someone who is anxious or depressed. I’ve been there, too.
So I wanted to write a blog, not about overcoming depression yourself, but to help you if you, like me, find yourself struggling to deal with the fallout from another person’s depression.
Because ultimately, the person dealing with depression will need to find their way out, and there are few things more frustrating than watching helplessly as someone you love suffers.
This frustration can lead you to try to help, to end their suffering as quickly as possible.
It can appear in your life as anger for their apparent unwillingness or inability to help themselves.
It can show up as added stress while you try to shoulder more and more of the burden of life to protect them, or simply because their depression makes being productive and helpful difficult for them.
So it’s frustrating for you, and you also need care and attention. So this post is not about them. It’s for you. Continue reading “Tips for coping when a loved one is depressed”
I had an interesting conversation recently about the movie Inside Out (side note: one of the unintended side effects of parenthood is most of my film viewing is family films; thank god for Pixar…)
The person I was talking to hated the message the film gives to kids. “It doesn’t tell children they can choose how they feel,” she said. “And I just couldn’t stand the way Sadness was always moping.”
Conversely, I had liked the message the film may have been imparting to my kids; namely, that we all have a range of emotions and we can share these, rather than trying to pretend they aren’t there, can’t lighten the burden.
As an adult, this is something I continue to deal with – how to respond to negative emotions. Do you wallow in the negative emotion? Or swallow it, suppressing it until you no longer feel it? Or can you allow the emotion to exist without taking over?
Have you ever been given the idea that you and the other parent of your children need to be consistent with one another as much as possible?
It can feel like becoming a two headed entity, and can often lead to friction when you don’t always agree on how to handle something that comes up in the quagmire that is parenting, like how to handle a behavioural issue or a challenging stage of your child’s development.
Well, I had an eye-opening interview with a parent as part of my research to better understand parents and the highs and lows they face. She said she advises new parents that they don’t have to do everything identically. In their child’s eyes, they are two separate people. The kid can understand that Mum does things one way and Dad does them another way.
She gave the example of a friend who got really upset because her partner had dressed the baby differently to how she does. They apparently had a big fight about it. But when asked why it mattered, the mother paused in her tracks. Did it matter if her husband dressed the baby differently?
Huh. Continue reading “Parenting together and playing to our strengths”
Happy Parent UK 