Eps 269: Solo Show Dissecting Beliefs Behind Behavior Part 4- Assumed Inadequacy

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
This episode of The joyful courage podcast is dedicated to all the parent educators out there doing the important work of supporting parents and families. Stay tuned to learn more about how you can become a certified positive discipline parent educator during the show. Hello, friends. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and a conscious human on the wild ride of parenting. I am your host. Casey o'brdy, positive discipline trainer, parent, coach and Mama walk in the path right next to you as I am perfectly raised my own two teenagers, joyful courage is all about grit, growth on the parenting journey, relationships that provide a sense of connection and meaning and influential tools that support everyone in being their best selves. Today's show is a solo show, and I encourage you to listen for how grit shows up as I tease apart this week's topic. Thank you so much for listening. I am deeply honored to lead you. I am grateful that what I put out to the world matters to you, and I am so so stoked to keep it coming. Thank you for who you are and for being in the community. Enjoy the show.

Okay, welcome back, my friends. We have made it to part four of the belief behind behavior series of solo shows I'm going to start us off today, sharing directly from the positive discipline for teenagers, book written by Dr Jane Nelson and Lynn Lott. And the title of this section, hold on. I thought I was ready, but I wasn't. The title of this section, the section that I'm going to read is mistaken goals of behavior are based on underlying beliefs. So let me read Rudolf dreichers identified what he called for mistaken goals or purposes of behavior, to get attention or special service, to have power over others, to seek justice through revenge, or to be left alone without anyone expecting anything. Of them, this is called assumed inadequacy. Some recent Adlerian psychologists have added a fifth goal for teens, which is to seek excitement. We'll talk more about that on another episode. These are called mistaken goals, because children mistakenly believe that the only way to find belonging and significance is through behaviors that often achieve the opposite of what they really want. Instead of achieving their goal of belonging, they find alienation from those closest to them, as well as deeper discouragement, their mistaken goals become a vicious cycle. The more discouraged they become, the more they escalate their efforts through the mistaken goal. Behavior has a purpose, even though a teen may not be aware of the purpose of his or her behavior. When you deal with your teen's behavior without understanding and addressing those underlying beliefs, you will be frustrated in your efforts to affect change. Becoming aware of mistaken goals can help you understand your teens, improve your relationship with them, and help them see options for their behavior. All right, so this is what we've been talking about. If you're just tuning into this conversation, please know that I've already covered the first three mistaken goals, or as we also call them, beliefs behind the behavior in episode 263, 265, and 267, and I did a general summary in episode 261 so if you're just chiming, if you're just jumping in. Now, I encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes, because it'll just build the context and will help make this show make that much more sense to you.

So again, remembering that all of this work is based on the Adlerian theory, the Adlerian idea that human behavior is motivated by our perception of belonging and significance. And as Rudolf dreicher said, and he was a student of Alfred Adler, he said, a misbehaving child is a discouraged child. We call this mistaken goals, because they are based on the mistaken beliefs about how to achieve a sense of belonging and significance. Yes, this week we are focusing on the final mistaken goal, which is assumed inadequacy. And that mistaken belief is that it's impossible to belong, so it's better to just give up. Hmm, makes me sad. I'm going to be using the mistaken goal chart to guide us through this content. And just like in previous episodes, you can find a downloadable PDF of the mistaken goal chart in the show notes. But before we get into that, I'm wondering, if you listener are asking yourself, what's the big deal? Like, why does this matter? Why do we care about mistaken goals? Well, if you have been listening to me for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about the iceberg metaphor. In a nutshell, the iceberg metaphor is the idea that at the tip of the iceberg are the behaviors that we don't love, the behaviors that make us feel fear or anger, sadness, annoyance, irritation, resentment, all the things right? This is what we see from our kids. This is what's on the surface. This is what's showing up in our homes and out in the world. And well meaning, loving parents, just like you and me, often want to shut that behavior down, right? No, thank you. We get laser focused on making it stop, right? Sometimes, we might get a little desperate and use that one tool that we all have in our toolbox, whether or not we use it often, it's in there, and even though it's pretty ineffective in the long run, it makes us feel powerful as parents in the short run, and that tool is punishment, right or intimidation or lecturing or blaming or shaming. Now, what typically happens when we react to behavior this way is that we may shut it down. So it seems for a minute, but more likely than not, the behavior will return, or we damage our relationship with our teens, or they just go underground, right? What is more effective is to go under the surface. Right? Remember, we're talking about the iceberg. Go under the surface to that part that we can't see and remember that there is a lot going on under there, and we need to be curious about that. This is where our kids mistaken goals live. This is where their misguided beliefs about belonging and significance are developed. This is why these conversations matter? Because when we can support our kids in developing new beliefs about themselves and the world around them, we see the behaviors at the tip of the iceberg shift, right? I mean, it just it makes sense. When we can take care of our kids needs, then they don't need to act out. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. So this week's focus again, we're talking about the fourth mistaken goal, the fourth belief behind the behavior. It is called assumed inadequacy. And as a reminder to discover our kids mistaken goal, or to make a guess about what our child's mistaken goal is, what their belief behind behavior is, we have to tune into how their behavior makes us feel. It isn't about looking at what they're doing and making a guess. It's about turning into our inner experience and exploring that first so side note, side note, many people aren't paying much attention to their internal experience. So if this feels hard for you, you aren't alone. Remember, one of the pillars of joyful courage is personal growth. And here is a prime example of why it's so important for us to continue to grow and expand who we are. Know that so much can be gained in the context of parenting as well as the larger context of being a human out in the world when we learn to pay attention to our inner experience and grow our emotional intelligence. Just trust me on this one peeps as a review undue attention. Remember, that was the first mistaken goal leaves us feeling kind of annoyed and irritated, like the sensation of having this pesky fly around that won't go away. The second mistake and goal, misguided power leaves us feeling challenged or threatened. The physical experience of like our hackles getting raised and we're ready to show who the actual boss is, right? Who's the adult in the room? Well, if you're throwing a fit alongside your teen, who is. Adult in the room, hmm, revenge, which is the mistaken goal we talked about a couple weeks ago, leaves us feeling hurt and defeated. And it's the physical sensation of being punched in the gut, like, Ah, how could you, how could you do this, right? It's different than big and tall and how could you do this? It's more of like an Ugh, like a like a punch to the gut. Now, finally, this week's topic, assumed inadequacy. Assumed inadequacy, when our kids are living with the mistaken goal of assumed inadequacy, we are left feeling despair and a sense of hopelessness. It's as if we're a sponge, and we've been wrung out so much that we're dry, we don't have anything left to give. And I really think of this as a down low energy experience, a low energy, right kind of like hunched over head in your hands, tears right there, just really feeling that sense of helplessness around what's going on with your child. So it's not like, God, if they just get it together, like it's not that kind of that's like a higher energy, this is a really low energy. And I see you. I know you parents out there. I know that there's many of you that are in this place right now, and I hear from a lot of you. There's people in my membership in the Facebook group, one on one clients who are feeling really worried about their kids and not feeling like they've got anything left to give. And that's a really desperate place, right? You may be experiencing this. If your child is totally withdrawn from the family, has stopped putting any effort into school, won't try new things, or just generally, seems to be checked out. Now, some of those behaviors that I just mentioned could be an indication of another mistaken goal, right? Which is why the important piece is to focus in on how these behaviors make you feel okay, how these behaviors make you feel let's use the chart to guide us through this mistaken goal. So in that first column, adults feel a sense of despair, hopelessness, helplessness and inadequacy. They might respond to their child's behavior by giving up doing things for them over helping or showing a lack of faith. Sometimes we might even compare them to another child. So it could sound like I don't know why this is so hard for you. Your brother blew through this and was fine, right? Again, we're coming from that desperate place. So we have our feelings, we respond typically in a certain way, then our child's typical response is to retreat further or to be passive. Right? Have you ever had a situation where you're trying to get your child to shift their mindset around being able to do something, and they're really committed to I can't, I can't, and then they just kind of get that passive affect. Typical response also includes no improvement, no response, or just avoiding trying. Now we can guess. We can make the guess that if this is the pattern that you're falling into, that your child's mistaking belief is I don't believe I can belong, so I'll convince others not to expect anything of me. I'm helpless and unable, and it's no use trying because I won't do it. Right?

This is a really heartbreaking mindset to be inside of. These kids are deeply discouraged. They are not looking for a fight or vying for your attention or pulling a power struggle. That's not what this is about. They're actually hoping that you don't notice them really and beyond our mistaken reactions, like I mentioned earlier to these kids, we also adults also contribute to the issue by holding beliefs of you know, one, I expect you to live up to my really high, maybe inappropriate expectations. Or two, I thought it was my job to do things for you, right? We slide into some enabling beliefs or three, it's too scary to have faith in you, right? It's too scary to have faith in you. And if these kids were wearing a t shirt with what they really needed written on the front you. It would say, don't give up on me. Show me a small step. And here's what's annoying, right? This isn't what these kids say out loud, right? Like they don't even really know that that's what they want. They believe they aren't perfect enough, so why bother trying? They believe that they don't fit, that they don't belong. So they protect themselves by disengaging. They aren't doing it to make you mad, to prove a point. In some ways, it's their misguided self preservation, right? If you don't see me, then I can't disappoint you, and you can't disappoint me. But just like everyone else, this is something that's been coming up that came up last week in the membership teens long for connection. I know it's it's hard when they're giving every indication of the contrary, but they want to know that you're not going anywhere, that you have their back, that you can hold space for them. So if you have a child that's you know in this assumed inadequacy place, see them. See them, and help them build the bridge back to having the courage to be imperfect, right? They're deeply discouraged. Your job is to support them in building back the courage that they need to be the imperfect human that they are. And again, we're looking at the chart. So this is all in the downloadable chart.

Here are some other tools to try, tools that will build that bridge, breaking tasks down to small steps, making tasks easier until our child experiences success, setting up opportunities for success, taking time for training, teaching skills, showing them how to do things, but not doing it for them, stopping all criticism, encouraging any positive attempt, no matter how small, show faith in them. Show faith in them. It's different than just good job. I know you can do it right like how do we show faith in them? Focus on their assets and their strengths. Don't pity them. Don't give up. Enjoy them. Build on his or her interests and invite them and involve them in finding solutions during family meetings or one on one. Now, I also think that our own emotional honesty is so key here. I think that parents everywhere could be better at being more transparent around the fact that you know it's hard to know the right thing to do all the time, and that we make mistakes, right? It requires us to be vulnerable, which takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable people, and it pays off, right? Because we want to have, we want to like, like, like, it's like, we're it's like, you know, the energy between us and our teens sometimes can feel so thick with worries and unspoken things and ideas and beliefs about each other. It like gets so thick that it starts to become this barrier. And what I want you to think about doing is like, bringing in transparency and vulnerability and using communication in a way that like parts, parts that heavy energy and opens up the space that you can really see each other. If that makes sense, I don't know if that made sense, but I'm rolling with it. We need to let our teens know that we love them and that we're worried and that we don't always know the best way to support them, and sometimes it means we need to find a team, right? And if you've tried some of those things mentioned earlier, such as if you've given up, if you've been doing things for them over helping, showing a lack of faith, or maybe have compared them to other kids, then what maybe, what may be an opening is taking time to clean things up right. Own that you were doing the best you could at the time, and you now realize that you may have made things worse. Let go of the idea that this is a quick fix, this is a deeply discouraged child. And those of you that have had deeply discouraged kids, you know it takes time, it takes experience, and it takes a supportive, consistent relationship with you to move the needle on the beliefs. They are holding about themselves. And I want to say because I know that there are parents out there who the relationship is just the struggle, right? So when I say a supportive, consistent relationship with you, I just want you to know that sometimes that is just your side, right? Like we're gonna be lovingly detached on how they show up to the relationship. But how are you showing up to the relationship? Are you consistent? Are you supportive? That's all you have to do, being consistent, being supportive, and just keep showing up, right and over time, and it might be a long time, and it might, you know, it might be later on that they say, you know, I was, I was really tough for you, and you never gave up on me. You kept showing up, even when I was so crappy to you, and that meant everything to me. I didn't know it at the time, but looking back, you know, that's what got me through. I'm telling you, it's so powerful for you to keep showing up for your kids. And remember, if you practice some of these solutions and proactive responses and find that they aren't useful, it might be that your child is coming from a different belief or a different mistake and goal. So yeah, assumed inadequacy. And you know, there are some kids that move through the mistaken goals, like undo attention, and they don't get that need met, and so it evolves into misguided power. And then again, they're not getting that need met, and so it hurts, and they move into revenge, and then finally, they find themselves an assumed inadequacy. Sometimes that is what happens, and other times it's not so. Yeah, there's that too. But this week, I just want to give a huge shout out to all the parents who are feeling inadequate, all of you that are feeling helpless and helpless, all of you I see you, and a big shout out to all the teens out there who are so deeply discouraged. Ugh, I see you too, and the adults love you so much. I know that we may be missing the mark a little bit, making mistakes, but please know we are doing the best we can with the tools we have, and we're always striving to do better, to listen harder, to understand you deeper. Next week, I will be back with a brand new interview, but until then, thank you so much for listening. You've got this, you've got this. And if you have any questions or feedback about this show or any other show, you can reach out to me at KC, at joyful courage.com

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