Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 I typically oscillate between long-form psychoeducation pieces and narrative essays. I also periodically do an advice-esque segment and roundups. Today is a little bit of everything.
I promise to get to the question at hand. First, a story…
Around the new year, my husband and I realized we hadn’t had a night away, just the two of us, in nearly a year. We began thinking about places we could go–Mexico, Big Sur, Seattle (notice how they’re all by water). All sounded amazing, but a little more cash than we were thinking of spending. Also, because we could only get a few days of extended family childcare and days off work, the idea of spending almost a whole day just traveling to the place didn’t sit well. We thought better of it and opted for a staycation.
Another influence for me in keeping it simpler and cheaper was that what I really wanted to do on this trip was…
(drumroll please)
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
Watch TV.
This may sound ridiculous to some, but the ability to sit and binge a show is about as unattainable to me in our day-to-day life as it gets. Or, imagine actually getting to watch the Academy Award nominated films that were celebrated last weekend at the Oscars.
Inconceivable!
I watched a lot of TV growing up. I was basically1 an only child and my parents weren’t keen on me spending school nights outside the home, unless it was for a school event. I kept myself company with Oprah, Friends, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
Ah, the warm embrace of unlimited and repetitive watching potential.
Obviously this continued to be more and more accessible to me as streaming became a fixture of our lives. However, once our son, Archie, became older–naps and early bedtimes becoming obsolete–watching TV became a distant memory. My friends asking, “Have you watched ‘X’ yet?” Almost always answering, “Not yet.”
I can’t entirely blame Archie. After all, I have enough time to write this newsletter each week. It’s not that I don’t have any time. It’s just I’ve been spending it doing this.
I miss my old friend.
Which brings us to me wanting to take a vacation so I could watch TV.
God. Does that sound as tragic as I think it does?
Just tell me. I can take it.
When I pull back, I realize it’s only sort of tragic. This is simply a part of me that I miss. I’ve neglected her. For childrearing, for professional development, creative pursuits, physical wellbeing. I won’t say those are good enough reasons. Just reasons. There used to be times where I’d prioritize TV over those other pursuits.
This is me trying to integrate. To listen to the rhythms of myself. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.
That’s a lot of preamble just to say we’re on a trip, sorta, and I’m going to write about it, sorta.
We’re staying at a hotel.
I love a hotel.
AirBnb/Vrbo-land certainly has it’s perks. It’s lovely to have access to more space for longer trips. Especially when traveling with Arch. Having a room for him and a kitchen is so clutch.
But, a hotel.
It evokes this very specific feeling for me. Those long hallways. I just want to run down them. I feel lighter, brighter, freer.
I feel like there are two camps regarding hotels: those that see the hotel as a storage unit to hold their shit while they explore the surroundings and those that see the hotel as part of the destination.
I’m in the middle, but definitely leaning more toward the latter. I want to spend considerable time IN the hotel room. As already expressed in detail above, I want to watch TV. I want to lay in the big bed2 and read.
I also like to venture off and see what there is to see. We plan to check out a few vintage shops, live music, and some stand-up. Amazing.
But rest assured, I have my eye on getting back to that room as soon as I can.
If you listen to the podcast I do with my husband, a therapist and a lawyer walk into a bar, you won’t be surprised by what I’m about to say, which is that my trusty travel companion here is the complete opposite. I have to basically beg him to stay in the room.
I was able to convince him to stick around yesterday. After I unpacked all my stuff, I was a bit disappointed to realize the room didn’t have a Smart TV. No streaming options. We were relegated to what the TV gods felt we should be consuming. They landed on Vanderpump Rules.
I’ve never watched a full episode of this show in my life, but I quipped to him, “I don’t watch this show, but I so could.” We watched a few, cuddled up, watching these strangers navigate their very bizarre realities. I explained the best I could what was going on and who was who based on what I’d gathered entirely through the zeitgeist. By the end, I was crying. ‘“Vandertears,” he called them.
I got my wish. Not in the way I expected, but it happened all the same.
When I first started this newsletter last year, I had segments I did every week. I cringe a bit when I look back at my first few editions. Then, I quickly realize I would have more than cringed if I had never started this all. Plus, it’s been a growing experience to flail a bit as I figure this out. Being OK with good enough.
While I’ve done away with that more rigid format, I thought it’d be fun to return to one of those old segments: 2 flows and a slow.
As I described in my first newsletter, this is my take on “two highs and a low.” I find the high/low framing often ends up with me choosing a low that has to do with something emotionally challenging. I worry that encourages my brain to file these experiences away as BAD. Not to be repeated. The truth is these moments are rarely “bad” for me. Rather, they are typically times where I need to slow down, breathe, and listen. As you’ll soon see, this week’s was no exception.
Then there is flow. As a 90’s kid growing up in the Midwest, there were very few things that held my awe more than Michael Jordan. To me, moments of flow always make me think of him and this shrug. He said, about this championship game where he sank six 3-pointers in the first 18 minutes, he was so utterly and completely “in the zone” that he didn’t even know how he did it.
Flow, to me, is being in communion with Self so much so that I’m not even really thinking or doing, I’m just being and fully embodied. Without further ado, this week’s two flows and a slow:
two flows
Beyoncé. Ah, Beyoncé.
If you’ve been conscious the last month, it’s likely you’ve heard Beyoncé has a country single out: TEXAS HOLD ‘EM. The song is amazing. I’m in heaven. The idea that I can enjoy country again is a turn of events I did not see coming.
In addition to the song being great, it has inspired, of course, a corresponding TikTok dance. I don’t have the ‘Tok, but I do frequent YouTube and have gotten inundated by dozens of people putting their spin on it. With each unsolicited video, my desire to be one of those people line dancing grew.
I’m not a dancer by any generous stretch of one’s imagination. That has very little impact on my engagement in said activity. Archie is often telling me, “Don’t dance, momma.” When this public shaming by my 4 year old occurs, I’m not doing a choreographed dance. The last time I did that was probably in high school P.E.
So, I know going in if I take this on, I’m not going to be any good. At least not at first. This undertaking is also quite expressive. I’m not out there practicing 3-pointers like Mike. It’s deeply vulnerable. As such, I ignore my itch to learn this dance and put it off for weeks. Until this Tuesday.
I typically do at-home yoga Tuesday mornings between Archie drop off and seeing clients. However, this Tuesday, I was dragging so much ass. Daylight Savings Time gets me every single time it happens. I worried if I did any type of yoga, I’d fall asleep right there on the spot. While there is nothing wrong with sleeping on a yoga mat, that is not what I had in mind for myself that day.
I thought maybe, just maybe, this is my moment…to learn my first TikTok dance.
I found a video3 that assured me I could do this. I dressed in what my mind had filed under choreographer: loose sweatpants and a tank top.
For an hour and a half, off I went. So much messing up.
This one could have also been my “slow” for the week. The instruction was, thankfully, unhurried and repetitive, but I know it was more flow because I entirely lost track of time. I was even late getting ready for work. So, if your therapist is ever running late, maybe they were just learning a TikTok dance.
An image you want, right?
Recording
We’ve been wanting to do a deep dive for the podcast on this season of Love is Blind for weeks, but have struggled to find time to record and edit one. We waited until the season wrapped this week and brought our equipment with us on our staycation.
Last night, in between a lovely dinner at The Regional and playing Academy Award catch-up with Maestro, we recorded an episode. We had planned for it to be just 30ish minutes, but once we started we couldn’t stop.
Laying on that glorious King bed, mics in hand, riffing, arguing, conceding, talking.
I don’t know what else to say other than we are just loving doing this podcast together. When I zoom out, I worry it’s dumb and weird and way too exposing, but then we start it and we just go. Time flies. I hope we’re not dumping shit, but rather shedding light on the inside of a marriage with thoughtfulness.
There is no sign of stopping even if it is stupid. As a general rule, I don’t argue with flow.
and a slow
As we often do, my husband and I had a misattunement this week (I refer you again to our podcast). He was mixing it up in the kitchen, as per usual, making what turned out to be a delicious shrimp scampi. I sat at the kitchen island with Archie on my lap.
It started innocently enough. A conversation about this very trip we’re on right now. Due to how long it’d been since we last had extended time together just the two of us, expectations were high for quality time. A misunderstanding about how that time would be spent elicited some clunkiness.
I could sense something was happening with him. That I was not understanding what he was feeling. I had a part of me that felt guilty I wasn’t getting it. Another part becoming angry because it felt something was being taken from me.
This all transpired in front of Archie. While we don’t always argue in front of him, when we do, we try to be intentional about how that looks and how he’s taking it in.
If this feels like a dangerous thing to you, I understand.
It can be. It’s worth being very thoughtful about when and how to argue in front of kids.
ZERO TO THREE4 has a list of considerations. Things like keeping your cool, focusing on a solution5, reassuring your child about why we argue sometimes (to solve an issue or better understand one another) and that the argument is not about them.
I need to do a better job with that last one. I feel like it’s so obvious it’s not about him, but as the saying goes, children are keen observers (this kid hears and remembers EVERYTHING. He should be a spy), but poor interpreters.
Meaning they see and hear every damn thing you say and do, and they also interpret every single thing to be about them regardless how far-fetched that may be. They are inherently egocentric, as they should be at this developmental stage.
Growing up, I didn’t see a lot of fighting per se, but I did see a lot of bickering. While we do our fair share of bickering (again, you can catch this every other weekish on the pod), we try to do it when it’s actually lighthearted. Not when we are truly mad and trying to communicate veiled feelings through indirect jabs.
This week’s argument took place during a moment where Archie was already wanting to interject. In all likelihood this was solely because he’s a toddler, but I also wonder if he may have been gathering that things were tense. I acknowledged he wanted to tell us something and asked if he could wait for a few minutes while I tried to better understand his father. I kept him on my lap while we worked through it. He was able to stay close, practiced waiting his turn and he got to stick around to see us figure it out–AND bonus points, he got to observe his dad express vulnerably how he felt.
We have learned through our individual and couples therapy how to talk “for” parts of ourselves rather than “from” them.
For instance, if I were to talk “from” a part it would sound like this:
“I am allowed to have a thing that takes up time. I have always made space for you and your interests and career. Where is that space for me?”
If I were talk “for” a part, it would sound like this:
“I have a part of me that is feeling scarcity around this thing that is important to me. It needs to know I’m not giving it up entirely.”
It was very uncomfortable and necessary. Instead of a rushed, mutually unsatisfactory resolution, we slowed all the way down. We got to a place where all of us felt more understood, even Archie. He ultimately wanted to chime in to let me know that dogs can’t usually talk, but they do on Paw Patrol.
News you can use.
We ended the night wrestling on the couch to the point of crying with laughter.
I fleshed this out because, well, it happened this week, and two, I often see with clients that they struggle to know how to argue. Sometimes, it’s that they don’t get it technically— what exactly to say—but also in what it may feel like in their body to confront, to express, to seek to understand or be understood. What’s OK and what’s not? Add a kid into the mix and it becomes even more confusing.
A lot of clients straight up say, “I never saw my parents fight.” This is often not said with appreciation, but rather frustration.
“How am I supposed to know how to do this? In a way that is honest to me and my experience? In a way that doesn’t cause absolute wreckage to my loved ones?”
I don’t have all the answers to those very solid questions. I stumbled in this argument a lot. Even though I could see my husband was hurt, I felt defensive and super fuzzy. I didn’t know if it was OK to work this out in front of Arch or even if we were doing a half decent job trying.
I like the guidelines provided in that ZERO TO THREE article, the Power & Control and Equality wheels and The Gottman Institute’s Four Horsemen. Those provide some bumpers for me. I take those in, use what feels right in my system, do my best, and have faith in myself, my husband, and my child.
I know I could have done a better job narrating that it wasn’t about Archie and emphasizing his dad and I were OK. Maybe I could have said that the argument was a signal of precisely that: we are OK and trying.
This is what two people trying looks like, my love.
Questions for you:
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What kind of hotel person are you? Additionally, do you unpack?
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What’s your relationship to arguing? Watching other people do it? Being in it yourself? How, if at all, does having children present change that for you?
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Like my Bey-inspired dancing, what thing have you been itching to do?
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What are your 2 flows and a slow from the last week?
You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here. Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
Also, if you’re interested in submitting a question for the dialogue league, recent example here, please email me at [email protected]—or if you’re reading this via email you can just hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
1
My sister is 12 years older than I am. According to birth order theory that makes my experience closer to one of an only child than a youngest child.
2
The difference between a queen and a king bed is astronomical to me. Granted there are 2 less cats lodged between us at a hotel. The space feels absolutely cavernous to me. It’s apparently only 16 inches wider, but it feels twice the size a queen to me.
3
Texas Hold ‘Em Dance Tutorial
4
ZERO TO THREE is an organization that takes what research has shown us about early childhood development and cultivates programs, trainings and helps inform policy.
5
I would slightly tweak this one for me, personally. I’d focus less on getting to the solution and more on the child observing whatever the “solution” is. If they see the rumblings of a disconnect, I feel it’s important for them to see the reconnect.