Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Getting Clear - Post on Hopeful Parents

I don't know about you but I did not expect to have to become an expert mediator when I became a parent. I suppose I anticipated honing my parenting skills as my children grew, making mistakes and learning from them. If pushed I would have agreed that there would likely be times I would be put in the uncomfortable role of needing to confront an adult in my child's life over something but I would have guessed it would have been something along the lines of not being played enough on the soccer field, or being wrongly accused of something at school. I didn't anticipate the sometimes daily onslaught of phone calls and meetings, intense negotiations that even the most skilled and trained mediator would find challenging.
Funny thing (well more ironic than funny "ha ha") is that I am a very socially anxious person. I have a hard time talking on the phone and could go days without even talking to someone if allowed. The idea of going to a room with as little as 3 people in it for whatever reason is enough to make me shake with nervousness and my mouth go dry. I hate confrontation of any sort and I even have a hard time figuring out how I FEEL about things. Most people who know me are completely flabbergasted when they find this out about me. My own husband of over 15 years used to think I was being flippant when he would ask me "Well how do YOU feel about it?" and I would answer "I don't know". I really didn't. As soon as my emotions were activated in any way that was remotely threatening or overwhelming to me I would "shut down" and I couldn't think straight at all. I would just feels waves of raw and very intense emotions, weird things would happen with my vision and more often than not I would no longer really be "hearing" anything that was being said. For those old enough to get the reference, think of the teacher on the Peanuts cartoon "wah wah wah". I didn't know if I was mad or sad or frustrated or feeling threatened. All I knew was there was a panic bell going off in my head.

To read the rest head over to Hopeful Parents

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