"Can you please just be nice to me?"
A reminder to soften our bellies and open our hearts, even when our bodies want to do anything but.
A few weeks ago, my house had a difficult Friday. Friday’s are normally chill days. I don’t work, my son doesn’t have school and we either rest or do a special activity together.
This particular Friday, I needed rest. Then everything went wrong. I dropped an entire (just opened) glass container of cranberry juice on my foot, it shattered into my foot and onto the floor. My husband’s stomach ache turned into a full on stomach bug. The dryer stopped worked in the middle of five loads of laundry.
My capacity was stretched thing.
My son sensed all of this disruption, he was thrown off and disregulated. I grew more and more disregulated and he followed me down that path.
At one point, I was so distressed, I started pacing, stimming, biting my lip, pulling on my hair. I felt I was about to come out of my skin, and yet my son kept asking me questions. My voice came out harsh and he said…
“Can you please just be nice to me?”
No, I couldn’t. I didn’t change my tone because I was beyond the point of a few simple deep breaths to speak differently. He kept pressing me with questions and requests and I snapped, yelling at him and completely breaking down.
My husband stumbled down from his upstairs quarantine and told me to go, I took space and I cried my eyes out. He asked me for what he needed and I couldn’t give it. I don’t blame myself for the disregulation I felt (or him), it was a bad day. Everything went wrong. Everything felt out of my control.
I cried and cried. But I offered myself compassion instead of shame. I eventually pulled myself together and repaired with my son.
But his question has stayed with me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I talk to him. I’ve been thinking about why, even in moments of daily life and not worst case scenario’s, I still sound exasperated with him.
It brings me back to when my husband and I were newly living together, he would ask me to speak nicer to him. I didn’t understand what was happening then, but I worked hard to not sound like I wanted to hurt him for asking me simple questions.
I understand it all differently now. I understand PDA (SENDinMama is my go to for all things PDA), I understand demands feel like threat to my safety, I understand the edge that comes out in my voice is an attempt at self protection.
Awareness is great, but it isn’t enough.
I heard this in a yoga class recently, it’s not enough to just relax when you have quiet space to relax. We have to be able to relax in the face of demands.
Exactly, I thought this is what I need to work on.
I’ve been researching a lot on grief for my own well-being and for my book, and I’ve been reading Unattended Sorrow by Stephen Levine (I’m really enjoy this book, it reads like poetry and not like a manual on how to recover). He mentioned the exercise of softening the belly to feel our emotions, stop holding onto the grief inside of us.
I recommend softening your belly, it’s a game changer. I feel softer. I do it about a million times a day. I pause and soften when I feel my body wants to tense, to flee, to react. I soften and I can be different, maybe even shift my tone.
Those words from my son broke my heart.
Sure, frustration is normal. But yelling, getting so disregulated, I send him into a state where he feels unsafe with me. I don’t want that to happen (I want to say ever again, but that seems unlikely).
On that horrible day, I did nothing to try and make myself shift into a place of safety. I just let the stress pile on until the point of a breakdown.
Since then, I’ve forced myself to slow down and be more mindful. I’ve added in more tools for regulation to reach for when I need them (coloring and crocheting, I’m having SO much fun and I feel calmer…like a lot). I’ve been softening my belly, I’ve been noticing my tone.
I’m trying to be kinder.
I’m trying to find compassion.
I’m trying to soften my heart because I’ve felt so much strain around it.
I’m writing a novel cemented in grief, grieving, what it means to lose, and who we become because of it. It’s deeply personal because grief has been a huge theme in my life. I’ve felt my heart become hard, calloused because of it. I noticed recently how little joy I feel or love.
Sure, times are hard and confusing. Sure, I love my people.
But how often do I laugh?
How often to feel that love move through me?
Not often enough and those things are the whole point of being alive.
Sure, life is full of pain. But how much have I been the cause of my own suffering?
To bring us back to the day in question, I couldn’t control all that unfolded that day, all the events going sideways. I could control how I reacted to those things. Instead of trying to slow down and face the stress, I let it build inside of myself. An overflow of stress was inevitable because I wasn’t moving it through my system.
It’s the how first arrow, second arrow thing.
The Buddha said something like…in life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.
The first arrow is pain and that’s unavoidable. The first arrow is the things we can’t control. But the second arrow is our reaction to those things we can’t control. This is where suffering comes into play, the second arrow is what we cling to, it’s the meaning we make of things that causes us even more pain.
(Mollie Birney has a great post coming out soon about the meaning we make out of our experiences and trauma, I highly recommend her.)
What do we do with that second arrow?
How do we react? How do we respond?
It is hard to lean into kindness. It’s difficult because when our bodies feels unsafe, we choose protection. I want to believe we are wired for connection but sometimes survival instincts seem stronger.
I know I want to be kinder, practice more compassion. I know I don’t want to raise my voice. I know I want to practice something different in my home. And then, I get overwhelmed. Even though I have the tools, my instincts take over and I pull away. I pull into protection.
Years of doing that over and over again hardened my heart, I’m trying to learn how to soften.
It isn’t easy. Our bodies sometimes want to do the opposite no matter how much we want to choose something softer for ourselves. Protection can feel like power, it can feel like control, it can feel like safety.
But in order to connect, to be here, to be in relationship with others, we have to be able to soften.
Both things are inherently human, the desire to protect and the desire to soften into connection.
We need both for our survival. But softness leads us somewhere else. It’s fucking hard to choose it but it’s a choice we have in every moment.
Maybe if we shifted our tone, softened our bellies, took a god damn deep breath every once in a while, maybe we would all feel a little better. Maybe we would feel kindness from others. Maybe we wouldn’t run out of the room screaming because it all became too much.
If my three and a half year old can identify that me being nicer to him could change the way he feels, isn’t the same true for adults?
It is true.
Kindness. Love. Compassion. Empathy.
A little bit more of all that and I wonder what could be.
I don’t know if it would change the world, but I know I feel better inside when I choose softness instead of protection.
Rooted in softness, we can feel our humanity and act differently.
And maybe from there, we can be nice and attune to those around us.
Can you find one place in your life or in your heart where you want to brace against, but you choose softness? Share what you choose to be soft with in the comments.
With a soft belly and therapeutic doses of kindness,
Emma
Welcome to How Human, I’m human, autistic, a writer and a mother navigating different parts of myself while trying to live a full creative life. I believe offering ourselves compassion for being human is where great change begins.
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I feel this, mama! I have two 3.5 year olds, and the whole household is autistic. Some days feel like that “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” book, and it’s tough to recover and soften when your nervous system is in fire. Working on it over here too. If I feel like I’m going to lash out, my daughters get some screen time and I angry dance in the other room until I feel like the energy has moved through my body. Somatic movement has been transformational, when the space and safety is afforded. Glad you’re finding some tools that work for you too 💚
I’m going to try doing the soft belly. That sounds so helpful. I also feel so bad when I get upset with my daughter but I remind myself I’m human. Sending you so much love!