The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (8 page)

Imagine your child doesn’t do well in a baseball game…three strikeouts and he drops a fly ball. You are disappointed but must keep
your feelings out of it. Saying “Better luck next time” or “Good try” is supportive. What’s not? Saying “You should have caught that! You’re not keeping your eye on the ball!” Your pings matter more than his actual performance…or lack thereof. They are what the child will remember, not the bad game. Your
reaction
to the failure could last a lifetime. Not everyone is born to be a musician or an athlete—the key is to help your little Beethoven or Derek Jeter find his authentic self.

Helping your loved ones find their own way means you can compliment them for being gifted, but the minute those gifts look less than Olympian, you don’t say, “What happened? You used to be so great!” Depending on the goal (fitness or sportsmanship or scholarship) your job is to say, “What do
you
think is going on?” or step back and tell them, “As long as you enjoy it, do it.” Best is to help them figure it out for themselves. If you get upset, suddenly they will be reacting to your emotions, not theirs.

The minute they aren’t achieving they need to know you love them anyway; you’re the parent, not the coach or the scout. At that point in the game, it either becomes their passion, or they can move on to something else. Your opinion shouldn’t be a factor. This is how they will find their authentic self: when they aren’t doing it for the positive ping but doing it because they choose to, not because you want them to.

Your whole life is ping! ping! ping! ping! From your first breath to your last gasp, you will ping and be pinged. The best pings will be those that are neither hurtful (“That song made my ears bleed!”) nor fake (“You’re the best!”), since your integrity as a pinger gets tarnished. The point of pinging is to be as authentic as you can be, but empathetic too.

We are all seeking what is authentic, in ourselves and in others. We don’t believe feedback that is either too effusive or too harsh, which is why we value some reviewers above others. The family room is where we first get this sense of whom in our lives we can trust to tell us the real deal.

So let’s get into it. Here are stories from real women experiencing what we all feel in the family room: the stings of those who love us most.

Jean is still hearing these words in her head all these years later and has allowed them to put the brakes on her potential. A mother of two living in an affluent Chicago suburb, about five miles from where she grew up, Jean has her MBA and used to work in management consultancy, but when she was pregnant with her first child, she decided to stay home with the kids while they were little.

Jean manages to raise her children, run the house, and do plenty else as well. Her kids are now in middle school and thriving, and she does fund-raising for two children’s organizations, cochairs the school auction to fund financial aid, and loves to entertain—and is amazingly good at making it all look easy.

Although Jean describes herself as blessed, she feels guilty all the time, “and not just because I’m Irish Catholic, but because sometimes I’m not sure I deserve all the good things that have come my way.” Jean was very successful at her job, rising to the top of her work group and making a bundle of money. She has a very comfortable life, a handsome, supportive husband, and two great kids, plus a beautiful home and nice vacations every year. “I’m a lucky person, really I am.” So why the guilt?

From Jean’s perspective, she and her mother are very close. They talk on the phone several times a day, and see each other several times a week. But it’s not entirely loving. Jean’s mother torments her, dropping little comments like “Who do you think you are?” when Jean pulls off one of her dazzling holiday fetes or gets a community service award for her fund-
raising efforts. Jean thinks these little jabs have to do with the fact that “Mom feels insecure. She never got to go to college—she raised us four kids and was at her husband’s beck and call and feels competitive with me and more than a little jealous.” Jean says her mom almost boasts about the sacrifices she made for her family. “I had everything I needed right here at home with you kids and Dad,” she’s told Jean too many times.

But Jean never totally bought her mother’s line about being satisfied with what she had. She sensed her mother’s resentment at not having the same kind of opportunities. As much as she always says she’s proud of Jean, she has acted in ways that have eroded Jean’s confidence and made it hard for her to enjoy her successes. Even in high school, when Jean ran cross-country, her mother would smile when her team won the city championships but later tell Jean she should be careful not to look or act too successful since “people will talk.”

Jean seems to feel guilty about her own success in contrast to her mother’s many sacrifices. But Jean is sick of the conflict and all the bitterness.

Here, as in most cases, it is important to recognize that there is an unconscious process at work. Jean appears to be stuck, perhaps because she hasn’t adequately “separated” from her mother, emotionally speaking, and become her own individual adult. In other words, she still cares too much about what her mother thinks, even now that she herself is a mother in her forties. When this kind of overinvolvement happens, it often means you haven’t fully completed the developmental process called “separation/individuation,” a concept coined by Margaret Mahler, a renowned child psychoanalyst and childhood development specialist. Some children have trouble with this phase of development, often because the mother may have anxiety issues of her own, and consequently, she and the child became enmeshed and have difficulty separating.

Now Jean wants to break the pattern, for her own happiness, and it’s a struggle to step out of the dance she and her mother have done for years. Jean has to explore the basement—her childhood memories—to better understand where her feelings come from. She remembers a moment when
she ran fastest at the state championships and her mother, before congratulating her, said, “You know, people are going to hate you for being Little Miss Perfect.” Shortly thereafter Jean started to eat more and slowed down and stopped winning track medals, as if to be more likeable in her mother’s eyes and in the eyes of other women.

Which takes us to the bathroom, to get her healthy body back. Over the years, Jean allowed the little stinging comments and her mother’s simmering bitterness to chip away at her self-respect. But a year ago something clicked and she decided to stop letting someone else determine what she would look like. It happened on a family trip to the Bahamas. Jean was about twenty-five pounds overweight, was perpetually tired, and had no sex drive. And she felt guilty and unable to enjoy staying at a luxury hotel in a gorgeous location with her beautiful family.

She decided it was time to make some real changes to her lifestyle.

“I can’t go through the next half of my life feeling like this,” she said. “I have to do something.” Jean started running on the beach and limiting her cocktails. She soon started feeling more energetic, more interested in sex, and was, without tremendous effort, shedding some pounds. She felt proud, and her kids and husband noticed the transformation and complimented her.

But her success was bittersweet; her transformation initiated a new spate of bitterness from her mother. Still, it made her choice clear. “I was not going to go back to being fat in order for her to love me more, so I decided to be who I wanted to be despite what other people, including my mom, might think. So when Mom says those nasty things I tell her, ‘You know what? I’m happy.’ And that shuts her up.”

“Don’t get too big for your britches” feels dated, like something she can return to the basement and put in a box marked trash, since it no longer holds the same power over her.

Now Jean may get irritated by her mother, but it doesn’t penetrate the same way or cause the old harmful guilt. “I’ve made a decision to value myself, take care of myself again after a lot of years of focusing only on others, and this is the source of my strength.”

So her key process for cleaning up her family room was to stop allowing
the negative pings from her mother to affect everything—her weight, her tiredness, and her stress level. Jean realizes she can shrug off the bad pings.

Jean has things squared away in the bathroom as well. “I look in the mirror and feel proud of my body and what I’ve accomplished, and I think:
You’re not too big for your britches, you’re just the right size.
” We’d tell her to think about this as her own personal victory, one that doesn’t reflect on anyone else or their personal baggage or shortcomings. Her body and healthy lifestyle are things to be proud of, to cherish and take care of, and she has accomplished a new level of health, fitness, and total well-being. She can help others by inspiring them, but letting them bring her down helps no one in the end. She can go back to the family room, where the zingers still fly, but now she can say: “Be true to yourself” and don’t let the pings bring you down. Be authentic, and be your best self.

Joanna, a vibrant, optimistic, and whip-smart mother of two, is fed up with her in-laws and tries to explain to Rick, her husband of twelve years, how miserable his family makes her. He knows Joanna feels excluded and put down by his family, but he doesn’t see how bad they make her feel. Or he doesn’t
want
to see it.

In fact, when Joanna and Rick visit his family in Massachusetts, everything seems fine while he’s around. It’s when he goes off to play golf with his dad and Joanna is left with her mother-in-law that things go south. Joanna is usually able to hold it together, but on their five-hour drive back home to New Jersey, Joanna confesses that she feels humiliated and
disparaged, especially by Rick’s sister, and that his mother does nothing to stop it. His family adores Rick and has always felt that Joanna was not good enough for him. She had hoped that becoming the mother of his children would turn the tide and make them at least accept her, but they just make her feel bad about her parenting skills—even mocking what she feeds her children (organic food, tofu hot dogs, vegetarian entrees). “They hate everything about me, and it’s just not fair because I try so hard.”

Rick is in denial. He listens to Joanna, but he doesn’t really acknowledge any of her grievances. In the past, he just told her to fight back, dish it right back to his sister. (It works for him!) “Why can’t you just let it roll off you?” he says. “You’re tougher than that.” He tells her that the tension has more to do with Joanna’s need to be loved and to always do the right thing than any egregious behavior on the part of his sister or mom. “Don’t take them so seriously.”

Joanna says, “I am not going to get down in the mud with them. I could easily spar with them, but then I’d be as bad as they are. I could tell them their kids always need a bath, or something equally stupid, but that’s not who I want to be. I want to be respectful of my in-laws, and I need his help. He has to get them to stop picking on me.”

It kills Joanna that she can’t win over the in-laws, since most people find her an affable woman. She has done everything she can think of to please her husband’s family, such as always arriving with a gift, and remaking the bed with clean sheets when she leaves. She even gives Rick plenty of time alone with his dad on their visits. She believes most of the tension comes from the fact that her in-laws think she should quit her job and spend all her time making her husband dinner and doting on their children.

“Rather than see me as someone who makes him happy,” she says, “they see me as an interloper, taking away their beloved boy. I always have to defend myself. They forget that Rick is half of our parenting team and is part of all the decisions we make.”

Joanna would quit making these trips altogether except that she treasures the great relationships her kids have with their cousins and grandparents, but she always feels like “an unwanted outsider.”

Catherine points out that Joanna is focusing on the wrong person. Her problem isn’t with her in-laws; it’s actually with Rick. Joanna feels Rick doesn’t stand up for her, and Rick feels Joanna is too sensitive. They need to look closely at their dynamic and acknowledge that there are issues pulling them apart when they visit with Rick’s family. He starts to relate more to his sister and mom, leaving less overlap with Joanna. So suddenly, the Venn diagram of their marriage is thrown out of whack and they fail to connect on parenting and all other issues that aren’t so scrutinized at home. If Joanna and Rick realize they are disconnected from each other in this scenario, they can begin to see that a dysfunctional pattern emerges whenever they go to his family home. They just can’t figure out how to relate to each other when they are overwhelmed by the strong bonds back on Rick’s turf.

The key process here is to reconnect the circles of their Venn diagram, which means Rick and Joanna have to find some common ground when they are with his family. The way they interact is the critical piece of the puzzle, since if Rick is loving and protective and stands with Joanna, the in-laws will follow his lead and treat her with more respect. Once they are more connected, and she feels less left on her own, the dynamic will change.