We’re All Basically Children In Stretched Out Skin Suits
and how Mel Robbin’s book Let Them showed me this is true
I love a good self help book, video, article or post, so today’s note to you falls under “things I’m reading right now” and as I work through the book I talk about here, things will change or evolve as they should and I may write about that when they do.
I’m reading Let Them by Mel Robbins. It took me a while to get into her work and this book is hitting some much needed “ways of dealing” with my own approach to estrangement and most likely life too.
Mel’s Let Them theory was built off something one of her daughters said to her in a moment when Mel was focused on what Mel thought her son needed more than she was able to listen to what her son was telling her he wanted. It came to my attention a couple years ago but it took me until last month to start reading it.
Mel describing that single scenario in her book clocked me on so many levels. First, I have been the kind of person who jumps in with unsolicited advice and opinions. Second, my adult children learned really well from me because in my Dark Decade, they did the same.
In one instance, Youngest Son and I were talking about my credit. During my Dark Decade, Youngest son inadvertently took on the role of mediator and consultant. It was a huge mistake on my part to let that happen. In fact it was a massive blunder on my part that my kids were all in the roles they were in during that time - they became financial supporters, landlords, life managers.
Youngest Son is wise about a lot of things and finance is something he’s strong in so he started telling me he would/could help me work through my own poor money management. Granted I am going to say he asked me at some point if I wanted help but in that time in my life saying yes to everything my kids tossed my way was my way of avoiding conflict. You’ll see how I learned that in a bit. Youngest Son had several great ideas. I was not ready to listen or act on anything he brought up and I reacted like a tiny child by almost shouting “I don’t want to look at it right now!” All he was asking me to do was to go find out my credit score.
An aside. Both my parents were unable to regulate their emotions. My dad dealt with it with alcohol, sarcastic barbs and silence. My mom, with angry outbursts, food and passive aggressive sabotages. My mom was someone who lived in a state exactly like that little kid who when you ask them if they ate the cupcake, they say no emphatically while smearing the chocolate frosting across their face. Ask her to talk about something important that might remotely feel like a conviction of any kind? “I don’t wan’t to!” Talk to her like an adult about her petty responses to coworkers who truly loved her? “They are mean and don’t do what I want!” And in the frequent response of getting angry at me, complete silence mixed with passive aggressive actions like her last angry act toward me of removing me from her final arrangements as her executor - and not telling me.
Now you have an idea of what level of unlearning I’m doing in my own very flawed life. It’s a lot.
And so I reacted knee jerk as I have been prone to when overwhelmed, to Youngest Son’s genuine care toward me, with the maturity of a 6 year old by saying “I don’t want to!” Of course that hurt him because from his point of view he was offering something compassionate to me. It was one of the last straws in his own bucket of frustration toward me that led to him putting me in a 6 month time out of no contact. One of the last straws. There were about ten because he’s also a patient person.
The way this specific book at this specific moment is impacting my learning and unlearning is mixed up in both the assumption Youngest Son made about helping me and my response to it in such an immature way.
There’s this balancing act I have as a parent whose children have chosen estrangement combined with my very confusing experience with my own parents that often had me wondering if I was ever wanted, loved or seen mixed with the unbelievably generous things my parents did do for me that they most likely could not afford in their own lives. Then, later in life when I settled for marrying a violent domestic abuser, lots of my learned helplessness was reinforced with no model or ways to find out how to be stronger or mature. And that’s why I think we are all simply children in stretched out skin suits. If you’re reading this it is very like you did not have the model of maturity you needed to move into adulthood let alone parenthood where these amazing fresh little beings needed us to step up and be our most evolved selves instead of the selfish kids we often stay stuck as.
So I will read and maybe re read, Let Them and plug in the very important part that follows, which is “let me”. That isn’t a selfish statement, it’s a declaration of what I will do after releasing the desire to control other people, which in my life takes form like this: keep moving my newly healthy body, keep going to therapy, keep learning to build my life instead of let it drag me along. So far, so good. I’m on top of the first two, with the third coming along pretty damned well. AND I still have so much more to learn with however much time I have left.
A final thought for the moment. Robbins says in her book:
“One more thing to understand is that it really has nothing to do with you. When someone gives you the silent treatment, it all stems from their inability to understand their emotions or past demons”
And I agree in most cases but not when you’re their parent and you modeled that bullshit to them, then it becomes a thing you have to start modeling better to them no matter how old. And by you I mean me.
Talk to you soon,
Cindi