Ep #37: The Messy Middle

I'm Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number 37, The Messy Middle. [music] Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly wanna be. My name is Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach. With my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you are ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well, get ready and let's dive into today's episode. [music] Welcome friend, and thank you for joining me today. I know there are so many great podcasts out there that you have available to listen to, and I'm so grateful that you're here with me today. Before we dive in, I wanted to make sure you know and that you know you are invited to a free workshop I have coming up next week, Monday, June 27th, at 2.00 PM Eastern. And it's all about expectations. If you listened to last week's episode, Episode 36, then you know why it's so important to do the expectations work, and that's exactly why I have created this fun, easy, free workshop, so together, we can take a deep dive into the process of examining and releasing those harmful expectations and then creating healthy expectations that serve us. So grab your spot by signing up at www.mikkigardner.com/workshop. The link is in the show notes to make it easy. So today, I really wanna talk about the messy middle. But before we dive into that, I wanna tell you a story. I have a client, Christy, and she came to me so frustrated. She was exhausted from the difficult communication with her ex. I mean, she was trying everything. She would switch her approach. Her language, her tactics, the way she read things, the way she talked. But at the end of the day, she would end up either giving up completely and just giving in or entering that ring of combat so to speak. But either way, she was frustrated, she was exhausted and she was at her wits end. It was impacting everything. What we found out through the work together in our coaching was that her intentions were in the right place, but she lost her footing and would feel untethered when things got uncomfortable, when there was conflict. She thought that it meant that she was doing something wrong, and then she would end up giving up or attacking back. You know? As we dove into the work, she started to understand that in order for her to show up the way that she wanted to, to be the mom she wanted to be and to create a positive impact in her co-parenting relationship, it required her to get comfortable with the discomfort of conflict. And that's what I wanted to offer you here today in this podcast, in case you can relate with Christy and so many other moms. Me included. So what I wanted to do is talk about what is the messy middle? Maybe you've heard before. Right? But all of us, because we're human and because we're out there in the world with other humans who have thoughts and feelings and emotions just like we do, conflict happens. It can be small. It can be big. Right? And many of us think that conflict is a problem. It's not. It's inevitable is what it is, because we are all human and because we all have different thoughts and feelings and experiences. So it's not the conflict necessarily, that's the problem. But often, it's our thought that it shouldn't be happening that creates our suffering. And so really normal conflict is a cycle. It happens. There's conflict, there's a trauma, there's something, a demarcation that happens, but then we need to repair it. Then we reconnect, right? And it's a conflict resolution cycle. But often, what we do is maybe we stop at the repair part or maybe we skip over the repair part and we just try to reconnect, or maybe we skip the repair and the connection and we just try to forget about it. But either way, when we have this effective cycle of resolving conflict, there is some chunks of time in there. And we call this the messy middle. Because on one end, there's the conflict or the problem or the event that happened. On the other end, there's the resolution, the full repair. But in the middle there, is a space, and this is where a lot of discomfort comes in, because it's a space where we don't know what's going on. Maybe we make a lot of mistakes in this area. Other people are having their own experiences and reacting and responding. There's a lot of uncertainty here. And when we have this uncertainty and it's messy. We can't see clearly. Maybe we don't know exactly where it's going. And many of us aren't comfortable with that, right? We don't know what to make of it, and we make it mean that there's something wrong, that something has gone wrong. And when we're not comfortable, we end up doing a lot of different things with that, and that's what I wanna talk about today. So what are some signs or symptoms that you may be in the messy middle and sort of feeling the discomfort that comes along with that? Well, you might be feeling frantic or anxious. For me, this is like a driving need to just move forward, right? I get, I really need to fix or my thoughts are very frantic, they are moving at a high rate of speed, I can't keep my attention on something, or I'm feeling really, really anxious, really, really uncertain. Maybe I'm ruminating in the worry. I'm sure that many, many of you can relate to this because it's a common thing that we see. So when we are feeling anxious from that uncertainty, many times we worry. And worry is really just the thinking side of anxiety. So the feeling isn't the problem, right? But often we don't want to feel it, and so we wanna avoid it, and when we have this messy middle, this uncertain part where all of these frantic, anxious sort of feelings and thoughts are coming up. We can wanna run away from it, when really what we need to do is to sink down into the feeling so that we can uncover what is there. What am I afraid of? What is my need that's not being met? If we can meet the anxiety where it is, and ask it some questions, it actually, like all other feelings, has a lot to tell us. Another way we might know that we are in that messy middle, is where we feel like we are the problem, right? Oh I have to do X, Y, Z for this person to change, but I don't wanna do that because it doesn't feel like the right thing to me, right? And we start going back and forth, back and forth, that it's black and white, and that we either have to do this or that. And neither feel good. And so what we end up in these times often is feeling like we don't have any good option. And so we become reactive, maybe we get really dramatic. And when we do this, when we get reactive, when we get dramatic, we actually end up making things a lot that much worse, it's like we're adding to the mess that's already messy, and so we just keep keeping it on, making reactive sort of choices that are not in our best interest. Another way that you might find yourself sort of in that messy middle is feeling the need to over-explain. I know, I have this one, right? And oftentimes, we feel like we have to really explain why we are not doing something or why we're doing something. And really, what we are trying to do is get the people to agree with us, right? But it's not their job necessarily to agree with us. But we are so uncomfortable that we just start explaining, explaining, explaining instead of just sort of stepping back and separating and letting things function or settle on their own. Another symptom might be when we are over-functioning. What does over-functioning look like? Well, that means managing all of the details, right? When we are so attached to the problem that we're trying to make sure that every single person, every single part of the solution is dealt with right that moment. We can't allow things to unfold. We really need to step in and make sure that we have our hand in everything, you know, and what this really does is just allows us not to have the problem stand on its own, but we get attached and interfere. So another way that we might know that we're sort of in this messy middle is when we start getting into people pleasing. A lot of people pleasing. And what do I mean? People pleasing involves speaking and behaving to accommodate the emotional needs of others. Right? This is typically at the expense of our own needs. And how do we know that we are doing this right? It might look like we are not able to say No, it might look like we are saying yes when we very much me no. It might look like Over-scheduling. Again, that over-functioning, it might be a number of different ways that we are showing up for the other person and trying to get them to feel okay with this messy middle or make ourselves feel okay by managing everyone else's feelings at our expense. Another way that we might know that we're kind of in this messy middle is that when we are having a really hard time with our feelings and we start numbing out or buffering. We are basically seeking a pleasurable activity to get away from the pain that we don't know how to address. We don't know how everything is gonna unfold, and we are stuck in that messy middle, the uncomfortableness, and so we avoid it, the pain and that discomfort, through pleasure. But when we do that, we really rob ourselves of all of the growth, and we fail ultimately, to take responsibility, and often we shut down the learning that comes from working through the conflict, from working through the messy middle. And this is really the point of why I'm talking about all of this is because the middle... Messy middle isn't the problem. Right? But when we are uncomfortable with it, it shows up in all of these different ways. We are not holding boundaries, we are people pleasing, we are saying yes when we mean no, we are self-betraying, and all of that is taking away our power when ultimately, what we wanna learn to do is just become comfortable with the discomfort. Become comfortable with the inevitable conflict that comes from being human in this human experience with other humans. So how do we do this? There's really three steps that we are gonna go through, and it's the pillars of the work that I do with all of my clients, but it applies here. For us to learn to be more comfortable with the uncomfortable, we have to learn to know ourselves better, accept ourselves, and create agency. Meaning, the choice that we have. So the first one is knowing. This is really the awareness. The awareness around what is going on. When we start to look at the discomfort, when we are in that messy middle instead of running, instead of hiding, we really just wanna get curious, maybe asking, "Why am I triggered right now? What is bothering me? What's underneath all of the discomfort?" And if we are willing to sort of ask ourselves and be willing to dig and to get curious and to look around, we start to become aware of what's actually underneath the surface. Any behavior, I teach this with... As a conscious parenting coach, this is what we teach, that there is a behavior or a symptom that's happening in our children. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that is the vast majority of the iceberg lives under the water. And so we have to be willing to get underneath the symptom, underneath the behavior that we don't like to find out what's really going on down there. And we can do this same thing with ourself, especially when we're angry or we're anxious, or we're finding ourselves doing things that we don't like or that we don't really... We know aren't in our best interest, it's slowing down enough to stop and say, "What's really going on here? What's underneath? What am I feeling that needs to be addressed? What needs do I have that is unmet? And am I able to either meet the need or wait it out?" Right? If we can't resolve the conflict, what do I need to do to make myself feel at ease and peaceful while I work through this? That's powerful work and a powerful place to live from. We can't change what we don't know, so we have to get curious and stop lying to ourselves, because when we lie to ourselves, we just stay stuck in the not wanting to make choices, or the not knowing which choices to make and sometimes, we have to let things evolve so that they can unfold. So the second thing was really accept. Accepting what's going on, and doing it from a place of compassion, because when we judge ourselves and others, which is something many of us do in the messy middle, that's how we get so frustrated, it shouldn't be like this, they shouldn't be acting this way, this is all wrong, and we put a whole heap of judgments on ourselves and on others. But that judgment keeps us from accessing the very thing that we need to move forward. We have to be willing to, without judgment, sort of accept, "Okay, this is what's going on. What can I learn here? What can I find out? What can I know to be true?" And that leads to step number three, which is agency. All of us have agency all of the time, we have choices available to us all of the time on how we react or respond, what we say, what we don't say. So often, we tell ourselves that we don't. I have no choice. I had no choice but to that way. I had no choice but to respond the way he did. I had no choice but to put my kid in timeout. I had no choice, right? It's on and on and on. There is always a choice. You might not like your choices, I'll give you that one. Right? I know that to be true in my life often, but there are always choices. And so when we can get curious and know what's going on, be aware of what's going on, accept it without resistance, without judgment, and without pushing away, then we can start to see, "What are the choices that I really have here?" And this is a powerful place to be, because when we can choose with intention how we want to show up for ourselves and for others, that is our most powerful place because we are taking self-responsibility, we are taking ownership over what we have control over, which is our thoughts and our feelings and our actions, and then we are allowing others to be responsible for theirs. This is revolutionary, right? And this is where the messy middle gets ironed out. When we stop trying to take control of everything and everything that we can't control, meaning the other people, and we start really taking ownership and responsibility for what we can. This is a powerful place. This is where we are, that grounded oak tree that I've talked about so many times, when we can stop trying to control out of fear and instead, find strength and peace. I mean, here's the truth, all control is based in fear, whether it's discipline for children, whether it's the government system, all of the things. Control is based on fear, it uses fear to control, and it suggests that the opposite of control is chaos. We all say, "Well, without any rules, it would be chaos." It actually isn't true. The opposite of control is peace, because it's the absence of fear. All people, all humans, I believe, are innately good. Every baby that's born. Is there a bad baby? There really isn't, right? Listen, through conditioning, through experiences, people make really horrible choices and show up in really horrible ways, and I'm not discounting that in the least. But I also believe that at our core, our true nature is peace, is ease, is Love, is goodness, that is within each and every one of us. And I know that's in you, and I know that's in your children. So when we really take the time to understand that when we can walk through the three steps of getting more comfortable, of knowing ourselves, becoming more aware of accepting, with compassion, and then recognizing the agency and the choice that we do have, we can get more comfortable with the uncomfortable. And here's the best part, there is magic in the messy middle. What do I mean? When we are able to move through the messy middle and with ease and without really trying to resist it, we leave space for understanding, we leave time for healing, when we are not listening to react and control, we are actually listening to understand and learn and evolve. This is a beautiful place, even when it's uncomfortable. When we are able to sit with the discomfort of the messy middle and allow others the opportunity to learn and grow in their own way, that's a powerful experience. That's a powerful thing to offer to someone else. When we are not trying to control and over-function and over-manage, but really allowing them their experience and focusing on ours, it's a powerful place in an influential place. The greatest opportunities come when we're able to let go and allow everything to unfold, because that's when we can learn. We know better... We do better when we know better. I'm always saying to my clients, clarity only comes through action. But sometimes, we have to be stepping in the right one, and that's where we have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to put ourselves out there to make mistakes, to figure it out, to learn, because things become more clear then. And here's the other greatest part of the messy middle, when we are able to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, we stop adding to the drama, we stop adding to the attack, and there's less to clean up in the messy middle. It is completely possible to be able to learn to move through conflict, to move through this uncomfortable messy middle of a stage in a way that is grounded at ease and taking full responsibility. Whether it's healing from the divorce, whether it's a conflict that it's going on maybe it's a stage that your kid is in, all of these things create discomfort for us, when we don't know what to do. It's totally normal. But the best thing we can do is to learn how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable so that we can move through it in a grounded present state. If any of this felt like I was talking directly to you, I get it. And in order for you to be the most confident, grounded and at ease version of you, to really step into your role as mom and co-parent in an intentional way, it requires you to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, to know and accept and love yourself so that you can stay grounded when the chaos and the storm comes, which it is, because that's life, and that's how it works. It's not easy work, I'm not suggesting that it is. But that's why I work with moms. That's why I do the work that I do with mom's one-on-one, to support and guide them on their journey to confidence in living an extraordinary life after divorce. It's completely possible. And you are completely capable of doing it. I know that. I know it's true for you too. If you're interested in exploring how coaching might be the next step in your journey, please reach out to me. I'm over on Instagram all the time. You can send me a DM, or if you wanna talk, I always offer a free clarity call, which is a free no strings attached call with me. And the link is in the show notes. Right? You do not have to do this journey alone, and you do not have to be uncomfortable on your own, I'm here to help, I'm here to be your coach and your mentor and your biggest supporter as you heal and grow. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'm so grateful that you are here with me, I'll see you next week, and in the meantime, take really good care of you, friend. [music] Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week. [music]