We have cats. Well actually we were kind of roped into the cat ownership. Our daughter wanted the cats. And so, it is her responsibility to take care of the cats. However that responsibility somehow transferred to mom over the last 6 months or so.
That cat box NEEDED to be changed. And I decided that I wasn’t going to be the one to change it this time. So a couple of days ago I asked my sweet baby girl if she would change the cat box.
The pattern for this is I ask her to do something, she says she’s going to do it, I ask a few more times, she doesn’t do it, I get frustrated and angry and end up doing it myself. We have this pattern.
I ask.. She ignores me
I get mad… She ignores me more
I get madder..I finally clean the litter box.
That pattern has worked for her.
It hasn’t worked so well for me.
She not only skates from cleaning the litter box but now she truly has a reason to question my integrity as I talk the talk about love but clearly haven’t been walking the walk.
Today was different. Today I fully EXPECTED to go downstairs and see that the cat box had not been changed. I expected there would be a mess on the floor. And I was already mad about it on the way down to the basement.
Except she had changed the litter box.
And it hit me. I was already playing in to the pattern. I walked down those stairs ready for a fight. And had she been home, I may have even made the horrible mistake of saying something salty to her before I even knew if she had done what I asked her to do.
Because that was the pattern.
We do that in life, don’t we? We get into patterns. They always do this, so I always react this way. And we often feel justified in those patterns. Well…if he would just clean his room. Or if he would just get sober. And the patterns continue.
We may even have learned those patterns from our family of origin. For example yelling, anger and verbal abuse kept us in line. So we bring that pattern into our own child-rearing. Somehow we have a great sense of control when we yell or get angry. So the cycle continues. Sometimes we have such deeply ingrained patterns that they are pathological. We don’t even realize that we have them. They are so normal for us that we don’t even know that they are unhealthy.
The good news is that it’s not ever to late to shift paradigms. I’ve learned is that WE can be the ones to start to break old patterns that haven’t been working for us and we can be the one to start to develop new patterns. When we interrupt the pathology of automatic responses things start to change. When someone expects a typical response and we don’t give them that response, things start to change.
When we start interacting differently with someone. When we stay calm instead of over-reacting. When we no longer cry or beg, but offer encouragement instead. When we pause and think, waiting to respond later in the day or the next day. When we turn statements into questions or validate a person rather than minimizing their struggles. All of these things change patterns.
This is how people get better.
This is how families heal.
Our family is getting better.
And the cat box is clean!
For more information on how you can break family patterns, register today for the Family Recovery Conference. This virtual conference is available 24/7 from the comfort of your home, beginning 3/15/19. www.familyrecoveryconference.com