Saying No.

This morning he said “you know you’ve been saying “No” a lot lately?”. A little bit grumbly, a little bit indignant and critical. And I noticed myself not feeling triggered.

I noticed that a feeling of “how dare you?” and “who do you think you are?” and “please don’t start” did not come up.

I acknowledged that yesterday it probably would have.

See we are dancing a tricky dance at the moment and I have been feeling pretty wobbly with it. Not only do I know that he is entering into a huge leap in development, a stage of life that I found incredibly hard when I was his age, a stage I have seen many parents struggle with, a stage I don’t feel ready or prepared for. He knows now too. He has become aware that he is on one side of a big deep gap, that his journey over it from where he has always been to somewhere he has never been able to reach, has begun. He wants to be there now, ASAP, yesterday. In his mind it’s a simple jump and the only thing in his way, is us.

This morning I asked him to consider that he is hearing “No” a lot at the moment because he is pushing boundaries and asking for things that I need to say “No” to more. That the pushing and asking is ok, is normal, makes sense and feels really important to him. But that doesn’t mean that I have to say yes to everything he asks.

Last night I brought this topic to my practice. I focussed on him ‘pushing the boundaries’ and how I had been feeling about that. My head had been trying to process the frustration, exhaustion, avoidance and resistance. My head had been holding all of the reasons I want and need to protect him from all of the potential for ‘too much too soon’, justifying all of the “No’s” and the energy they have been bringing into our home.

My body told a different story, when I gave it the chance it told a different version of the story that allowed me to respond to him differently this morning. My body intuitively took me through a boundary exercise where I became aware of how my boundaries with him have often been completely open and enmeshed lately. His experience, emotion and turmoil literally feeling like mine. His expression of wanting and needing to do what everyone else is doing and have what everyone else has becoming my memory of how scary and unsafe it felt not to at that age. His emotion and reaction becoming my fear of him not being ok, because at the very foundation of it all is my need for him to be ok. In this state I am lost, because where I end and he begins is lost, because there is infinite space and no edges.

As I moved through the process I felt into that feeling of nothingness, I noticed how uncomfortable and difficult it felt, I acknowledged it being too much and also how and why I had got there. And then I could feel the edges coming back to me and for me. I found the sensation of a soft and flexible boundary and then noticed how the one I have been calling in to help me subconsciously, when things have felt too much, has been more of a brick wall.

I had been bouncing between, ‘I’m here, let me hear and feel and hold it all for you’ to ‘I’ve got no space left, I need you to stop’. Neither were serving him well, neither can serve me well or be sustained.

I wondered, to my focussing partner last night after my session, how that exercise would shift things, how it would show up in my future interactions with him. I was curious when I went to bed but when I woke up it had left my mind, until he stood in the driveway and said “you know you’ve been saying “No” a lot lately?”.

Limitless, open boundaries would have felt that deep. Felt guilt, felt judgment of myself, my parenting, they would have reacted to defend and protect myself from his judgment and complaint. They would have had me crumble inside while projecting a false strength on the outside. Brick wall boundaries would have ignored it and him, they would have shut down to protect me from him and from not knowing the right thing to say. Not knowing how to fix it and fix the way he was feeling and directing his feelings at me. Not knowing how to protect either of us.

The soft, flexible boundaries I was able to find, largely through the somatic work I did last night, felt curious. Looked for what was coming up in me, sensed for what might be coming up in him and simply asked him to be curious too. The conversation stayed open and most importantly we both stayed present in it. Not reactive, not shut down, not disconnected. The conversation around how and when he takes each step to make his way over the gap in front of him stays open and the part that we figured out today was that maybe I could start to say “Not yet” a bit more than just “No” and “I need a break from this conversation” rather than “I need you to stop”.