8. The Scorpion Pit and How to Deal With Hurtful Comments !

Summary

In this episode, Sarah Norris discusses the importance of addressing hurtful comments and opinions in the parenting world. She highlights the prevalence of criticism and judgment faced by pregnant women and mothers and the harmful effects of internalizing these comments. Sarah introduces the concept of externalizing the hurt by visualizing hurtful thoughts and comments as scorpions. She encourages listeners to protect themselves by checking their armor of knowledge and choosing how to respond to hurtful comments. Sarah emphasizes the need for a grassroots revolution to change the toxic parenting world and calls for valuing oneself and changing perspectives.

Takeaways

• The parenting world is filled with opinions, criticism, and judgy comments, and it's important to address and externalize the hurt caused by these comments.
• Visualizing hurtful thoughts and comments as scorpions can help in safely studying and flipping them away.
• Checking your armor of knowledge and recognizing that you don't deserve to be hurt can empower you to respond to hurtful comments.
• Replacing poison with antidote by sprinkling respectful and supportive comments in the parenting world can contribute to a more positive and less toxic environment.

You can find out more about Sarah and how to work with her by clicking on the links below:
https://www.instagram.com/thebabydetective/
https://www.babydetective.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/babydetective/

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Mama Island where we travel away from the noise and the pressure of real life to a safe and quiet place where we can spend time figuring out how to be great mamas without losing who we are and what we love doing and how to get the mama life we really want.

Hello, it's lovely to see you here on our island and I hope you've had a good week.
So...this week I was planning a light -hearted episode to introduce you to our scorpion pit and how we use it, but as I was writing, I started getting more and more indignant and angry, and I think you might end up feeling the same way because what we're actually talking about is how to deal with people saying things that hurt us.

And I realized that most of us just don't actually deal with it. We ignore it and we put up with it and we allow ourselves to be hurt, so I think it's time for a revolution sisters !

 Okay, so we all know the parenting world is a minefield of opinions, criticism and judgy comments, so much so that I think most pregnant women and mamas are actually a bit afraid to say what they really feel and think and just keep quiet or pretend or go along with the strongest voices because it's easier and safer.

It starts with questions about what birth you're going to have and how you're going to feed your baby, and then it moves on to whether you're going to use a swaddle, a dummy, go to work, stay at home, sleep train, use routine, wean with purees or finger foods.
It's endless and you're surrounded by it.
You end up drowning in other people's opinions and advice when what you really feel like doing is losing it and screaming at everyone to just shut up and leave you alone.
 But you don't.
You take it.
You're polite about it or you ignore it or pretend to agree with it.
And every time you do, you're internalizing the hurt it causes or the self doubt or the fear it triggers or the betrayal you feel.
And all the hurt you internalize act like a poison and continues to hurt. It never goes away because it keeps on coming every single day.

 I was thinking like...why do we do this? Accept this, put up with this?
Then I thought, it's just like the way women are treated in the whole of society.
We are expected from an early age to put up with all the crap.
First from boys, then from men, then from employers, then from doctors and nurses and midwives, and now with all the revelations over the last couple of years in the UK, also from the police, fire and ambulance services, all expecting us just to put up and shut up.

It's everywhere.
We're so used to putting up with demeaning, disparaging, controlling and threatening comments and behaviours, that it's just part of who we are now.
We can't challenge most of it without risking our safety, our jobs, even our lives, and the parenting situation is just an extension of that same expectation.
Anyone can say anything they want to women because we can't do anything about it.

But I think we can.
Maybe not everywhere, but we can certainly fight back at the parenting crap because this is our world, our arena !
Now can you see why I ended up getting angry?
And I think this is why I need this island as much as you, because it gives me a chance to think and feel honestly, to get angry, but then I can look out to sea and let the waves calm me enough to think about how to change things.
So this is me taking a few deep breaths.

So if the fact that we're internalizing things makes it worse, then surely externalizing it must make things better or at least easier to deal with and less damaging long -term ? And that's where the scorpions come in.

Imagine if you were sitting with your family or in a cafe or in a mum's group and someone took out a pin and stuck you with it and acted like they expected you to ignore it.
Would you?
You might actually the first time out of sheer surprise, but would you just sit still and let them do it again? I bet you wouldn't.
You'd challenge them, knock the pin out of their hand, yell at them, ask them what the hell they think they're doing...and that's the reaction I want you to hold on to as we talk.

The thing is, we're so used to putting up with it that we need a bit of help changing our reactions and I always find visualisation helps.
So here on our island, we are now sitting round our own scorpion pit.
Imagine it any way you like, but it needs to be big.

It's easier to see things for what they are on our island, so here, thoughts and comments have a physical presence.
Nice one are butterflies and hurtful ones are visible as scorpions.
Here at least we can see them coming, though sometimes we only notice them when we're stung and as soon as that happens we do whatever we have to to make sure we don't get stung again.
Luckily for us, a crate of long -handled spider -catchers was washed up in a storm last week and there's enough for one each.
It's a clear plastic box on the end of a long stick which we can open and shut with a lever on the handle.
So whenever we see a scorpion, we can scoop it up from a safe distance.
We can safely study it, have a good look at it, and then when we figure out where it came from and recognise the harm it's doing us, we can fling it into the scorpion pit where it can never hurt us again.
This way, we can start to externalise the hurt and stop allowing ourselves to be poisoned because it's been going on too long and it's time it stopped.
It's a seriously difficult habit to break, this putting up with stuff,  so it's going to take time and practice, but we can start here by thinking of times when we've been stung by family, friends, work colleagues and strangers, online and in person.

Maybe you have a sister who likes to talk about how great she was at breastfeeding and how important it is when she knows that you're really struggling.
Or maybe someone in your NCT or your mum's group keeps going on about how important it is to be a stay -at -home mum when they know that you're getting ready to go back to work.
Or maybe you've had someone making comments about how children need two parents when they know full well you're a single mum.

Think about how you reacted.
Did you ignore it?
Did you try to justify yourself?
Did you get upset and leave?
Did you feel yourself shrink under a pile of guilt or sadness?
Do you expect these sorts of comments and dread them beforehand and then stew about them for days afterwards? (and it's usually in the middle of the night !)

Now, I want you to imagine that the next time you meet this person, you see them looking at you and they start to bring the conversation round to the point where they can make their mean comment, and this time you can see that scorpion, big and nasty and shiny, crawling towards you with their stinger raised.
But this time you're going to protect yourself.
So how are you going to do this?
Well, like a knight getting ready for battle, the first thing you do is to check your armour. and in this case, your armour is knowledge.
You ask yourself, does this person know me or my situation or my baby or family as well as I do?
Does this person care as much about me or my situation or my baby or my family as much as I do?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you can safely ignore anything they say to you that isn't helpful, caring or supportive.

Because you do believe that you deserve to be helped, cared for and supported, right?

So after realising this, your next step is to ask yourself if you deserve being hurt for no reason.
Anyone here think they deserve to be hurt just because the other person likes being mean or, most likely, just can't be bothered being kind and sensitive?
Anyone?
Well, I hope not.
Okay, so you've spotted the scorpion.
 You know the sting is coming and that you don't deserve it or want it and you are not going to continue putting up with it, so what are you going to do about it?
Well, this is the tricky part because it's all down to who you are.
It would be great if we were all warrior women, happy looking the scorpion sender in the eye and telling them exactly what they can do with their poison but most of us aren't, not at the moment, anyway.
I know I'm not. I'm too polite. I don't like conflict, and sometimes I'm afraid of losing my temper and saying what I really feel because I've internalised it for so long it's all bottled up, ready to blow like Vesuvius !

 If it's a situation where you can't answer back openly, remind yourself you know and care for your family and remind yourself that they don't, then picture that scorpion just shriveling up before it gets anywhere near you.
Then turn away from the scorpion sender and ignore the barb with head held high. Make it deliberate and obvious to them and to yourself that you are choosing not to be heard and you aren't afraid of them.

If you feel you can say something but want to remain polite, you can use a shutdown tactic like, 'Actually, I'm fine with what I'm doing, thank you' and change the subject.
No emotion from you means no win for them.
I had the most amazing client who just said to anyone who asked,
"I'm not breastfeeding, it's not for me".
Just that, no excuses, no justification, just the fact, and she said it so firmly that no one ever questioned her about it.
From her, I realised for myself that as soon as I start to explain or justify, I come across as weak or uncertain.
I have to remind myself sometimes as I do slip back into old habits, but it does work. People just accept what I say and I feel noticeably stronger each time.
Try it yourself.

If it's a family member or a close friend, try being honest just once.
Pick a moment when it's just the two of you and say calmly, I just wanted you to know that when you make that comment about X or Y, it's actually quite hurtful and upsetting. I'm sure you didn't mean it to be, but please don't say it again.
So, you've been nice, you've given them the benefit of the doubt by suggesting the hurt was accidental, but you've told them exactly what you expect to happen.
"Please don't do it again".
There's no weakness and no justifying.

If you feel like being a bit more challenging, you could say something like, "I'm sure you didn't intend that to sound mean or judgy or critical, but you know, if you said that to someone who was more fragile than me, you could really hurt them."

If you felt even braver, you could address their comment directly and say,
"Actually, I'm deliberately choosing to use a bottle for some feeds because it means my partner can feed baby while I spend more time with my toddler who really needs my attention at the moment"
So it's telling them you know what you're doing, you're not justifying or apologising, you're just being strong and confident.
Another one could be... "Actually, I think a strong woman with a successful career is a great role model for any baby".
And if you are one of those wonderful warrior women you could say what we all wish we could say.
"Why are my parenting choices any of your business? "
Wouldn't it just be wonderful if we could all say that?

The thing is, a lot of the time, if the scorpion senders were honest with themselves, they do know on some level that what they're saying is not okay, but most of them are dealing with their own internal poisoning to the point where they aren't thinking straight.

I was with one client who had her NCT group around for coffee when they'd all had their babies. I was in the room but not part of their group, so I was in a good position to observe what happened.
I noticed that mum A was giving mum B a hard time about supplementing her breastfeeding with formula because she didn't have enough milk, and she was persistent enough that you could see everyone was uncomfortable but just didn't know what to do.
The conversation moved on and literally half an hour later, that same mum who had been sending scorpions was talking about how her mother -in -law had given her such a hard time about breastfeeding that she was still upset about it.
So without even realising it, she had internalised the poison her mother -in -law had dumped on her and then dumped it on someone else.
So she was perpetuating the harm, along with the expectation that it's okay to dump on women because they just put up with it.

Or maybe she just thought it was okay because everyone else does it ?
And that's another reason for dragging this out into the open, to talk about it honestly. Because YES, it is time you stopped accepting the hurt from other people's stings, but isn't it also time we stopped passing our own poison onto other mums?

In episode four, I talked about learning to understand and manage the voices in our heads and choosing the ones which we listen to to protect ourselves, to make us stronger, but also to make ourselves a better person.
So we can be that person who might hear a judgy comment inside our own head that makes a conscious decision not to pass that crap on to anyone else.
So maybe if you're with a friend who's doing something as a mum that triggers a judgy response inside you, choke it down.
Don't let the poison out.
Replace it with the antidote...a respectful, supportive comment like, I"'m so glad you figured out something that works for you" or something in your own words like that. Because isn't that what we're all doing?
Just feeling our way through things, figuring out what works for us.

And if you're in a group of mums who likes to bitch about other mums behind their backs, firstly, you have to know that they'll be doing that to you as soon as your back's turned, right? Just picture those scorpions crawling out of their mouths across the table and all over you all.
Secondly, don't join in.
Don't add to the poison in the parenting world.
Sprinkle in your antidote wherever you can.
You could say, "well, she seems happy and her baby's doing well, so it must be okay."
Or " it doesn't really matter how she feeds though, does it?
Or you could be a bit more direct and say, "I feel a bit mean bitching about her like this because she's a lovely person and she's been through a lot."
Or maybe make a joke about it and say, "God, I just realised we've all been bitching for the last 10 minutes. How did that happen? What can we talk about that's nice and positive? Anyone got any gorgeous baby pictures to share?"
Just turn it around, or if none of that works or you just feel like it, vote with your feet.
Leave the mean mums to their poison and go find some nice ones.
If there's a nice mum or two in the group, get in touch with them privately and start your own mum's group.

If it's an organised group with a leader, tell her that you're leaving because it's too cliquey and bitchy.
You never know, it might make her change the way the group is run, and if she changes her group to be more positive and less poisonous, and she gets more mums as a result,
she might just share that with other group leaders who might just change their group because they want more mums.
So you might actually have helped improve the parenting world.

I did say at the beginning that we need a revolution and I wasn't joking !

The parenting world is toxic and mums and babies are the ones who suffer the most, but it won't change by itself.
 
We can't sit around, complain about it, then wait for someone else to come fix it for us.
It's hurting us, so we need to be the ones to fix it.

I don't mean riots and protests, we can't fit that in around our feeds.

I mean a grassroots revolution.
I mean you get to decide enough is enough and that you're not putting up with the pressure and the poison anymore.
You're not going to allow yourself to be poisoned and you're not going to poison anyone else either.

Whatever strength and energy you can muster now, wherever you are on your mama journey, make the decision to use it to change how you think about yourself and how other people think about mamas in general.
You can do it quietly in your own head, you can do it politely or subtly, or you can do it loud and proud, but please don't ignore those scorpions and their poison.
And know, that every time you go on a scorpion hunt you are changing your own little corner of the world.
And if everyone does that, the effects will spread to the point where eventually we might just change the whole parenting world.
It's a big goal, but every big plan starts small.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if what we do now makes it better for our own daughters and daughter -in -laws 20 years down the line?

You know, if I could really take you to a tropical island, I would give you that gift of time and space to think and feel about yourself and your mama life, but until I win the lottery or Jeff Bezos gives me some of his millions, we'll have to carry on with our imaginary island.
So do try and make the most of it. If you can, don't go straight into something else once this podcast is over.
Stay in the moment and process what we've talked about.
Is there anything you can relate to?
Anything that applies to you?
What is hurting you?
Who is hurting you?
Even little stings count because they add up over time and can end up just as toxic as big stings.
Think about who you are at the moment and what you can cope with.
Are you the sort of person who can challenge scorpion senders directly or are you more comfortable challenging them internally, finding ways to protect yourself from the poison so it doesn't hurt you ?
I was going to say do this when you have some spare time, like that ever happens, but if you can, through the day, whenever you get a couple of minutes to yourself, think about this, because I think the hardest part might actually be finding some way to remind yourself that you don't have to put up with this crap that you don't deserve to be stung on a daily basis every time you read the news, open your phone, open social media, have visitors or venture out into the world. 
Honestly, if you were to start to picture every barbed or sly comment as a real scorpion, for every article, every post, every tweet, every advert, every book, you'll see that you can't take more than a few steps without crunching on a scorpion.
They're everywhere, so if you don't learn to stamp on them or swat them away, you're going to keep getting stung.
But as soon as you do take action, you start to feel better because you're fighting for yourself. 
This is the start of real self -care.
It's the start of really valuing who you are by recognising threats and neutralising them.
 
Oh, and that reminds me...
...you know, I said you had to imagine the scorpion pit big. ?
That's because we get to throw people in there with their own scorpions !
I do this now as a way to dismiss and neutralize people who just can't or won't recognize they are hurting me in any part of my life. 
I just think "it's the scorpion pit for you" and dismiss them from my life. 
I imagine them flying through the air and disappearing into the pit and then
I get on and think about something else. 
If I find myself revisiting or dwelling on their poison, I think, "oh no you don't" and I imagine them trying to climb out of the pit and I just poke them back in with a big stick !
 
Okay, it might sound crazy, and of course you can find your own way to deal with it. 
But this is my own light-hearted way of tackling poison that's been hurting me for years. That's knocked my confidence, made me doubt myself and made me too afraid to be who I really was or dare to reach for my dreams, but I'm not putting up with that crap anymore!
And it just so happens that part of my dream includes helping you avoid the pain I've suffered, So for me, it's scorpion pits all the way !
 
So go back to your off -island life now, but take your scorpion catcher with you and use it, and if you have friends who are being stung share this episode with them so they can get their own catcher and you can go scorpion hunting together. 
Have a great week and happy hunting! 

That's it for today and I hope you found something to love about our time together. If you did then please take a second to hit subscribe and share it with anyone you know who could do with some time on our lovely island. And if you want to check me out on Instagram I'm at The Baby Detective.

See you next time!