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| Yes, this is the best pic I could get of all 3. |
Self-Preservation vs Self-Actualization
Dependence vs Independence
This is a bit longer than my usual posts, so grab a coffee and enjoy. Next post I'll try to keep light with some good stories about the kiddos instead of the never ending battle of prioritizing ;)
Upon reading the “Six Challenging
Perspectives” section from Gelso and Fretz (2001), two themes really stuck with
me: Prioritizing and Independence. Though the act of prioritizing and balancing
doctoral studies requirements, research, and home life is likely a struggle for
most of us, I find that the additional responsibility of being a mother puts an
additional weight on this precarious balance, adding an additional layer of
stress and difficulty not experienced my many doctoral students. Additionally, my upbringing and the culture
in which I was raised, namely the deep south, has led to a view of the academic
world that often works against me in seeking support from or pursuing
collaborative projects with staff. I
knew that pursuing a PhD while raining a small family would be difficult, especially
with my default personality setting of “follower”, but I rationalized (and
continue to rationalize) that in the end it will all be worth it, not only for
my family but for growing as an individual.
Having children was a game changer
for me. I always thought I would never
want to be a stay at home mom; that I would get bored, end up resenting my
children, and not give back to the world like I “should” through teaching. Then I got pregnant with my first and I
couldn’t imagine not staying home with her, not seeing her first steps or answering
her cries. I couldn’t picture someone
else assisting her in making sense of the world around her or leading her
through her first few years. It made me
tear up to think that she would be repeating someone else’s words before my own
or smiling up at someone else, some stranger, before smiling at me! It probably did not help that my background
is in special education and I had a litany of examples from my undergraduate
readings, case studies, and practicum experiences of how serious developmental
delays can be and how important the first few years of life are for the
development of mind and body.
That is when I decided to go back
for my Master’s degree. It gave me the
chance to further myself (and what I could give back to the world) while also
being there for my daughter…then daughters.
This desire to be a part of my children’s life was one of the deciding
factors in why I chose to continue my studies at the doctoral level at this
point in my life instead of further in the future. This allows me to still be home with my
children an additional two days per week, and that’s while also pulling a 20
hour graduate assistantship.
It kind of sounds like I have things
all nice and neatly separated and planned out…but it’s not. There are times when I’m at school that I’m
worried about my oldest daughter’s ear ache or stressed about how much interaction
the youngest is really getting in day care.
There are other times when I am in the center of an all-out kicking,
hair pulling, toddler fight and I get a sudden paper topic inspiration and have
to write it down with the toddle fight rolling around behind me, their screams
for mommy’s help falling on momentarily deaf ears. This is when it is hard for me. It is SO
hard for me to put school before my kids…even when it is time that I have purposely set aside for studying! I can’t count how many times I have chosen to
stay up late or forego reading so that I can do something as mundane as walk to
the playground with my girls and watch them slide and swing. They didn’t need me there, it was scheduled
study time for Mommy and play time with Daddy, but oh, how I wanted to be
there, to be a part of their lives, and to revel in their happiness.
And those moments when I do choose
school first, when I do take a moment to shut them out, or a few hours to
complete a paper, I am bombarded with “mom guilt”. Worries and “what ifs” buzz around my head
constantly suggesting the girls are better off with me around, that I am not
doing all I can for them, that no one else can do as much for them as I can,
that I don’t have my priorities straight.
Silly, I know, but these thoughts pop up and take off running before I
can consciously stop them and process to rationalize my way out of them. This rationalizing has become increasingly
more difficult now that my middle child has begun to cry on Tuesday and
Wednesday mornings, saying “No school, Stay Mama today.” And I still get a sharp punch in my gut each
time my oldest hugs me tight and whispers “You’re a good Mama, but I don’t like
when you’re at college all the time.”
Prioritizing between school
requirements and parental responsibilities sometimes seems nearly impossible,
and that doesn’t even touch on how difficulty it can be to find “me time.” This is where the need and struggle to
balance comes in. It’s clear that the
girls and school requirements are my competing top priorities, but that doesn’t
change the fact that I need to balance these top priorities not only with one
another, but also with other necessary priorities such as myself, my marriage,
my home, my social life, my limited hobbies, and my additional professional
interests (i.e. additional reading, research, committees, etc.). Basically, to use the authors’ words form a
couple different places in the reading, I need to “make time” with “only 24
hours in a day”. (Gelso and Fretz, 2001)
This attempt to make time in a defined, and rather limited, set amount of time is
what makes the challenge of changing the perspective of self-preservation to
one of self-actualization so difficult for me.
Though I tend to have an initial self-actualization perspective, one of attacking
tasks instead of avoiding them, I have so many responsibilities that my
attacking tends to either fall short in all areas, or be focused only in
certain areas…leaving those priorities outside of the top two with little to no
attention.
Often, I find myself attacking tasks
in several different areas, such as reading everything for class, attempting to
take my girls on weekly outings to the zoo or museums, signing up for
additional research, and vowing to do all the laundry that has piled up in the
past two weeks…only to find myself drowning in commitments and going into
“fight or flight” mode. Though I get
everything done (except for maybe the laundry), and get it done well enough, it
leaves me feeling empty. I become devoid
of energy, strength, and will power and need a significant amount of time to
recharge before I can attack again.
Additionally, this switch to self-preservation tends to put me in an
emotional funk characterized by crankiness, unhappiness, and self-berating for
falling short, yet again.
In the reading, Gelso and Fretz
(2001) state, “Graduate study in counseling psychology may bring numerous
threats to one’s sense of self-efficacy.
We define self-efficacy as the ‘expectation that one can
master the problems that one faces in a given situation’” (pg. 196). It appears that my struggle is in having an
overabundance of self-efficacy, or the belief that I can effectively take on my
whole world at one time. This leads to a
multitude of responsibilities resting squarely on my shoulders, knocking me
down a peg or two, and my finally prioritizing and effectively taking on most
of what I wanted to accomplish. The
trick in this cycle has always be not allowing my flight instincts to take over
when I begin to feel overwhelmed, but to, instead, prioritize and keep on
attacking. This is the constant cycle I
travel as I try to keep from falling into the trap of valuing self-preservation
and turning towards it when time get tough or my to-do list become too long.
This is a conscious effort I have
been making AND will have to continue to make.
I have found that blogging about the struggle to maintain priorities and
balance is helpful in finding balance and in appreciating my successes when I
have them. It works much like journaling but, because it
is out there for all to see, it keeps me focused on the positive instead of
allowing me to wallow in the negative.
Additionally, I have found that staying out of conversations in which my
peers are discussing the sheer amount of work required or their high levels of
stress allows me to remain centered. It
appears that not only misery, but also stress, enjoys company. If I can’t get away from these types of
conversations, I find that reminding myself everything is relative keeps me
from defaulting immediately to the safety of self-preservation and flight.
After these types of conversations,
I remind myself that being calm about upcoming assignments does not make me
less of a student; being confident in my abilities does not mean I’m
naïve. It does mean that I have a good
deal of self-efficacy, which is a good thing, as long as I realize that I will always eventually stumble, fail, or
flee. It is in these specific cases that
I need to remind myself that I have the knowledge and the strength to quickly
talk myself out of hiding and go back on the attack; to come out of the womb of
self-preservation and into the harsh light of self-actualization.
As if that weren’t a big enough
challenge to face daily, I am also uniquely challenged by the perception of
being a dependent receiver while in the doctoral program instead of an
independent doer. This challenge is due
more to where, and how, I was raised. I
grew up in the deep south, middle of nowhere Georgia to be precise, followed by
several years outside of Columbia, South Carolina. I lived on dead end dirt roads, played in
creeks, and was taught by not only my parents, but the whole community, to
respect and value my elders, particularly the teachers and the preachers. This included not only saying “Sir” and
“Ma’am” but also respecting what they had to say: listening, learning, and looking up to them.
This cultural norm carried into how
I interacted with professors in my undergraduate and Master’s degrees. I was raised to believe the teacher is to be
learned from, respected for their knowledge, and always viewed as above
oneself. In my world, one should never
have conversations focused on the teacher’s personal life, or *gasp* become
friendly with them, as it is “rude” to assume they want to have anything to do
with you outside of the classroom or subject matter. However, in a doctoral level training program,
there is a shift from student to practitioner, from assistant to
scientist. I find navigating the world
of academia difficult. Pair my default
“follower” persona with a culture of viewing teachers as “separate” and you
have an individual who is unsure as to how to interact with staff, as they are
colleagues, professors, and elders at the same time! I find myself wanting to be passively
depending, wanting to just revert to “Yes, Sir” and “No Ma’am.” I just take the requirements, the workload,
the complete lack of control over my own schedule in stride because it’s not
something I can control; deeper yet, it’s not something I feel I’m supposed to
control. I don’t feel the rage the authors suggested many students feel at the
perceived lack of control in a doctoral program (even after having been in the
“real world”) because I am perfectly comfortable in the passive dependent role.
Yet, I know I won’t get as much out
of the program if I sit passively by on all things. So, here I sit, yet again, having to consciously
bolster myself; consciously keep myself from fleeing. I must choose my priorities in the program…and
attack, despite the cries within my mind telling me I’m being rude or
presumptuous and begging me to go back to the comfort of following. Daily, I must wage that war within myself as
I navigate the world of doctoral studies while also somehow balancing my
responsibilities as a mother.
References
Gelso, G., & Fretz, B. (2001).
Counseling psychology (2nd
ed.) Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
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