'There is no freaking answer'

Carla Naumburg offers us all grace — and strategies — in 'You Are Not A Sh*tty Parent'

Carla Naumburg is a clinical social worker, a mother of two teenage daughters, and author of four parenting books. Her most recent book, “You Are Not a Sh*tty Parent: How to Practice Self-Compassion and Give Yourself a Break,” is out now from Workman Publishing. I’m giving away a copy of Carla’s book to one subscriber - skip to the end to find out how you can enter.

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First of all, I loved “How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t” so much — it was so important to me as a new parent, and I have recommended it to so many people. What’s new in this book that you didn’t get to explore the first time around?

I briefly mentioned self-compassion in “How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t” — because we're all going to lose our tempers with our kids; I still do it sometimes — and being able to treat ourselves with kindness, cut ourselves a little slack, is an incredibly powerful practice. It’s not just like, ‘Things won’t feel bad;’ it’s actually a super effective way to calm down and make better choices going forward.

“How to Stop Losing your Sh*t” came out before the pandemic, and then reporters and journalists and podcasters were calling me, asking for advice, when these poor parents were stuck at home. At first, I was like, I don’t have any advice because this is an unwinnable situation. A lot of my coping skills that I practice were hinged upon the idea that it was safe to leave our house and that we would get time away from our kids on a regular basis and connect with our support systems. All of these things that have already been a fundamental part of parenting were no longer available to us.

I was worried that the implication would be that it is possible to be stuck at home with your kids and not lose your shit, which is absolutely not the case. So I talked a lot about self-compassion. It was the only strategy I had for what was literally and hopefully the hardest thing most of us will ever live through.

Nothing like this had ever happened. We’ve had crises before, but there was no internet, no Zoom calls, no work from home. Either you left your house, or you stayed home. You weren’t expected to be on professional calls with a 2-year-old pulling at your leg, or to be managing at-home school while you’re also trying to do your job.

This was the hardest thing, and you have to cut yourself a huge amount of slack, and realize that we are all suffering and struggling. None of us are prepared for this and we don’t have any skills or strategies. So that’s what I talked about.

In your book, you name the four elements of self-compassion that parents need in order to be able to see themselves as not a shitty parent. What are some of the barriers to these things, or why don’t parents necessarily have these tools already?

There are a couple reasons why parents are not sort of naturally practicing self-compassion. We aren't wired to do it, which sounds insane. Wouldn't it be nice if we were? When our brains are developing, their fundamental goal is to keep us alive, and this comes from a time when most of us lived with significantly more physical threats. We’ve got this brain that has literally evolved to see the worst in every situation.

But most of us aren't facing physical threats in every situation. So we have this brain and this wiring that has literally evolved to focus on the risks, on everything that has gone wrong, because if we can obsess about that, we can fix it or make it better. The problem is, most of the threats are emotional or rational or financial or parenting that we’re now obsessively thinking about and beating ourselves up over, even when they’re not really problems.

The other thing about our wiring is that we’re wired to compare ourselves to the community. That’s a valuable survival skill. We can’t survive alone in the wilderness if we don’t have a community, and the best way to survive in a community is to constantly compare ourselves. So we still have this wiring that leaves us comparing ourselves, but instead of comparing ourselves to the person next to us, we’re comparing ourselves to literally every parent on the planet, including celebrities who have unlimited resources. We’re no longer just comparing ourselves to the people who have similar backgrounds and resources.

It’s also like a language none of us grew up speaking. I went through over a decade of clinical training. I never heard this phrase. My parents didn’t teach me this; their parents didn't teach them either. It’s very much not in the Western lingo until recently. We were taught, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and what we’re learning now from psychologists who are researching this is, being compassionate for yourself is actually a super effective way to create better habits.

So what’s hard about practicing self compassion?

We’ve been literally practicing the opposite for most of our lives. I have four decades of experience giving myself a hard time. You spend 40 years doing anything, and you’re going to be pretty awesome at it, even if it’s something we don’t want to be awesome at.

Imagine going to a job every day where there’s a person following you around, just talking about what a wreck you are and how you’re screwing everything up. And imagine it’s the most important job of your life. This is literally your soul work, and you’re working so hard, and this person, all they do is remind you of what a mess you are and how much you suck and how the product is going to develop into a complete useless mess. That’s what a lot of parents are doing to themselves, except they don't get a break from that.

The benefits of self-compassion are, we feel calmer, and we can see the situation more clearly. When our thinking is so wrapped up in how much we suck, that makes us anxious, it makes things really confusing. When we can let go of that, we can see the situation a little more clearly. We also feel more competent as parents, because when you’re calm and you can see things clearly, you’re far more likely to make a more skillful choice. When you remember that parenting is hard for everyone and that you can do this, then you feel more confident in your choices. That’s what I see as the benefit.

Tell me a little bit about how you came to self-compassion.

It was like one of those earth-shattering, life-changing moments, even though it was just a tiny little comment. It was a Friday afternoon, I was home with my girls, they were probably 5 and 6 at the time, and I was chopping up a bell pepper. And the girls were playing with markers and surprisingly not being total jerks, and I had Willie Nelson playing, and all of a sudden I just thought, Oh, I’m a pretty good mother.

First of all, I want to be clear, there is no connection between a calm parenting moment and someone’s ability. Even if someone had been crying, I would still be a good mother. So let’s be very clear. But that thought showed up and it was so shocking that I dropped the knife, and the girls were like, What happened?! But a few things came to me. First, I don't think I had ever thought that before. How sad is that? I went through five to six years of parenting, working my butt off, objectively doing a pretty good job. I was horribly anxious, I was feeding them boxed mac and cheese, but I was still a good mother. I was showing up for them. Was I present all the time? Absolutely not, but was I still a good mother.
But I couldn’t see that then.

This moment when this thought showed up — it was amazing. I felt so sad that I hadn't felt that before. But really where that came from was practice. Just like learning a new language, you can’t suddenly be like, I’m going to be more compassionate. You have to start small and do it a lot; do things that are easy. That’s what I was doing after I learned about self-compassion. I was like, This is a load of crap, I really do not see how sending myself happy wishes is going to help. But I started to make those connections. In the past, when I would lose my temper, I would put the girls somewhere safe, where they would leave me alone, and I would head for the chocolate. And I would eat my chocolate and tell myself all the ways in which I was a shitty parent. And then if the girls came for me, I would probably snap at them again.

Now what I do is I go to the kitchen counter and put my hands on that firm surface and I take some deep breaths and I say, Parenting is hard for everyone. Just because I’m having a bad moment or a bad day doesn’t mean that I’m a bad parent. And I try to think about, What do I need right now? Do I need to pee? Do I need food? Do I need sleep? Did I just have a really rough call with a loved one? What is going on with me? This is the curiosity place. What am I capable of giving to my kids? What do they need? And what can I offer them? This is how compassion has really changed my parenting. Instead of just losing my shit and then beating myself up and then eventually somehow calming down, now I have this thing I do, which is remind myself I’m not alone, and ask myself what I need.

It occurs to me, as you say that, that one difference is that you can actually take action. You’re not just stuck in this place of, I suck, I can’t do anything right, which there’s no real way to move forward out of that. But if you can take that pause and think about, What do I need, what do my kids need? That becomes something you can actually act on.

Even if you don’t know what the problem is, or what the solution is, somehow that moment of compassion can lead to a place of calmer clarity. Even if you’re like, I have no idea what’s going on in this moment, which is how I felt during the entire pandemic, at least you don’t have the added layer of beating yourself up.

The analogy I use in the book is, you take your family out on a hike, you get the family lost, everybody is lost and in a terrible head space. And you see a ranger and you’re like, Yes, this is amazing, they’re going to have a map for us. But they hand you a map and all it says is, “You got your family lost. You're a terrible parent. You’re so lost. Nobody has ever been this lost.” Which is basically what we say to ourselves. That is the map we are handing ourselves every time we go to self-contempt.

So the perfect map really doesn’t exist for parenting. There are very few cut-and-dry, easy solutions to parenting problems. But what if the ranger was like, “Hey, a lot of parents get lost. It’s OK. You're going to find your way back, and remember, you’re not alone. This hike is a hard hike.” This is not really a helpful map. It doesn’t tell you how to get back to your car. But you would feel a sudden weight lift off your shoulders. And when your thought is no longer clouded, all of a sudden, options show up. Your brain can start functioning. It’s not going to give you the answer. Most of the time, there is no freaking answer, which is extremely annoying about parenting.

I’d love to hear, since we’re talking about things that are hard, what’s something that’s hard for you as a parent right now?

The thing that is honestly hard in this moment is that my girls are off with their grandparents in New York City, and I am getting a preview of what it’s like when they’ll be going off to college. They’re starting seventh and eighth grade this fall, and I am a little devastated. I want them to go and flee the nest and do the things human people are supposed to do, but I’m going to miss them so much. My goal is to try to stay present with them as much as I can.

Tell me something wonderful about your kids.

They are starting to swear, and I am all here for it. To be clear, I don’t think all kids should swear, and it doesn’t work in every family, but as those of you who read my books know, I swear for a living, and it feels like we’re having the same conversation now. We’re having all the conversations about not using it in a hurtful, disrespectful way, but we’re getting to this moment where I can be truly, authentically myself with them.

And again, I’m not a proponent of profanity among children specifically. I’m saying that, for my family, in this moment, this totally works for me. My kids and I are just connecting in a lovely way, and this is what I wish for every parent — that you can find an authentic, honest, joyful way to connect with your kids. I know for many parents, they haven’t had that experience. And it’s not your fault. These little creatures come into our lives, and, who the hell are they?! So I am fortunate that we are having a good moment.

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Thanks so much to Carla for speaking with me. You can find her latest book wherever books are sold — and I am giving away a copy to one lucky subscriber! To enter the giveaway, just comment below — I would love to hear about a way that you practice self-compassion, or about something that’s hard for you in whatever season of parenting you’re in. Or you can just say “Enter me in the giveaway,” that is also totally legit. I’ll announce the winner in next week’s newsletter.