New Father Fears- The Terror Of Feeling Trapped

Ah, the joys of parenting when you’re just a panic stricken guy in way over his head…

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This morning I got Gus up, found his clothes for him, fed him, talked with him about which colors match which levels of emotions (his choice of conversation not mine), made his lunch, and took him to school on the C train. Feint echos of some bad old emotions hit me sometimes when I spend the morning being a Dad. I recall the panic I felt when I first became a full time, all day parent.

As kids get older and start school and other activities, they move out into the great big world and the all-day parenting ends. Even if you’re home schooling, things change when kids get a little older. The first real rush of parenting happens with babies and toddlers, which is nothing less that a rewiring of everything you are. Just walk alongside a toddler for a few days to understand this rewiring at its most basic physical level; in your lower back. You stay bent over to hold the tiny hand that reaches up to you. You walk so very, very slowly. You turn and pause and walk and bend, and turn, and kneel and stand and so on. There is no distant destination you are charging toward. Parks become vast empty places with swing sets and jungle gyms that are impossibly complicated. Cars drift by. Oh, look, a leaf, etc.  It is not an easy thing to slow down for anyone. But to slow down for your tiny bright-eyed toddler, and to do it for years is a test of who we really are.

Call the Electrician
The panic I experienced as a new parent made me feel like an animal trapped in a cage, pacing. Sometimes it was full blown. Sometimes it was just a low level anxiety. And getting out for the night or an afternoon, didn’t seem to help much. It was a state of mind that panic. It stuck with me.

I tell people that being a full time father changed me. I tell them it made me a better person.  A better human being. In part, this is because it forced me to confront the source of those gut-churning moments of panic. And there were a lot of them. They still visit me. They are a sign of something fundamental; the very rewiring of who I am. Ask any full time mother or father. Raising a child is a relentless assault on the self-centered side of ourselves. A side that does not go quietly into that dark night. A side that does not actually go away at all.

The person I primarily used to be, I’ll just call him PreDad, is a mystery to me now. I look back through the fog of the changes and can only catch partial glimpses of him. It seems to me, he’s a person who spent a lot of time feeling out of touch; with himself, with his wife, with the world at large.  As an artist and a writer, PreDad actually did a number of very creative things, but there was a lack of unified intention. The world was a mystery. His view of things was muddled.

I recall holding my sleeping son, Gus when he was a year old and watching the clock move mercilessly slowly; the second hand ticking by, dragging the hours out. Maybe some people can sit with a baby for hours on end, but PreDad was not one of them. I still remember PreDad’s panic rising in me like a scream. I was trapped in some silent, still place that wasn’t ALL ABOUT ME. Some part of me was screaming that being still and quiet was destroying me; leaving me a shell of myself; that having Gus in my life was erasing me.

Sitting there with baby Gus, for the first time in my life, I couldn’t force things to hurry up. The part of me that was PreDad had to sit still. He had to wait. He had to serve another life and another person without tracking the rate of exchange for some pre-negotiated beneficial outcome. PreDad was a particular kind of man. In that time and place, he could only sit there feeling panic-stricken, disempowered, isolated and shut off from the world.

A Couple of Options
In that bleak place, I really only had a couple of options. I could stay in that mode, that version of myself, and I could struggle as a father, or I could grow and tap into other versions of myself; versions of me that created more flexible ways of being. I could tap my nurturing side to hold my sleeping child. I could tap the calm center of me to slow down and let change come. I could become attuned to processes instead of outcomes. I could value journeys instead of results.  I could make myself see that being still was a gift to my son. The gift of time in which he could reach his own understandings about his world; to arrive at his own appropriate moment for each next step.

My friend Michael, told me one day that he was taking on the exercise of saying “yes” as often as humanly possible; to his children and his wife and damn the consequences. What he discovered was that things starting working really, really well and something else. He discovered that a lot of what he personally needed began to happen, too; without him even having to ask. He changed how he oriented himself to the relationships and the relationships, in turn, changed his world. I don’t think the PreDad Michael ever fully recovered from that decision.

I like to believe I have changed a lot. And that I am continuing to change. What became evident to me was that I had to become much more open and flexible internally; much more able to be in and stay in the moment, instead of tracking a laundry list of tasks and issues. I had to become more at peace. More calm. More, dare I say it? Spiritually aware? One mantra I came up with for a while in those days was the following: “When ever I get angry, I loose.” I shows the mix of scorekeeping mindset struggling against some kind of more holistic awareness. The evolution of the PreDad continues.

And for the record, writing a blog about parenting might suggest that I somehow think I have my act together, but I assure you that I don’t. PreDad and all my other more cantankerous selves are right here with me. Just about every single day, PreDad lurches up in me and tries to wrestle my parenting interactions to suit his needs. He wants Gus to LISTEN. To BEHAVE. To HURRY UP. You gotta love that PreDad. He’s consistent…

The Change that a Child Brings
But even PreDad can’t avoid the power of change that a child brings.  PreDad sure doesn’t seem muddled anymore. When he gets a few hours to do something, he knows what he wants to say. He speaks with immense clarity. In fact, he’s writing this blog right now. When he gets a few hours, he writes, he draws, he creates, he’s getting it done. But, unlike before, he has a unifying purpose to his work.  Proving that even he can’t avoid the power of change that hanging in there and staying engaged with your child can create in people. And because of his clarity and capacity to drive processes, PreDad is actually getting invited back in these days.

I don’t want him raising my kid, but I do want him driving my personal passions. As much as PreDad is about me, he serves a powerful role in balancing a parent’s life. He comes storming back in and says, what is your purpose beyond being a father? What will you make, now that you have some clarity? What are you going to become next? Look, I found a really cool idea. Let’s do this new thing.

And so, the cycle of life is playing out. A part of me that once responded with terror and panic, now returns, reborn, to demand new interpretations of how life can be lived. Other, more spiritual parts of me buffer that forceful self from my child, who continues to school me in patience even as he models impatience. Our internal landscape is peopled with complexity, and all of these parts of ourselves, these different individuals that make up the whole of who we are, can help us manage the cycles of change.

So, as Gus grows, I keep trying to access the army of more flexible selves inside me. Sometimes I try to shift, and no one is home. Those are difficult days. But I go running or take a moment to really play with my son and suddenly the mob of energetic patient selves is available to me. And when the panic of failing as parent wells up, I do what I can to embrace that, too.

The Various Versions of Ourselves
If I had to come up with a formula to hold all of this, I would suggest the following. As we struggle to live and grow, we can learn to spot the various versions of ourselves. Often, people can easily define the parts they frame as negative. For me that was PreDad. An impatient and self-centered part of me. A part that, perhaps, I had come to rely on too much over the years before Gus was born.

So I assign PreDad a visual symbol. Perhaps a guy in a red shirt? Then there is the nurturing version of myself. The image of a growing plant? Okay. Then there are other selves. The version of me that loves to play. A jester or a clown? So when I find myself telling Gus to HURRY UP. I can just visualize my Jester and shift to that mode. If I want Gus to HURRY UP and get his shoes on, I can suggest, “Let’s play the animal guessing game while you put on your shoes.” It shifts everything internally and externally and the shoes cease to be the only focus. Then, whether the shoes go on faster or not, you’re playing the game, not just standing there watching your kid put on his shoes AGONIZINGLY SLOWLY. (A watched pot never boils, right?)

The trick, I think, is becoming familiar with our multiple internal selves and moving them to the forefront as needed. Once you identify the first two or three versions of yourself, other less obvious sides of yourself will emerge. You can learn to call on any of them when you need them. They’ll come. Really. And as you embrace this idea of multiple selves, you will discover something else very important. That our multiple selves are neither good nor bad. They are contextual.

I may label PreDad as bossy, but if I am in a burning building, PreDad is the guy I want. The Jester would do me little good. We need to accept and hold all our internal selves because, in balance with each other, they all bring important strengths. And the balancing of these strengths are what will help free us from the unwelcome influence of panic.

Panic is what happens when we have too few choices, when we try to use one way of being for a life that is complicated and ever evolving. Employing our different internal selves brings all of your options into play.

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