13. What to do when you know you're behaving like a toddler

Do you find yourself just not doing the thing you intended to do? No good reason but you just don't want to? In this episode, I talk about what to do if you find yourself just behaving a bit like a naughty toddler and saying "no" to all the things that are good for you. You'll get a five step plan to move from resisting starting to getting going on your tasks.

In the show I mention three past episodes - you can find them here:

How to review your year the strengths-based way

How to set new year's resolutions that stick

Ten lessons I learned about doing PhDs by playing Stardew Valley

I also mention the time management lecture by Randy Pausch

Definitely check them out!

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 13 of the PhD Life Coach. I'm recording this as my first new episode of 2023, and having done my strengths-based review with Professor Jenn Cumming and my New Year's resolutions with Dr. Karin Nordin. I'm feeling super motivated for the year and ready to go. I hope you are too.

I'm sure quite a few of you though are feeling some resistance, especially coming back after holidays, after time off. And even if you are listening to this at a different time in the year, there will inevitably be things where you are feeling like you just don't want to do the thing you need to. And so this week's episode is called “What to do when you know you are behaving like a toddler”.

And what I mean by that is when you know that your inner brain, you're in a voice is just saying, I just don't want to. There's no particular reason why you don't want to do the thing. It's not some underlying fear or you know that you are worried or massive self-doubt or anything. If it's those things, we'll have other episodes for that stuff, but I find there are just times where it's just like, I just don't want to.

I want to sit here and do something fun. I want to mess about on the computer - talking of which, if you haven't listened to my Stardew Valley bonus episode, check that out. It's awesome. I want to mess out on the computer, I want to mess out on social media. I want to watch terrible television. I don't want to do the thing I should be doing, and I'm just kind of metaphorically stamping my feet and not wanting to do it.

And, one of the things that made me realize I wanted to make this episode was I was talking to my coach yesterday and talking about how I'm consciously trying to work on the voice I use to myself when I talk to myself, when I'm in those sorts of moods. When I'm just having a bit of a soak, when I just don't want to do the thing that I'm meant to be doing, when I'm acting like a toddler, how do I talk to myself? And the big realization that I'd had just before that coaching call was that it's really about parenting yourself. It's really about the fact that now that we're grown-ups, there's no one to make us do this. There's no one who forces us to tidy our rooms, to eat healthily, to do the work we're meant to do.

We're somehow expected to do that for ourselves. And it made me really reflect on what can we learn from parenting advice to apply to how we speak to ourselves. 

I'm going to give you a confession. Some of this came out of me spending too much time on social media because for reasons I don't fully understand, the Instagram algorithm seems to think that I need to know about gentle parenting, and it turns out, apparently I did. So I've been hearing quite a few stories recently thinking about gentle parenting and for those of you who don't spend as much time on Instagram as I do and/or who aren't parents and/or who haven't really thought about this stuff, . Essentially there's a line of thought around parenting that there's different approaches and that these often traditionally are authoritative parenting, where you really tell people what to do and you are strict and you're stern. Or permissive parenting, where you're just kinda like, oh no, whatever you want, that's cool, cool. Or sort of a conscious decision to be in between that, which has been termed gentle parenting. And so what I'm going to think about and talk with you about in this episode is why do I think that's irrelevant? Why are we even talking about parenting on a PhD life coach podcast? Why I'm trying these things out on myself, and importantly, how you could think about how this applies to you, so if you want to take these approaches, how would you do that? So those are the things I wanna talk about today.

So why did I feel like this was relevant? Well, usually I was finding that if I was in that sort of “I just don't want to mood” that I would either speak to myself pretty sternly and often quite critically saying, you know, you just need to come on. You need to get on with it. Stop being so lazy. And kind of speak to me in quite a disrespectful way, in definitely quite a bossy, authoritarian way.

Now people that know me might not be too surprised to hear that I speak to myself bossily, but that sort of strict “you just need to buckle down and do it” sort of a voice. I'd have that or I would take almost a permissive parenting approach of, “oh well, if you don't feel like it, you don't feel like it, let's not bother”. And I would really flip flop between those two. Being very strict with myself and resenting it, and being very permissive with myself and regretting it essentially. And then moving between those would make the other one worse. So the more I'd been permissive to myself and allowed myself to not do the thing and indulge myself, the further I would swing to being authoritarian, and then the more authoritarian I was being, I would resist it more, act more like a stroppy toddler and being more permissive with myself as a consequence. And it's something I've really kind of worked on without really putting all this stuff into words. And it's really just been in this last few weeks, I've really thought Gosh, this actually could be gentle parenting. 

So what do I mean by gentle parenting? I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not an expert in gentle parenting. I get married this summer and I'm about to become a stepparent. Beyond that, I don't have children. I don't pretend to know the joys and pains that you parents go through with small children, although I do have a lot of nieces and nephews, so I see some of that. But I've, I've listened to quite a bit about this stuff. I'd encourage you to look it up for yourself if you want to know more detail. But essentially the premise is that in gentle parenting, you work on ensuring the child feels heard and empathizing, but also being firm around your boundaries and what's going to happen.

And so you're not just saying you've got to do it because I've told you to, these are the rules, get on, I'm your parent, do it. And you're not letting your toddler rule your world. You are finding this middle ground where they feel understood and they feel like their emotions are listened to, but where you still help them to act in their own best interests

Because that's the problem with toddlers, and even when we're in toddler mode, we don't act in our own best interests. We stamp our feet and decide that we don't want to do the thing and we just want to lays around and eat chocolate even when we know that's not in line with our long-term goals. Because toddlers don’t think about about long-term goals, they think about right here, right now, what do we want to do? 

And so I have five steps for how to gentle parent yourself when you notice you're behaving like a stroppy toddler. So step one is noticing. I'm trying to notice non-judgmentally. We all do it. This is always my first step. My first step of anything I ever teach you is to notice it and notice non-judgmentally. 

We can't do something unless we notice what we're doing. And if we notice it and beat ourselves up for behaving like a toddler, then we don't get anywhere. We sway into that authoritarian parenting where we're minimizing and saying, “oh, don't be so silly, you shouldn't cry over that” and that's not helpful. So we are gonna try and notice, “oh, look at me. I'm totally acting like a toddler”.

And sometimes that makes me laugh. And to be honest, even that non-judgmental noticing with no other technique, kind of takes some of the sting out of it because I find myself going, “oh my God, you're such a toddler”, and kind of laughing, and that just makes it all feel a little bit better there in the moment.

So first step, notice, you're doing it without judgment. 

The second one is you need to listen to that toddler. What are they saying? Why are you behaving like a toddler? What is it about this thing they don't want to do? Are they scared? Are they tired? Are they hungry? Do they need the toilet?

What have you not noticed? 

Because a toddler has a tantrum when it's thinking something. And sometimes it's something legitimate and sometimes it's something stupid because it's the wrong color cup or whatever, but there's always something, and it's something that's important to them or else they wouldn't be having a tantrum about it.

And sometimes it doesn't feel important to the parents. Sometimes it's like, “my gosh, why are you having a fit about that?” but it feels important to them. 

And so the next step is to listen to that, partly because that gives you a load of information and partly because they're never going to do what you want, if you haven't listened to them first.

You can, in the short term, you can beat yourself into doing things without listening to your thoughts and emotions. But it doesn't work in the long term. We don't stick to that long term. And if we do, it's a pretty miserable existence. So the second step is to listen to yourself, again, non-judgmentally.

Why are you having a little tantrum? Why don't we want to get out of bed today? Why don't we want to exercise? Why don't you want to send that email? Why don't you want to talk to that person? Why are we having a strop? Okay? So make sure you spend a little bit of time just listening to yourself. 

Sometimes writing that down can help because it sort of slows our brains down and forces us to actually think a little bit. So first, notice nonjudgmentally, second, listen to your voice. 

And now the third one is, this is where you get to put your parent pants on. This is where you get to say, “okay, I've listened. I get it. You're scared of sending this email because you are worried you're going to word it wrong and they're all going to hate you”. Or you, I've listened. You know, you're meant to be exercising, but you are kind of tired and you don't really want to, and the programme you want to watch is on tv and you'd rather just sit down. Okay, I get it, I understand”. 

So you get to then evaluate that from your parental position. So in step two, we're really in our toddler mind. Going “okay, come on. What is it? What's the problem?” We're trying to understand that title mind. Now in step three, we're making a decision as a parent, is this concern legitimate and does it change what we're going to do?

So any thoughts are inherently legitimate. So even if being scared is stupid, because there's nothing really to be scared of, if you are feeling scared and you're having thoughts that make you feel scared, totally legitimate. What I mean in this context is do these thoughts and feelings that you are currently experiencing change our plan.

So let's take the example of writing. PhD students always struggle, all academics, always struggle with getting on and getting writing done. It's always a thing. I coach with my individual clients on this a lot. So let's think you are having a bit of a toddler fit about the fact you don't want to write the paper you need to write. 

You're meant to be doing it. It's due to your supervisor soon and you don't want to, and you're having a bit of a toddler tantrum about that. And when you've stopped to listen to yourself in step two, you've gone, “okay, I get it. You're not quite clear on what you need to write. You're not quite clear whether you are doing it the way your supervisor's expecting. And you are worried that your supervisor's gonna think you're an idiot. Okay. Right. Get it. I understand.”

And now, Step three, you get to decide as a parent, what am I doing with that information? And there's a whole bunch of things that you could decide.

You could decide that actually genuinely, this is a reason not to write today. So if, for example, you've checked in and you're just like, I'm exhausted, I've written for the last 10 days in a row. We've produced, I've burnt out, I'm exhausted. I haven't seen fresh air in however long, actually, as a parent, I'm gonna say, “you know what we had planned to write today, but I don't think that's in your best interests.”

So you, so you decide not in a permissive, “okay, baby, if you don't want to, you don't have to” parent way. But in a, “you know what? Actually, on reflection, now that you've talked me through how you're feeling, I think it's probably not in your best interest for us to follow the plan, so we'll do something different today” 

Or you might decide to adjust the plan. You might decide “okay, I get it. But let's just do this bit”. Or, “okay, yeah, it's pretty confusing. Let's see how we can make that clearer. Let's figure out a way to really spell out what we need to write today so that we can make that as easy for you as possible. We're still going to do it, but let's make it as easy as we possibly can”. So you get to decide how you want to take this forward”.

And again, with writing, it can be quite useful to now come in writing as the parent. So in the listening to yourself, allow yourself to write as a toddler, writing a felt tip for goodness sake, whatever you want. But now you're coming in as a parent, you're writing in a proper pen, and you're saying, “okay, right. What is in my best interests in the moment and my best long-term interests?”

So you decide.

And then step four is I want you to bring, what I call “firm compassion”. So once you've decided, you are not going to say to yourself, “right, come on, you just need to get on with it”. Always listen out for your voice saying you “just” need to, because that usually means there’s something difficult you need to do and you've not fully thought it through.

So you're not going to be your authoritarian parent. You're going to find a voice that is firmly compassionate. “I get it. This is hard. Of course it is. We knew that when we signed up for it. When we decided we wanted to do a PhD, we knew it was gonna be tough, and you are worried. Your supervisor thinks you're an idiot. That's okay. You're not really clear on what you need to do next. But we do need to do something today. So let's figure out how we can make this as easy as possible. How we can get just a bit done. We'll have some nice stuff afterwards.”

Do you see that voice? Do you see how it's different from, “oh, well let's not bother today”, or, “come on, you just gotta get on”. So that firm compassion is step four. 

And then the final step I've already alluded to in that step four, but the final step is how can you make it fun and how can you make it easy? So if you've got a toddler that you need to stop having tantrum and tidy their room, for example you might go, “I wonder if you could pick up all the bricks faster than I can”, or “I'll race you to fill that up”, or “let's do it all laying on the floor and pretending that we are dinosaurs” or whatever. You'd think of ways to make it fun. Or you might think of ways to make it easy. I remember watching a a video on YouTube, which - I'll put the link to it in the show notes because it's super amazing. It's by this academic called Randy Pausch.

It's really inspiring. It's all about time management. I'll let him tell you the story, but he's somebody who he's not with us anymore. At the time he made the talk, he was experiencing terminal illness and was talking about time management from that perspective. And he was amazing. Anyway, slight tangent, but I will give you him things in the show notes. 

And one of the things I remember him talking about was managing his children. When they needed to tidy their room by just breaking it down really easily. They'd say, “I don't want to, dad, there's too much”. And he'd say, “okay, but could you pick up all your clothes and put them in the laundry basket?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I could do that.” 

“Okay, brilliant. Could you pick up your Lego and put that in the Lego box?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could do that.”

And he'd do it one bit at a time until suddenly he'd tidied his room. And so you can make it fun or you can make it easy. The other one that works quite well, not so much with toddlers necessarily, but with us, is how can I make it feel indulgent and luxury?

So how can I make this feel a little bit special? So it's like “I'm having a toddler tantrum. I don't really want to do this writing, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to make myself a really nice hot chocolate and I'm going to get a blanket and I'm going to do it in my favourite room and just make it feel nice”. So let's do it.

And that's the last step. So how you stop yourself be when you know you're behaving like a toddler is those five steps. 

1)You notice it non-judgmentally. 

2) You listen to what you're having a drop about. 

3) You decide what things still need to happen. Do you adjust it? Do you encourage 'em to go ahead? Do you stop entirely? Do you modify your plans? You decide with your best parental pants on. 

4) You exercise firm compassion when you're saying to yourself what you're gonna do.

5) And then you do whatever you can to make it fun and easy and a bit luxury. 

Let me know how you get on. I would love to hear, and you can either find me on Twitter @drvikkiburns

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can drop it in the comments. If you haven't found me on YouTube yet, I put all of these podcasts onto YouTube for people who prefer that. Let me know. I hope you find it useful. 

It's something I use on myself increasing amount. I have set some resolutions around my exercise training for circus, which I'm super excited about.

And I am going to be using this gentle parenting to get myself to do my strength training program and my circus training that I want to do this year. I'll keep you posted on how I get on, and I'd love to hear about how you get on. 

So next time you find yourself having a little strop, I hope you find this technique useful. Take care and see you next week.