Expectations - thought about yours lately?
- Wendy Bennett
- Sep 20, 2015
- 2 min read
So this is week 3 of me seeing “Kate”. Kate is our case study subject (40ish mum of 3, works full time and is feeling lost, as though something is missing, cannot find joy in her life and is fighting with her husband).
Kate is continuing to write in her journal and has noticed that the positive and negative posts are about even so I challenge Kate for the coming week to journal 2 positive items for every negative.
I take Kate back to when she first came to see me and ask her to expand on the issue of her struggling to be the perfect wife / mother / employee / daughter / woman. I would ask Kate
where in particular she was having problems and where she felt she was not achieving all that she wanted.
Further in to this session I am going to work with Kate to define those roles. What does it mean to her to be the perfect Wife? Are her expectations realistic given the other commitments she has in her life? Often a source of stress is that we are not meeting our internal definitions of what a mother / wife etc should be doing.
In addition to this I would ask to Kate to think about herself – not Kate the mom or Kate the wife or Kate the employee but Kate.
What does she want?
What are her dreams?
Desires for herself?
What does she stand for?
What does she believe in?
Writing down these definitions is important as it is not until we see them in front of us that we can determine if we are expecting the impossible of ourselves. When looking at Kate’s definition of wife and mother I would encourage her to discuss her definition of these roles with her husband. We can form expectations in our head of what we believe our partner wants or needs of us. Until we have the discussion surrounding roles and responsibilities in the home these misconceptions can be a source of marital problems.
So Kate’s homework for this week – in addition to the continuation of journaling will be to discuss with her husband their roles as parents and partners. It can be fairly high level at this stage but this is a good starting foundation for later discussions regarding more specific partner roles such as cleaning, cooking as well as parenting issues such a discipline, sleep time and other household rules.
If you have a question regarding the tools and techniques I am employing with Kate please do not hesitate to contact me – amazeinlife@hotmail.com
Wendy xo
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