MELODY: So I came across a cry for help the other day: How can I stop my child from coming into my bed every night, this mum was sharing in an online forum. She was exhausted because you know kids, sleeping, drunk octopus, lost their keys, arms legs, looking for everything, everywhere.

FAITH: Yeah, they do that.

MELODY: One advice however stood out for me and you'll love it. This person told the mum, "Your child obviously has attachment issues. You need to work on it."

FAITH: Wait, what? That's...that's coming across as really judgey because they didn't have any other context other than just that one sliver of information. How did they know it's not like a gazillion other different issues that could be contributing to that? I mean, like, you just jump from one piece of information and then boom, this is it?

MELODY: Yup.

FAITH: I mean this, this is, this is the thing, right. I mean, there are general guidelines that, true, as far as we know, do work on a population level but because we're all unique individuals, there's so much complexity involved that when we bring these complexities into our lives and our relationships it's not so simple anymore to say, "Oh I had, I know this one small information therefore it must be this." No. You have one information but there's so much complexity happening all around. It could be a lot of other things here and there's a lot of grey that we don't know and we're living life in the grey. That's the thing, it's grey!”

MELODY: Good! I thought you would like that. I thought I would get, you were giving me the reaction that I thought I would get.

FAITH: What? That I was feeling judgey about someone being judgey?

MELODY: Yes! Let's park that for now and we're gonna let people know who we are.

FAITH: Okay.

MELODY: And the fact that you know, we're here to be judgey about people being judgey. [LAUGHTHER]

FAITH: No no. We're here to stand up for ourselves and heal the the wounds that come from being judged or feeling judged.

MELODY: By judging other people. [LAUGHTHER] So, this podcast "Life in the Grey" is a Mums At The Table podcast. It isn't about our mutual lack of melanin causing us to prematurely go grey.

FAITH: Although that is true though.

MELODY: It also isn't so much about judging other people for being judgey. It is more about being a micro podcast where we try to understand what makes us tick and how it impacts our lives and relationships. It's gonna be short because we ain't got time for fluff. My name is Melody and I have a journalistic background. I spent the past eight years working in the parenting arena through Mums At The Table, interviewing parenting experts and speaking with mums. So I have an eight-year-old son and we live in Sydney, Australia.

FAITH: And I'm Faith and I have a background in psychology but I'm not a psychologist. I do have decades of deep personal experience with counselling practices, trauma healing and navigating mental health challenges. And I live in Singapore, hence this digital space of meeting online and you know chatting on over over the digital space, yeah. It works.

MELODY: And we bonded because of our grey hair, nah, more than that. Anyway.

FAITH: And our love of colour.

MELODY: I'm gonna go back to the topic that we're talking about. On the one hand, yes you gave me all the reactions that I thought you would give but yet I wanted to point out as well that you know, what that person actually gave was actually quite sound advice because it is true. Some children with attachment issues can be extra needy and clingy. Of course, at the same time as you've mentioned, there are so many layers of what's wrong with it. It's judge…the judgement is strong. It is very judgey. I mean, I'm not even the mum and my first reaction is, "You don't know me. How dare you say my child has attachment issues?"

FAITH: Because that statement, it's kind of like trying to give someone a technical solution when what that person has is a relationship problem. So let me explain.

MELODY: Technical solution?

FAITH: Yah, let me explain. Technical solutions are like two plus two equals four. You know you're gonna get an answer. You know what kind of answer you're gonna get. You get, you do X, you know you're going to get Y, right? And relationship problems are so much more complex. They have nuances and I'm gonna qualify this. When I say relationships, it can refer to the relationship that we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with others, the relationship we have with our beliefs, our values, our history, right? Our experiences, and all of that. It makes us same-same but different. And that's why when we bring our differences into our interactions and our reactions, the answers that we get aren't always technically right or wrong. It would be so much more helpful if we could get curious because when we can excavate more information, when we can uncover more context, that's when we can figure out what technical solutions can apply how, can apply where, can apply when…and then it becomes so much more useful.

MELODY: But it's interesting what you said, that you know there's technical solutions and there's relationship solutions, and that when it comes to people relating to each other or even relating to themselves, it's a relationship solution. But when you think about it right.

FAITH: Relationship problems.

MELODY: Yes, sorry, yeah. But when you think about it right, technical solutions are actually very rife in in the world. Like in both in self-help, in psychology even, but especially in parenting. I can take, I'm just gonna use parenting as an example because it just reminds me of you know, when I first became pregnant, I approached my impending parenthood like you know, the overachieving student that I am. I found the best parenting books, I researched all the parenting advice and I was gonna be the best parent to my child, right? I'm gonna get HD, A+ and it's... the information that I led… that I got got led to is the same as the attachment one. It had very sound, it was very sound advice. There was scientific evidence behind them. There was all these case studies around them where the researchers and experts proved that what they did created the results that came. But. The problem with all of that was that none of it worked for my child. He cried and he cried and he cried as a baby. And that's the thing, right? What I concluded out of that? Was that I was a terrible mum. I broke my child, I was a failure. I tried all the advice. I tried all these technical solutions. 90% of the population has gotten, well…99% of the population has gotten it to work. I'm failing. So if I'm failing, I'm doing it wrong, I'm failing.

FAITH: This, this is so… it's so… it's so interesting, right? Human brains are so interesting that we can have so much compassion for other people when they are, when they are not in a, when they're not in a good space, right? When things are not working out for them, we can say, "Oh look, you know, there's so many other reasons why it could not work out for you." But then when it comes to ourselves, immediate conclusion: Blame yourself. You're the problem! When the real the reality is that you know, the technical solutions, they can be very reassuring especially for someone who is new at something and is struggling. Parenting or whatever it is, right? The solutions can offer a ray of hope. This is like, "Okay, someone's done it before. Here's something that I can try. Here's a tool that I can try." And then when it doesn't work out our brains go: You're the reason why it didn't work. Yes, because you're like, this expert says do this and you're the outlier.

MELODY: Yes, yeah and you're the outlier, you're the reason it didn't work.

FAITH: And, and this is, this is why I say the grey is so important. Because we are not robots. We have to make space for the grey. For the stuff that we don't know. We don't know what we don't know. We don't know why it didn't work. There are also other aspects of it. Other elements that might have contributed to the situation, that we didn't know about. We are in the same boat but we are still different human beings.

MELODY: Different, different family of origins, different personalities, different influences, different perspectives and you know, we're talking about babies and it sounds like "Oh well, this doesn't apply to babies", but you know, babies have personalities as well. So, yes, the environment around us is different, the resources we have access to are different. So it is, you're right it is all different.

FAITH: It's different. And we need to take into consideration, context. We need to leave that little space to say, "Hey, you know, like, can I have this space of compassion for myself? Can I have this possibility that it's not always just me?

MELODY: But it's hard, right? Like, you know when you think about the fact that when you're stuck, you're holding this crying baby, you're sleep deprived, your emotions are hard and you're going...well, you're not going, you're not going, "Oh what is the wrong variable here that's different?" You just want the solution to work You just want to two plus two equals four. Two plus two equals baby sleeping, baby being quiet.

FAITH: Yeah and it's really… I mean I feel so, I feel so frustrated when things don't work out right, and I cannot even imagine how much worse it would feel for mothers who are sleep-deprived, who are feeling so helpless and powerless and then they're feeling also all this, all this like, you know like, like pain for their child because they're thinking this child is going through so much misery and they can't take the misery away, they can't fix it. So I can't even imagine the kind of stress that they're going through, right, and in the midst of all this they're like, "What solution is there?" And you know the funny thing is, this sounds really counterintuitive, it really sounds counterintuitive but before we let that guilt and shame run away with us, can we just pause and say, "I…I wanna give myself some grace, right? I want to give myself some grace."

MELODY: Which is really hard for a mum. Because you know, I once talked to someone before
and they were basically saying that you know when you gave birth to a child, you gave birth to guilt at the same time as well. But yes, I get what you're saying.

FAITH: Because the thing is this. Whatever we're feeling, those are so human and it's so understandable. And it's not to say don't feel those feelings. You know what? The feelings are gonna be there. Feel the feelings! Feel the feelings! And then also leave a little bit of space for compassion to say, "It's okay to feel these feelings." And it's also okay to leave room to say, "I wanna get curious. I wanna get curious about what else could be out there that's happening here that I don't know about yet. What else could be happening?"

MELODY: It's a very interesting point you put up there because it reminds me of, yes, we do need to be curious because what we see may be the presentation of a problem, but what led to the problem is very different. I mean, to be a little bit more practical and specific here. Let's talk about anger right. And we're talking about a kid throwing a tantrum or being angry in the middle of a supermarket. And we're saying, immediately everyone's going like, "Oh, this kid doesn't have discipline" or "This mum is doing…" you know, being judgey again. But the thing is with anger, right? It may be the problem you see, but it's also the perfect mask for so many different other emotions. I may have feelings of inadequacies, that's why I'm angry. I may be afraid, that's why I'm angry. I may not have gotten that I want, that's why I'm angry. I may be grieving, that's why I'm angry. And the solution for every single one of that is so very different.

FAITH: And that's why context matters. But I do want to caveat this though. I think something that I think is important to remember is when people are in the midst of a very high intense emotional state. When they're sleep-deprived, when they are whatever, right. I don't think that's the time to really want to excavate really deep.

MELODY: Ah yeah, no.

FAITH: Because we're probably not gonna be excavating very effectively but it's just to say we we just leave room for the possibility. Because just even that, right, even just saying that there is room for the possibility allows us to tap into that self-compassion. And just tapping into the possibility that we can access this self-compassion gives our brain this space, this space to breathe and it sort of like turn away from being inward, blame-oriented to maybe starting to say, "Hmm…there's possibility to be solution-focused and it all adds up overtime and you get a little bit better every day. You know, it gets a little bit better every day.

MELODY: It's a good thought about the pause because that's the thing, right. We… I don't know about everybody else but I'm really good at reacting. Like it's immediate reacting. And you know we're talking about anger, right? It's like basically something that goes wrong, the first reaction is anger. But when you… anger…it could be anger at the child or anger at myself but when you give yourself the time to pause and say, "I will look at this and I'll figure out what's going on, but I need to pause right now.” That gives that…space.

FAITH: Yeah. The space. It's not even that you have to do something in the space. Sometimes it's just giving yourself space to breathe. Just space to breathe. We are really just human. We are not robots. So technical solutions can be very reassuring. It's good to know they exist. But we also need to give space for that grey area of context, grey area of what we don't know yet, grey area of all these different complexities and saying, "Yes, I have technical solution here, I have technical solution here, I have all these different technical solutions. I've all this… now how does that apply to me? How does that apply to my baby? How does it apply to my wounds? My own experiences? And how can I give myself compassionate space and time to slowly unpack this?"

MELODY: And yeah, and that is especially important when you're trying to receive advice because, well I mean, you know there's the one hand where you're trying to do it yourself but then when someone's coming in to give you advice, that's when you really need to think about, Do they know the full context and chances are, they don't. I mean let's talk about the problem that I mentioned at the start where the child keeps going back to the parents' bed. It may not be an attachment issue, it may simply be a child being a child. They wanna be safe and it's not…nothing to do with attachment. Or it may be that the child needs reassurance because there had just happens to be some big changes that's happening in their life at that point in time. It could be anything.

FAITH: Yep. And I know we made a joke earlier right, about judging people after we feel being judged and all that. But the reality is that when we receive, when we receive advice that doesn't land well, we have a choice too. We do have a choice. And it doesn't mean that the feelings that we feel make us bad or make us good. The feelings that we feel are just the feelings that we feel. Ultimately it's what we do with the feelings after that. And we can look at the advice and go "Hmm okay, so I felt a little bit bad at the beginning. I felt threatened, I felt inadequate and they brought up all these feelings of reactive reaction out of me. But, hmm, I can take a look at the advice and go well, it doesn't really quite work here. Or I can go and I can take a look at the advice and go, oh actually that made… kind of kind of made sense." But to get to that space, there's pause that's needed and there's compassion that's needed, both for ourselves and for other people.

MELODY: And the most important thing with the compassion is that, yes, we did say that it was a judgey comment but if you take the pause and you realise that, well that person is actually coming from a good place as well because it's probably a solution that's worked for them. And so instead of feeling judged ourselves it's just basically saying that well that would work in a different context. Not in my context but that is a good solution, just doesn't work in my context.

FAITH: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly.

MELODY: Which then removes the anger from you and also removes the feelings of being judged by the person.

FAITH: Exactly. Totally agree.

MELODY: Just a heads up. We're here to share stories and ideas not to give advice. If you enjoyed our chat today don't forget to give us a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button and click the bell icon so you never miss an episode. Prefer just the audio? You can find us on your favourite podcast app. Just search for "Life in the Grey" And that's grey with an "E". We'll love to keep the conversation going so please leave a comment below or reach out on our social channels through Mums At The Table, the village it takes to raise a mum. Thanks for tuning in!