Why You Snap Even Though You Know Better

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the moƒm you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy mom, dog mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. How we doing today? So glad to be back with you. I’m still getting in my groove of recording the weekly public podcast, so I still feel like a little bit giddy every time I go to record, even though the recordings never stopped. And I did some fantastic teaching podcasts that are really, amazing inside the membership and they’re still in there. It’s just been a different experience reaching so many more of you at this scale every single week.

And even though I’ve done this for years, after five months of just doing it monthly, coming back to weekly has just been so much fun for me and just, really exciting. So I’m really happy to be here with you, every Wednesday new podcast and hopefully you take away just something that really helps you with your mental and emotional health. The clients that I work with and the moms that are kind of in this space typically are like high achieving moms who have a very high capacity, and with that come its own challenges, right? We have like a racing thoughts and you know, and instead of having the challenge be to get more done, the challenge is to sit still and rest and, it’s work that I’ve done. I remember when I was certified as a coach, it’s insane to say that was like eight years ago now it feels like yesterday, but I remember one of my coaches just being so highly productive, yet so chill and I was like, you are a unicorn.

Like, I could just tell how chill she was in her energy, in her body. And up to that point, I really had only understood high productivity as coming with like a side of being a little bit manic. You know what I mean it’s like the high achieving mom dilemma where we’re just like in that go, go, go doer energy all of the time and it’s not really a problem except it is a problem for you and it just kind of robs you of your experience, I think, of everyday life. And I remember just kind of in my mind having like more, all or nothing thinking about, it’s like, oh, you’re either highly productive and you’re like type A or you’re just more chill and laid back and type B and until just witnessing this person, in her work, like I had had that sort of black and white view of things, but she really broke my brain about it and I witnessed her being super highly productive.

Like I consider myself top 1% of productivity and I just have worked so hard on being able to like produce and not busy as like a skill, but I had not worked on up until that point, like how to simultaneously have a lot of slowness and groundedness and to be like calmer in my body. And seeing her really showed me like, oh my gosh, it’s possible to have both. And so if you are listening to this, this is sort of just a tangent before we dive into today, it was kind of related, but a little bit of a tangent. It’s just on my heart. I just want you to know that it is one a thousand percent possible for you to continue to be highly productive and high achieving and get a lot done, like a lot done. And at the same time in your body, in your energetics, like energetically feel calm, grounded, present, it’s not like a fire is happening in the next room and you’re putting out the fire in your running around, you know, like a chicken with its head cut off sort of trying to do everything all at once where it feels overstimulating or overwhelming and it, it’s not a good time, right?

And this is sort of when you’re like trying to get your to-do list done to feel better, okay? Versus, oh my goodness, like I just am so proud to say, obviously it started then for me witnessing her experience that and I was like, Ooh, I want that. Now, now I have it. And I want to be an example of that because I just don’t think it’s talked about that much and witnessed that much in terms of like now my capacity is very, very, very high to get things done. And at the same time, I still have to like work on this part of myself to make sure I’m like in the space that I want to be in physically, like with my feelings and, nervous system response. But I, I do it very, very well. It’s like a skill that I have definitely worked on in the last handful of years where I can be highly productive and not feel frantic and manic and crazy in my mind.

Like I’m also in my body. I’m very grounded and connected. And, I remember working with a one-to-one coach years ago and, and just feeling like one of my top emotions all of the time was excited, okay? And nothing wrong with excitement. I love to be excited still, but I worked on that because like, again, that emotion is very reflective of, if you’re someone who’s highly productive and constantly in that state of, go, go, go, then like your kind of parallel really positive emotion is likely excitement. Like I didn’t really know how to be grounded, how to be calm and just like joyful and happy. Like it felt very, unsafe or scary for my body. And now I can do that, right? A part of it is like I had to learn the skills to do that because if you don’t, and you have small children who are like very much not concerned about the destination, right?

They do not care. They’re like, look at that tree over there and let’s stop, right? It’s like, have you ever gone on a walk with a toddler? It’s like they are not at all concerned about the destination. It’s like, let’s find a pine cone. No, that one is really dirty. We gotta put that one back. And, and so it’s really like stop and smell the roses that saying. And for me, being able to do that and still be highly productive, it’s sort of like the yin and the yang. And I feel very grateful to have done that work. And so I’m always kinda asking myself like, how can I get more done, like with less? And, I think it’s related, but it might not seem related. It’s like my mini course that’s on weight loss, how I lost 50 pounds in four months. It’s like I was able to figure out how to lose weight with less.

And that’s sort of the framework that I ask myself to accomplish other things, like in my business, I have revenue goals and I’m like, how can I get this revenue goal? And how can I serve X number of clients with less, like, less time, but maybe more ad spend or like just figuring out the puzzle pieces. And I think that when you like want so much in your life and you want to take on so much, it’s such a useful question to ask, so that you don’t put your body into like, taking on too much so that you don’t feel overstimulated and or overwhelmed. And so just kind of on my heart thinking about it and I, I think it is one of the best skills for me because it allows me to expand my life so much. Like I can take on more in my business and in my family without the overwhelm, without the kind of, inner like frantic frenzy leading me because of that skill.

I did teach, in the Mom On Purpose membership, the brand new masterclass that just came out a couple weeks ago called Calm at Heart. And I really teach these skills and so I definitely highly recommend getting that over at momonpurpose.com/coaching. That’ll be very helpful. And that kind of dovetails nicely into today’s topic, which is why you snap even though you know better. And that masterclass will a thousand percent help you as well alongside this podcast. And so let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about snapping even though you know better, because if you’re listening to this, you’re like a smart educated mom, you do the work, you are very self-aware, like, you know, intellectually how to not snap okay or yell. I’m kind of using snapping and yelling kind of interchangeably here, but you still do it. Why is that? Okay, I want to ground this in an analogy.

I think it’ll be really helpful if you watch an entire video series, you could take an entire course on How to Bake a Cake and you can study that course, you can watch module after module and read PDF guide after PDF guide and you will learn some things, right? You will learn in what order to mix the ingredients and how much blending you should do and how to kind of, prepare the dough and the batter and the cake and all the things, right? You will learn very, useful tools, right? We can all imagine this if it’s not a cake. Like I don’t bake a lot of cakes personally, I tend to. I like cooking and baking, but you know, cakes I tend to cater out or order from a bakery. And so for me, this example resonates so much because I know that if I went into the kitchen right now and baked a cake, no, my friends, we are not serving that for a birthday, right?

Because it’s my first cake that I’ve ever baked, right? Aside from the, the prepackaged box kind. So when you learn something intellectually, it’s not the same as having practiced it. Now you still need both, right? Because if you just say, I’m going to go in the kitchen and bake a cake, and you, you’ve not taken a course on it, you’ve not read a book, you don’t have a recipe at all. You’re just like, I’m going to bake a cake. You will not have a cake at the end of that, right? If you have no experience baking cakes, the same is true. Like if you don’t know anything about thoughts, create feelings and feelings, drive actions and, you try to stop yelling, you’re just trying to like use willpower that will not work. But really, like, you know, the title of this podcast is why you snap, even though you know better, I’m talking to the person who has taken the, the course on how to bake a cake.

I’m talking to the person who you, kind of know better than to snap or yell. Like you know enough, you’re educated, you understand your thoughts, create your feelings and your feelings, drive your actions. You understand that snapping is an action. You understand that, in order to not snap or yell, you need to think and feel differently ahead of time, right? You understand that the same as if you took, an entire course or class on how to bake a cake. Like you understand in when order to mix the ingredients, you understand how things go. It is still different than baking a cake every single week for a year, okay? Because cake number one, compared to cake number 15 compared to cake number 35 compared to cake number 52, very, very different cakes, right? Because of the experience, because you’re training your body because there are nuances to how you are learning to bake a cake.

There are nuances to what you picked up from what you read and learned versus your application. Of course, we understand this, we understand that taking a course on baking a cake is very different than applying that course and baking one cake a week for an entire year and getting 50 plus reps in 52 reps in such a different experience. Your body has to practice the actions. So what am I getting at here? When you snap, even though you know better, it’s not because you’re missing information, it’s because you haven’t practiced the work. You haven’t, you know, done thought work out of the moment every single day to rewire your brain to have a new experience physically in predictable circumstances. So let me give you an example here. Let’s say that you predictably snap when you’re trying to get your kids out the door in the morning, now it’s, you know, what, you know, might be telling yourself like it’s gotten a lot better.

I used to snap right away and now I don’t, you know, snap all of the time and it’s only on the days when I have to ask three or four times or it’s only on the days when, my middle like really won’t listen or whatever it is, right? But there are still predictable patterns, there’s still predictable times when you are snapping trying to get out the door in the morning, okay? Your body knows that snapping works. It works to get compliance. Now, there is a net negative consequence, let’s call it to that because it damages the relationship. Now that’s, you know, I don’t want to like, make that seem that it, you can’t repair it, right? We inadvertently or accidentally just as human beings, like kind of damage our relationships and then we repair, right? But we try our best not to of course, right?

We make mistakes like we’re human beings, but in terms of learning tools and practicing these tools so they become skills so that we don’t, snap in the future, that’s a way that we can really like change ourselves, change how we show up as moms and so that we are not inadvertently kind of damaging that relationship. Because when you snap it’s about getting compliance, getting cooperation. It’s about controlling the other person like immediately in the moment, okay? And snapping or yelling works to get that to happen. That’s why you do it, okay? But, it also has the downside, the nine negative consequence of now you’re very disconnected from your child, right? The relationship has like a little crack in the foundation, right? And so in my Connected Parenting Framework that is also in the Mom On Purpose bundle that you can get as well as in the membership, if you want just the masterclasses by the way, they are in a bundle.

And you can go while supplies last to the discounted link, which is momonpurpose.com/bundle. You will get the Parenting Framework where I teach this because you have to have connection as the foundation. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be perfect and never yell or snap, but you have to be able to repair through, connection. Otherwise, the relationship won’t stand right? And this is how we grow up and we don’t want to like talk to our parents, right? Because like we don’t have connection as the foundation. And so it’s not about never yelling again it is about prioritizing connection. And every time we yell or snap just think of like that connection foundation as like getting a little crack that now we have to fill, okay? Again, I don’t want to, I’m not even going to go like on a whole tangent of like mom guilt and shame, but that is relevant.

And so we have to work on that so that we have space even to do this work on yelling and snapping. Because if you’re judging yourself, if you’re blaming yourself or you’re blaming your circumstances, you just won’t even be able to access the part of you that needs to work on this skill. It’s like, it’s all of the reasons why you can’t get into the kitchen and bake a cake, right? Versus like what I’m talking about here is like we just gotta get you in the kitchen baking cakes every single week so that you get your reps in. That’s what I’m talking about with how to stop yelling or snapping even though you know better. It’s, it’s getting your thought work reps in out of the moment that is key to training your body. So this is what’s going to actually help you to stop snapping.

It is not learning more. It’s not another audio book, it’s not another podcast my friends. It is the actual practice of doing thought work. And I think people like don’t understand what that means. Okay? And so I just want to, and, and that’s partly my fault. So I’m always trying to talk about it and, and also we’re just not like, this isn’t a normalized part of, of our culture yet, right? I think back to when like exercising wasn’t really a thing, right? And now it’s a huge thing, like everyone talks about it and I just really hope that thought work, gets that popular because it is just as important. It’s just for your mental health. And so just like we might say, let’s exercise, you know, four to seven days a week, let’s do thought work four to seven days a week, especially when there’s an area that you want to work on and you gotta sit down and you gotta write it out so that you’re training your mind, okay?

And I think of like taking a new language class. Like if I wanted to learn Spanish, they would have me writing in Spanish to practice that new language and then I would speak it and then, I would fumble my words and I wouldn’t get it right and the teacher would correct me and then I would try again. And it like, I could take years of Spanish, right? And I would be training my mind and body to, learn that language. And that is exactly what you’re doing with learning to stay grounded and regulated and choose calm during, circumstances that are predictably hard for you, predictably chaotic, predictably stressful. And so think about one of those situations like getting out the door in the morning and you, right? Trying to like white knuckle it. You haven’t done the thought work, you haven’t actually practiced baking the cake and you’re like, okay, I’m trying to remember what it says in the course to bake the cake.

It’s like trying to remember what you learned, on this podcast or, you know, in any of my other containers, but you haven’t actually written it out and trained your body out of the moment. It’s just impossible, right? It’s trying to like bake a cake for a competition, but you actually haven’t practiced five times before that. And so before you get to the performance, which is the daily, out the door for the mornings, you gotta practice your thought work and writing down actually what you want to be thinking during like circumstances that are typically challenging for you. So for example, when you’re trying to get out the door and your kids are doing whatever they’re doing predictably, like I want you to expect them to be their “worse”. Like they’re the same, right? What is your thought right before you yell, right before you snap?

I’m not talking about the times when they listen or it’s easy or you take a deep breath and I’m not talking about how you react in like the way that you want to show up. What we’re talking about here is when you snap, even though you know better right before you snap, what are you thinking? That is the only reason that you snap. I want to be really clear. It is not because of what your kids are doing. I promise you I could go in there and not snap, not because I’m a better mom, I promise you that I am not. But because I have practiced these tools so much that I’m not snapping, okay? Now this does not mean I’m perfect. Please do not hear me speaking from my ivory tower. I just want to be an example to you of what’s possible when you practice these tools so that it’s like, you know, again, the cake analogy, it’s like I’m not making a perfect cake every single time, but, I’ve been making cakes once a week for the last eight years, let’s call it that.

And so like thought work is a part of my daily life. I question the words that I use, for most high achieving women who are like educated and they know better, right? In their minds, the reason that they’re still snapping is because they’re not doing the work out of the moment to become number one more aware of the actual problem thought, okay? You have lots of thoughts, some of them are very helpful, others of them are very problematic and lead to you snapping. And you only need to look at the thoughts that create the unwanted result. Even if you don’t snap. Let’s take an instance when you don’t snap, if you feel like I’ve been there, my friends, I’m laughing, right? Just imagine it probably not hard when, when was the last time where you didn’t snap or yell, but your body just felt so tense and it felt so challenging, okay?

That we want to take a look at, we want to take a look at what are you thinking that’s creating that, okay? I am all for you, teaching your kids, helping them become independent, more independent, helping them, move things along and do all of those things, but not so that you can feel better, not so that you need them to cooperate in order for you to not lose your cool. Because then it’s like emotionally delegating your experience to your kids, right? They’re too little for that. You don’t want to do that to anyone, even an adult, right? Because you know it’s hard enough to, take care of our own emotions and it’s just not their responsibility. It’s also unfair to them and it’s unfair to you. And so instead it’s like, okay, I notice my kids struggling in the morning. I want to practice this with them out of the moment, but not so that I’m not losing it so that they just learn this skill.

But if I’m losing it or I’m snapping, that’s work that I need to do on my thoughts. That’s it. Not on anything else, my friends. You don’t need to exercise more. You don’t need to practice gratitude. You don’t need to practice patience. I love gratitude, I love patience. I love exercise. They’re just not related to why you snap. Okay? And this is the message that I really want to get across, is like, you have to become aware of the actual thought that happens instantaneously so quickly before you snap. And this is why it’s out of the moment work. You can’t possibly do this in the moment. You have to do it out of the moment so you can slow it way down. There’s a one sentence in your brain that you are thinking that creates, frustration or tension. Like, it could be a thought like they know better or we’re going to be late and, you know, they’re not listening or like, it’s, it’s usually a thought.

It it is resisting the reality of the situation. It’s usually what it’s right because that’s why it feels so frustrating to us. And then we ultimately snap and we try, we try so hard, not to, but then if you’re just using willpower again, that is why you end up kind of thinking that you know better, but still snapping. And this really does get at kinda the language that you use in high pressure situations. And this is what I taught in the Calm At Heart framework, but you really need this my friends, because you’ll learn how to unwind those pressure fueled thoughts. So that like it, I always like to think of the example of like stubbing your toe, okay? Like it doesn’t have to be related to your kids. Obviously we’re talking about snapping here in this episode about with your kids, but like, it could be any situation where you normally have like tension or frustration or you have some sort of dialogue, that feels intense or heated or you’re mad like, like when you get hurt, when you stub your toe or when like there’s a little like annoyance, right?

Your husband forgets to pick up, I dunno, the dry cleaning on the way home or something, right? Something small. What is your inner dialogue like? Most of the time we are totally unaware of that because here’s the thing, high achieving women are really, really good at looking externally at other people at what they’re doing, at what they’re not doing, at how they’re feeling and taking care of other people’s needs. And then not only is that like a very, high functioning part of the primitive brain, but couple that with like how we are conditioned just as women and then as moms, to meet everyone else’s needs, right? From a very young age we’re taught like, oh my gosh, you’re such a good girl when you do something nice for someone else or when you, are quiet, right? You are praised for being pleasing to others.

And so what this manifest as in adulthood and as moms is taking care of everyone else’s needs and kind of having this, buzzing mindset of like, it’s my job to take care of everyone else pretty much always. And why that makes you snap or yell and not be able to stop it even though you know better is because you’re not even aware even though you think you are, that you are so externally focused that you haven’t looked at the actual root cause of the snapping. There is a thought that you continue to think and it is the only reason that you keep snapping, even though you are highly self-aware, it’s probably 80% externally focused and you’re validated for that. No one’s like great job looking at your thoughts today. They’re like, great job taking care of your kids. I don’t know how you do it.

You get so much done, right? And so what do we do? We’re like, oh my gosh, the more I do, the better I am. And so we keep in this loop and again, this is not a knock on being productive. I love, I love me some productivity as I talked about in the beginning, but it is just, I think adding more color and hopefully it’s helpful for you to see. Like, it takes a lot of intention to say, you know what? I’m not going to get more praise for this and I’m going to validate myself and it’s so worth it because it is so life changing my friends, there is not a day that I am not so incredibly thankful for thought work because, I know that it is the reason that I do anything or don’t do anything. I know that, like when I am frustrated or tense or want to snap at my kids or snap at my kids, like it’s coming from my thinking and that’s for my sake because then I don’t turn into a crazy controlling mom. My friends, okay, I learned this work before becoming a mom.

Becoming a mom. And I promise you my default, just natural personality tendency, probably personality traits that I was born with, combined with like how I was raised, firstborn daughter, all the things is to be a control freak. Oh, thousand percent, right? And I, I think for a lot of us, we just, it feels safer to be more controlling. And what I always tell myself is like, okay, I gotta stop trying to control them and start trying to control me more. That’s really what this is about because when you snap it’s because you’re trying to control something outside of your control. Don’t touch that, don’t do that. Hurry up, let’s go. Right? It’s like I can’t let you fight with your brother. Take that away. Like there’s this, controlling part of your brain that thinks it’s useful and it is in so far as it stops the behavior immediately.

But you know what? Even when your kids are, about to hit each other and you gotta hold a boundary, even when they are, you know, kinda like “dangerous” , right? It’s not like there’s a fire, but they’re fighting with each other and you really need to get in there and stop, especially with little ones this comes up, but sometimes with big ones as well, it’s like you don’t need to be in the state that your body thinks there’s a freaking fire. Okay? You can, I like to think of, either like military, navy seals. I also like to think of like physicians and nurses. Like you’re in the ed, you’re in the emergency department and you like are triaging and you’re navigating these intense situations. Like these are skills that professionals train for and you my friend have that capacity to, to train for it, to train your mind, to expect predictable circumstances.

You can still help your kids out of the moment. You can still teach them, you can still practice with them, but I want you to be like the grounded, confident, connected, present leader that you want to be in those moments because they’re not going to get it perfect and that’s okay. And so yes, you know better in your mind, but your body hasn’t been trained yet with that knowing. And so the work, and this is what we do in the Mom On Purpose membership is weekly group coaching so that you rewire your thoughts every single week. You pay attention and then you do the thought work out of the moment so that you no longer snap. It is the most life-changing work. I’m so obsessed with it, my friend. So I would love for you to join us over at momonpurpose.com/coaching. I will see you inside and talk with you next week. Take care.