Resentment, Joy, and Why Moms Don't Believe They're Allowed Either

Good Inside with Dr. Becky

Dr. Becky interviews Kate Bowler to explore the distinction between happiness and joy, particularly within the context of parenting. They ar

Key takeaways

• Happiness is defined as 'ease,' which requires a thousand small circumstances to line up perfectly.
• The pursuit of child happiness can turn parents into 'professional happiness managers,' leading to exhaustion and burnout.

Main topics

• Happiness vs. Joy
• Parenting boundaries

Notable quotes

Happiness is what luck feels like.

Conclusion

By shifting focus from managing circumstances for happiness to being o

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) You know that feeling when your brain is at full capacity, right? I mean, you have a reminder from the dentist in your email, a birthday party invitation on the fridge, and your kid just texted you about a soccer game they forgot to mention until that moment, and you just cannot remember one more thing. That's where Skylight Calendar comes in. It's an all-in-one digital smart calendar that syncs with Google, Apple, and Outlook to help your whole family see the days and weeks ahead. And I really love the tasks feature, which is designed to help your kid build routines around things like homework and chores. And when your kid can do those things independently, it's a huge win for everyone in the family. Skylight Calendar is so much more than just a calendar. It's something you can add to your routine to help your family work together. And right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash Becky. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash B-E-C-K-Y for $30 off your 15-inch calendar. myskylight.com slash Becky. Speaker 2 (1:14) Boundaries. Speaker 1 (1:16) Here's something I can't stop thinking about. We are a generation of parents who care so much about our kids' feelings. And to be clear, that's a good thing. We needed to do better than in the past. But somewhere along the way, I think we've overcorrected. We went from kids' feelings don't matter to kids' feelings run the show. And those are two extremes, and we have to come toward the middle. Caring about your kids' feelings should not mean that their feelings are in charge of your decisions or your entire family. And I know how many families feel like that is the case. And I think it's one of the reasons why we're repeating ourselves all the time, negotiating everything, and honestly just feeling so burnt out with this parenting thing. While our kids' behavior somehow feels more out of control than ever, we need boundaries. Now, not... mean, cruel, harsh, punitive boundaries. Not because I said so boundaries. Those aren't even boundaries anyway. Boundaries are what lets you be connected to your kid and still, yeah, be in charge because you should be as the leader in your home. This is why I built something totally new, perfect for the moment right now. Boundaries for Behavior Change. It's a brand new program and I couldn't be more proud of it. It'll teach you exactly what boundaries are. how to set them in a way that actually works and creates behavior change that lasts. Find it at goodinside.com. Speaker 2 (2:39) I can't wait to see you there. Always a good time to rediscover the sense that your life, before you were useful to anyone, you were already good. Inside. Good inside. Good inside. Just reading all the branding. I did not ask her to add Speaker 1 (3:04) that. Speaker 1 (3:07) I just want my kid to be happy. Of course we do. We want our kids to feel light. We want them to feel loved. We want them to move about the world with ease and confidence. But at the same time, Maybe optimizing for our kids being happy is a little bit out of our control or has a cost to us or isn't actually good for them long-term, which doesn't mean we want our kids to be unhappy. But in today's conversation with Kate Bowler, I talk about happiness and joy, and I can tell you it gave me a totally different perspective on my days with my kid. I mean, I end most days thinking about how the day went. And I know I'm going to be asking myself different questions to assess my day because of this conversation. And I have a feeling it's going to do that for you as well. Kate is a professor at Duke University. She's the author of so many amazing books. And she's honestly just a deep thinker who translates her thoughts into very practical, manageable ways to go about your life differently today. I know you're going to love this conversation. I think it's also going to lead to new thoughts and new associations and a new way of seeing your day. All right, here's where I want to start. You are only as happy as your unhappiest child. True, not true? I Speaker 2 (4:30) think people think it's true and it shouldn't be. Not that you want to like look into the eyes of your child and be like, I'm thrilled. Sorry, having a bad time. Speaker 1 (4:41) Is it the worst? Not for me. Speaker 2 (4:45) But I think this endless calibration of our own emotional worlds to... the unhappiness of our children has like got to stop. Speaker 1 (4:55) Yeah. Where, okay. So you're saying. I'm so attentive to and perceptive of my kids' emotional state, which probably I think I've noticed is more and more common, right? Because there's maybe an overcorrection, but I think it comes from a good place of feeling like nobody looked at my emotional state when I was growing up, right? Speaker 2 (5:15) No one cared in the 80s. No Speaker 1 (5:16) one cared. No. And so I'm not going to do that. No. But now I'm so attentive and you're saying... because your language was around kind of that being the barometer. Now, my mood, like I don't even know what my mood is until I've kind of assessed my kids. That's Speaker 2 (5:31) exactly Speaker 1 (5:31) right. Speaker 2 (5:32) And Speaker 1 (5:32) I think it starts with moms Speaker 2 (5:35) in particular believing that happiness is ultimately the goal. Like, and I know we really share this deep and abiding Speaker 1 (5:45) hatred. But happiness has... Hatred of happiness. Hatred. Quote us, Kate and Dr. Becky, hate happiness. Is that the... She hates it. I hate it. I hate it. Speaker 1 (5:56) Agreed. Speaker 2 (5:57) Yeah. I think because happiness has such a distinct psychological profile, it's supposed to feel like ease. And if you think about happiness as ease and then suddenly it's women's job to guarantee ease, it's wild when you think about all the things that would have to fall under that list for that to be true. Do you want a snack? No, my... Is the temperature okay? Do you want a snack? It would Speaker 1 (6:27) take a thousand details to put everyone in your life at ease. Okay, we're going to come back to the first thing I said, but now I'm on to a second thing. So I'm just going to follow my thought, which is I just want my kids to be happy. But that swap is really powerful because it changes that sentence for me. I just want things to be easy for my kid. Like, and then, oh, I have a little more dissonance. Is that, do I really want that? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:55) I think you're right. I think we start with saying, I just want them to be happy. I care so much about their happiness. But when you think about it, like, I want my kid to feel relaxed all the time. I want my kid to feel only comfort and no distress. I don't want my child to experience. the gamut of human emotion and ever be uncomfortable then I think we start to realize how many things we would have to do to fill in a gap that maybe we should not Speaker 1 (7:27) be filling Speaker 2 (7:28) oh Speaker 1 (7:28) my goodness I mean yeah it feels less enticing as soon as I replace it with ease but maybe because I know if my kid only experiences ease and comfort in their early years when their body is being wired up for the rest of their life, then they're locked into a version of life where they should always be comfortable in that ease, even in adulthood. Maybe even locked into a version of life where anything even a little bit hard feels this hard just because their body's kind of experienced like, well, what Speaker 2 (7:56) is Speaker 1 (7:57) this? I've never had this before. But also, Nothing even about childhood is always comfortable and easy. So the other part of that that doesn't feel good to me is my brain goes to, oh, is that my job then to morph and to get ahead of something and to take away and to exit? And that it makes me think about how exhausting it can be as a mom in modern day parenting. But maybe some of it is this. This is how I'm operating all the time. I think we Speaker 2 (8:25) feel like plugged into everyone else's nervous system. Speaker 1 (8:29) And Speaker 2 (8:30) that feels for a lot of people like very tight and anxious and kind of and worried and noticey. And if that's it sort of so then it creates two very distinct roles. The mom is the professional happiness manager and the child as the as the bubble wrapped. Speaker 2 (8:55) precious darling who is whose job it is to feel this, to receive love as comfort. Speaker 1 (9:02) Well, another question for you, you said, is happiness ease? Is that the correct understanding of happiness or do we misunderstand it? Yeah. Happiness, well, it'll Speaker 2 (9:12) make you feel relaxed, but happiness is, I think our culture thinks it's just positive feeling, but it's really. many things that are going your way at once that will cause you to feel like you can settle in. And so for me, it would be this delicious beverage, a conversation with a friend I love. You're welcome for both. A gorgeous setup. Like things are, you feel yourself like it in that way. Happiness is much more like math than other things. It's small, incremental, tiny things that. really on the whole, if you look at it, happiness is what luck feels like. Huh. That makes me think about happenstance though. Like, is it not fully in my control? Exactly. Just a lot Speaker 1 (10:03) of things happen to Speaker 2 (10:03) line up. I Speaker 1 (10:04) didn't know that's where it came from. It comes from the Norse word hap as in happenstance. So happiness. Yeah. Happiness is what happens to us. But wait, then I'm thinking I just want my kid to be happy is I just want to create a life for my kid where everything happens to line up for them. Yes, forever. Don't forever, though. Eesh. But OK, your newest book and tell me about this isn't titled Happiness Anyways. Happiness, right? It's not. So what do we miss on? Is there happiness, joy? Those are those are different. I thought Speaker 2 (10:40) that happiness and joy were the same thing until I. looked into happiness as this ease this set of things going your way, a whole world built of small circumstances. And as someone who has had really long stretches in my life where I couldn't line things up, I spent a lot of my thirties with a stage four cancer diagnosis. Like I've had long seasons where happiness was not always available. And so I just kind of went looking like, well, if it