DON'T Appreciate Every Moment
As the new mother of twins I am often flooded with well-intentioned and loving advice that is also unrequested and completely unhelpful. Much of the advice is annoyingly cliché or a total mismatch with my values about parenting. Other times the advice is so darned obvious and repetitive that it’s hard for me to understand why anyone feels compelled to say it out loud. And as annoying as it can all be, I typically smile, say thanks or hit the “like” button. I take a deep breath, remember that the advice giver’s intentions are good and move on. Our social norms don’t really give us permission to say “that’s not helpful, but thanks for thinking of us” or “your advice just made things harder for me”. So I keep my mouth shut, as many of my clients do. But there is one piece of advice that I’ve seen do actual damage to many of my clients and I know that it has made the first year of parenting harder for me. For my clients (and for my own cathartic release), I am compelled to put my thoughts about it on paper.
We’ve all heard it before: “Appreciate every moment”. “Time flies and you’ll wish you had these moments back”. “These are the best years of your life”. There are two times in our lives when we most often receive this advice. The first is when we are children, teens or young adults. Adults who feel their sense of opportunity and vitality slipping away from them repeat this mantra as if they could somehow save these young people from getting old. The second time we hear this is when we have children of our own. People who’s children are grown and out of the house imagine that by telling you to appreciate every moment, you might grab more juicy, beautiful moments than they did when their children were young.
As is often the case, this advice serves the giver more than it serves the receiver. It allows them to voice their grief over the loss of a time gone by. It allows them to reminisce. It allows them to paint a glossy coat over the past. I understand feeling compelled to speak these words out loud. There is such value in expressing your own sense of loss and allowing yourself to feel the grief of a phase of life that you’ll never get back. And I realize that it seems, at the worst, to be harmless advice and, at the best, to be a good reminder to stay present. I’m here to tell you that this advice is neither harmless nor helpful. Let me tell you why.
The first three months of my twins lives were three of the worst months of my life. BY FAR. There were a gazillion moments that are better forgotten than remembered. There were days when I wasn’t sure how I’d make it through the next hour, let alone the next 18 years. There were days when I truly evaluated every single option available for me to get out of parenting. After deciding that I wasn’t comfortable with any of those options I decided that I would just focus on keeping my children and myself alive for another day. I am not alone in feeling this way. The CDC identifies that 10%-15% of mothers experience Postpartum Depressive Symptoms within the first year after giving birth. Younger mothers and mothers of multiples experience Postpartum Depression at far higher rate (www.cdc.gov). Mothers suffering from postpartum depression will typically hide it very well and you will not likely know who is and who is not struggling. Postpartum depression can be incredibly dangerous and harmful to mother and child. One of the main reasons that mothers don’t reach out for help is that they feel ashamed that they are not able to “appreciate every moment”. That’s what people say you should do, right? That’s what everyone else on Facebook seems to be doing, right? They feel that something is wrong with them that they hate being sleep deprived carrying a screaming baby around for hours. They feel guilty that they wonder if they’ll ever be happy again. They try very hard to “appreciate” the fact that they are blessed to have a child in the first place. Telling parents to appreciate every moment often causes these parents to feel isolated and misunderstood. This piece of advice can make things worse. And while most cases of Postpartum Depression are not dangerous to the lives of mother and child, some are. And because you may not know how the receiver of your message is feeling about parenting, you could be making things harder for them without knowing it.
In my practice I support parents with children from zero to thirty. The most common thing I hear in our first or second session is “I know I should be enjoying this more” or “I know time flies and I should appreciate these moments more” and “I feel like there’s something wrong with me that I can’t enjoy this as much as everyone else seems to.” Oftentimes these parents have been beating themselves up for years but have not gotten help because they are ashamed to admit that they are not enjoying parenting. Children and parents suffer greatly when parents aren’t comfortable admitting to themselves or others that they aren’t happy. I also work a great deal with teenagers and young adults. Again, the common theme is “Everyone says these are supposed to be the best years of my life” and “There must be something wrong with me that I’m not enjoying it” or “If this is the best it gets, what’s the point in continuing to live?”
But it’s ridiculous to expect that we would appreciate every moment! That’s a completely unrealistic goal. There are lots of life moments that are not worthy of appreciation. Being so sleep deprived that you are hallucinating while holding a screaming, colicky infant is not worthy of appreciation. And no, I do not believe that it made me a stronger person. Having your teenager defy your rules while throwing insults at you is not worthy of appreciation. Being 16 years old and torn between social acceptance and your parents’ values is not worthy of appreciation. These things just suck. And we get to say that they suck. And we get to feel that they suck. And we get to decide not to appreciate them.
Suffering is a part of the human experience and yet we struggle to allow each other to feel it. Every day that I scroll through my Facebook feed I see another meme about being grateful, focusing on the positive, creating your own joy, or the 10 things that happy people do. We repeatedly send the message that the comfortable emotions (joy, excitement, love, gratefulness) are the ones we should focus on and the uncomfortable emotions (sadness, anger, anxiety, jealousy, hate) are the ones we need to avoid. But avoiding those emotions and denying their right to exist (or their helpfulness) causes us to be completely out of touch with what they are trying to tell us. Avoiding these emotions takes us out of contact with our true experience and authentic selves. In the end, it makes it harder to be truly happy or content in life.
It is also a complete farce that we can simply think positively, focus on the things we’re grateful for and get out for a nice walk in the woods and magically find happiness. If this were true I would be out of a job. If it were true that we can just simply “choose happiness” or “create our own happiness” we would all do it and we wouldn’t even be talking about it because it’s as easy as breathing. It’s not that simple and to suggest that it is causes those who can’t seem to do it that easily to feel alone and to sink deeper into their depression.
So for those of you out there feeling guilty or emotionally incompetent for not “appreciating every moment” of your life, I want to assure you that you are not alone. And next time someone gives you this well intentioned, but annoying advice, maybe tell them that you’ll appreciate the moments that are worth appreciating, try to be present for the moments that aren’t and cope in the best way possible when being present is too painful. Because that’s life. That’s real. And that’s what will truly help you find your joy.