Jernigan column: What happens when your thoughts turn out not to be facts?

A few years ago, I was wallowing in the chaos of my own brain, and I didn’t even know it. I lived in a state of almost constant overwhelm, but I was so used to it that I had begun to believe it was normal.

Didn’t everyone stress about every detail of every moment? Wasn’t it normal to feel an underlying tension for no particular reason throughout the day? Weren’t all the other humans drowning in every request that was made of them?

Turns out they weren’t, but at the time, I was, and I truly believed everyone else was too.

I’m a mom of two and three years ago, the kiddos were ages 3 ands 6. I had always wanted to be a mom. I thought I’d be relatively good at it too, but I suppose that’s what we all think until we’re thrown into the ocean of parenting and have to learn how to swim in a hurry.

Like many moms out there, I found motherhood to be more challenging and confusing than I expected. I was staying afloat, but I’m not sure you could say I was swimming. It was more like coming up gasping for air only to be pulled under the current again.

I felt like I couldn’t handle so much of what motherhood handed me — the neediness of young kids, the constant requests, the necessity of always keeping my eye on someone, the lack of time alone with my own thoughts. These aren’t things that prove to be a challenge for everyone, but they did for me.

Eventually, I realized I was not being the mom I always thought I would be. Instead, I was turning into the person I never wanted to be. Yelling came faster than understanding. Frustration knocked out any attempts of peaceful communication.

And I lived for nap time as if it was the only thing required to keep me alive. It was in the midst of all of this, that I finally decided to look for a flotation device amongst the swelling waves. I was hesitant about therapy, but had stumbled upon the Instagram account of a “life coach” and, while I didn’t know what that meant exactly, I knew something had to give.

And so, I had my very first conversation with a life coach. The magical being I met with was wonderful. She was kind and compassionate. She didn’t make me feel like a failure.

In fact, she showed me that everything I felt was normal and OK and none of it made me a bad mom. Then she threw me a curve ball when she said that all of my struggles were directly related to my own brain.

What? How could that be true? My struggles were obviously stemming from motherhood and owning a business and trying to balance it all. It was my circumstances that were the problem, She pressed harder.

“The way we think affects the way we feel, which drives our actions, which creates our results. Our circumstances are just neutral. They’re just there. We get to decide how we think and feel about them.”

Mind. Blown.

That first conversation led to many more conversations and slowly but surely, I became a different human. Not on the outside, but on the inside, She was right! I was causing my sense of overwhelm with my brain.

I spent so much time with thoughts like, “I can’t handle this,” “there’s too much going on,” and “someone else could do this better” running through my mind like background music to a stress filled movie that I didn’t even notice how often I thought them or how loud they’d gotten.

The truth is, none of those things were true. They weren’t facts, but my brain had automatically repeated them so many times that they felt like absolutes instead of possibilities. It was possible that I couldn’t handle what was in front of me, but it was also possible that I very much could handle it.

It was possible that there was too much going on, but it was also possible that my belief in the “too much” made it feel bigger than it actually was. It was possible that someone else could have done things better, but it was also possible that I was doing a pretty good job and never noticed.

Three years later, I’m not the mom I once was. I’m way better! Its not because I have less going on or because my kids have gotten a little older. I’m better because I started tending to the thoughts in my head as if tending a garden.

The weeds simply must go, and in place of them I spend my time planting seeds that produce beautiful flowers. I’m not perfect, but I’ve come a long way, and it all started because someone told me my thoughts were optional.

So today, I offer you that same idea. What if your thoughts aren’t facts? What if they’re just the possibilities you’ve chosen?