Years ago, I identified "personal control" as a key component of a resilient outlook and a resilient life. I defined personal control as the ability to focus our time and energy on factors over which we have some influence rather than on situations over which we have little, if any, control. Resilient people have learned to cope effectively with challenges and adversity and demonstrate personal control.
Is there any way you can make "loud and obnoxious" more bearable? Maybe you can ask everyone to go for a walk outdoors, where it's acceptable to use outside voices. Turn on music and make it a dance party! Take mental notes on outrageous behavior as material to discuss with your husband after everyone leaves, and convince yourself that the chaos is part of your Thanksgiving tradition. Wear noise-reducing earplugs.
During Pastor Appreciation Month, we include our gratitude for the support of the pastor's wife. Spiritual spouses are viewed differently than their faith-leading husbands. Although there are plenty of benefits, both emotional and spiritual, of serving within the leadership of a faith community, there are challenges as well. A pastor's wife is expected to be kind, compassionate, sympathetic, supportive, patient, gracious, long-suffering, and the list goes on. She is required to be, in a word: perfect. Yet this unrealistic expectation can be tempered through realistic strategies of coping and support.
Looking ahead for myself, all I could see were broken shards, glomming and splintering, far from the awed and vibrant colors and geometric shapes that reform with the twist of the kaleidoscope in transition. I was early in my career as a counselor. More by dumb luck than prescient insight, somewhere deep within me I knew that I was vulnerable and at risk to make really bad choices. I was hurting and needed to feel better.
Self-soothing advice is all over the internet, much of it in the form of warnings to avoid potentially damaging sorts like "shopping therapy" or bingeing on Ben and Jerry's, or worse, vodka martinis. Instead, experts suggest using the "good" ones, which seem to run the gamut from stimulating your vagus nerve to hugging yourself. Among the University of Miami's recommendations to faculty and staff in their current summer newsletter is "tapping."
Mother-in-law disputes are nothing new; generations of daughters-in-law have wondered what on earth they did to deserve the MIL they got (whether that's good or bad). But now, there's a new system for figuring out exactly what type of behavior your mother-in-law is displaying - and how you can cope. In her forthcoming book You, Your Husband & His Mother, psychologist Dr. Tracy Dalgleish lays out six different types of mother-in-law, what each one wants, how she acts, and what you can do in response.
