64: Why Self Confronting is Growth

What happens when your expectations for your missionary’s experience don’t match reality? How do you handle the fear, frustration, and even resentment that can arise when things don’t go as planned? In this episode, I dive into the powerful concept of self-confrontation—the ability to see yourself and your emotions without judgment honestly.

I share my journey of navigating fear and trauma during my son’s mission, how it shaped my nervous system, and why self-awareness is the key to growth. We’ll talk about the difference between self-reflection and shame, noticing when you’re stuck in blame or avoidance, and simple ways to shift into a place of clarity, strength, and resilience.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why unexamined expectations can create stress and trauma
• How self-confrontation leads to emotional growth (without judgment!)
• The role of the nervous system in emotional regulation
• How to recognize and interrupt negative thought loops
• A practical self-confrontation exercise you can use this week

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Transcript

0:29

Hello and welcome to the podcast. First of all, I want to start out this episode with just a quick story to kind of give some context to what I'm going to be going over today. So I've talked about this in the past. My older son, when he went on his mission, I had all these expectations of what I thought it was going to be like and the danger that he was in, I actually didn't foresee. I knew that he may have. Like he might run into being mugged or something like that, but some of the other things I didn't anticipate. And so my expectations were that he would be relatively safe. And then he had a companion that he was not safe with, like his companion had some very interesting things that he was doing and contemplating. And then consequently that took me by surprise. Then, you know, by the time he came home, I had been stuck basically in team hyper. Most of his mission, everything felt very dangerous and I had no awareness about my nervous system. I just knew that everything felt very catastrophic. And so consequently, because I'd been stuck so long in team hyper I ended up creating some trauma. around just missions in general, the way that my brain stored some of those memories. So when they came up, they were very, very activating, very triggering. People would even talk about missions and I would get so angry. And I remember a few times going with my friends, we'd go hiking or Skiing and they would be telling me about you know, oh my my daughter's getting ready to go on a mission And I remember in my body being so angry like it was this visceral response that I couldn't control and my awareness now is that My expectations were not aligned with what actually happened and some of those expectations came out of just a lack of awareness of my own self, but also then getting stuck in kind of that team hyper where I was just feeling everything very jarring then it just created a You know, some trauma. And what I wanted to do initially was I really wanted to blame. I wanted to blame the companion. I wanted to blame the mission president. I wanted to blame my husband. I wanted to blame the church. I, I wanted to blame the country, the culture and What I ended up doing, and this is what we're actually going to get into today, is our ability to self confront. And before you panic and think, oh no, I don't want to do this, just hear me out. We often think of growth as something that just happens over time. We experience the challenges, we learn, we evolve. But what if our growth isn't automatic? What if it's directly tied to our ability to look at ourselves? Honestly, and just sit with what's really happening inside of us instead of avoiding it. So that's kind of what I want to talk about today and how our ability to self confront, confront directly impacts our growth as moms, as women. It's humans, and this is not about beating yourself up. It's not about judging yourself. It's just about seeing yourself clearly, telling the truth about what's going on inside and deciding what you want to do with the truth. Let's get into it. What does it actually mean to self confront and how can we use it to our growth? I went through, I had to go through this process of self confrontation because I had other boys that wanted to serve missions and it was so difficult for me at the time because I had developed this trauma. If I had known, you know, some of these things, like so let's just talk about what self confrontation actually means. It sounds pretty intense, but at its core, it's just being willing to tell the truth about yourself without judgment. It's about asking what am I actually feeling without trying to cover it up or judge it? What patterns do I keep repeating? Where am I avoiding something that I don't want to deal with? And so we spend so much time avoiding discomfort, distracting ourselves, justifying our actions, blaming other people or circumstances. And honestly, that's totally normal. And our brains are wired to protect us from pain. And so consequently, we Or we try and justify what's happening. Here's the thing. Growth doesn't come from comfort. It comes from truth. So the more we're willing to sit with our own reality. The more power we have to change it. Why is this so hard, but also so necessary? And why don't we naturally do this? Because it is so hard to see ourselves clearly. It's a lot easier to blame outside circumstances, outside people out, anything outside of us, than to take responsibility. It's easier to avoid emotions than to sit with them. My favorite way to avoid emotion. Once I get really in team hyper, my emotional state, I'm hyper aroused. I want to eat. I want to, I want to start consuming, especially sugar, chocolate, anything like that, because that is easier. Physical pain, making ourselves physically sick is easier than dealing with emotions and the emotional trauma that kind of comes up with our emotions. And it's easier to believe this is just how I am. Then to ask, is this who I really want to be? But here's what I've realized. The version of me that I want to become is on the other side of the things I don't want to face. So if I don't want to admit that I'm feeling resentment towards someone, it stays inside of me and it keeps growing and festering. If I don't want to acknowledge that I'm scared of failure, And I keep avoiding opportunities if I don't want to look at the ways I self sabotage, I keep repeating those same patterns over and over and over again. And maybe you can relate to this. How many people start a good healthy eating plan and then they sabotage it. They start doing really well, then they sabotage, or maybe, maybe that's something that you've seen. Maybe it's something that you've do. And the hard truth is we cannot change what we refuse to see. So if we want really. Good growth, like honest, good growth. We have to be willing to look at it. And I just recommend that we try and do this in stages. I am not all about self confronting all the time, but I am willing to look at things and I'll pick things up and then I'll set it back down. So when I decided that I was gonna confront some of the trauma that I had developed around missions, I. went to a therapist. I did EMDR. I've talked about this in a previous episode. I worked really hard on that piece and then I set it down and I couldn't continue to look at things because I needed a chance for my nervous system to kind of reset so that When I talked to people about missions, when I talked to my friends, when I started coaching about missions, that I was actually able to do that in a really clean way without bringing in a ton of emotions and drama, and so I was willing to look at it. There are still things that I can see and I always. Just talk about, I can see something running in the peripheral. It's like I can see something that's running right outside my vision, just right there on the edge. And when I'm ready. Then I drag it to the front of my vision and I'm like, all right now I'm ready to work on this and I'm willing to self confront but how do we self confront without shame because shame is a problem and It's but it's self confrontation isn't about shame. So it's not looking at yourself and saying I am the worst I have to tell you a really funny story about this my youngest two boys my when they the The second to the youngest was a senior in high school and the youngest was a junior. The first day of school they called me and they're like, Mom, you have to keep parenting us. And I was like, what are you talking about? And they said, you didn't even register us for school. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. And probably 10 years prior, probably my 35 year old self would have looked at that with so much shame. I would have gone into the, to the school, into the office. I would have been apologizing. I would have tried to justify it. I would have thought like, I'm the worst mom ever. Definitely no mom of the year award here, but. Because I'd been able to self confront so many things, one of those was that I'm the world's most okay est mom and I don't have to be like this supersonic, you know, wonderful mom that I had created in my brain. I was allowed to make mistakes and so I didn't have a lot of shame around it. I actually went in, you know, it was the first day of school, there's my boys sitting there in the office and I, I was laughing. So then they were able to laugh with me. And so it's self confrontation isn't about shame. It's about looking at yourself and saying, Oh, I see what's happening here. So now what do I want to do with this information? And so how, here's how we do this in a way that leads to growth, not self judgment. First off, you want to notice when you are defending or when you feel defensive. Next time you catch yourself in a pattern, whether it's procrastination, self doubt, resentment, frustration, pause and instead of justifying or blaming, just notice it and say, Oh, that's interesting. I wonder why I reacted that way. I wonder what's going on with my nervous system. I wonder if my nervous system thought I wasn't safe and then just get really curious instead of critical, instead of saying, Oh my gosh, what's wrong with me? I can't believe I didn't register my kids for school. Try asking. What's this trying to tell me right so that we're not critical and I actually didn't even self reflect in this in this deep on that on that aspect because I was laughing so hard about it. I thought it was so hilarious that I had forgot to register my kids and I was like, I mean, is that still a thing? How's that still thing? I don't even know. But if you're always feeling overwhelmed, is it because you're over committing? Like what is what's happening there? Yeah. Sometimes overwhelm is because we've committed ourselves to doing some things that we don't have the skills for. And so we get very overwhelmed with trying to learn them. Or if you're easily irritated or agitated, is there some unmet need that you're ignoring and asking yourself questions like, why is this, why does this bother me so bad? Why am I getting so irritated? This is really, really helpful in your marriage. You can ask yourself these kind of questions and it is very beneficial because it's not them It's you and I was able to really make a huge change in my marriage Simply by confronting my own self. I didn't have to drag my husband into marriage Counseling because that wasn't really going to happen for us. And it's very easy to go in and say, here, fix him here. They need help. But if we're willing to look at ourselves and see what we're creating and what we're doing and how we're contributing, we can change the whole aspect of our marriage. or any relationship. This is something also with our kids. I learned early on that one of the things that I self confronted was I was trying to control my kids. I was trying to control their actions, like what they did, what they were doing. And the more I tried to control the worse it got, the more they pushed back. And, and so then I was like asking myself, why am I trying to control? Like what's happening here? And it was. It was totally fear based. I was afraid they were going to ruin their life. I was afraid they were going to go off the rails. I was afraid they were going to go off the deep end. And, which was so interesting, because fear was really the way that I was parenting at the time. So, but self confrontation, it's not about judgment, it's about curiosity. So you can always ask yourself, what would my highest self do now? I can tell you if you are dysregulated and you're a team hyper and you ask yourself, what would my highest self do? You're like for me if you're anything like me, you're gonna be like at this moment. I don't care Like I'm ready to burn the house down or I'm ready to die on this hill or whatever. So it's actually instead of You know, jumping right into what would the highest self do. It's like, let me see if I can get some regulation here in my nervous system where I can access my higher brain. And so pausing on some things I actually had an email, somebody emailed me and I don't love when people email me or text me in all caps, it feels very aggressive and I, I kind of struggle with that aggression or perceived aggression. And so I was typing up a snarky response to it and I was like, you know, I'm just going to leave this response and I'm going to sleep on it and if I'm still mad in the morning or if I, if it still feels this big in the morning that I'm going to send it, but that way I can just kind of put my, put my team hyper self kind of in timeout to kind of see if there was a way that I could get a little bit more regulation around it. And then in the morning I was like, yeah, this isn't a problem. So. Cool. I didn't even send the email and it wasn't that big of a deal. But the night before it was a really big deal. But I, at the time I couldn't, I, I even asked myself, what would my highest self do? But I didn't care. Because I was dysregulated. So you just have to have some of that awareness. And these are all things that I work with my clients on is gaining some of this awareness, gaining some of this ability to see what we're doing, what we're what we're creating also be able to see our nervous system. So, here's some of the questions you would ask yourself. What would the most grounded version of me do here? What would the wisest, most loving version of me, how would, how would I handle this? If I weren't afraid, how would I move forward? And that is a really, really good one for me because a lot of my very reactionary self comes from fear. So, if you can kind of see what is the root of it, then. That helps you move forward. Another thing, and I've talked about this in a few episodes is if I weren't afraid. that I wasn't enough, how would I move forward? Or if I'm enough, exactly how I am, how would I move forward? That's been very, very empowering. Because that whole word enough, worthy, has been very, very pivotal for me moving forward. And that can shift everything. So how does this apply to you? And just like being a mom of a missionary, well missions bring up a lot of emotions and you may feel like you're on a roller coaster with your emotions and just being jarred about. And one week you get on a call and they're doing great. And so then you go about your week and life is good and the next week they're not doing good. And so then all that week you feel dysregulated and a little bit. Disjointed and then you get back to the next phone call and they're fine. And you're like, Oh my gosh, what just happened there? All week I spent dysregulated, but being able to self confront, like, why did that happen? How did, how did I allow that to happen? How do I want to show up? So worry about your missionary, guilt about not handling things perfectly, guilt about not showing up or teaching them all the things they needed. All of this applies. Frustration that there's others that don't understand what you're going through or frustration with. You are missionaries companion and what they're doing and how they're showing up frustration with your missionaries companions mom For not teaching them something that you feel like is important and then also loneliness in the season of life especially if you're getting towards the tail end, I'm definitely dealing with some of that. And I am going to probably do a whole episode just on loneliness, just because that's the season that I'm in because I'm, my youngest is, you know, currently serving and it's so easy to numb out instead of dealing with those. Feelings. So be aware. And I'm not saying don't numb out. I'm just saying be aware of that. That's what you're doing because if you can go back and look at it when you feel better, then maybe the next time you won't want to numb out or you'll numb out less. And when I say numb out, I'm talking scrolling social media binging Netflix, food, porn, alcohol drugs, all of these things are ways that we deal with our emotions. I listened to a guy for a long time and I still listen to his podcast occasionally and he's called the sober bodybuilder. And he grew up LDS and he's not anymore, but he ended up getting into a lot of drugs. And he said, I never, and he was living on the street in and out of jail. Anyway, he's got his life together. And he said, I've never had a drug problem. I had an emotion problem because he, you know, when he was 14, he had a lot of anxiety and he didn't know how to deal with it. And there wasn't a lot of tools, you know, I think we're a lot better talking about that stuff now. But this all applies to us, right? Like, not numbing out instead of dealing with those feelings. So here's what I want to offer. The more you're willing to self confront, and to look at what's really going on inside of you, the more power you have to grow through them. So, if you're feeling resentful, ask yourself why. What do you need if you're feeling anxious be honest about what's underneath that was creating some of that fear is a lot of behind anxiety Perfectionism a lack of self worth Trying to gain self confidence Externally instead of internally and knowing that no matter what I'm enough if you're feeling lost instead of avoiding it explore What is this season inviting me to become? So this is not just a hard season. This is a transformational season. It's a growth There's a lot of opportunities here and it's how much you're willing to look inward and question what's happening So here is my final takeaway and it's a self confrontation exercise So here's the challenge sometime this week when you notice you're feeling overwhelmed anxious stuck kind of in team hyper just Ask yourself what's really going on here and notice without judgment, without fixing, and just let yourself see yourself. See if you try to blame somebody else and if you do or something outside of you, a circumstance that's happening, ask yourself why. Why is this affecting me? Because when we do that, we, something really powerful starts to happen and we stop being stuck in old patterns and we start stepping into who we were meant to become. And I know that self confrontation can feel scary. And like I mentioned before, it's really helpful if you just do this in seasons or in small, small incremental ways and then you'll find huge shifts and you're not here to stay the same. Growth is what we are made for. And I think that it's worth mentioning that they talk about in the Bible like you can ask God and he will let you know where your weaknesses are. I think it's also really important to be able to ask for help when we're trying to self confront because those are looking at our weaknesses and being able to see them and be able to love them because they served a purpose in our life. One of the reasons I was so controlling as a mom was because I mentioned I was scared and a lot of fear. I didn't want anything to happen to them. I didn't want them to go off the rails and all those things. And when I, once I was able to realize that I was putting faith in things that I was more afraid of than faith in the things that I wasn't afraid of. And so it really helped me be able to expand and grow and learn how to love and follow Christ and a lot more deep. Connecting way. All right, everybody. You've got this. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Come share with me on Instagram If you love this episode if you'll share it on your story and just tag me. I would love to see that My Instagram handle is it's michelle underscore Evans dot life. So that's where I usually hang out is on Instagram and Like I usually mention if this resonates with you if you'll share it with another missionary mom who may need it That would be great And if you want to 10x your growth and you're ready to really look and see what's happening and what you're creating You can always click the link in the in the show notes and book a free call with me All right, you guys, make sure you subscribe and leave a review. That really helps me be able to bring my content to more people. And then hopefully we can just ease this journey just a little bit for all of us. And I will see you next time.