The art of letting go by a self confessed control freak

Dr Mataji Kennedy is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. She specialises in helping women adjust to motherhood and in helping women with Postnatal Depression. Her book 'Hanging by a Thread - 12 strategies for staying sane in the first year of motherhood' contains simple, easy to apply strategies for taking care of yourself as a new mum and for preventing and treating postnatal depression . It’s available for $19.95 plus postage at www.gainingmomentum.com.au.

Mataji can be contacted on 0414 301 237 or mataji@gainingmomentum.com.au. Medicare and health fund rebates available.

Happy New Year! I hope 2011 is a healthy, peaceful and prosperous year for you and your family. Over Christmas I found myself reflecting on the issue of control or lack thereof. This train of thought was prompted by some tricky sleeping behaviour by my two year old and as always resulted in a good life lesson for me....

For many, Christmas is the time to be Merry but for my two year old it was the time to experiment with unconventional hours and positions of sleep. This was an extended experiment that went on for days and eventually weeks. Why sleep on a mattress when you can sleep on the rug on the floor? Why sleep on your tummy, back or side when you can sleep in a circular formation not unlike a King Cobra? Sounds cute doesn’t it....well it isn’t.

These nocturnal antics went on for what seemed like an eternity. Every morning the household was exhausted after a night of little sleep. The two year old was waking 3-4 times a night due to uncomfortable sleep positions and a refusal to get back into bed almost always ended in a full blown tantrum. We tried everything to persuade her that sleeping in a bed was in fact a great idea, tried rewarding her, getting angry at her and then eventually begging her which was humiliating and still didn’t work.

Dave and I put some elaborate Machiavellian plans together that would make Churchill proud. If she does this then we respond with this but if she does this then our counter response will be this. Needless to say still no luck.

It wasn’t until a good friend said to me have you thought about just going with it rather than fighting it that the light bulbs went off. What a novel idea.....we could just go with the flow.....mmm hadn’t thought of that.

To cut a long story short we ended up responding to her needs more and stopped trying to get her to conform. We gave her an extra bottle, sometimes read her a book and generally tried to let go of the battle of getting her to sleep in a bed.

Something strange happened after several days of this approach, she actually consented to sleep back in her bed after a month of no success previously. I’m not sure what the catalyst was but I do believe that when we stopped trying to control the situation the struggle went away. I’m not suggesting we should give into unreasonable requests from our children or loved ones but I think our desire to control all aspects of our life gets us into trouble.

I see friends, family, clients and myself engaged in battles over things we have little control over. Energy is wasted, people get despondent and angry. Focussing our energy on the things we can impact is a better way to go. We can manage ourselves, our emotions, our behaviour and our responses. We can sometimes influence what others do or what happens around us but most of the time our ability to control those things are well.....pretty limited.