The Comparing and Categorizing Mind

I am reading Mindful Motherhood by Cassandra Vieten. My mom bought it for me while I was pregnant. I love it because it reiterates everything I learned in A New Earth, but with focus on motherhood, and real life.

Since going back to work, I feel a little more alive and well rounded. I feel that I am exercising important and very expensive parts of my brain. I do not feel that I am fully in every or any moment though. By the end of the night, I am a zombie who falls into bed and is asleep in 20 seconds. From a former lifelong insomniac.. that says something.

Vieten talks about unhelpful ways the mind processes information, often by padding the facts of a situation - e.g., The Storytelling Mind that adds made-up information to a situation ("He must be a jerk, he cut me off, I bet he beats his wife too"). The Comparing and Categorizing Mind immediately adds a "good" or "bad" or some other category to simple observations. When I read this, I cried. "You might compare another mom's performance to yours... Or, one of the mind's favorite activities, you might create an imaginary, unachievable ideal and compare yourself against that ('I should have a conflict-free marriage, be content and fulfilled as a stay-at-home mom, be cheerful and sexually vibrant, and not worry about money')".

SLAM DUNK. This "habit of the mind" is undoing me. When I check into the present moment, I find myself completely inadequate against that wonder-mom. I don't look professional enough at work. I'm not eating well enough to provide nutrition for myself and the baby. I haven't finished my Mindful Motherhood book so I'm probably ruining the baby already. I can't find the playard sheet so she's sleeping on plastic. She has a cold, I should have been rinsing her binks. I am too tired to even think about sex. Who would want to have sex with me anyway? Certainly not the man lying next to me who keeps telling me he does. Lies, lies!

Oh, the mind chatter. No one told me how much it would mean to a new mom to hear frequently that she's doing awesome.

Says Vieten? "Don't believe everything you think". Sticking to the facts, and accepting the moment for what it is can help suspend the constantly judging mind.