Everyone at Walmart thought I was The Worst. The store had an anti-theft policy that entailed locking up the baby formula. So every time I went grocery shopping, I had to wait in the formula aisle for an employee to open the glass case and retrieve a can of Enfamil for me. I would stand there, pushing the cart forward five inches and pulling it back five inches, on repeat, trying to prolong my baby’s nap in her car seat while shoppers passed on either side of us. I could sense their eyes, glaring at me, thinking "she probably didn't even TRY to breast feed." I wanted to catch just ONE person giving me stink-face so I could cock my head in "mind your own damn business" face. Which I had practiced. In fact, I think I shot that face at the backs of people's heads who hadn't even looked at me, because how could they NOT be thinking that about me. I dared just one woman to suggest that I try fenugreek tea, so I could go down the long list of things that had failed me while my baby's weight on the growth chart slowly sank like a helium balloon losing lift. Now. YOU know that's crazy. And Today-Emma knows that's crazy. But Back-Then-Emma? Was certain. She was vulnerable, paranoid. Defensive enough to attack, unprovoked. I could have spared myself the armor and the arrows, because you know who secretly thought I was the worst? Me. Who was always asking me if I had tried every natural remedy to make enough milk? Also, me. Deep down, I was making stink-face at myself. We all feel judged. The one thing I hear moms say all the time is how judged they feel. But I don't see a lot of actual judgment transpire between moms. I see a lot of defensive, insecure people who catch your glance when their child is throwing a fit in public and instead of seeing your "been there, be strong" sympathy nod, they glare at you because all they can see is a mirror reflecting their own glare, judging themselves through you. I see moms getting defensive when people give them suggestions, because instead of hearing "You seem frustrated, here’s something that might help," they hear "I think you're incompetent." The struggling mom wouldn't recognize support if it came with an underwire, because we are too busy being hard on ourselves. Now. Judgy people exist. They FORE SHORE exist. But I think most of the people we believe are judging us, aren't. AND - this is the most important part - if they are, does it matter? You don't have to feel guilty even when someone is legitimately guilt-ing you. Now that you "know" it, let's talk about how to "be" it. Here are three rules for not feeling judged. 1: Don’t judge other people. In the next chapter, we’ll talk about how harmful it is to judge the people who are trying to help us. Before we talk about how we don’t want to be treated, let’s make sure we’re not adding to the problem. When you see people doing things different than you, remember that you don’t know the whole story. We live in a child-centric world. When you’re pregnant, people ask themselves what you need. But as soon as that umbilical cord is cut, you become a far second priority to your child. Now, everyone’s asking what the baby needs, and your needs only matter if they help you serve the baby’s needs. I’m very much guilty of this. My kids went to a parent co-op preschool, which gave me the opportunity to work with and learn from a wonderful director who taught us so much about understanding and communicating with our kids. And experiencing the benefits of that mentorship made me eager to share that information with my friends. I often saw my friends telling their kids “Stop throwing rocks!” and I’d chime in with “Fun fact: I learned that kids have an easier time changing their behavior when you tell them what to do, instead of what not to do. Cool, huh? Try telling her ‘put the rocks down’ instead.” I thought I was being helpful, but I was only thinking about how they could serve their child, not how I could serve my friend. Please triage the parent first. What you see is them doing their best in the moment. If they are staring at their phone at the park and ignoring their child’s requests to be pushed on the swing, don’t judge them. They might be texting a sibling to encourage them to not kill themselves today. If the person in the grocery checkout has nothing but highly processed foods, don’t judge them. They might be suffering from E.Coli and their kids are living off of whatever food they can feed themselves while mama is stuck on the potty for hours. If someone cuts you off in traffic with two kids and a dog on board, this might be their first day on allergy meds and are slowly realizing that it makes them a little loopy but they have to get their dog to the vet and if they ever realize that they cut you off they will be really, really sorry. (These are not hypothetical examples, friend. That person was me. All three times.) So. Triage your friends. And choose to believe that everyone is doing their best. The best thing you can do to help us build a world with less judgment is to withhold your own. 2: Stop Judging Yourself. Remember, self-judgement often manifests as being overly defensive all the time. If you hear "I'm doing the best I can" in an angry voice in your mind several times a day, that's a good sign that you are under non-verbal attack from somewhere deeper in your own mind. Deep down, you're probably accusing yourself of not doing enough. If you feel attacked without interacting with another person, then the call is coming from inside the house, my friend. Feel it. Sit with it. Figure out where it's coming from, and why. Make peace with it. Sometimes, self-attacks happen because we're afraid. When I was buying formula, I was afraid that I wasn't trying hard enough to be the best mom. I was afraid that giving up on breastfeeding was just the beginning, and that I would eventually give up on every other aspect of my child's health and well being. Once I figured out which fear was driving my inner stink-face, I had to ask myself "is it true?" And I prepared myself for the answer. Sometimes, the answer is "obviously, not." I had researched all the formula labels to figure out which one was best for her now that my milk wasn't enough. I was supplementing on the recommendation of her pediatrician. I had tried so many things to increase my supply. Once I acknowledged my fear, and reassured myself that it was unfounded, it finally sat down and shut up. Sometimes, though, when we ask ourselves “is it true?” our conscience answers us quietly "Actually, yes. That is exactly what's happening." Like when I was unemployed and sat around the house all day judging myself for not being an equal partner. At twenty-three, I'd drink coffee spiked with Baileys on my back porch at 11am and dare anyone to look over the fence and judge me for being a lazy housewife. I spent months wallowing in depression, trying to get over the guilt of not "pulling my weight" around the house, before finally deciding that it doing my chores was easier than battling my sense of guilt all day. Freudian principles (that have been long denounced by psychologists) linger in this idea that, if we feel guilty about something, the answer is to re-draw the lines of what is guilt-worthy so that the thing we feel guilty about is permissible and no longer induces guilt. That doesn't actually work. If we feel guilty about something, sometimes the answer is to admit that we're not acting right. Instead of judging myself for not being a fair partner, and then justifying my choices in an uphill struggle to uninstall my guilt-response, I got up and started being a fair partner. And yeah, the guilt went away. Like, immediately. Laundry is lighter than guilt. This is a scary conversation to have with yourself. It's hard to be vulnerable when you're feeling attacked. It's hard to accept that fear has tweaked your sense of reality, or that your actions aren't right. But the question you need to ask yourself is: how long do you want to feel judged all the time? 3: Stop Needing To Not Be Judged. Needing other people to not judge you is a problem. It puts all the control over your mental state into the hands of strangers. Strangers who, by the way, don't deserve that power because they have no obligation or interest in taking care of your mental state. You cannot control what other people think, or say, or how they treat you. If you are at peace with yourself (see Step 1) you'll be amazed how little someone else's judgment matters anymore. Let's say your two year old throws a fit in Target because you won't let them have an electric beard trimmer (hey, it happens). If you are confident that the best way to handle your toddler's meltdown is to ignore them, then a stranger passively implying that you can't control your kid will bounce right off of you as if they had implied that your shoes are made of cheese. It just won't matter. Thinking that people are judging you all the time isn’t just untrue, it’s also self-centered. Realistically, you can usually count on people to not be thinking about you. Not being judged isn’t an option. You will never, ever, ever live in a world where you are free from being judged. You might as well say "I can only have a good day if there are no clouds.” If you have a core need to not be judged, then you will always be on the lookout for people judging you. Even when you're not being judged, you will walk around full of anxiety that someone, at any moment, might judge you and take away your happiness. You will only go out on sunny days, and you'll watch the sky worrying that a cloud might suddenly appear. What we fear, we obsess over. What we obsess over, we imagine. We predict. When your imagination says “You’re going to be judged at the store” and visualizes the person at the checkout eyeing you, your emotional side of your brain THINKS THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. When you replay the time you were judged, your emotional core thinks it happened again. Your emotional response to imagined or remembered incidents is the same as if it’s happening right now.*** Stop doing it to yourself. Stop replaying that time a person judged you. Stop predicting and imagining that it’s going to happen again. For a lot of us, by the time we realize this, we’ve made a habit of being judged and habits are hard to change. It will take time to re-pave the pathway in your brain that looks for judgment. One chapter of a book isn't going to teach you how to undo your need to not be judged by others.** It isn’t realistic to expect to not be judged, but it's possible to live a life where judgment doesn’t harm you. And when you step out of your fear of being judged, you open your life to being helped. No One Doesn’t Need Help In Bible times, there was a man named Jethro, who was high priest of Midian. The Midianites were an Arabic nomadic tribe. Jethro’s daughter was married to Moses – THAT Moses – who went back to Egypt and freed his people from slavery in the famous story of the exodus. Moses is new to leading, and his people are new to being nomads. So Jethro comes to visit. And he sees that things are not going well. Moses is already overwhelmed by spending all his time adjudicating grievances. There was no law yet. If two people had a problem, their only recourse was to ask Moses who was right. From sun-up to sun-down, Moses listened to their disputes and settled them as best he could. Jethro sees this and says “You can’t keep doing this. First of all, it’s taking up all your time, and second of all you’re not even making a dent in your case load. The disputes are piling up, and you’re wearing yourself out. Something’s gotta change.” And then he laid out a multi-level litigation system. (I’m paraphrasing of course, if you want to read a more accurate translation it’s Exodus 18:13-27) Moses was clearly chosen by God to lead these people. He could have been like “Sorry, I don’t remember God ever sending YOU a message in a burning bush. Did you also part the Red Sea to get here, or did you go the regular way? Go back to Midian and stay in your lane.” Who did Jethro think he was to tell Moses how to do the job God gave him? He was God’s high priest of a nomadic tribe, that’s who. And Moses wisely listened to his father in law – who would have been about a hundred years old, by the way – and did everything he said. Even though God gave YOU these kids, he will advise and equip you through other people. Being helped isn’t Plan B, it’s not the thing we resort to when we’re messing things up. Being advised and helped and trained by others is Plan A, and we turn it down when we’re too prideful, threatened, and defensive about being judged to accept it. This goes back to our discussion about having to figure out everything, and being told we’re the expert in our kiddo. If we can accept that we’re not the expert, then we won’t feel so defensive when people help us. I mean... God gave Adam a helper before he had ever sinned. Adam was still a perfect person, without sin, when God decided that it was good for him to have companionship in the work he was doing. Needing help isn’t a symptom of our imperfection. It isn’t proof that we’re failing. We are divinely destined to need and have helpers as we live in community with others. But sometimes, finding and managing help feels more like a burden than a blessing, right? In the next chapter, we’ll talk about the art of being helped. ………………………………………………………. Questions to ask yourself: When I feel judged, what is it specifically that I think people are judging me for? Is there a reason why I might be thinking that about myself? Is there a reason why that’s my biggest fear? Is is true? If it is true, can I forgive myself and change my actions? If it’s not true, how will I correct my inner voice when it calls me that? When I’m afraid that someone will judge me, how will I remind myself that it doesn’t matter what other people think of me? Is there a time when I was judged that lives rent-free in my mind and hurts when I remember it? If so, what’s the thing I will think about instead so that I can stop increasing the negative effect that that incident had on me? When I find myself predicting that judgment is going to happen, how will I bring my mind back to the present where judgment hasn’t happened, might not happen, and won’t even matter if it does happen? Do I embrace “being helped” as a beautiful part of God’s plan for the work I’ve been given to do? ……………………………… **I recommend "When People Are Big and God Is Small" by Ed Welch ***https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112008/