When Avoidance Ties You up in Knots

We all have things we avoid, or resist, in hopes that if we just ignore the issue for long enough that… it might just go away.

Big things or small things. We just seem hardwired from a young age to avoid the hard and uncomfortable things that would work out much better if they were confronted.

Hard conversations… shame about spending habits… paperwork we’ve been putting off… that pile in the corner of the room that you need to go through and pare down…

Yeah, somehow these things we’re eager to avoid don’t just tend to disappear.

None of us are immune to the shackles of trying to avoid discomfort.

I mean, we do get lucky sometimes.

An ignored caller might stop phoning us.

An avoided chore might end up having someone else tackle it instead of you.

But… it very often gets worse.

Much worse.

Until it CAN’T be avoided.

And to be clear: this isn’t just an early adolescence thing.

But that said, in our house, we’d fallen into a comfortable – but at the same time, very uncomfortable, angst ridden, emotionally spiraling – routine of my dealing with my dear daughter’s hair.

Her fine strands, that somehow have grown into a THICK full mop of curls (which trickily, have a few different textures to contend with) need regular love and attention.

Over the years, we’ve had varying levels of success with new routines, better brushes and tools, and with special products that work better in her hair.

But when puberty hit – and her hair got 3 or 4 times thicker and a lot of those “good enough” products stopped playing nicely with her curls – we entered a new level of frutration and drama and (yes I am being dramatic, where do you think she gets it?) HELL.

Part of me said: We’ll just chop it if you can’t care for it.

But I’m more into conversations and reasoning and compromises more than ultimatums, so there was no dramatic chop.

Part of me said: Here’s advice – try this brush, this dentangler, this (fill in the blank). Bit by bit, day by day. You take ownership, though … you’re old enough.

But kids of a certain age aren’t always too keen on well meaning and practical parental advice, it turns out. And ownership was… not taken.

Part of me said: Ok, fine. I’ll help you. C’mon, I’ll work on it. Mommy/daughter time?

But mommy/daughter time turned into groans and screeches that spiraled into drama, pain, name calling, threats, and the job rarely getting completely done. Not the quality time I’d somehow tried to convince her (ok, both of us) of.

Part of me said: You can do hard things. Deal with it. It’s YOUR hair.

But it turned out her way of dealing with her hair was putting her hoodie up, completely ignoring it, avoiding it…

And we watched the problem get bigger and bigger.

More matted.

More tangled.

So thick and twisted and poofed out in the back of her head, up the nape of her neck.

More impossible for one kid and one parent to solve.

It was the definition of a hot mess.

We were at a point where wasn’t anything I could do without putting her in a ton of emotional or physical discomfort.

So how’s that for a very physical manifestations of what avoidance does and looks like?

Damn.

We talked. We fought. We disagreed.

I told her something had to happen. She disagreed.

I reminded myself I too can do hard things, and started making calls anyway, and ended up connecting with a compassionate hair dresser with a calming demeanor. She listened to me and my concerns about having to chop all her hair off and told me she was willing to check things out.

We made an appointment for the following day.

Once there, she assessed the situation.

We talked about cutting it short versus trying to untangle and salvage it.

And then this calm, skilled, patient, and non-shaming professional spent two separate one hour+ chunks of time gently and precisely working through the dried out mats, the shampooed-over but not clean tangles, the chunks, the twists.

And then this hair dresser sent from Heaven made a plan for that untangled crown:

She took the dead, tangle-prone ends off.

She washed it and did a deep conditioning.

She thinned out the mop of curls.

She put in layers, especially in the back where it was most intensely tangled and difficult.

And she gave my dear daughter ideas about washing it earlier in the day so as not to go to sleep with it wet. About running a wet brush through it. And about beginning to care for it so we’d never end up in this situation again.

Y’all, I tipped as generously as I could. 😆

My girl was emotionally spent at the end of it all, and while there were occasional single tears in moments of pain, she never spiraled or completely broke down.

And she loved how it turned out. ❤

And has recognized it’s a lot easier to care for because… gasp!… she’s actually been caring for it.

And she may have even said, on the ride home: “Man, I should have done this a while ago.”

And I may have tried to bite my tongue, but still ultimately said some (slightly more tactful) version of, “Told you so.”

Yeah, no one is perfect, this tired mama of 4 included.

Maybe I’ll work on that…

…or maybe I’ll just avoid that self-work and hope it magically gets better.

That happens sometimes, right? 😏