The Therapy Edit - On feeling calmer in chaos

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

A technique to help you find more calmness and resilience when you're faced with change and challenge.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi guys, welcome back to episode four. I am going to be talking about on keeping your call. I've got a technique that came to me the other morning. I kind of made it up. I think I made it up. called Mind Meals. I'm going to talk you through that. It's just a technique to something to think about to really help you through these challenging times. So a week ago, I had the mother of all meltdowns. Honestly, it was like when one of my kids has a mega tantrum and you can tell that in that moment they are not quite sure that they'll ever feel okay again or ever feel normal again

or calm again and as a parent it also you find yourself questioning the same thing anyway everything just came to her head everything just felt too much and I thought man how am I going to find a way to manage my emotions because for me as a parent I believe the most important thing that I can do for my children now beyond trying to keep up with any phonics or work is to find ways to be consistent for them. And normally for me, I will get up early. I'll get up before the children. I'll go downstairs. I'll do a workout for 20 minutes. I'll listen to a bit of headspace meditation for a few minutes and that will keep me going. And then we have play dates and we get out and about and, you know, life and just just goes quite quickly. The days are just quite full. So that, you know, 40 minutes.

in the morning is generally enough to kind of carry me through to the evening when I flop on the sofa with some dinner and turn on the TV. But I think what my very tearful Sunday afternoon taught me was that actually more is required of me at the moment. It's going to take a lot more energy for me to kind of access that rationality and to be consistent for my children. And I just realized that, you know, the things that I used to do, the getting out the going about, the seeing friends, you know, the play dates, all of the kind of the general rhythm of life I couldn't lean on anymore. And my, yeah, 40 minutes was not going to cut it to give me what I needed for the rest of the day. So I thought, right, we are very familiar

with needing to eat three times a day. And the reason for that is that it sustains us, doesn't it? You know, you have your breakfast, it powers you through the morning, then you have your lunch, and that keeps you going until dinner. And it's that, it's that acknowledgement that we always need fuel to function. And I think when a lot of what we are fueled by in our lives, be it sports, you know, a game of sports, or be it time with a friend, having a good chat, you know, whatever it is, when those things are compromised, we have to work harder to find ways to fuel ourselves. So I started thinking, well, I need to address it like mind meals. You know, my exercise in the morning will keep me going for a little bit. And I think, you know, when we're

going on a longer journey in the car or when we know we're going on the motorway, we know that we need to ensure that the car is sufficiently fueled. It will use more fuel. It will use more oil. So we take those things into account. And I think at the moment it's like our car is having to work a lot harder. But we also need to step up what we're feeding it. My mind is working a lot harder trying to be consistent with the kids when they're going stir crazy and my mind is working you know my emotions are having to work a lot harder to manage well my own whilst my children are struggling with theirs so I have to up my input I have to up my fuel my sustenance my emotional support so I started looking at as breakfast lunch and dinner you know three points in the day

where I need to really actually need to prioritize just doing something, engaging in something, listening to something that will fuel me emotionally for the next few hours. So I want you to really consider the fact that more is being asked of you at this time. It is harder to respond to things in a way that you might normally want to, to parent in a way that you might normally want to, to respond to a comment in a way that you might normally want to when your coping mechanisms are challenged, when your space is challenged,

when the things that feed you and sustain you and give to you are challenged. So we have to just be more intentional. We have to prioritise these things. Don't let them just drop down that list. Because these are the things that are going to sustain you. these are the things that are going to enable you to feel like more yourself when things around you just feel so different. So three times a day and I'm talking minutes. I'm talking, you know, for me it is I do my workout in the morning as normal. Then maybe I save my little meditation headspace

five minutes and do that at lunchtime when the kids are napping or in the front of the TV. Just five minutes, you know, and then in the evening, you know, maybe just doing a flow activity. So those are those activities that you do that just kind of give you some respite from your own mind because they take you out of your thoughts. So for me at the minute, it is, you know, things like doing a jigsaw. I'm loving jigsaw at the minute. I fear that we're going to run out of good ones. So yes, you know, just considering what might those three things be. They don't need to be massive things that add to your to-do list. So some tips, for example, might be that you have a nice

hot digital free bath in the evening that you read a chapter of a book at lunchtime to give you that little sense of, I don't know, just taking you out of your mind, giving your mind a bit of rest by. It might be that you download a workout app. You know, even five minutes, five, ten minutes of raising your heart rate is just going to have a positive impact on your mental health. and that might be enough to carry you through for a few hours. A little conversation with a friend.

You know, watching something really funny to get those endorphins going. Anything that just gives you a sense of you, it might be spending an extra couple of minutes in the morning, sticking on an outfit that even if no one's going to see it, you are the point, you are worth feeling good. So it's the simple things. I'm not wanting to add your to do-do-lou, I'm just encouraging you to think about what those things might be

that will carry you through the few hours when your resources are being more demanded upon at the moment. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review. You can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books called Mind Over Mother and Know You're Worth. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mothers' mental and emotional well-being.

It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.