The Therapy Edit - On how to be more patient

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Patience isn't a virtue I was granted with, but it's such a vital parenting commodity! Here's how to find more of it for those moments you need it most.

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. Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit. Today I want to talk about what I think is the most precious commodity of parenting life and that is patients. I do not count myself to be a person. patient person. I remember having some building work done in our house and this is a few years ago and the builder said to me, you are so patient with your kids. And I thought it's absolutely hilarious because I know how hard I have to work to be patient and I'm not always, but I try very hard.

So I want more patience in my life. The moments I'm not patient, I am snapp. I am snapping. I'm reactive. I shout. I get frustrated. I want to run away a little bit or a lot. And so patience is something I always want more of because we benefit. Patience enables me to respond rather than reacting that knee jerky way. It enables me to think and actually access my rational, intentional brain. So I want more of it. I always want more of it. I think the challenging thing about patients is that it does require energy because we're essentially trying to bypass our inner human response to what is going on. So in a moment where it's chaotic and all the needs are coming at me and everything is loud,

my human response is often just to escape the stress, to do anything I can in my power, in that moment to make it stop. and that might be to remove myself, it might be to completely zone out, it might be just to shout, stop it, it might be to want to run away mentally or physically and patience enables me to stay in that moment and respond in a way that I am proud of, a way that isn't going to fill me with guilt and shame later on. You know, those days where you kiss the kids good night or you go and see them and they're asleep and you look at them and you think tomorrow I'm going to be better.

tomorrow I want to do better for you. And it's often what fuels that feeling is a lack of patience for me. So the other day, I dropped everyone off at school and nursery and I had two and a half hours. And I thought, right, I'm taking everyone swimming later. For me, that is a massive trigger point for total lack of patience because it requires so much of my energy to be considered. and respond well and to be calm. So I thought I'm going to have to do some stuff

that is going to give me some energy so that I can be patient. Now I had two jobs, right? The first job was to sort my flipping wardrobe out because I keep all of my winter stuff under the bed and I hadn't swapped it over. So what I was doing was having a good old rummage every time I was cold or fancied a different jumper

I would rummage under the bed, grab a jumper, grab something, wear it, and then wedge it into my wardrobe. So I was getting rage at the wardrobe. Every time I opened it, it was this cascade of summer and winter stuff just falling down on my head. And it was giving me this frustration. I need to sort this out. So I had this time that morning. And then the other thing I was going to do, I was going to go on a nice walk. Because for me, walking is refilling.

walking was going to give me something so that later on at swimming when it was chaotic I was far more likely to be able to respond in a way that I wanted and to have some patience, some energy so that I could be patient. So I had this time and I came in the house and I dumped the shopping on the floor. I mean I'm talking frozen food that I picked up for dinner. I'm talking milk, a massive four pinter of milk and I saw my laptop and I sat down.

and I started doing emails. I thought I'd just do a couple. I was sat on the stairs with the shopping around my feet. An hour later, I realised I'd utterly sabotaged this opportunity to sort my wardrobe and reduce my wardrobe rage and to go on a walk to reduce the chance of rage in the changing rooms later on. So I had an hour left. So I debated what do I do? Do I sort the wardrobe, reduce the wardrobe rage? Or do I go for the walk and reduce the likelihood of rage later on? I give myself a chance to hopefully have a bit more mental headspace so that I could be patient. Now one of those tasks was going to prevent rage at the wardrobe and one of them will prevent kind of rage at my kids in the moment and the stress and therefore less guilt and shame. So I went on the

walk I prioritised the walk even though I was said oh man I just and I still haven't done it I still haven't sort of the flipping wardrobe out so I went on the walk and we went swimming and it was for long and I was kind of a parent that I wanted to be so I was pleased with that now in the pursuit of that incredible parenting commodity of patience the reality it is is that it comes down to those decisions. It comes down to those opportunities to refuel, to refill, to get some headspace, to have some needs met so that we're widening the gap. I call this my gap between the mum that I want to be and the Hulk, the incredible Hulk. And I talk about this in my overwhelming burnout sofa session about how to widen the gap between the mum I want to be and the

incredible Hulk because the more depleted I am, the more likely I am to switch into Hulk mode and patience just goes out of the window. So it's in those moments, it's in those moments where the decisions are there. Do we sabotage those opportunities by doing what could be done another time so that you can refill and refuel and reground and rest and increase that space between the mum that you want to be the patient you and the Hulk. you and it can be so rewarding to tick things off the to-do list but you are not an item on the to-do list you are not an item you belong outside of that to-do list so patience that commodity that when I am patient I am so proud of myself because parenting is often like thunder

the thunder cloud you know I remember learning at school how thunder comes when you have a hot, like the way that I remember is you have a hot weather front, a hot cloud and a cold cloud and they come together and then that, it's that crashing, it's that, it's that clashing that causes the thunder. Now I sometimes feel thunder in parenthood. It's that clashing of, this is who I want to be. This is how I want to be. And then the part of me that is just young and I want to have a tantrum too and I've got needs too and this is hard and this is stressful and in any other situation in life where you didn't have that kind of that maternal drive and that maternal responsibility you'd probably run away and there are situations

you can imagine if you were in a workplace and someone was just relentlessly shouting at you and placing demands on you you'd probably say I'm out of this but parenting calls us to war towards those needs and those things that are sometimes causing a stress. Parenting requires us to walk into the waves, to walk into the noise and that is hard, especially when we are wanting to be patient as we do so. So we're often fighting a really basic human drives when it comes to the stress of parenting and asking ourselves to be patient at the same time is a really tall order and it requires energy, then as those opportunities arise and as you see the choices mapped out in front of you, you know, my choice

to pick up the laptop and do those emails and to keep doing those emails until I sabotaged myself out of doing the two things that I wanted to do that morning. And then I had another decision. Do I sort of the wardrobe? Do I go for the walk? And only one of those was going to enable me to have a little bit more patience that afternoon. And I'm proud of myself for choosing that. I think I would have got a lot of enjoyment for ticking the wardrobe of my to-do list. But as I kissed the kids good night that evening, there was less guilt and less shame that there would have been if I was just feeling frustrated with myself and depleted. So on how to be more patient, it's in the decisions that we make to prioritise that rest and

that refueling and not sabotage those opportunities to do so. So if you're not naturally a patient person like me, I really hope that was helpful. Take care. 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 Your 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 mother's mental and emotional wellbeing. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.