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If you’re human, you use defense mechanisms even though you might not consciously know it; and so does everyone you know. And when you can actually see them, your communication, problem solving skills, emotional health and relationships improve. Let’s break this down – what they …
Social media, whether we like it or not, has an impact on the therapy world. In therapy, we often educate our clients about mental health, family dynamics, and emotional wellness. We normalize and validate experiences to create a platform for the work you come to …
Being physically drained and emotionally drained are not the same thing. Even though they can sometimes look similar.
Why is it helpful to know if you’re emotionally drained?
It can save you a fight and it can help you take better care of yourself because being emotionally drained is not something we really know to watch out for and often minimize it thinking: “I shouldn’t be tired”.
This is especially important for people who are highly sensitive, empathic, introverted or (if you’re familiar with Human Design) non-energy types like Projectors, Manifestors or Reflectors.
Knowing when you’re emotionally drained starts with identifying the signs leading up to this state, so let’s talk about what they are.
Ever opened an email and been like “I can’t”… and then you go back later and realize it wasn’t that big of a deal? You don’t know why, but in that moment, a small task felt overwhelming.
The same thing can happen with your kids when you ask them to do a chore or they’re trying to do homework. If they’re navigating emotional intensity that’s going on at home or school, a small task feels like a big ask because they only have so much emotional bandwidth, and at the moment, it’s maxed out.
There is no more energy or headspace left to deal with a situation because you don’t have the emotional capacity to take on anything else, even something minor.
Just like physical growth spurts, there are such things as emotional growth spurts. So if your kid is going through a period of time where they are getting especially overwhelmed, this could possibly be what’s going on.
If this is happening, develop a practice of taking the overwhelm as a sign to take some space to do something else completely, and come back to it later. Or a sign that it’s a good time to pair back on extra activities, projects, tasks.
For a kid, let them play but try to avoid screen time because that doesn’t let them metabolize emotion. It’s better for them to move or go with you on an errand, something that can engage them and create a break. If this is happening for you, go do something you enjoy that recharges you, then come back.
This is your time to tag yourself out. Give yourself permission to take a break because that’s what you need. Allow extra grace and compassion here and downshift to just covering the basics. You will be more upset with yourself if you continue to make mistakes that have to be corrected, then if it takes you longer to complete a task due to taking a break and taking it slow.
Same thing if this starts showing up for your child.
Instead of getting critical and trying to get more strict around mistakes, simply realize, oh, this is time for rest. Don’t focus on the mistakes, focus on what is leading to the mistakes which is the need to rest and take a break.
Usually if you or your child start doing this, you’re not necessarily aware that you’re drained. This is just how the mind/body/brain starts to go into energy conservation mode.
So, start to pay attention when easy mistakes start happening so you can recognize that this is your system’s way of letting you know you need to power down.
Listening to your body and your performance will give you good indicators about what is happening inside of you and what you need.
There’s something about getting into a space of overwhelm that causes you to lose all sense of time and reality.
“Emotional dysregulation refers to difficulty in regulating emotions. It can manifest in several ways, such as feeling overwhelmed by seemingly minor things, struggling to control impulsive behaviors, or having unpredictable outbursts.”(Medical News Today | What is emotional dysregulation?; Zia Sherrell, MPH on April 7, 2022)
Your thoughts and general outlook are clouded by your emotions and it feels like it always will be and always has been this way.
Dysregulation is temporary, especially when we are able to see the dysregulation is happening. Obviously, it will persist longer if we don’t do something about it.
So when you find yourself experiencing feelings of despair, saying or thinking that something will “always be” and “never will be”, it’s likely that you are emotionally drained.
Same thing goes for your kid. When you start to hear “always” and “never”, then you know it’s time to recharge and reset.
You see kids resisting sleep the most when they are overtired and likewise, people resist situations that require emotional stability as a result of being overwhelmed emotionally.
So the guidance is to start observing yourself and others for the cues you get signaling that you are emotionally drained.
Sometimes people do things that get under your skin and they usually aren’t doing them because they’re rude or annoying. More than likely it’s because they are responding to something intense in their internal world. Of course, it might annoy you and push your buttons, …
Have you heard someone say that a person is emotionally unavailable? Or maybe they have said that they are emotionally unavailable. This is a term that gets used a lot on social media so we thought we’d take a moment to clear it up and …
There is no parent in the world that wakes up and says “I’m going to be a terrible parent today”. As a parent you are doing your very best, and sometimes it can seem like doing your best means that your parenting needs to be perfect and you need to have a perfect, happy kid.
Thank goodness that isn’t true! You are human and being human is messy. That means being a parent is messy and so is growing up.
So let’s look at three parenting traps that come up in day to day life, so we can move from trying to be perfect, to being beautifully human.
Doing things perfectly, with zero mistakes (even if that was possible), doesn’t ultimately serve your child.
What does serve them is you modeling how to navigate mistakes and showing them that you are human.
No child is perfect, and they won’t grow up to be perfect adults, and it’s important that they know that’s okay.
If you’re concerned about doing it perfectly all the time, they will be too. Seeing you handle mistakes and challenges will also reduce defensiveness, help rejecting and lying when they do make mistakes because they already have an attitude of: we can manage mistakes and challenges.
If they see you using positive coping skills when you mess up or face a challenging situation, they will internalize that and the focus will not be on the mistake but how you were able to overcome it..
If you allow yourself to be imperfect, you are equipping your kids with valuable life skills they will need as adults. Your child will still love you and be happy, even if you aren’t perfect.
There is a difference between a child being happy in this moment (ah, the best moments are to see a child light up!!) and being happy in the long run. Kids can face disappointments and have unhappy moments and still have a happy childhood.
It’s natural to want to make your child happy, to give them things you didn’t have as a child, especially if you have the resources (time, money, emotional bandwidth) to do it. Parents love seeing their children smile, hearing them laugh and knowing that they have the things that they want.
But, of course, always giving your kids the material things they want or allowing them to do what they want to do when they want to do it, will not produce feelings of true happiness that will fulfill them and last over time.
“No one is happy all the time. Suffering and difficulty are part of the human condition. Some of the richness of life comes from experiencing the highs and the lows. “
(Sarah Rosensweet | Peaceful Parenting | Want to Make Your Kids Happy? Why It’s Okay Not to Try…| https://www.sarahrosensweet.com/make-kids-happy/)
That requires a blend of having joy and fun in the day to day but also having someone to model the skills needed to be successful. As a parent you know the world and human life are not, as my mother would say, “thrill after thrill”.
It’s OK for your child to struggle. By rescuing the struggle all the time, you are sending a message that struggling is not okay or needs to be fixed.
There is value in struggle. Struggling can help your child learn to tolerate frustration, help them feel the push to problem solve independently, learn through natural consequences, regulate emotions, and, most importantly, learn that there is nothing wrong with struggle or difficult feelings.
Thinking that a struggle needs to be soothed immediately can lead to resistance around difficult experiences, not feeling confident to navigate life and developing strategies to avoid necessary life tasks.
“While it can be difficult to watch our kids struggle, they’ll never know the thrill of mastery unless we allow them to risk failure. Few skills are perfected on a first try. It’s through practice that children achieve mastery.” (Parents.com | 7 Secrets to Raising a Happy Child, Marguerite Lamb, April 22, 2008 | https://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/fear/raising-happy-children/)
One tool that I use with younger children is to say, “I’m here if you need support” when I see them struggling with something. This helps them know support is available and to teach them to ask for help after they have tried to make something work themselves.
It takes work to hold back helping them when I know I can help them so easily. But this will foreclose their learning process. Having an awareness of your impulses to fix and holding back on acting on them while they work through something is a crucial part of helping your kids learn.
Parenting can be a challenge and it’s second nature to want to do it perfectly by making your kids happy all the time and fixing all of their problems.
But the reality is, parents are not required to be perfect but they are charged with teaching life skills and providing a safe environment for their kids to grow up.
Knowing the way therapy with kids looks different than therapy with adults can help you feel more relaxed in the process of bringing your child to therapy. Once I point out the fact that there is a difference, it seems obvious. However, when you are …
In our last post we discussed nervous system regulation and how it can impact your mental and emotional health. Now let’s cover how to support your nervous system and develop habits to cope before stressful situations occur. How to Know your sympathetic nervous system …
Do you ever try to take a relaxing moment to yourself, and then notice your brain is escaping to the never ending to do list, upcoming events, or a past mistake?
Our brain tends to focus on the past or future, which can lead to triggering emotional moments throughout our day.
And how can we practice this in our daily lives?
Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment and focusing on the details of what you are doing. I know it seems pretty hard tap to into mindfulness, due to the mind being focused on what’s next and how we can get there, but mindfulness might be the key to helping you feel more connected to what you are doing and help to complete a task more efficiently.
When you are mindful, your brain focuses on the smaller details of your task, allowing you to fully grasp the beauty and depth you have in front of you. When you’re mindful, your awareness increases to give us the ability to see things you might have overlooked before.
Okay, so now you have the idea of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is something that is practiced over time to build the muscle in your brain of focus. You might find that when you’re trying to focus on one thing, your mind wanders to other responsibilities.
The key to managing that lingering thought is to acknowledge the thought is happening, accept the thought, and return focus to the original task you’re focusing on.
There’s no need to add things to your plate, so let’s talk about how mindfulness can be applied to the tasks you’re already doing.
The 5,4,3,2,1 exercise is a great place to start. In this exercise, you tune into your five senses: your sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. The numbers collate to each sense for the simple reason of availability. Meaning, you might not always have five things to taste readily around you, but you can definitely see five things. Your five senses are the way you actively connect with the world daily, so you’ll use them to mindfully focus.
These five senses have allowed us to connect to our surrounding through things we would already be doing, but now with intentional focus.
You can easily share mindfulness with your children by helping them to connect to the moments they are engaged in, and further feel connected to you, who engages in the mindful activity with them.
Here is one to try:
**Written by Sienna Thompson, M.S, MFT, therapist on staff at One Heart Counseling Center**
You have probably seen people in the mental health and mindfulness space talk about nervous system regulation. Nervous system regulation sounds complicated but once you understand some basics, it’s easy to see the immediate positive impact it can have on your life. So, let’s go …