Self-care is not just a buzz word. It’s about identifying where there are gaps in your care for yourself and setting yourself up to have more peaceful days even when you are an extremely busy mom. If you find yourself struggling with anxiety and burn out, this episode is for you…
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
This Episode Discusses:
Why self-care is important
How to recognize the type of self care you need to feel more at peace
How self-care and guilt are related
What is the spoon theory
How to build up tiny self-care habits into your lifestyle
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT:
So many women are struggling with anxiety and depression and are often burning themselves out by doing too much. In today’s episode we’re talking about taking care of yourself. My guest today is Sarah Miller from the self care lifestyle podcast. Sara helps women reduce anxiety by helping them find effective self care habits that are unique to their needs. Be sure to check out the show notes to find out how to connect with her further. I’m your host Jackie from Whole9family and this is the Simply Freeing Podcast.
Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
Hi Sara!
Hi! Thank you so much for having me.
I wanted to talk to you about self-care and I know that that's your area of expertise and I feel like self-care is a pretty big buzzword. I realized how easily I could become overwhelmed and I had to find ways to get myself to relax and calm down especially as more kids were added to the family so I would love for you to talk about this topic. it's really important to find ways to get yourself to be in a more relaxed, calm state so can you talk a little bit about this?
Yeah. Absolutely! I love that you've addressed the buzzword aspect of self-care. I think in recent years especially, it's become such a common thing to hear oh just you know self-care drinking a glass of wine doing whatever and not that that can't be self-care, it absolutely can be but it goes so much deeper than that. Self-care ultimately is about meeting your needs it's about identifying where there's gaps in your care for yourself. It's not this extra luxurious thing that you have to do or something special to reward yourself with. Self-care comes down to taking care of yourself and meeting your needs consistently and setting yourself up for success through that.
So when I hear people that are like, I just don't have time for self-care. I don't deserve it. I need to be productive…Self-care truly can be anything from the basic needs of like showering and drinking water too or something more fun like doing a bubble bath or shopping trip or maybe like meditation and zen kind of stuff is not for you maybe it's jamming out in your car to some like punk rock. I mean I know that can be me at times. It's such a variety of things and it's just important to recognize right at the beginning of your self-care journey.
There are certain seasons where I've been able to get away and personally I love going away and recharging but right now, in my season, it has just not worked out for me to get away with my with my husband and it's hard because it's something that I really desire but I've had to rethink how I can get myself to that place of relaxation and you know sometimes it just means like leaving to go to the bathroom when I don't even really have to go to like sit in there for five minutes just to like decompress.
Yeah. I can understand that. Self-care is something that does have to evolve with those life seasons and I think what you said about like literally going into hiding in the bathroom for five minutes is a great example of that. I have an almost 2 year old and my self-care from pre baby and even pre marriage is drastically different than having a kid and saying OK I have very limited alone time. I have to like really utilize it in very specific ways and find those tiny little pockets for self-care and for me a lot of that is the alone time because I'm very much an introvert.
I love that you've identified that getting away is also one of your big forms of self-care. That is something that sounds like it really recharges you and fulfills something in you and I'm curious if you've explored that deeper in like OK what about that getting away is so recharging for you? Is it being in a different environment? Is it being alone and away from your kids? Is it being just somewhere new? What has shifted that for you and how can you recreate that at home and make it work in your current lifestyle?
I think I do like the new environment aspect 'cause I tend to get very overwhelmed with my house especially having a lot of kids and being over stimulated and lots of clutter. I'm always decluttering. I talk about that all the time and one of the things that I've done in the house is in my bedroom for example. I created a very simple decor and changed it to be more tropical and to remind me of Maui which I love you know where we where we went on our honeymoon and it just is a place where I feel really at peace. So what gets overwhelming for me is that I want to do that to my whole entire house but there's so much stuff so it's like I find myself rage cluttering when I get stressed. I do that too. I definitely do that too
if you can't get away for a trip you could get away by going to the park…taking your kids to the park depending on their ages and how much supervision they really need. It could be you know going to a friend’s house if being with other people, if being around people, I know that's something that sometimes goes hand in hand with that travel if that's something that you enjoy. Another option could be just simply like going for a drive.
When I first had my son I remember feeling so holed up and stuck and we were in a one bedroom apartment at the time and we were just like it was such a tight space and it's like new baby and then I went back to work fairly quickly you know we don't I didn't have the luxury of a paid maternity leave so and we couldn't swing it up what happened is I would remember having this horrible, horrible, day and just being so overwhelmed and frustrated and couple weeks later I had a diagnosis for postpartum depression and anxiety so that kind of made sense but one of the things that was fantastic that my husband did for me that day was took all three of us packed us up in the car took us out of the house. We picked up at dinner and literally just like went and drove out in an area of town that we didn't normally spend time in and found a place to park and eat with a view. It was literally just getting physically out of the space and being somewhere else for a little shift in environment to feel a little better.
I enjoy going on field trips with the kids and I’ve had people say, I don’t have the energy. I don’t know how you take them out. I think there is a lot of guilt that surrounds this topic.
I think that’s a valid thing to feel that way but I think it’s important to recognize that it’s okay for you not to have the energy to do those things.
Have you heard of the spoon theory?
The spoon theory is generally associated with chronic illnesses and is very much about having limited spoons and limited amounts of energy and I think it applies to most people in general just maybe in different quantities. Everybody has a different number of spoons. Different tasks take different number of spoons for different people. It's all gonna vary so for instance for you it sounds like maybe taking field trips doesn't require as many spoons as somebody else might. So you have that energy to put into getting out of the house and it can still be that act of self care for you and by putting that energy in you're getting more energy out but sometimes if you don't have that energy to give at the beginning to get that energy back that can be really hard and that's where it's so important to start with where you're at and what needs you can meet.
So to a mom who wants to get out wants a change of scenery…that's really important to her self-care but she doesn't have the energy to get all of her kids and get out of the house what I would do personally if I were in her shoes is I would check in with friends check in with family and try to get that child care to try to get out of the house even if it's as simple as going for a drive for a cup of coffee and having a friend or a family member come to your home and stay with your kids so you're not dealing with packing them all up and going or your spouse your spouse is as much a parent as you are and they can stay and watch the kids for a minute.
But another great option if that doesn't work, if you can't find someone else to be with your kids, is to take 10 minutes in your bedroom and if it’s a place that's relaxing for you is to step away and take that pause and build up on those habits of self-care that are going to help you build more energy to take a bigger self-care leaps. So that's definitely something I struggled a lot with when I was going through I would say probably one of my second more severe bouts of anxiety a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder but I definitely went through some phases where I was very depressed because of it because it was limiting me in my life and I was so frustrated and just overwhelmed and exhausted from the constant just like stream of just stress basically like my head just never shut up and it was a lot. With that there was periods of depression where I didn't have the energy to go do those big self-care things like this is more pre children for me but like getting out of the house and going on a big thing that would really fill my cup. I had the energy for the little things... the little, tiny daily habits for the little tiny self-care habits that you can build into your lifestyle and that's what I think is so so powerful in building a foundation so that you can take bigger steps towards feeling calmer and feeling more fulfilled.
You really have to figure out what you’re feeling and what needs you have. Of course there are also elements to self-care where you want to push yourself a little bit. You want to do the hard thing to get to the better place, but you have to start with this little stuff that feels good that recharges you now. That key point is what recharges you. I think people really easily fall into this trap of well I really like Netflix and junk food and that's totally cool if you needed Netflix night but when you're doing that consistently and you're consistently doing things that don't necessarily consistently recharge you…that truly help you feel better and bring you out of that funk, (it’s not good.)
One really good example of something I have in my like self-care toolkit is a hot shower. That is like my go to thing that I know always helps me and there's a relatively low energy thing that I can do and probably most any point in time so it's something where it gives me a really solid like mental reset like I'm literally washing away the overwhelming anxiety and like you know when you like get out on the wrong side of the bed you're just in a funk that day one of my favorite ways to reset is through that so that's one of my like key self-care things. It's not the meditation, it's not the exercise.
I know that you work with moms on this topic. I love for you to share before we end how we can connect with you.
Absolutely! I am the host of the self-care lifestyle podcast. I create courses and content to help women reduce anxiety with the power of effective self-care which is really what we were focusing on…finding self-care that works for you and that's effective for you. Thank you so much for having me Jackie! This is so much fun.
You're welcome!
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And as always please email me Jackie@whole9family with any questions.
I’ll see you next time friends.