What's your resilience level today? A nervous system check-in you can use daily.
Lately I have shared how my nervous system has been a little fragile, so I have needed to check in with myself and think about what I can handle - changing plans where necessary, asking for support when I need it. And I invite you to do the same!
In this quick sesh I will be giving you a practical tool to assess where your own resilience level is, and how you can honour your own needs during seasons of overwhelm. You and your kids will be grateful for it!
Hey Mama, I have a Sleep Guide for you! For birth to 18 months, this guide is steeped in evidence and laced with compassion. And you can download the first chapter absolutely free HERE.
Are we Insta pals? If not, why not? Come and hang out at @mamamatters.au!
As always, thanks for being here- if you enjoy this poddy I would LOVE if you could give a rating and a review. It means the world to me.
xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:05
Hello love and welcome to the mama chatters podcast. If you're keen to ditch all of the parenting shirts and want to uncomplicate super parenting, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Fiona Weaver, founder of mama matters, and through honest chats with experts, and each other, will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. Wherever and whoever you are, you belong here. Now, let's have a chat. Hello, my love's I hope you're well, it's so lovely to have you here. Again, I love checking in with you, every week, twice a week at the moment. And I am grateful that you are here. Today, I want to remind you that I have my first chapter of my sleep guide available to you to download absolutely free now, this will give you everything on what not biologically normal sleep looks like the data, the science behind sleep, how sleep works, all of these foundations that are going to get you well on your way to making sense of your baby's sleep and also optimizing sleep for your entire family. So there's no strings attached, hop over to my website, or I will link in my show notes here, you can download the first chapter. And hopefully it will help you on your way. I wanted to talk today about a little strategy that I have been employing myself lately. I have shared recently how I have been feeling I have felt like my nervous system was just a bit shot. I felt really stressed. Not very resilient, not very coPI I was snapping at my kids a lot. I was emotionally dysregulated I felt like anything could make me cry, and I could just not stop crying. It just it wasn't a very fun time. But I am very pleased to report that I'm feeling much better. Some of the things that I mentioned that had helped me during that time was starting to journal talking to my husband, I got a GP better outcomes mental health plan and LinkedIn with a psychologist. I have been just looking after myself that little bit more I have an appointment with a naturopath that I haven't been to yet but yeah, I think it was I think it was what my mind needed my body to do to remind me to check in with myself and look after myself. But something that came up for me during this time was noticing how how much I needed my own boundaries. And to know what I could cope with it anytime. And I think this is really important. And I want to keep doing this. And it used to be a little strategy I used with working with groups when I was social working in parenting space. And we would start by going around the circle and just saying, What's your resilience level today? Because if everybody's come to that group feeling really low or not very resilient, we're not going to push as much. And if everyone comes in feeling resilient, or, you know, just being mindful of who's where today gives us an idea of how much to push and how much to push. And that is a dance Eagle term. And we use it with our kids how much push and how much cushion as in, how much do we push before we push them away? And how much do we cushion them when they need cushioning? And it's the same for us. So how we can use this strategy is just to check in with ourselves like what is my resilience level today, I'd like to do it out of 10. And if I'm thinking I am a low to today, I am not going to be coping with much today. Then I am going to work my day around that. I am going to set up the cushioning that perhaps I might need to get through the day or if I am feeling particularly resilient. Maybe that's the day I challenge myself to try something that I usually find overwhelming. And I had a an invitation the other week when I was feeling really fragile. My friends wanted to meet me at this waterplay Park, which was about a half hour drive from home. It was on a Saturday morning. It's a fun place to go. But it's also a really busy place on a Saturday morning. And I knew that it would be really hard to get a park and I knew that I would have to walk a long way with the kids and all the things and also it was really really hot and humid and I have been really struggling with the heat. I am sensitive to heat at the best of times. I live in Queensland. I love being warm because I'm also sensitive to cold. But really hot, humid weather makes me feel so irritable. And I just don't cope with it. It makes me frustrated. I get snappy, I can't go. And so it was gonna be really hard. I wanted to catch up with my friends. So I was telling my husband, he was going to be at golf that morning. So I said, what my plans were, and he said, I think you bite off more than you can chew. And I was like, Yeah, I know I do. But I should do it. And as it got closer, I thought, You know what, I'm not going to do it. These are friends who are going to understand and I think that my nervous system that is too much of my nervous system at this time. And if I'm going to push myself and push my nervous system, it's going to end in overwhelm, burnout, possibly ruptures, and then I'm going to get home and think, why don't I do that? I knew that that was going to be like that. And so I've told my friends, I don't think my nervous system is going to cope today. I don't think my resilience levels are at up up there today. And I'm going to leave you guys to it. And that was it, they were like, sure, take care. And that morning, we had a whole morning with the kids, and they had their iPad time, and I clean the kitchen. And it just felt exactly like what my nervous system needed, and actually what the kids needed as well at that point. So I think this has been a real reminder of just checking in with myself about what I can handle at any time. And I invite you to do the same. I think it can be really easy sometimes to stretch ourselves for the sake of our children's fun. And this sort of intensive mothering ideology, this people pleasing this, wanting our kids to be happy all the time can be at the detriment of our own mental health and well being at times. And so I like to model to my children, when I am feeling overwhelmed or when I don't want to do something, because I don't think that I can cope with it, then I will say that, you know, we were talking about going to that waterplay Park, and I said, I reckon we have a whole morning today because I am just not feeling like I'm going to handle that today and had a quick chat. And that was it. This is what today's gonna look like. And even if they feel a little bit disappointed in that it is still modeling to them that I am mindful of my own needs as well. And sometimes when I feel that push and pull between pleasing my kids and looking after myself, I think about what I'm modeling to them and how I want them to grow up and how I want them to honor their own needs in their adult life and their parenting. You know why later down the track as well. Because a lot of us grew up with Moto mothers, a lot of us grew up with overwhelmed mothers who weren't able to share the load, and we're all giving and will do anything for their children. And as beautiful as that sounds and flowery and lovely. It also leads to burnout, overwhelm, resentment, low self worth. And there is so much to that. So we are trying to, you know, shift some of these generational patterns of parenting of mothering. And I am proud to show the show my kids that I can have my own boundaries and put it on me and not them, not our we're not going to go there today. Because now you're you're too tired. It's about me, we're not going there. Because I don't feel like I can cope with that today. This is why and this is what we can do instead. And other times my resilience level might be feeling pretty high, like up around an eight or nine or hell even a 10. And those are the days where we might, you know, do something a little bit more wild, like, you know, catch the train or go somewhere on an adventure that you know, there's gonna be a little bit harder, but I can handle it today. And so I invite you to do the same. I invite you to check in with yourself, I invite you to honor where your nervous system is where your resilience levels are out in a day and think about what you need in that day to help you to cope a little bit better. Because if you're constantly ignoring that you're not honoring your own needs, that's going to learn that is going to lead to burnout. And that is not what we want to model for our darling little children. So I hope this has been helpful. I love these little nuggets, these little strategies that we can implement in daily life. I don't think self care needs to be all you know, nail salons and massages. I think that it can be these real micro ways of checking in with ourselves honoring our own needs and putting ourselves at the forefront sometimes and it will pay off. So I hope you have enjoyed this and I will see you back here on Thursday chat soon my love thank you so much for listening to mama chatters
Fiona Weaver 09:59
if you enjoyed this Episode Let's continue the conversation on Instagram at MAMA matters.edu Be sure to share this app with your family and friends and don't forget if you liked it please leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts thank you again and I will see you next time
