Ep #48: Name It to Tame It Series – Part 1

Welcome back, friend, to the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast. I'm your host, Mikki Gardner, and this is episode number 48, the Name It to Tame It series, Part 1. [music] Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly wanna be. My name is Mikki Gardner, I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same, if you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well get ready and let's dive into today's episode. [music] After working with so many moms and some dads who are working on their co-parenting journey, I have definitely witnessed a whole lot of feelings, and I've been there. I totally understand, I've felt them too. And we feel them rightly so, because divorce isn't some fun easy process that we all sign up for willingly, it's usually brought on to us or a decision that we have to come to, and it's not easy. And for many of us, we go through a million and one feelings over the course of this journey, and maybe multiple times, and having these feelings can make us feel crazy, alone, alienated, unhinged, out of control. The list goes on and on. So I wanted to do a series of podcasts devoted to the common feelings that we all experience, why? Because we have to understand what's going on, we have to be aware of it before we can change it, so that's why I wanna talk about feelings in a few separate podcasts, the common feelings that we experience, why we experience them, how we can identify what we're feeling and then what we can do about it. If you've listened to this podcast at all, then I'm sure that you already have guessed that this process is really about just becoming more and more aware of what is true, what you're thinking, and what you're feeling, so that you can learn to accept. And when I say accept, it's really just not resisting, running away, or avoiding, because when we can do this, when we're aware and we accept, then we take aligned action towards the life that we want, not what we don't want. This process only works, though, when we're able to feel our feelings, when we're able to name them and take ownership of them, and so we have to create a vocabulary to be able to do that. And the amazing Brené Brown, her newest book, Atlas of the heart is this guide. She has created an atlas of emotion for us to understand and to be able to name, and so I'm gonna use this as our guide in this series because there is just no better resource than Brené. So in this part one, we are gonna look at stress, overwhelm, and anxiety, these are all emotions that all humans experience, they're not special to divorce, but when we are in the trenches of separation and divorce and co-parenting, these often can feel like a permanent state that we're residing in, and that's why I wanna address them today. Thich Nhat Hanh, and I'm sure I'm saying his name wrong, famously quoted saying, "Suffering is part of the human experience, but you can learn to suffer better," and that's what I want us to do by looking into these emotions today. So we're gonna start with stress, this is a common emotion that many of us feel, just trying to manage our daily lives, we feel stressed, and oftentimes, we nowadays are all living in such a state of stress that it has become our normal. It's become our baseline. We don't even know the difference, but when we are stressed, what's happening is our body is actually having chemical reactions, things are going on, and we can become sort of addicted and used to it, and so that's why we wanna look at each of these, but starting with stress, here's how they define stress in the Atlas of the heart, we feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as beyond our ability to cope successfully, this includes elements of unpredictability uncontrollability and feeling overwhelmed. So this happens often when we are co-parenting, when we're in the middle of or after divorce, when things are uncontrollable, unpredictable, and we are uncertain and we're feeling overloaded. Stressful situations cause both a physiological meaning in your body and psychological, your mind and emotion reactions. Our body responds to stress, it increases our heart rate, it floods us with cortisol, and this is really useful because in caveman days when we needed to escape the tiger, this is what allowed our body to do that, but our body, even our emotions and our mind is reacting to a state of constant threat that sometimes it's not there, and so when we're unaware and were living in this state, we just think it's normal, and what happens is we start to live in this cortisol-flooded State, always ready. Always prepared and ready to fight. But what that does is it keeps us on edge, it keeps us in the state of stress, and where I see this come up so much is especially new into the co-parenting journey, just trying to learn how to do things that you once did in a partnership, now alone, learning to get everybody to all their things, but there's only one of you. Managing the house and everything that has to happen within it, and it's only you. Those stressful interactions with your ex where you have a physical reaction as soon as the conflict comes up, these are the things that create perceived stress, and when we have perceived stress, it often will lead to decreases in our immune functioning, greater inflammation in our body, less sleep, and poor health. So stress really does impact our daily lives and our body, so let's look at overwhelm because there is stress, and then there's overwhelm. So where stress was really... Where we felt like everything going on, the environmental demand was beyond our ability to cope with it, overwhelm is really an extreme level of stress, an emotion or a cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function. Stress, Brené Brown suggests, is like being in the weeds, you're sort of trying to figure out what you need, getting all the things done, you're still functioning, but it's hectic, it's a little bit frantic. You're needing sort of all hands on deck to be able to do this, overwhelm is when you're totally blown out, and the only way to deal with it is really to step out. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes overwhelm as an all-too-common feeling that in our lives are somehow unfolding faster than our nervous system and psyche can manage, we feel like we are totally under water, totally drowning and don't know what to do, this really resonates with me because I know and I watch clients get completely overwhelmed by all of these day-to-day things that they have to do now that they're navigating a different journey, and when we get to a state of overwhelm, when it is all just too much and we are blown out, it is a really detrimental place to be because you just need space and time to figure it out. But sometimes that's not an option especially when we have little kids that we're trying to navigate and we're trying to raise and we're trying to deal with, and when we have those places where we're just completely blown out, what do you do? Well, we're gonna get to all those in a minute, but what I want you to understand is that stress and overwhelm are normal part of the process, you are not weak, you are not abnormal for feeling these things, just because you get overwhelmed doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. It simply means that in that moment, what is going on, your brain and your body feels that it is unfolding faster than it can deal with, and it needs really to be taken a step back to be able to regulate. And we're gonna get into that in a few minutes. So there's stress and there's overwhelm, two super common things that we feel in life and definitely in co-parenting. Now, I wanna get to anxiety, this is something that we hear a lot about, and I love Brené Brown's visual description of anxiety, she lovingly thinks of it as that Willy Wonka shit tunnel. Do you remember that in the movie, that super frightening, really scary, intense scene in the movie when they're floating down the chocolate river in the cute little boat, and all the kids and the passengers are all going along and they start to freak out because of what is happening around them, this is what anxiety can feel like, it's escalating to a loss of control, it's worst-case-scenario thinking and total uncertainty. The American Psychological Association defines anxiety as an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure, it can be a state and a trait. So what does that mean? A trait is considered to be something that is part of an individual's personality, and therefore sort of a long-term characteristic, something that shows up in their behaviors, their actions, and their feelings. It might sound like I'm a confident person or I'm just an anxious person. A state, on the other hand, is a temporary condition that we are experiencing for a short period of time, and after it's passed, we sort of go back to how we normally are, and I think of many of my clients that have said to me, "You know what, I don't even know what this anxiety is," it was brought on because of what happened in the marriage. What happened in the divorce. I know one of my clients in particular has really struggled and we've had to do a lot of work around anxiety, learning how to work with it, to name it, to process it, because she's never experienced it before. But when she had this life-altering thing happen, suddenly the certainty that she had about her life was gone, and when that certainty is gone, enter anxiety. Now, some of us are naturally disposed to anxiety, there's generalized anxiety disorders that are both a trait and a state, these things last more than six months, in addition to feeling worried, you might also feel restless, fatigued, trouble concentrating, irritability, increased tension and trouble sleeping. So many people are affected with anxiety disorders in their lifetime, and it is very difficult to work through one without professional help, so I just wanna say that, if you feel like this has been a state for you, that you have been in for more than six months, I really want you to seek professional help, for me, anxiety has been present in my life, and it definitely was a state that I was in after the divorce, and this is what I see with my clients, it's moving in and out of anxiety. Anxiety happens, again, when we have that loss of control, it's when we get into worst-case-scenario thinking and total uncertainty. For those of us who are pretty uncomfortable with uncertainty, we're then more likely to experience anxiety when we're going through divorce and co-parenting, and oftentimes, Brené points out that there's really two mechanisms that we use, worry and avoidance, but unfortunately, neither of these is effective. Worry and anxiety really go together, but worry isn't emotion, it's just the thinking side of anxiety, this was so powerful for many of my clients and I know for me to understand is that worry is not a feeling, it is the thinking part of anxiety, it is a manifestation of it. So I can understand that when I am in worry, I am in an anxious state. Worry is described as a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that will happen in the future, and those of us who have a tendency to worry believe that it's helpful, we think we have to do it, that there's really no other option, or we try to suppress it and just not do it. Unfortunately, none of those things work. I'm not saying that we wanna worry just to worry, but we have to understand that worry is not a helpful coping mechanism, and we need to learn what's going on, which is that we are anxious and deal with those feelings. The other coping mechanism that Brené points out is avoidance, who here can raise their hand for this one? We so often just try to avoid. What does that look like? It looks like just not showing up at all, ignoring it, often spending a lot of time zigzag-ing around it or away from it, instead of dealing with what's going on. And avoidance isn't just sort of a benign experience, it can hurt us, it can hurt other people, and it increases more anxiety. So we looked at those three emotions, we've defined them a little bit, we've given some words and a vocabulary, we've started to put some language around what they are, so now what we wanna do is look at why they might be present. So evolutionarily, we are wired for anxiety and fear because they've helped us stay alive. Fear can signal us, anxiety can help signal us to act or to resist doing something, it can help us make wise or self-protective choices. Again, when life was really simple, when we were just living in caveman days and we were pretty much eating, sleeping, having sex, and hunting. There wasn't a lot going on. So when we're in an anxious state, it was meant to be there because there was a threat, there was a perceived threat that we needed to be aware of, and so anxiety is useful. Again, the feeling of stress actually has a physiological response in our body, overwhelm is when we have so much of it that we just shut down. So it's really important for us to understand that these things are normal. They're wired into us. Our body's way and our brain's way of keeping us safe and keeping us alive, and that's okay, but we just also wanna understand that we have control here, and when we're in these states, there are things that we can do, because when we don't understand them, when we fight against them, when we go into the worry cycles, or we go into the avoidance, our body has to ramp up to get our attention in different ways. What does that look like? It could look like starting to have panic attacks, being really overwhelmed to the point of non-functioning, and the way I like to think about it is our brain's way of really just trying to get our attention. And once we can start to understand what's going on, become aware of it and name these things. Well, this is when we have a little bit more control. This is when we can start to make some choices, take that aligned action. So I'm gonna offer just a few ideas here, and as we go through this series we will continue to look and expand this, but today I really just wanted to talk about the different feelings that we all experience, why we're doing that, and then again, a couple of points to help you. So there's two things, in the moment. Because these things happen so quickly, we get totally overwhelmed, we feel the stress and it's happening in our body sometimes for long periods of time before we even become aware of it, and so what we wanna do is be able to catch it earlier and earlier, so that we have less and less effects on our life, so in the moment when you do feel that you're stressed or there's panic attacks. Those moments where you feel like you can't breathe. One of the things that we need to do is your system is being flooded, you are dysregulated, so our main priority is to regulate the nervous system, there is a nerve, the vagal nerve, that goes down your spinal column and can flood your body in an instant with stress hormones, and these things can come on out of the blue, a memory might trigger something, conflict with your ex, something that your child says, it can all be brought back so quickly, and you're experiencing all these things again, so in the moment, when you realize that you have been activated or triggered, whichever you'd like to say, and you realize that you are dysregulated, what we wanna do is regulate the nervous system. So there's a couple of things that I'm gonna talk about here. First and foremost, it is really a simple and profound, not easy, but simple as breathing, when our body is dysregulated, we need to ground it down, and we do that with our breath. So what that looks like is proper breathing, many of us haven't been taught how to properly breathe. But mouth-breathing actually makes us more stressed, so what we wanna do is breathe through our nose fully, and what that looks like is putting your hand on your belly, your hand on your heart, grounding down to realize I'm safe in this moment, because likely you are safe in that moment, if your physical safety is in jeopardy, then run. Get yourself out of that, for sure. But when we're talking about feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or anxious, we are physically safe in that moment, and so we wanna ground down, so again, hand on your belly, hand on your heart, and you breathe in deeply through your nose, allowing it to fill your belly with air. And then you are going to release, exhale through your nose, and you feel your belly go back down and you do three to five breasts like that, just that can help you regulate in those moments of stress, of overwhelm, of anxiety. There's also four square breathing, which I know is very helpful. This is where we can actually breathe in for four. We hold for four. You exhale for four. Hold for four, and repeat, you can think of it as visualizing a square, as you watch yourself go over, you breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four, do that three to five times and you will feel more regulated. So those are a couple of things to do in the moment. I know it sounds simple, but we have to do something to ground ourselves to create safety, to say, "I know that I feel out of control. I know I feel uncertain, so I need to create certainty. I need to create a sense of control inside of me. " So that's what we can do in the moment, preventatively, there's a couple of things here, one of my favorites that I always tell clients, I know that the end of the day, after you're done working, maybe you've had an interaction with your ex that's been challenging. Maybe your kids aren't listening. Maybe you're running late and you have to get dinner on the table, there's those moments when we feel so overwhelmed, we just don't know what to do, so instead of allowing ourselves to push to the edge where we blow up. What I wanna suggest is that you have something in your back pocket. And what I mean is, a lot of times, dinner time can be really, really challenging, and during those early days when you feel overwhelmed and emotions are running high and there's a lot of stress, give yourself a pass, have a go-to meal that you always have on hand that you do not have to think about, and that creates ease. For me, it was popcorn, Apple, and cheese sticks. [chuckle] And I would give it to my son and we would eat it in front of the TV. I felt generally okay about it because there was Apple and some dairy. And so I felt like it was okay, he thought it was fun. But what it did for me was it allowed me the moments to take a breath, to do nothing, and when you're overwhelmed, that's exactly what you need, to do nothing. And so to plop down on the couch with him while he's taken care of, that helped me feel a lot better and helped me manage the overwhelm, and I know for so many of my clients, this is one that really helps, it might be breakfast, it might be another part of your day, whatever it is, give yourself sort of a go-to that you could have in your back pocket to pull out because when we're overwhelmed and stressed, we're not thinking clearly. As soon as emotion goes up, our intellect goes down. That's just the way the brain works. The blood can only go to one place at a time, so when our emotions, when we're flooded, when everything's high, all of our attention and energy goes there, and then our intellect, meaning the wise version of us that can make reasonable choices, logical choices, delay gratification, that's all offline when we're overwhelmed, when we're stressed, and when we're anxious, so we wanna be able to get that part of our brain back online to do that, we have to ground ourselves, regulate our nervous system, and by having these little tools in place to do that, we give ourselves the opportunity to do it, preventatively I work with a lot of my clients on what that looks like, creating a self-care plan, this is not manicures and tea in the bath tub, no, what it looks like is what are those things that create well-being, that create less stress, that create more ease, that help us show up in a different level. For me, it has been in the past, therapy and it's coaching. Yes, coaches have coaches, and this is the work that I do to make sure that I am taking care of myself, that I am able to recognize and understand my reactions, the patterns that are going on. So it's an ongoing process. I've also had to learn to cut down on caffeine, I've learned to change my diet to things that actually serve me better, getting enough sleep. I require sleep, we all do, but so often we run on so little of it, but we need to prioritize sleep, we also need exercise, we need to prioritize that because that helps us be less stressed, which helps us stay out of overwhelm and anxiety. And for me, meditation, absolutely a game changer, because when I'm doing those things, when I'm taking care of my thoughts and my feelings, when I'm not putting in my body things that are harmful for it, when I'm prioritizing sleep and exercise, and when I'm meditating, I am more able to keep myself regulated and then keep myself out of dysregulation, which is stress, overwhelm, and anxiety, I still feel them all the time, just like you do, but what we wanna do is start to learn the skills that we need to be able to deal with it, and it is possible, I know that it doesn't feel like that sometimes, right now when you are in the midst of it, when you are overwhelmed by these things, but you are capable of doing it, but dealing with them often is a skillset and we need help to do it, I'm here to help you do that. And I hope this podcast today has given you some ideas and helped you normalize some of the things that you might be feeling, but you are not alone in this, and you are 100% capable of working through all of these emotions, feeling all of them, and coming out a better version of you. So that's the show that I have for you today. If you know someone that could benefit from this episode, I would be so, so grateful if you would share it with them, either text or email them the link, or take a screenshot of this and share it on social, and if you do share it on Instagram, please tag me, I would love to connect with you there. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I'll see you next week, and in the meantime, take a really, really good care of your friend. [music] Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week. [music]