Ep #6: The Secret to Being OK Even When You’re Not OK

I’m Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number six, The Secret to Being Okay, Even When You’re Not Okay. Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who want to move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name’s 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. Hi, friend. I’m so excited that you’re back here with me today, and I’m super excited about this episode. This is one of those topics that I think we all really need to hear. There are a lot of times we’re not okay, and we make it mean so many things. But today, we’re going to break it down and figure out how to start being okay, even while we’re not okay. But before we dive into that, I just want to do a little shout-out. I have been so overwhelmed and grateful for the outpouring of love and well wishes and good reviews and all of the things with this podcast. It’s a new thing for me. It’s a labor of love. And I’m just so grateful that it’s resonating with some of you. As many of you know who have been listening, I’ve been offering a little bit of a fun giveaway just as a celebration of launching the podcast. And so, for three lucky listeners, they’re going to be getting $75 Amazon gift cards from me for following, rating, and reviewing the show. I just want to share a little gift and a little bit of love with you when you share that with me by reviewing the show. If you’re interested in doing it, please just go to CoParentingwithConfidence.com/PodcastLaunch. And you can get all the details on the contest. But I just wanted to give a little shout-out to—the name of the review was HicksSK24, and the title is “Love!!!” with three exclamation points, and a five-star review, which I’m so appreciative of. Hicks says, “This is just what I needed. So happy I found you. (Big heart emoji).” You know, it can be that simple. I am so grateful that it’s resonating with you and, to share that with you, you’re going to be receiving a little gift from me. So, if you want in on the action, please just go to CoParentingwithConfidence.com/PodcastLaunch. And feel free to dive in there. Let me know what’s going on. Please, in the comments, tell me what’s happening for you. I want to hear what’s resonating, what’s not, what you want to hear me talk about. I want to tailor this so that it’s of value to you, and I would love to hear from you. So, with all of that said, I want to dive into today. This episode is really about ways that we can start being okay when we’re not okay. And so, why am I doing this one today? Well, I’m going to tell you. I hear from my clients all the time and women that I talk to how hard it is to be okay when your kids aren’t with you. Listen, I get it. I still struggle with it if I’m being completely honest. There is something that feels unnatural to me to not have my child with me. As moms, we are biologically wired to be with, protect, love, and care for our children. And when we are divorced and we are splitting time with the other parent, this literally goes against our wiring. And so, it is normal that you have discomfort, that you don’t like it, that you struggle. It makes sense that that’s happening, and I think sometimes we just need to normalize that it is sort of against what we want. It’s against maybe our natural inclinations. And what can we do about that? How can we set ourselves up to not dwell in it, not make it worse, but actually sort of empower ourselves and move forward? And that’s what I really want to talk about today. But before I do that, I want to maybe share with you how I noticed the showing up for me, especially right after the divorce, when we were separated. Just starting to get used to everything, and honestly, for a while after that. For me, I would miss my son tremendously. And I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t understand what was going on. I just knew I hated the way that I was feeling. So, for me, what happened is I just decided to ignore it, to avoid it, to dismiss it, and to do all the other things. I started working out and doing CrossFit like a crazy person. Did I love it? Was my body in good shape? Sure. Was I actually doing damage to my body because I was pushing myself so hard? I actually was. I was going out. I was consuming too much. I was drinking more than I normally had. I was going out a lot. I was not sleeping as well, because I was out. I was avoiding—just didn’t want to be home alone. And I classified it as, “Oh, I just deserve to have a good time.” But the good time didn’t extend into the next day always. Or I just got so busy in work. Really became that... I was always a little bit of a workaholic, but I really dove in, and trying to derive all of my worth and feeling better by doing more. But really, all this left me was exhausted. I was depleted. I was worn down. And, frankly, overwhelmed. Still with the feelings of sadness, of aloneness. And here was the biggest rub: by all of this that I was doing when I wasn’t with my son, when he was with me, I was depleted. I was exhausted. And I wasn’t showing up for my time with him the way that I wanted. I might get short with him. I was tired. I was frustrated by all the things that I had to do on my own. And I was missing out. And so, for me, I had to start to understand what was going on. And like many of us, I kind of had to hit rock bottom before I could see clearly. So, I’m hoping that maybe some of this today will help your rock bottom not be such a hard landing. And so, there are going to be a few things that we’re going to talk about here. And the idea behind it all is really deciding and choosing to be okay. Now, this is not a switch that we flip. This isn’t, again, about toxic positivity and just “thinking positive.” But it’s about learning how to set ourselves up for change—how to put ourselves in the position to be okay. And we need this most when we’re not okay. And so, the first thing that I want to talk about is intentionality. This is one of those things that I know I’ve talked in other episodes about being reactive versus responsive, unconscious versus conscious. And being intentional really is about making conscious choices—conscious decisions. And so, one of the first things that I learned that really shifted things for me is when I started to understand what was going on in my brain. Because I just, frankly, felt broken. I felt like my brain was different. That I had more negativity than the average bear. That I was just more emotional. That I just couldn’t figure it out. But that wasn’t true. And it’s not true about you either. Here’s the thing: our brain is pretty simple. It was wired and created for us. You have to think about it like as cavemen. There are two modes that are brain is in. One of them is “I’m safe and I’m okay.” The other one is “I’m in danger. Everything’s ending.” And so, when we think about this, think about it in caveman days. Our brain is really wired to just keep us alive. That’s its job. So it’s going to do that at all costs. So, we have these two modes. The one mode is the, “I’m safe” mode. This is actually what the parasympathetic brain—it’s the rest and digest mode. This is when everything is working really well. Our body loves this. Our digestion runs smoothly. We’re absorbing antioxidants. Our heart is normalized. Our immune system is working well. Our higher functioning brain is full of oxygenated blood. It’s making good decisions. It’s compassionate. It has thoughtful decisions. It’s able to express gratitude. It feels good in this mode. Then there’s the second mode. And this is the “I’m in danger.” And this is really where fight, flight, or freeze comes in. So, this is set off when our sympathetic nervous system a.k.a. that fight, flight, or freeze is in charge. And when we see this, it’s really looking for “everything is a threat.” Because again, your brain’s job is just to keep you alive. So, whenever we’re threatened, whether that’s real or not, we go into this. Our body is flooded with cortisol. That’s the stress hormone. And what that does is it really shoots throughout your body to put you to attention to be able to run. So, why would we be set up this way? Well, in caveman days, we needed to be ready for anything. If we were in the cave, we could probably be in that super calm mode. But when we were out of it, we had to be ready for anything—a saber-toothed tiger, natural disasters, whatever it was. But we’re not living in caveman days anymore. We’re not running from tigers. Our lives are relatively safe in comparison to those days. But here’s the thing: we have psychological threats that are coming at us that our ancestors never had. We have to deal with social rejection. We have to deal with divorce. We have to deal with traffic, with a weird look from a coworker, a loud talker, a pandemic, our children’s frustration. All of these things, we have to deal with now. And when our brain only has two modes, you can see that anything that is quote-unquote “negative” really can put us into that second mode, which is “I’m in danger.” So, the reason that I bring all of this up is because it’s really important to understand kind of what’s going on. Your brain is just a really simple computer that has these two modes. I like to use the analogy that I’ve heard that it’s like our internal radio station. So, we have two stations that we can tune to, and really that’s it. So, we have to make a choice: which one we want to. The first station is that “I’m safe” one, and that’s WCGL. That’s the calm, grounded radio. The “I’m in danger” radio is WFML. (If you know what “FML” stands for, you can go ahead and insert that there.) So, when we have these two radio stations, we have to understand that we get to choose which one we’re dialed into. And when we’re in these—when we are in WCGL, that calm, grounded radio, really all is well. We can make better choices. We can make better decisions. We can be thoughtful. We can plan ahead. We can be grateful. We can be okay with the discomfort of things happening. But when we’re tuned into WFML, man, everything is wrong. Everything is happening against us and we’re not happy about anything. And we start to really spiral into negative thinking. We start to overgeneralize. We start to be really dramatic because we get into all-or-nothing thinking. And so, when we’re not okay, we have to be really conscious of what radio station we’re tuning into. The second thing that I want to talk about when we talk about sort of setting ourselves up to be okay is about consumption. And I started this with a little story about sort of how I was consuming things, whether it was workouts, whether it was alcohol, whether it was busy-ness. All of those things. When we want to be intentional about being okay, we have to put ourselves in a position to be okay. And part of that is understanding what we’re consuming and what the effect is on us. So, the other day I had a conversation with a client, and she was telling me how she was so excited that the Hallmark Channel holiday movies were starting. And she just loved them, and she and her son would watch them, and it just was this very happy moment. And I kind of giggled to myself because I said, “I actually have the exact opposite experience of the Hallmark Channel.” I’m not ripping on the Hallmark Channel. Listen, I love it and it can be an amazing little guilty pleasure on an afternoon. But here’s the thing: I have to be really conscious about what I take in, whether it’s entertainment, whether it’s news, whether it’s media, because those things impact me. If I watch too many holiday Hallmark movies about how wonderful the holidays are and how everything turns out perfect, I actually do not feel awesome. If I’m in a low place and I’m missing my son or I’m missing the life that I had, and I start watching romantic Hallmark movies, it’s not going to be uplifting. It’s going to do the opposite. So, I just want to offer up that everything’s different for some people, but starting to be aware of how things affect you. When I watch the nightly news, is it putting me in a good place or a negative place? We actually stopped having news on at all in the morning because to start our day that way was starting on a negative station. It kind of dialed us into WFML and started our day that way. So, I have to be conscious about what I’m consuming as it relates to entertainment, media. And this might sound exhausting. I actually don’t find it exhausting. I find it protective, and I feel loved when I can say, “You know what? I’m not going to take that in because it just doesn’t serve me.” You know, my son is definitely one of these kids that, scary movies, not for him. Some kids can watch it. The little boy next door? No problem. But mine? Doesn’t go well. And so, learning and teaching him how to do that for himself is really important. So, I’m going to talk about other things here with consumption. Food and alcohol. Now, this is not a weight loss podcast. This isn’t an overdrinking podcast or anything. And whatever you’re doing, if it works for you, great. I think it’s just about bringing awareness to, when I consume certain things, how do I feel? Do I like the results? And do I want to continue it?” I think we can start to look at consumption, too, of busy-ness—what we’re putting into our calendar and what we’re not. And being intentional about choosing what we’re doing and when we’re doing it and how we’re doing it all is starting to put us into a position of being okay, even when we’re not okay. So, the other thing that we need to be really intentional about is our energy. And here’s something that I want to talk about is that thoughts are just energy. Thoughts are not true statements. They are just sentences in our brain. They’re optional. They’re neither true or false, right, or wrong. They’re just thoughts. And thoughts are energy. And so, when we start to understand this, we can start to understand what’s happening. A lot of us have automatic negative thoughts. And I know I mentioned Poppy Jamie in the last one and her book Happy Not Perfect, but she calls them “ants,” and likes to think of these automatic negative thoughts as little insects, that once you step on one or once one is present, there’s a million of them. And that’s kind of how our negative thoughts are. They’re always playing in the background. It’s like that background music of what radio station we’re tuned into. And so, when we have these thoughts all the time, we need to start to become aware of them, because these thoughts—there are only really two options in the energy of thoughts. We are either having thoughts of love or we are having thoughts of fear. And so, what do I mean by that? I like to think of it as, if you think about feeding wolves or crazy little puppies—whatever analogy works for you—but there is a wolf of love and there is a wolf of fear. We can only feed one at a time, and they’re going to battle for the food. That’s not about us, but they’re going to want to be fed. So, we can either feed the wolf of love or we can feed the wolf of fear. But we can’t feed both at the same time. If we want to feed the wolf of love, these are those intentional thoughts. These are thoughts of compassion, of kindness, of growth, of learning. And this is not all puppies and rainbows. These are all the thoughts that are tuned into that radio station that is grounded and calm. So, if we want to add more of those, we actually have to starve the wolf of fear. So, we have to step away from the negative thoughts. When we see them, when we have those thoughts of “you’re not good enough,” “this isn’t working,” “nobody loves you,” “your life is horrible”—all of those things, those are fear-based thoughts. And so, what we want to do is start to recognize those and choose, “Do we want to feed those thoughts, or do we want to feed the loving thoughts more?” And we start to switch over. And this is not thought swapping. This is not, again, thinking positively just to think positively. But it’s being intentional. It’s deciding on purpose that “I am going to be aware of—when I am aware—of the negative thinking patterns that I’m in, and I’m going to choose differently when I’m able to.” Sometimes, it’s really just about allowing the thought to be there—to seeing the negative thought, and just not resisting it. Not trying to run away. Not trying to hide from it. But just allowing it to be there. It’s kind of like, “I see you and I’m just not going to continue to feed more into that.” And it’s about not shoulding on yourself. When we have all of those thoughts that “it should be different,” “I shouldn’t still feel this way,” “my kid should be with me”—all of those things are resisting what actually is happening, and it’s feeding more of the fear and more of the negative energy. And so, part of it is just dropping the rope and not resisting it so much and just being able to allow what’s happening. So, what does this look like in your real life? How do we begin to do that? How do we begin to change the channel? How do we become more intentional? Well, it starts with loving ourselves—self-love. And I know that everyone talks about that now and it’s this sort of cliché thing to say. But how do you even love yourself? Loving ourselves means that we are doing things to set ourselves up to feel better, to be stronger, to be okay when we don’t feel okay. So, there are those moments—and I have felt them. When you wake up in the morning maybe, and your kids aren’t there, and you just feel awful. You just want to turn over and go back to bed. It’s the idea that we wake up and we can see a million things wrong, and we just can’t see any reason to get out of bed. I understand. And so, those are the exact moments when we have to dig deep and intentionally choose differently. To choose to start to start to be okay, even when we don’t feel okay. So, one of the favorite things that I like to tell people is to help yourself normalize it. Because your brain is, again, going into all of those ants—ant thinking. The automatic negative thoughts that are going to swarm you and tell you all the things that are wrong. So, when I wake up and I’m feeling really anxious in the morning—maybe anxious about not getting through the day, about worrying, all the things—I name it. I say, “I am feeling anxious right now.” Because when I say, “Right now,” what I’m doing is I’m telling my brain it’s not forever. This isn’t going on and on and on. It’s just right now. When I can do that, I start to normalize it, and I can start to allow it a little bit more. This might help me get out of bed and get dressed. It might help me want to go get my morning coffee and sit down and just take a minute to myself. It might not. I might still feel horrible, but I can at least decide that I’m going to continue on and do these things. It’s just the awareness of the feeling so that you can choose what you want to support you. So, here’s one exercise that I want you to try. And this is the idea that we’re going to set ourselves up in advance to be okay when we’re not okay. How are we going to do that? Because we’re going to love ourselves. How are we going to love ourselves? Well, here’s the exercise. I want you to make a list of 20 things that your soul loves. So, what is that? You know, for me, it’s walks. It’s yoga. It’s meditation. It’s my morning coffee. It might be a bath at the end of the day. It could be calling a friend. It could be sending a nice text to someone. I love sending random texts to people just saying “I love you” or “thinking of you.” Whatever it is that feeds your soul—that your soul loves and it makes your soul feel full and warm and rejuvenated—I want you to give that to you and I want you to figure out 20 ways that you can give that to yourself. And then each day, I want you to do two of those things for yourself. Just two. And then, if you want to go back to bed and hide under the covers and Netflix for six hours, do that. But first, I want you to do two things that your soul loves. And do you know why? Because that’s loving yourself. That is choosing to intentionally love yourself and set yourself up to be okay, even when you don’t feel okay. That is intentionally choosing to switch the channel to the WCGL—that calm and grounded radio. And so, I want you just to try it. You can start adding more and more of those things to your day as you feel better and better. But it’s almost like a little toolkit that you have, that “I know that I’m going to do these two things every day to fill my soul, because doing that makes me feel better. Makes me feel loved.” And so, when I’m not okay and I’m missing my kids, I’m still going to do two things for myself to fill myself up, to love myself, and to start to choose differently. To start being intentional. To switch that radio station. To choose which energy I’m going to be coming from—love or fear. And then I’m going to choose what I’m going to consume and what I’m not to support myself. Part of being okay is just putting yourself in a position to try. And sometimes, this is a very simple act. Sometimes it’s hard. But this is what’s needed to be okay when we’re not okay. So, that’s what I wanted to offer you today. I’m so grateful that you’re here with me. Thank you for listening to the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast. If you want more information or the resources from this podcast, please just visit CoParentingwithConfidence.com. I’ll see you next week, and in the meantime, take care of you. To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away $75 Amazon gift cards to three lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show. I want to give you something that brightens your day, like subscribing and reviewing to this podcast brightens mine. And it doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I sure would love that, but I want your honest feedback so that I can create a show that provides so much value to you, because that’s why I’m doing this. So, please visit CoParentingwithConfidence.com/PodcastLaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on a show in an upcoming episode. Thank you so much for spending this item with me. I know there are a million other things that you could be doing, and I’m so grateful that you chose to be here with me. So, take care of yourself, and I’ll see you next week. Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit CoParentingwithConfidence.com. I’ll see you next week.