The Most Effective Stress Reduction Technique EVER

Yes, I said it.  The most effective stress reduction technique EVER.  AND it's natural, easy and free.  Don't believe me?  Read on.

Diaphragmatic breathing.  What on earth is that, right??  It’s a fancy term for deep breathing using your diaphragm.  Why is it important?  Let’s try an exercise to help figure that out:

Lay down if you can, but if you can’t, sitting works.  Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach.  Now breathe as you normally do and try to notice a couple of things: Do either of your hands move?  If one of your hands does move, is it the one on your stomach or the one on your chest?  If you’re a busy, chronically stressed out person, my guess is that one of two things happened: neither of your hands moved much at all OR your hand on your chest moved.  So why does this matter?

It matters because how you breathe affects how you feel.  When you’re stressed out, scared, angry, etc., you take shorter, quicker breaths into your lungs.  When you take shorter quicker breaths into your lungs, you set off an entire stress reaction in your body.  Your heart rate increases, you might sweat, it’s more difficult to focus.  And it’s all of these physiological reactions that make you feel even more stressed.  For more details about this process read this.  Its one big cycle.

The good news is that you can interrupt this cycle by changing how you breathe.   Here’s how: when you're starting to feel stressed out in an unproductive way, immediately start taking low, slow, deep breaths into your stomach, NOT YOUR LUNGS, by gently inhaling and exhaling through your nose.  If you’re alone or so inclined, go ahead and put your hand back on your stomach; you should feel your stomach fill up with air and rise up lifting your hand.  That’s how you know that you’re doing it right.

Check out this video for a quick *video demonstration if that's more your thing:

The magic of this technique is that it’s as far from magic as you can get…its pure physiology.  But it requires practice.  So pick a time of day when you're typically pretty chill, lay down somewhere and focus on your breathing.  Even if you only practice for 5 minutes every day, after a few months of really consistent practicing, you can completely re-wire your nervous system and lower your overall levels of anxiety.  Pretty damn cool huh?  The more you practice breathing using your diaphragm, the more natural it will become and the less stressed you‘ll feel.

It’s nice when we can make our bodies work for us rather than against us right?

*I realize that I chose to post that video and it's mostly good (fun accent right??), but they are WRONG about breathing out of your mouth.  Far better to exhale through your nose.  If this is too uncomfortable for you, you may breathe out of your mouth, but exhale the air as if you are blowing through a straw with pursed lips.  If you open mouth exhale too much it messes stuff up (too much carbon dioxide blah blah) so...inhale AND exhale through the nose no matter what the nice Brit lady says ;)

Have your tried it yet?  What was it like?  How did it go?  Tell me about it on my Facebook page!

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost! (Or Maybe I Am...)

We've been talking a lot about the monster within lately, when you feel like a monster and what happens inside your body and brain when you're feeling that way.  And most of what those posts have discussed is the experience of being angry.  Which is big.  But what we haven't talked about yet and really need to is FEAR.  

All of the same stuff applies in terms of the nerdy brain structures (limbic system and amygdala), chemistry (adrenaline and cortisol) and bodily reactions (increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, shortness of breath, etc), but we interpret all of these things much differently because instead of wanting to kill someone (not truly of course), we're terrified.  And perhaps not even sure why.  So let's talk about that....

The other day I was scrolling through Facebook when I stumbled upon a video.  For any of you who use Facebook, I don't have to tell you that the videos in your feed start to play without audio as soon as you scroll by them.  So this video started of people waiting in some kind of line in some kind of store and suddenly a woman is carrying what appears to be a very young child who is totally limp in her arms.  

Confused (and alarmed), I began to read the description of the video, which said, "A 2-year-old girl in a Perth IGA became unconscious and stopped breathing Sunday. The store’s a CCTV camera shows the girl’s mother, Amy Collard, coming toward a cashier line from the aisle carrying her daughter’s limp body."

A small voice in my head that felt very far away and muffled said, "Stop reading!!  Stop watching!!", but it was almost like I couldn't change my behavior.  I could feel that tiny, far away part of me starting to freak out a bit, but it was like watching a train wreck: I could not take my eyes off this video.  Within a minute or two, this toddler's lifeless body is thrown onto the check out station for a man to begin CPR on her.  I think it was at this point (although I don't really remember which happens quite a bit when you're freaking the eff out), that tiny voice got louder and forced my fingers to turn off the screen on my phone.  And once my phone was off, I started to realize what was happening.

I was starting to have a panic attack.

My breathing was rapid and shallow, the start of hyperventilation.  My heart was beating out of my chest.  I was crying and wasn't even aware of it.  I began to experience tunnel vision, where it feels like your range of vision is getting more narrow by the second.  I felt hot and flustered.  

And again, that small but helpful voice buried somewhere under the panic reminded me that this is simply the start of a panic attack and all I needed to do is breathe.  

So I did.  

I closed my eyes and focused all of my energy on taking slow, low, deep breaths through my nose and within a couple of minutes, the panic reaction ended.  

Whew!  Crisis averted.  Now what the hell happened??

Well we know what happened literally speaking.  My brain was super freaked out about this horrifying video (the girl is just fine btw, thank god!!!) and flipped shit.  Amygdala took over and I was totally unable to be rational about the situation and instead had to initially ride out my reaction until I realized what was happening and could circumvent it.  

And why did my brain flip out about this?  Well that's pretty easy too: I have two young children and while there are few things that I seriously worry about regarding them, the one thing I worry about quite a bit is their health and safety.  So seeing a child the age of my oldest lifeless for no goddamn reason in the middle of a perfectly normal day in a perfectly normal store shook me up.  Bad.  

Makes sense.  But if you've ever had a panic attack, you're probably curious about what you can learn from this.  So here we go:

1) Know your triggers.  For me, anything that reminds me that something awful could happen to my children is going to trigger me.  It's a soft spot for me.  Which is good to know because knowing that, I can mentally prepare myself when I anticipate that I might hear, see or be reminded of that.  And awareness is half the battle.

2) Know your brain and body.  Do you have any idea what is going on in your brain and body most of the time?  If not, start observing.  Get your doctorate in YOU.  In fact, take a moment right now and check in with yourself.  What's on your mind?  What kinds of things are you thinking about?  What emotions are you feeling?  What's happening in your body?  Do you feel physically relaxed?  Are you muscle tense and bothering you?  Once checking in with yourself become habit, you'll be able to notice what could turn into really intense feelings before they actually get intense.  

3) Once you notice something is amiss, BREATHE.  Slow, low, deep breaths through your nose.  Look for a detailed post on that coming up, but for now know that slow, low, deep breaths will short circuit a panic/anxiety response.

4) If you're really freaking out, it will help to focus on something other than the upsetting thoughts.  Breathing wouldn't have done me a whole lot of good I just kept picturing that little girl's lifeless body or thinking about something bad happening to my own kiddos.  So pick a spot on the wall or floor and stare at it hard.  Or come up with something to say over and over again like "all I need to do is breathe" or "I'm going to be just fine".  

Now if you have panic attacks on a regular basis, worry about having more of them or change your behavior significantly because of them (hard time leaving the house, avoid potential triggers, etc), then this article isn't getting it done and you might need treatment.  Feel free to visit me on my website if you're interested in scheduling an appointment to learn how to get rid of these emotional roller coasters.  

Do you know what your triggers are?  What makes you irrationally angry or super scared?  Tell me about it on my Facebook page!

The Monster Within Part II - Understanding Your Monster

Ok, we can agree on the fact that we all feeling like losing our sh*t every now and then and it's, by definition, can be quite ugly sometimes.  I hope we can also agree on the fact that feeling like were losing our shit doesn't make us monsters, it simply makes us human.  Fine, fine, you say, but it SUCKS.  It feels terrible, sometimes we act terrible because of the feelings and then we feel even more terrible because of how we acted.  Wah wah.

BUT by understanding what's happening inside our bodies and brains when we're melting down, we put ourselves in a position to better manage our emotions when we're feeling our most monstrous.

So let's nerd out about this for a second.  Very generally speaking there is an animal part of our brains (limbic system and more specifically, amygdala) and a human part of our brains (prefrontal cortex).  The animal part is ALL FEELING and even more specifically, mostly rage and fear.  It doesn't understand time, place, person, CONTEXT.  Just feelings.

So when your toddler screams "no" at you for the 15,367th time that day or your husband walks out of the room in the middle of an argument (and you're a bit sensitive to loss), the amygdala is the part that goes CRAZY.

Remember the scene in Titanic where the water gets into enough compartments of the ship that it activates the alarm because the system has determined that it's going down?  (Don't tell me you haven't seen Titanic and don't tell me you don't love it.  Lies!!).  Horns are sounding, lights are flashing and all panic and anarchy ensue?  Well THAT is what is going on in your brain (and then body) when it feels threatened.  Seriously.

Crazy huh??

Let me refer you back to the examples that I gave.  Your toddler and husband being shits are not in fact mortal threats (though YOU may be a mortal threat to them if they keep it up ;)).  But try to tell your amygdala that.  If you are really scared or really angry, regardless of whether you could actually get dead or not, your brain goes into full on fight/flight/freeze mode, where you are literally ready to duke it out, run like hell or play dead.

Your body is being flooded by stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol primarily) because your brain has determined that you might die.  So your blood is pumping, your heart is racing, you're possibly sweating, you might feel hot and flustered, you might even be shaking.  It's that intense (you probably already know that).

So does this sound like the ideal set up to make good decisions??  For you to be on your best behavior?  To talk to your loved ones or boss in a healthy and constructive way?

Hell no!

The part of your brain that's in charge of doing all that good stuff doesn't have enough blood to make it work!  The limbic system has taken over and you have turned into nothing more than a wild animal backed into a corner.  Physiologically speaking that is.

The take home?  This is NOT, I repeat NOT, the time to discipline your child, finish the argument with your husband, give your boss a piece of your mind, etc.  Because it will not end well, I promise.  This is when you will act like a monster while your body is being operated by the animal brain and then you will calm down, begin to operate under your human brain again and feel like a monster because of how you behaved.  And if you're anything like me, you'll beat yourself up about it and rake yourself over the coals for god knows how long.

So do yourself (and your kid and your husband and your boss) a favor: take a minute to calm down.  Let the blood get back to the places it's supposed to be.  Again, maybe you need to run, or swim or do something really physical to release the energy.  Or maybe you need to rest: meditate, nap, read, etc.  Figure out what that looks like for you and do it.  And whatever you decide that is, make sure it includes a lot of deep breaths...but more on that later.

Is there a time when your animal brain has taken over?  Does this help you understand what's going on in those moments?  Let me know on my Facebook page.

The Monster Within...And How To Deal

*So let me properly set this up for you. My family and I are moving to a new house (and city) in a few weeks which, if you've moved especially, with young children, I don't have to tell you how stressful this is. My daughter went from being a 6 week old who slept through the night beautifully to a 6 month old who is up every 2 hours at night. And I'm doing a lot of work on my business right now. Soo...I'm stressed. A lot.

Fast forward to a Sunday morning. We had just come back from breakfast and my baby was overdue for a nap but she will not go down. And this is like any other minute of every other day and they just all run together in one frustrating mess of half memories. This is nothing new by a long shot. And yet the anger I experienced felt very new.

No, it wasn't anger...it was rage.  And it wasn't just in my head or heart the way my feelings usually are.

It was in my body.

I wanted to kick something, hit something, scream at someone. Get the rage OUT of my body because it felt intolerable. I was crawling out of my skin.  I felt like an absolute monster/crazy person/some other terrible word for myself (which gave me a lot of empathy for my poor toddler who feels this way several times a day but I digress).

So as I was walking around trying to breathe and calm down (while I had safely placed my baby in her crib, I should add) I started to think about what I needed to do to actively cope instead of merely survive this moment. I decided I would go for a run as soon as my husband and son got home. No sooner than having that healthy, adaptive though, I immediately came up with 100 reasons why I couldn't do that: "You're being crazy", "Don't be so dramatic", "You have so much stuff you actually HAVE to do...what makes you think you should be able to go for a run??".

But the rational, kind part of myself reminded me that I can't take care of anyone or anything else until I take care of myself. So I put on my running clothes, laced up my shoes, and impatiently waited for my husband to come home.  And then I actually left.

Breathe.

Now I'm running, sprinting actually. I could stomp the ground as hard as I wanted, pump my arms and legs as fast as I could...and it felt good. But the tears came then. Rage tears, hot and wet on my face, blurring my eyes as I ran down the sidewalk.   But I let myself cry.  If I bumped into a fire hydrant because I couldn't really see, so what!  (I didn't - whew!)  If a passerby thought I should be institutionalized, who cares!  I cried and cried and cried as I sprinted through my neighborhood.  And slowly the lump in my throat that only existed because I had been fighting my emotion went away.

Breathe.

I kept running. Disgust is what came up next. Disgust at myself. That I could let myself get that angry. That I could feel that rageful toward people that I love, that (for the most part) have done nothing wrong.  That I could have my freakin' doctorate in feelings and still not be able to manage my own.  The intense anger felt SO TERRIBLE and it was hard to believe, awful to believe, that I was capable of feeling that way.

But at some point I noticed that compassionate part of myself starting to whisper about being human. Started reminding me of the enormous amount of pressure and stress that I'm currently facing and when you add total and complete sleep deprivation to that picture, anyone might feel some of what I had been feeling in that moment at my home. Or maybe they wouldn't feel what I was feeling but they would feel SOMETHING. Simply having unpleasant thoughts and feelings doesn't make me a monster, it's what I do with them that counts. And I was running. I could've been doing a lot of other not great things, but I was running.  So maybe I wasn't so bad after all.

Breathe.

I kept running and I started to fatigue from the sprinting. I could feel the anger draining from my body as my muscles finally began to tire.  So I stopped to walk and think. Think about what I was doing.  I didn't want to simply experience the feelings, I wanted to think about my thoughts and my feelings so that I could understand them. So I could later explain them to my aunt and husband who were waiting for me at home, undoubtedly wondering what the hell was going on. And I wanted to be able to explain it to you.

But then I noticed that when I stopped to think, some of the anger bubbled back up as I was walking. So I figured I should write about everything to better understand it. So I stopped in a park and sat in the grass, enjoying the beautiful fall weather while tears spilled down my cheeks, again, (I'm a cry-er, what can I say??) and let my thumbs fly across my phone screen writing all of this down.

Breathe.

So what's the take away?  What can you and I both learn from my mess of a morning.  Several things I hope.

1) When you are melting down, however that looks for you, you are not a monster/crazy/substitute some other terrible word about yourself. You are human. You are having a hard time. And you feel things. And sometimes those feelings are intense or feel intolerable.  But that's human too.

2) When you find yourself melting down, you need to actively cope. That sounds like me saying something incredibly obvious - did you know water is wet?? - but when we're feeling something really intensely, we often forget to cope. We start to spin around in our heads and all we can think about is the possibility of going down the drain - being sucked into these terrible feelings - so we fight it and freak out and we sometimes forget to cope. So run. Or meditate. Get a massage. Ask for a hug. Write. Breathe. Something. Just remind yourself that you are not crazy and Do. Something.

3) It's necessary to do something to actively deal with the feelings but often this isn't enough. Catharsis - getting energy out - is typically not enough to deal with it and ultimately feel better. We have to think about it, make meaning of it, understand it. That's why every time I would slow down during my run, the anger would bubble back up - because I was still thinking about my stressors in the same unhelpful, inaccurate way ("What the hell is wrong with my baby?!?!, "I want to kill my husband!!!", etc).  I needed to THINK through what happened, understand it differently ("Nothing is wrong with my baby - she's just a baby"; "My husband is stressed and human too") in order to actually feel better and move past it.

And here's the final take away, which will be familiar to those of you who follow my blog or know me. Now would be the time that I post this and immediately old fears come up. Cue the worry: "But my family and friends might worry about me", "My clients, current or future, might think I'm crazy"; "What if I am kinda crazy??".  And then the kind, compassionate, wise part of myself starts to whisper again about vulnerability. About how what ultimately connects us as humans being more than anything else is authenticity. The courage to put ourselves out there, the good, the bad, the ugly.  Even if it's scary.

So here I am. Human, occasionally wounded....but stronger every day.

What does your monster look like?  How do you deal?  I would love to hear about it on my Facebook page 

**This was written over 2 months ago and only now am I finding the time to edit it and post.  Yeah...shit's crazy.

"Enjoy Every Minute" - Major Parenting Myth Debunked

"Enjoy every minute".  "It goes by all too quickly".  "You'll want this time back".  

How many times have you heard it Mama?  The sweet smiles and unsolicited advice you get from strangers probably on a daily basis if you have little ones.  We are told over and over and over again to enjoy every minute and not to take this time for granted.

Don't get me wrong.  I agree with this...for the most part.  Most of the time, I am acutely aware of how finite time is and so many of my parenting decisions are rooted in this awareness.  It's why I almost never leave my house before 8:30pm because I so value this precious chapter in life where I'm able to read stories and rock and sing to my babies before bed (the only ones who do not protest my singing voice).  It's why I work so hard to oblige my 3 year old every time he asks me to play or watch or listen even if it's the 33rd time I'm watching him jump the same monster truck over the same car.  I get it...I know I can't get this time back.  And it's precious.  I don't need convincing in this regard.  And yet...

It's NOT POSSIBLE to enjoy every second.  Can we just be honest about that??  I'm here to argue that it's not even ideal to try to soak up every second of these short chapters of our childrens' lives.  Yes, our children are beautiful and special and only small for a short period of time.  And we should be aware of that and milk it for all it's worth...*for the most part*.  BUT...how many times have I forced myself to put both my newbie and my toddler to bed after working a 10 hour day instead of giving myself a break because of this same logic?  How many times have I went out of my way to do something for one of my littles because I need to soak up this time and wound up feeling extra frustrated with my non-cooperating kid as a result?  How many times have I made a parenting decision in order to avoid GUILT as opposed to experience PLEASURE.  I'm embarrassed to admit it...but I don't think I'm alone either.

Parenting used to be something that people just did.  They didn't put a lot of thought into it, they didn't read about it a whole lot.  They just did it.  We've come a long way since those times and parents are more involved and educated than ever before.  And so much of that is good.  When you know better, you do better and all that jazz.

But parenting is almost becoming cult-like in some ways.  There are strict and rigid rules and people are judged harshly and almost demonized for not adhering to the unwritten rules - for not ascribing to the dogma of the new wave of parenting (read: I must enjoy every minute.  I must feel insane love for my newborn baby.  I must feel tremendous guilt for wanting to work).

God forbid we're honest about we feel.  God forbid someone say that it took them weeks to truly feel love for their baby (ahem, me with my second).  God forbid we occasionally choose a glass of wine and a terrible TV show over putting our children to bed every single night because we value our sanity as much as we value our children (something I don't ever allow myself to do).  God forbid if we feel HAPPY to go back to work after maternity leave as opposed to tearful and guilt-stricken (me...both times).

There!  I said it!!  GASP!  The Horror!!!!   I love my children to the moon, I think they are two of the most beautiful, incredible little people on the planet.  I would move mountains for them, die for them, kill for them.  Truly.  And yet...I still said all of those things above.

So there it is.  It feels good to just be honest.  So many of us don't allow ourselves to be honest because we fear the judgement from others (and ourselves!) and I get that.  I obviously struggle with that too.  But it keeps us isolated.  It makes us feel bad about ourselves because all we see is everyone else making it look so easy and it doesn't feel easy for us.  BUT IT'S BECAUSE IT'S NOT EASY!!

So I'm making a deal with myself to strive for BALANCE as opposed to being the *perfect* parent and "enjoying every moment".  I still want to put my kids to bed at night...but maybe I'll make it most nights as opposed to every night.  Because dammit, The Good Wife and a glass of Shiraz every now and then will make me a happier Mommy ;)

What about you?  How does the religion of parenting affect your parenting decisions?  What do you do to find more balance in your life?

How Your Past Haunts You In Ways You May Not Even Know

I was standing in the shower, getting ready to settle in for the evening, when I felt something snake down my back, my leg and my ankle.  Somewhat alarmed, I looked down to see what could cause that strange sensation and I saw a huge clump of my hair tangled around my heel.

I momentarily stopped breathing and a feeling of panic came over me.  I opened my mouth to call for my husband, but nothing came out.  I could hear my heartbeat, increasing by the second, in my ears.

Then the air returned, my heart rate slowed down and I remembered what was going on: I'm several weeks postpartum and your hair falls out.  Right...I remember now.  It's as though the Universe has decided that you no longer need the gift it gave you as a reward during your pregnancy (amazing, thick hair) because you have your little bundle of joy so it takes it all back.  As if postpartum hormones, extra weight and getting to know your newborn aren't enough fun things to manage, now you have bald patches.  Awesome.  But the good news is that this is totally normal and expected and I know from going through this before, I will not go completely bald even though you would think that if you saw my drain after every shower.

So why did I freak out?  Flash back about 20 years...

I was standing in my shower, washing my hair and felt something snake down my back, my leg and my ankle.  Somewhat alarmed, I looked down to see what could cause that strange sensation and I saw a huge clump of my hair tangled around my heel...and even more wrapped around both sets of fingers.  The only difference is that 20 years ago I was in fact going bald because the chemotherapy I was receiving for my cancer had finally killed off enough cancer cells (and unfortunately all fast growing cells) that I was ACTUALLY losing my hair.  And not just some of it, but all of it.  As a 15 year old girl and a freshman in high school, it was the moment that I had been dreading since I started chemo...and here it was.  I LOST IT...and I don't mean my hair.  I mean my sanity.  In that moment, I lost it.  Not necessarily because of the hair, per se (although my teenage self might argue differently), but because my hair falling out made the diagnosis real.  My parents needed to literally drag me out of the shower that night and I don't remember anything else about that evening.  It's not the kind of thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "trauma", but make no mistake about it: it was traumatic.

So that's what was going on the other day in the shower.  Something totally ordinary and not upsetting was happening, but because it was so similar to something terrible that happened a long time ago, I was right back there.  Crazy huh?  Here's why: there's a part of our brains that doesn't understand time, context, person (better known as the amygdala for all you brain-loving folk).  The amygdala's main job?  FEELINGS.  Intense feelings, specifically, like rage and fear.  What makes this more interesting is when the amygdala gets involved, it overrides other areas of the brain (frontal lobe) that we could really benefit from at times like this.  So when we're reminded of something awful from our past, the human, rational part of our brain effectively shuts down, and the animal, emotional, irrational part of our brain kicks into high gear.  Sounds like a recipe for disaster right?

Why am I telling you all of this?  Because if this process is taking place in your life and you're not aware that's what is going on, it can cause major problems!  This is for the woman who was sexually assaulted earlier in her life who doesn't feel like she can have a "normal" sex life with her husband because she freaks out every time he touches her.  This is for the man who shuts down completely whenever he feels criticized (even if that's not what's happening) because he feels like a scared little boy again being berated by his father.  This is for the woman who cannot engage in any form of conflict because it's too reminiscent of the arguments her parents would always get into right before her Dad started throwing punches.  This crazy neurological wiring that is there to help us and keep us safe can sometimes wind up causing major problems.

Here's the beauty of it: when you know what's going on in those moments (and now you do!) and you don't make yourself feel worse by assuming you must be crazy (which you totally aren't!!), you start to take back some of your control...some of your power.  You can start to think through your reaction rather than just react.  And that allows you to talk about it (might need to read this for that), continue to make sense of it and heal from whatever it is all over again.  That might be all you need.  Or you might decide that you need a professional to help work through some of that.  But either way, you're moving in a direction where YOU get to control your life rather than your past.  And THAT is pretty damn cool.

The Two Things You Need To Do To Survive Overwhelming Moments

I sit here typing with my newborn sleeping in her Moby strapped to my chest and my toddler playing happily next to me at our kitchen table with his cloud dough and monster trucks.  It's quiet (with the exception of some Uptown Funk - who wants to listen to Sesame Street songs all day??) and everyone is content.  I feel like a Pinterest pin.  It's lovely.  Big sigh.  However, if we were to rewind and take a peek at the Friday 4 weeks ago, you would've seen a totally different picture.  My brand new baby would've been crying from her bouncer while my toddler's face turned purple screaming at me while I scrambled to meet everyone's needs and would fail over and over again at this unattainable goal.  To say that I was super overwhelmed is putting it mildly.  That was only a couple months ago.  The difference between now and then is STAGGERING.  And it made me think about how quickly we turn a problem into something bigger because of what we stack on top of it.

We all have real problems - problems that anyone would struggle with in the same situation - but often it's what we do with those problems that either makes the problems seem bigger or smaller.  The last few weeks have been hell for me - the learning curve of parenting two, especially a 3 year old and a newborn, has been steep.  But I think it would've been less painful if I hadn't thrown a bunch of my own stuff on top of it.  When #1 (L) was having a really epic tantrum, instead of just giving him and myself a break, recognizing this is just part of the process of adding another human to our family, I automatically started to worry that I wasn't handling his anger well.  Or that something was wrong with him because of how intense his anger was.  When #2 (B) would go through this insane cycle of nurse, throw up, nurse, throw up, I would worry that it would always be like this, rather than a small chapter in her very little life.

Of course I logically knew that L was just adjusting and B was simply a brand new baby and they do weird things, but emotionally it felt like it was going to be like this FOREVER.  And from that emotional place, I felt like screaming, "I can't do this!!", "What is wrong with me?", "What is wrong with THEM??", "I'm a failure!".  You get the idea.  I took this totally normal, albeit difficult, problem (the adjustment of one child to two) and turned it into 1) a character flaw in myself; 2) something permanent.

But we all do this to some extent.  We get into a fight with our husband and go to a dark place of either "I'm so f*cked up" OR "Why did I marry him?".  We screw up at our jobs and spend the rest of the worrying that we'll get fired.  We get a letter from our child's teacher saying that s/he did something bad at school and we automatically start to worry that we're terrible parents or that our child will have problems for the rest of his/her life.  Right??  We don't always do this and certain things trigger us more than others, but this cycle happens to the best of us at one time or another.  We take a totally normal, but difficult problem and make it more difficult for ourselves with shame, blame and judgment.

So how do we get out of this cycle?  Well let's be honest...to some extent, we don't :/  We're human and when difficult things happen, sometimes we're not going to deal with it exactly the way we would like.  So that's step 1: Let yourself off the hook.  Freak out a little.  Cry until you run out of tears.  Lose your temper.  Is this ideal?  Of course not...but it's human.  And you're human.  So if you spend all of your time trying to suppress your feelings and/or beating yourself up for having undesirable feelings/thoughts/reactions, you're just going to make the problem worse.  So let it happen (because it's probably going to anyway!) and give yourself grace.  There ya have it.  Step 2: Just. Breathe.  When things feel overwhelming and intolerable, when you feel like a messed up idiot, when you wonder if things will ever get better...just breathe.  Just get through that moment.  Don't worry about the next hour, let alone the next day.  Just breathe and focus on whats directly in front of you.  Because it will get better...you just have to breathe and wait patiently for that to happen.

PS - I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago and am just getting around to finishing it and posting now.  So rest assured...even when it's easier, it's still crazy ;)

How about you?  What do you do when you're feeling really overwhelmed?