Exhale: A Blog for Women’s Mental & Emotional Health
Military families are no strangers to sacrifice. They kiss their service members goodbye for long deployments and live through frequent moves, leaving behind familiar places, friends, and family. Relocating every few years can especially take an emotional toll on children, disrupting their sense of stability and security while creating logistical and practical challenges for parents.
Frequently a challenge for military families who are uprooted is the lack of a support system for the parents and children. In such times of distress, kids might reach out to seemingly unlikely peers and trusted adults with questions, seeking advice, or for connection. It’s smart to talk with the people in your child’s life and explain what’s happening so they can help monitor any changes in behavior or mood and give additional support to your child.
From there, your family can do several things to prepare for an upcoming deployment or find a sense of normalcy and peace during one. Here are 4 tips for how to help your children cope with your spouse’s deployment
People often use the terms “anxiety attack” and “panic attack” interchangeably but in reality, they are very different. If you have experienced the debilitating intensity of a panic attack, you’re familiar with the distress one can cause and the lingering worry that accompanies it’s passing.
While anxiety has roots in future-oriented worry and manifests as a more low-level distress of extended duration, panic attacks are acute, coming on quickly and often without specific reason. Everyone experiences their own unique cluster of symptoms during a panic attack including both physical and emotional distress.
Nearly three years in, we are finally feeling some relief to the stress and anxiety that accompanied living through a global pandemic. As mothers, it has felt like three years of constant stress and coping. Even without COVID, the pressure that moms feel daily can lead to chronic stress and anxiety. Many of my clients have struggled trying to cope on their own and come to me seeking relief from the discomfort of high stress in the body and mind. I teach my clients a variety of skills, filling their toolbox with resources to manage their anxiety even after they leave our session.
One such technique is Tapping also referred to as Emotional Freedom Technique. Despite the growing popularity of tapping in recent years, many people still are in the dark about what it is and how it can help their symptoms
Motherhood can feel like a constant flood of stress, overwhelm and anxiety. With all the loud noises, never ending requests for help, constant touching, and overstimulating toys, being a mom in and of itself can cause extreme anxiety. When anxiety isn’t dealt with it can cause additional problems such as panic attack disorder, depression, and chronic stress.
What do you do as a mom with anxiety when feel like you’ve tried everything to cope with the anxiety on their own? Online therapy using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) methods has been proven as an effective way to combat anxiety and reduce stress.
Over the last decade, the use of social media in our everyday lives has impacted us tremendously. With the continuous development of new social media platforms, our world has become exponentially connected in ways it never has been. And while the importance and influence of social media in our lives has been in the negative spotlight for some time, the truth is that social media can have some really positive impacts on our lives, especially as moms.
When we dig deeper and stop to explore why there is a belief that something is wrong with having these “negative” emotions, there usually has been some kind of overarching message in that woman’s life that has said, “It’s not okay to be mad, angry, sad, depressed…” and the list could go on. This message could have begun early in childhood by parents, siblings, teachers, and friends, or it may have appeared later in life from professors, employers, romantic partners, or the community within which they live. While the message is that those emotions are bad, the other message communicated is “You just need to be happy. Just focus on the positive.” And this is where “toxic positivity” begins to take root.
The last couple weeks have been filled with worldwide tension as Russia invaded Ukraine. We have watched in horror and sadness as the Ukrainian people have fled from their homes and been separated from their family, friends, and loved ones, but also united together to protect their homeland. And while our hearts are breaking for the people of Ukraine, many military spouses’ anxieties and worries are running high for their own reasons. Military conflict has a way of stirring up our fears because of the unknowns of what the conflict may mean for our own families. If you are a military spouse and are feeling anxious and triggered by the invasion of Ukraine, that is completely understandable.
The last two years have been filled with stressful situation after stressful situation for moms. Between frequent class quarantines, trying to work from home, and limited support from family and friends, many moms feel like they are emotionally and mentally hanging on by a thread. The stresses of the pandemic combined with the normal exhaustions of motherhood are enough to make any person feel like they are breaking. At times, it has been like a never-ending tsunami of overwhelm and anxiety.
While we would love to be able to wave a magic wand and make the stressors disappear, unfortunately that isn’t real life. Instead, learning to cope with the stress by completing the stress response cycle can help reduce the experience of burnout.
As 2022 rolls off to a fresh start, you may be reflecting on how to prioritize your mental health in the new year. Whether you’ve been dealing with anxiety for most of your life, or have found yourself feeling more anxious in the last two years than you ever have been, addressing your anxiety can have positive impacts on your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Sometimes when you are feeling anxious, it can be overwhelming to know how to actually deal with it. Here are five tools to help you cope with anxiety in the new year.
Our minds and bodies are not designed to be under the constant and consistent stress that they’ve experienced the last two years. The majority of moms I’ve spoken to feel burned out, overwhelmed, and exhausted. While there isn’t a quick fix or a pill that will simply take the overwhelm and exhaustion away, by taking small steps to prioritize your needs and your mental health, you may begin to feel some relief or a reprieve from the stress. Check out these five ways to prioritize your mental health as a mom in the new year.
For over a year, we have been told that we need to stay apart, that in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones, we need to stay home, stay apart, and stay masked up. These protective steps have been vital in trying to slow the spread of COVID-19. But they’ve created a sense of chronic hypervigilance that can lead to anxiety.
Giving birth is anxiety-producing and so is a pandemic, so when you put the two together, it’s a recipe for postpartum anxiety. On top of worrying about all the things that come with being a new mom or adding to your family, you now have to worry about being exposed to COVID, socially distancing, and the complexities of introducing or not introducing your infant to your loved ones.
If you’ve ever searched for a therapist or counselor in New Orleans or Metairie, you’ve probably come across the terms “cognitive behavioral therapy,” or “CBT,” and may have wondered what the heck that is. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a style of therapy that can be very beneficial in treating anxiety. But what is it, and how does CBT work?
I’ve heard a similar response from many people: “I tried to meditate but I just can’t get my mind to stop. It just doesn’t work for me.” If you’re someone who has tried to meditate but struggled with this practice, what can you do to still be able to get the same benefits that quiet meditation provide?
While the openness of people in the public spotlight has begun to normalize the discussions surrounding mental health struggles, in my conversations with friends and colleagues and in my work with clients, I have found that many of us still hold self-judgment and shame over our own struggles with anxiety and depression. As I’ve talked with other women, there are three common narratives many women seem to believe about themselves and their mental health that make acceptance of one’s anxiety and depression extremely challenging.
For us all, 2020 has certainly been a year that we will not quickly forget. When the coronavirus first hit, none of us predicted that life would look like it does today. “Oh, I can’t wait to be stuck in my house, homeschooling my kids, while trying to still get by, day by day, during a global pandemic with no end in sight,” said no mom ever. Yet, here we are – over two months into this life-altering time in history, and with little clarity on how life proceeds from here.
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