5 Ways To Support Your Maternal Mental Health
As moms, we have a lot of responsibilities on our shoulders. It doesn’t matter if we are working moms, stay-at-home moms, step-moms, half-moms, adoptive moms, it does not matter. We handle a lot of different things in one day, including taking care of our kiddos! We absolutely love them more than life itself, but if we ourselves are finding that we are feeling burnt out, instead of keeping on going to the point of breakdown, then it is time to take a step back and take care of ourselves.
5 Ways To Support Your Maternal Mental Health! Click To TweetDo you know how they tell you when you are on an airplane, and if the oxygen mask drops down, instead of putting it on your child, you are supposed to put it on yourself first. This is because that you cannot help your children if you pass out from lack of oxygen. It goes the same for mental health. Unless you take care of yourself, you might feel yourself down and burnt out. There are a variety of ways that you can support your mental health. Here are some of my favorites:
Life Can Be Monotonous
Life can, well, become mundane after a while. There is the work that we do as mothers, and if employed, we have our jobs there too. Within all of this, life can get, well to get to the point of it, boring. It can get boring. This can cause us to feel stagnant where we are. A good solution for getting rid of this feeling of monotony is to change up your routine. Take the back way in to work today. Switch up what park you take your little ones to. Grab a coffee at a local coffee shop you’ve been meaning to check out. There are plenty of ways to shake things up a bit!
Set Small Goals
When we accomplish one of our goals, we feel really great about ourselves! Each night, make up a small list of little goals that you would like to accomplish the next day. Don’t make them anything big! Want to remember to help your toddler clean up their playroom? Write it down! Once it is done, you (and your toddler) will feel better about getting it done! Just make sure that your goals are small. Having lofty goals can create high expectations for yourself which can cause you anxiety.
Grounding Yourself
You may remember that I wrote a little blog about tips for grounding yourself. Grounding yourself is the practice of living in the moment and being mindful of what is going on around you when you feel yourself getting caught up in anxiety. It is a practice that I personally use and it works. For me, it is going outside and walking in the driveway. But it can be absolutely anything. What can you do to ground yourself? Maybe it could even just be a cup of tea or decaf coffee, where you can feel the texture of the cup, taste the drink, smell the delicious scent. It can be just one little thing like that.
Give Yourself Grace
Every single person on this earth is not perfect. Nobody is. So, that means we mess up sometimes. It happens, it’s going to happen again, too. We can’t get everything done in one day, and we are all only human. This is much easier said than done, but you have to give yourself some grace, a break, if you will. Mama, you are doing so well. I can promise you that. So give yourself some grace, moms. You deserve it and you need it.
Talk To Someone
There is no shame in talking to a therapist. If you find that you are busy and really cannot make it to a physical appointment, there are plenty of great therapists that you can see online, either for a nominal fee or even free, depending on the type of insurance that you have. You can talk to them when you feel like you need to, or you can set up recurring appointments. Just getting our feelings out there to someone else out there in the universe feels good.
Taking care of myself after my first felt impossible but in a twist of fate my second was born at the beginning of the pandemic so I took plenty of time for me. Thank you this is a topic that needs to be discussed.
Grounding yourself is so important. Life can feel like it’s spinning out of control and having an anchor is vital.
Valid points. Acceptance and being mindful of what you are going through is the key. Easily motherhood is the most sensitive phase of life for any woman and such reminders are needed bigtime!
I agree with giving myself some grace. I’ve learned to stop being so anxious and unforgiving of my weaknesses. I learned to be good to me and it has been a blessing to my young family.
Giving yourself grace is a huge thing. I think most moms struggle with this.
I love the simplicity of taking a new route to the same place or trying a new coffee shop. It is so true the little things matter!! Going to try that this week!
How true ! Being mindful of your space definitely helps in heavy moments.
Great post! It’s so true-moms need to take care of themselves so that they can take care of their family the best they can!
These are great tips. I wish more moms gave themselves permission to ask for help. So many moms think they have to do it all.
You used a great example with the oxygen mask. We cannot help others without helping ourselves first. We need to be happy, healthy, strong mothers to be there for others. It’s also a good example for our daughters.
These are all useful tips. I think setting small goals is a good idea. If you put too much pressure on yourself it has a negative effect.
Amazing tips and very very important for new moms to know about it! Mental health for moms is vital.
Great article! I breezed through with my first child, but the second one (at 40) was a little harder. I didn’t realize then, but I definitely had post partum depression. It can be overwhelming.
It is such a complicated time with so many different emotions – asking for help and taking the time you need are so important.
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We all need some grace. Also setting goals are good too!
Setting small goals is my way. Just thinking and planning is the best way for me.
Mental health is so important no matter what. Great tips on prioritizing your health especially if you’re a busy mom- so many people don’t understand just how stressful it can be at times.
These are such great tips! I need to share this post with my new mommy friends, they’ll find this article super helpful🙂
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Totally agree – embracing the small goals was so helpful for me. Those little wins added up to so much self confidence along with a sense of accomplishment.
This is a wonderful list. I remember when mine were little, I would give myself the goal of doing three things each day. And those things could include taking a shower and going for a walk. Not much more necessary. It was such a grueling but wonderful time. I wish I had spent a little more time grounding myself and being mindful. It was a practice I had before kids and then sort of forgot about in the midst of the newborn days, but is so helpful. This is a great resource.
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Hi,
I thought I would mention that it looks like this link on your website is dead: https://mommiesmentalhealth.com/about-me/
I’ve seen some tools to help with problems like this such as DeadLinkReport.com. I just thought you should know!
-Jesiica
Nice content and tips as mental health is really important and must be taken care of properly.
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