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.