Self Care For Mental Health

As a mom, finding time for self care can be hard. right? But it is so needed and SELF CARE FOR MENTAL HEALTH is absolutely necessary for finding the YOU you need to be. Discover how to calm down with TRUE self care and care for you with combating negative thoughts. Our thoughts control our emotions and behaviors. There are many people who suffer from negative thoughts and don’t recognize or realize the impact it may have on your overall well being. Here are tips to begin to handle negative thoughts, so you can be the best version of you!

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Self Care For Mental Health How to Combat Negative Thinking

Script:

Kelly

The discussion of self care for mental health is an important one! During this series, we’ve had amazing moms and today we’re here with crystal. Crystal, if you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, welcome. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. I am a life and relationship coach I certified through the Life Coach School. I also have my undergrad in psychology. I homeschool my four kids. I love to travel we’ve done a lot of just like crazy traveling for months at a time with all of our kids. And we live in southern Alberta, we were just living in Quebec on the other side of Canada for a couple of years and traveling.

Crystal

We’re always, we’re always kind of all over the place but, that’s a little bit about me. Oh my gosh, I love that and I love the, um, the travel portion because I personally like my love was to travel and find new places and since I have had children it’s really, I haven’t figured out yet like how to get back to. It’s just very different. So, yeah.

I was pregnant with my first and I remember laying in bed and it was like, maybe the day before I had him, and I had this existential crisis because I’m like” I can’t travel anymore, what are we going to do? Our whole life is gonna be turned around” And my husband just like looked at me crying on the bed and was like, you can still travel, like why, like we can just take the baby with us and I was like, wait, we can just like do all the same things and he was like yeah I mean like he’ll just speeding through it if we just take him. And I was like, that’s true. And I’ve kind of, I kind of just shifted my whole mindset then, and we just have like up and taking all of our kids all like we we bought one way tickets to Hawaii one time when we just had two little kids they were like four and two, and my husband didn’t wasn’t doing anything over the winter because at that time he had a seasonal position so I was like well just go there and see if we can find work for a little bit come back again. So we’ve always done that and so now our kids are great little travelers they’re good Roadtrippers they love listening to audiobooks we don’t even do screens on trips now and we will go on like 50 hour vacations like 50, hours of traveling in the vehicle and nobody will even be on screens and they’re just like, they’re so pro. But anyways, that has taken a while to get here, a lot of screaming and yelling and not for me, mostly crying for me while they were screaming and yelling in the back of the bed. We figured it out eventually.

Kelly

We’ve taken some pretty like it’s just different because usually we fly but now we’ve really switched to doing road trips and so we started doing like last year we took a 10 hour drive which is more like a 12 hour drive, and we did. I don’t think we did screens either but we did about I don’t know 8 million snacks, and then like toy rotations and like I have a two year old a five year old so it was, we were figuring it out but it’s still not the same of, you know, being able to kind of have that freedom of saying okay we’re gonna give this flight and just go and like, it’s so much pre planning and all that stuff and it’s, it’s all of that. Yeah, that’s what we do now. Travel has always been such an adventure for me, it is my form of self care!

Crystal

Yes, and our last one was a 40 hour drive across the country and I was in the vehicle with the two little lists at that time they were probably one in three, And then, my husband had the two older kids, I don’t even know how it worked out that way but anyways we had, we had walkie talkies and sometimes I just like walkie talkie after an hour to be like we have to pull over because like, I’m gonna die because they’re just like, yelling and I’ve thrown all the toys at them but anyways but after we finally figured this out I was just like, oh man, now we can now we can go anywhere like we do take frequent stops and they’re my kids, some of my kids are still pretty little So, but, yeah, we just love it.

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Click to expand full script

Kelly

Oh my gosh, that is profound and true, and I love, I love your perspective because I think that that’s. Oh my gosh, so many points that you just hit on are so many things that people struggle with so having having that experience too I think that it’s so important to draw those lines because you will you will absolutely spend this time, the time that you like want to invest in learn and like read the books and do all of the things that you’re like reading blogs and, you know, doing all of that intensive work, and then you’re like, I still can’t figure this out.

Crystal

How to not react the way that I am reacting or how to feel that way that I’m like getting somewhere so oh my gosh, that’s, that’s a great story. I love that and now that’s what I get to do all day, and I just love it. I love being able to see like I worked with this mom the other day, and she’s young and she has these two little kids and her kids aren’t sleeping through the night and her baby is not nursing very well and like I used to feel exactly the way that she felt she was just like I can’t handle this like I call my husband and text him all day and I’m like, I’m seriously like “I need to get out of the house, I can’t do this anymore”.

I just remember so strongly feeling that exact way like I just could not handle this on my own, which then I think left me feeling resentful that my husband got to go off to work and I was like maybe I should just go off to work like maybe I just like don’t even want to be here with my kids anymore. And I actually talked to several moms who feel that way who literally feel like they just want to get a full time job so that they don’t have to deal with their kids, as much because they don’t know how. And so, can I move them into a space of feeling that they do know exactly how to deal with them and that they can handle them and they can they can have that power again, that it just gives them so much more freedom in their life.

Kelly

I would love to hear if you have any tips just maybe for somebody that’s feeling overwhelmed so like any quick things that you can think of that might be a help, that’s something that’s not too intense we can’t go into. Anything to point towards self care for mental health would be great. I would love to go into something deeper maybe in a different time but I think that there’s probably so many people that are going to watch this that are feeling the same way that it felt the same way I know just hearing your story it’s resonating with me so much when I had my second child. It was like it flipped my world upside down and, he was so good. And I was like, struggling, I mean my maternity leave I serious when I say that my maternity leave with my second one was basically crying like everybody was crying the whole time, like I was like they were crying my older one was crying because she wanted me, he was crying. These babies crying, and then I was crying because I felt like I didn’t know how to just like nurse him all the time and then still keep my older one happy.

Crystal

It was. Oh, totally, I have parents that come, and I asked them what they what their goal in parenting is like what would a perfect situation look like for you, and every single one has told me like when in the future I want my children to feel like they’re loved like they’re connected like they can come back and then I’m a safe space.

I love that goal for them, but their current parenting is not indicative of that it’s yelling and shaming anger based parenting punishments discipline like all of the things that aren’t going to lead to that kind of connection or relationship, and they don’t know how to get there. I had this client who had the one of her thoughts, because a lot of what we work on is what your current thinking is was like I don’t know what to do with this child like I just don’t know what to do. And I it was like a light bulb moment because when I, we could move her to this forward space of like okay well if you’re feeling really empowered and really confident and you really didn’t know what to do, what would you do, and she straight up said like every single thing from the books that I always read she does, she didn’t read these books but she was like, well I’d control my emotions and be a good role model and I would notice what was like the behavior behind what’s going on behind their behavior and I would just spend more time connecting before that happens and I would you know just allow them their space and I wouldn’t yell at them like for literally every single thing from all the books. And I think that that is where we can get to, I think that we all are our own parenting expert. If we can just get out of our own way and not be so like blocked by the fact that we don’t have control that our baby’s crying that we, the nursing isn’t going well that we’re, you know, all of the things so there’s so much I could say about this but I’ll give you two things are so much.

One is self care and actual self care so the self care that you know like I said like I would go to girls nights and then I would immediately come home and feel burnt out like the second that I stepped in the door. So it’s like the kind of self care that really nourishes your body and your spirit and your mind so healthy food and exercise for sure, but meditation, or if you do devotional some sort of spiritual devotional, or for your mind I, that’s what I do with coaching. I get coached on my own every week, although all the time regularly and just doing that mindset work regularly, and positive self talk like all the negative self talk we have inside of us is a huge form of not self care, and we’re just constantly having this going inside of us and believing all of these thoughts that are happening. Self care for mental health is essential. And then we wonder why we’re burnt out and we can’t handle it when our mind all day is going like well you can’t do this. You’re the worst like, “I can’t believe you had your kids watch TV all day” all these thoughts.

What to add to your morning routine to combat negative thoughts in 3 minutes or less!

1. Writing out ALL of your primary thoughts on a page (this step is like a tantrum)

2.) Circle the "true" thoughts and underline the false thoughts

True thoughts are things all people in your life would agree on about YOU!

3.) Bringing AWARENESS to your thoughts is PARAMOUNT in starting to refute them.

4.) The next time you think something "untrue" about yourself - simply tell yourself "That's not true".

5.) Awareness and Refuting - a strong combination for your subconscious!

Click to expand rest of full script

So definitely my number one would be self care. And then, my favorite form of self care is. I call it the brain dump. But what you do is you just write down all of your thoughts so I just did it this morning I do it every morning. You write down all of your thoughts and it’s all of your primary thoughts so like it’s not like well I shouldn’t be thinking this because I’m a bad mom, but it’s like actually write those out like in in Brene Brown’s book she says, Your storm first draft but it’s like having a tantrum on the page. But really you just like write everything I usually do it for like two minutes. You can do it for as long as you want but I don’t usually have a super long time with my four kids waking up. So I usually do it for two to five minutes I write down all of my primary thoughts, and then you go back and you circle the facts and you under your circle the thoughts and you underline the facts and just kind of start separating like how much of this really is factual like would everybody agree, and how much of this is really my thinking. And then once you look at those thoughts then you kind of get curious like if I’m thinking I’m a bad mom I’m doing a terrible job I’m never gonna get any better, like my day is gonna be awful. They’re like, how do you think that’s going to come out to play throughout the day if you’re if that’s the thinking that you’re having. So just kind of like noticing and recognizing all of those thoughts. So that’s kind of a really quick form of it. But, yeah, but that’s, that’s my favorite, for sure.

Kelly

Wow, that’s perfect.

So I think that we have already had a really good insight today on self care for mental health, and thank you so much for bringing that for us I really appreciate it. And can you let us know where we could find you if we wanted to check your check out what you’re doing or work with you.

Crystal

For sure. So, it’s coaching with Crystal Noel. I have a Facebook page, which is coaching with Crystal Noel I do most of my stuff on Instagram. Every Monday so I’ll be posting one today I do on Monday mini training which is just like a little video series about parenting or connection or self care today is going to be on self confidence.

So Instagram is definitely where I do most of my stuff. And then my website is WWE Coach crystal.ca, and I monthly have these girls night in where they’re like everybody comes in on zoom and we’ll do live coaching as a group and there’s always like a lesson. So the next one of that is June 17 and it’s going to be on self confidence, and then I do take just a few one on one clients I do most I do more group work, but I do take a few one on one clients as well. So, yeah. All right, I love it. Well, we would definitely love to have you back a different time. And thank you so much for sharing your story and giving us those hints because I think that having that two minutes in the morning and doing that brain dump and kind of like identifying your thoughts, is an amazing, amazing trick and tip to do because getting all that out, and then just having that self awareness around your thoughts is so important. I think yeah when you look at it in front of you. It can seem more ridiculous or more, you know, you’re like, why, why would I think that or, you know, it just brings it to light, when you’re looking at it on a piece of paper in front of you, then we are aware of that.

Yeah, because like you can kind of understand in your mind that you shouldn’t be thinking that or that it’s not a thought that’s going to be helpful. I’m not sure that because those thoughts just come in but I think as we write down those thoughts it’s like this next level of awareness, like, “oh, like this really isn’t like when my husband says the same thing, when my friends agree with this, you know it’s basically those stories that we’re telling ourselves, and how that affects, then how we show up as a parent and a wife and all of those different things.

Kelly

Yeah, makes so much sense. Marie Forleo also does a lot about “what story are you telling yourself?”

If you read that book it’s called “Everything Is Figure-Outable”. I just heard about that one. I say that all the time, everything is figure outable. So, another good one, and just the same kind of thing, same kind of thought process it’s just like what are you telling yourself and, you know, also a secondary part of what story you’re telling yourself and then everything you can literally figure anything out you just have to work around it and really break it down and you’ll get there. And I say that to my children “we can figure it out, everything’s figured outable” and I say “we’re meant to do hard things” and, you know, gotta go forward. All right well, I love it Crystal, thank you so much for joining us