26/05/2023
"80% of women recognize the value of self-care, yet few care for themselves as they care for others."
I've been there. I was that mom for a very, very long time. I once sat in a therapy session with my daughter's therapist, who specialized in autism. She spent 75% of the session telling me that I needed to focus on self-care, and trying to impress upon me how essential it was. Then, she spent the last 15 minutes listing all the other therapies and activities I needed to be doing for and with my child. With every new thing she added to the list, I felt my soul being crushed more and more. At the end, I wondered how she could live with herself after putting such a massive weight on a mother she just spent 45 minutes lecturing for not taking care of herself. How was I supposed to do anything to take care of myself when I was already drowning in all the things I was doing for my children? How did she expect me to add in even MORE things to do for them when I couldn't manage to do anything for myself? I left her office feeling 10x the guilt and overwhelm I walked in with, and spent the next week in a deep depression, waking from nightmares with anxiety attacks several times every night.
A few weeks after that fateful session, I switched my daughter back to the therapist that she was comfortable talking with, who didn't really know much about autism. What my daughter needed most at that time was someone to talk to, not someone to talk AT her mother. She gave us both empathy, which is exactly what we needed at the time.
Then, I used conscious thought reprogramming and DBT to change the way I was viewing all of it. I realized I couldn't fill my own cup, no matter how much "self-care" I practiced, as long as that cup had a hole in the bottom of it. Instead of letting the guilt push me to do more and more for my kids, I let self-compassion push me to do less for them, and more for me. I patched up the hole, and began refilling my cup.
The transformation this process brought to my life - as well as my childrens' - was nothing short of miraculous.
I can show you how to do it, too. I'm currently accepting beta testers for my new program, "Climbing Momlife Mountain". This is a unique group coaching program and support community that helps overwhelmed moms that are focused on natural healthy living overcome overwhelm and mom-guilt in 9 weeks without knowing where to start, knowing how to do it, or feeling unsupported, so they can have more peace and control over their lives.
If you'd like to see if you'd be a good fit to be a tester, schedule a 30-minute zoom session with me at https://go.oncehub.com/mominterview2
