With all that’s happening in our country, economy, the world, and social media, it feels like so many of us are under great stress. Parenting, in particular, can be stress-inducing. We know chronic stress can be as unhealthy as smoking a quarter of a pack a day. It is also challenging to be a present parent when your relationship is stressful. What are stress management strategies that parents use to become “Stress-Proof? What tweaks, hacks, and tips help reduce or even eliminate stress? Here are a few easy-to-do tips to help you manage anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout.
How do I define stress?
Stress is an energetic vampire that steals mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical energy.
Why are we stressed?
We’re stressed out because our culture tells us we must consistently achieve. Social media has created a comparison culture where we pit ourselves against carefully curated images and are pressured to look, earn, do, and achieve every moment of the day. The idea of resting, unplugging, and not monetizing ourselves became foreign.
How does the human body react to stress?
Stress manifests physically as:
- Anxiety
- Obsessing over the things out of your control
- Headaches
- Back pain
- Neck pain
- Cramps
- Loss of appetite
- Larger appetite
- Nausea
- Teeth grinding
- Nail biting
- Irritability
- Loss of focus
- Cleaning
- Inability to finish tasks
- the list goes on and on!
Is stress necessarily a bad thing? Can stress ever be good for us?
Stress is an excellent indicator if you pay attention to it. It can tell you that you’re not in a safe place. If you listen, stress can be a powerful early warning! If people or situations stress you out, it’s a sign that you need better boundaries.
Is there a difference between being in a short-term stressful situation versus an ongoing stress? Are there long-term ramifications to living in a constant state of stress?
Asking yourself what kind of stress you’re experiencing is a great tool. It allows you to check in and identify what’s real, imagined, temporary, and what needs to be addressed immediately. Short-term stressors include traffic, deadlines, and perhaps a dental visit. Long-term stress includes finances, mental health, emotional safety, and abusive work or home environments.
Long-term stress changes your subtle body energy, physicality, and mental and emotional wellness. It fundamentally changes you for the worse. It’s been proven to manifest illnesses and diseases. Seek help to manage your stress! You don’t have to keep living in a high-anxiety environment, but you may require assistance knowing how to leave.
Can you help articulate why being a parent can be so stressful?
Parenting is stressful because you’re responsible for nurturing, protecting, teaching, loving, and guiding another human. The old saying that your child is your heart walking outside your body is true. Many parents fear making mistakes that will harm their children. Overprotective, helicopter parenting, and not creating a clear line between being a parent and not a friend are issues many families are struggling with. Children are meant to learn and grow and pull away from their parents to individuate.
I want to advocate for letting children fail and allowing them to develop compassion, empathy, and resourcefulness. They will need to learn how to process failure to be functioning adults.
Can you help spell out some of the problems of being a stressed parent?
I want to address a specific kind of stress. It’s the stress people-pleasing parents face. These parents think they must fill every moment of every day with activities, enrichment, goals, controlling child and teacher interactions, and child-coach interactions, and they also endlessly tell their children how important they are. These people-pleasing parents don’t want their children to miss out as they did. They’re making sure everything is PERFECT. Parenting like this is an endless list of things to do and leaves no time for the parent’s interests, growth, or self-care. The helicopter parents are people-pleasing their children, which is a dangerous dynamic. The unsaid lesson of enmeshed parents to their children is that they think the child needs help to do it. Yup, it creates anxiety for everyone in the home, and it’s exhausting and stressful!
5 Stress Management Strategies for Parents:
1: Take three deep breaths. It’s scientifically proven that taking three deep breaths has a calming effect on your nervous system. How to take a deep breath: Place your left hand over your heart and your right hand on your solar plexus. Inhale through your nose and make sure your right hand moves out. As you inhale, I want you to count to four. Hold your breath for a beat, then slowly exhale through your mouth for the count of four. Repeat this three times.
Stressed-out people rarely breathe deeply. You can quickly check this by seeing how tense your shoulders are. Many clients walk into my office carrying stress in their bodies, especially their shoulders. Why don’t you check yourself right now? Lift your shoulders to your ears and then drop them. See what I mean? Now, try the breathing technique and notice how different your mind and body feel afterward.
2: Create Space. It’s okay to step away from a stressful situation and give yourself or your child the time and space to process. When a child is tantrums, I suggest this strategy. Tell your child to go into their room until they’re sweet. This strategy may take a few times to get the hang of. I’m asking the parent to breathe deeply and calm down when you say it. You’re not in a reactive state. If your child comes out, walk them back in. Allow your child to do what they need to self-regulate and calm down. If they make a mess of their room, don’t address it until after they calm down. Then clean it. “Stay in your room until you’re sweet” sets a healthy boundary, too. Be the one in charge.
3: Be Real, Not Perfect: How many hours a day do you worry about how an event, lunch, practice, game, meets, and meals will go for your child and family? Does the idea of letting things go cause you more stress? I want to suggest that you’re hiding from unhappiness or trauma inside perfectionism. A sure-fire stress relief for you is to stop making every moment perfect for your child.
Try being real instead. When perfection is not the goal, you’ll free up mental, emotional, and physical energy. And who could use more time? You! Being in charge is a continuous electric current of energy and anxiety, and I bet your body is tired.
I’m a reformed type-A overachiever who used my work and home responsibilities as excuses to escape my feelings. I felt like I had to help everyone and do things because it was easier to do something than explain the help I needed, outperform to prove my worth, and be the most dependable person so I didn’t have to heal my traumas. I bet you’re so used to living with anxiety that you’ll feel uncomfortable without it. But to be stress-free, you must let go of what you know because it isn’t working. When you get REAL about your heart, you’ll be happier, and the things you felt compelled to do will no longer rule your life. You’ll have less stress and more joy in your world.
4: Say No: Stress buster four is learning to say no to the things you don’t want to do to make room for what you want. As a parent, you first said “No,” to your child to protect them. That two-letter word, no, carries baggage. So let’s back up.
“No, don’t put your hand on the hot stove. No, don’t put the crayon up your nose. No, don’t run with scissors.” When they grow up and become teens, you may say, “No, you can’t have a phone. No, you can’t be in a car with people I don’t know. No, you can’t stay out until midnight.” These No statements are boundaries made to keep your child safe.
No is a tool for stress management. Use it to set expectations with your child and create boundaries around what is and isn’t acceptable. Your child(ren) doesn’t have to like it or agree. Being a parent means making choices your child won’t always like.
You can also use the word no to protect your time and energy. Say no to the things you don’t want to do. You don’t have to be a room parent, and you don’t have to attend every neighborhood event, you don’t have to be the one who drives carpool, and you don’t have to partake in every practice. How does the idea of saying no make you feel? Are you excited? I hope so!
5: Make Time for Self-Care Every Week: Once you get the hang of saying no, you’re set up for the best stress management tool: self-care! Self-care is more than mani-pedis or a salt bath. Self-care makes you lose your sense of time, reinvigorates your spirit, and brings energy and happiness to your life. If taking time for yourself causes stress, please refer to steps 1–4.
Self-care doesn’t have to be expensive. Here are a few simple and fun self-care tips:
- Play your favorite songs in the car, not music your kids like. Sing out loud!
- Learn a TikTok dance.
- Walk the dog without your phone.
- Unplug from your phone at 9 PM and charge it in the kitchen.
- Learn something new, such as to sew, knit, or cha-cha.
- Try something you once loved.
- Read.
- Listen to a comedy podcast.
- Spend time with your partner, and don’t talk about the kids!
Dancing will forever be my favorite form of self-care. I love everything about it, from the skills it requires to watch and learn to the physical exertion and the joy of expressing myself. I feel free because I’m not in charge, and there are no expectations or monetized outcomes to gain. It’s pure joy.
At first, when I started dancing again after becoming a mom, I felt guilty for leaving my family. But the guilt swiftly changed because my family noticed how happy I was when I returned. And they became my biggest advocates to make sure I made it to dance classes. Self-care is a win-win.
If I could start a movement that would bring the most good to the most people, what would that be?
I would love everyone to share one compliment per day with someone. It can be a stranger or someone they know. If we flood our world with more love and less hate, it will be a much better place to be.
Start Your Healing Journey with Me
I help clients create, maintain boundaries, healthy relationships, and self-care.
