If you find yourself needing more support, reach out.
The Canadian Mental Health Association has some great resources they have released this week.
Kelty Mental Health is hosting a series of podcasts for Mental Health Week.
The Crisis Centre has phone lines that are open 24/7 and an online chat line. Call 1800 SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) if you if you are considering suicide or are concerned about someone who may be. ​310-6789 (no area code needed) for emotional support, information and resources specific to mental health. ​
The BC Association of Clinical Counsellors has a Find A Counsellor resource to help you find a therapist anywhere in BC.

Stay well and stay connected

Suzanne

How are you doing? How are you and your family in this time of COVID 19?

How I am doing is a pretty mixed bag to be honest. Short answer is, I’m okay. The longer answer is more complex – I’m feeling grateful, worried, nervous, unfocused, unsettled, content, peaceful… sometimes all at the same time.

I expect your answer is complex as well.

As we enter week four of physical distancing, I’ve been ruminating on this question of how I am. How my family is doing. And I’ve gathered some thoughts that I wanted to share. Maybe your experience is similar, maybe it’s different.

In my home, there is myself, my partner, our two elementary-aged children and my brother. My brother came to stay with us as he transitioned to the lower mainland after living in the States for a few years – he was actively searching for a place to live when we began isolating. So here he is and here he will stay for a while. Which is a blessing, because he would be living by himself if he had found a place and moved before “all this”.

Physically, I am well. A couple of days the first week I went out for walks. “Ah,” I thought, “This is what I’ll do! Long walks, I will have time and be needing to get out of the house!” The forest is easily accessible from my home, and I envisioned daily forays into the wild. That didn’t last long. I actually found after that first week that I didn’t want to be out and about far from home. I’m not too sure why. Lately, I’ve thought that maybe it’s something to do with not feeling safe and therefore needing to stay close to home base and my family. We did go on a long family walk this weekend, and I’m sensing that I might be ready soon to venture out on my own again. Maybe.

What I have been doing is a 30-day wheelie challenge – my whole family has been participating. I can happily ride up and down my street practicing my wheelies and social distancing at the same time. FYI, I’m not very good, but I am enjoying it. I have also been doing some morning yoga. At first, I needed to push myself to get up early to do it. “This is what you need, Suzanne. Remember mental health is important. This is important.” Now, I’m in more of a routine and I can say it has been vital for my mental health. Speaking of which…

Mentally, I was quite unfocused at first; I still am, but it is getting better. That first week, I was even unable to concentrate on reading a book. Deciding what to do next around the house seemed challenging. I did manage to knock off a couple of projects that I’ve been meaning to do for a bit (patch the hole in the kitchen where I tried to hang a coat hook – but the hook fell out and left a gaping hole). The projects I’ve tackled have been low skill level, low commitment projects. Nothing needing large amounts of focus or brain power.

I am beginning to feel more grounded when I’m at home. However, when I go out to shop, I still feel lost. It all feels surreal and like I’m moving through water. This will change in time, I am sure. But for now, I have to really concentrate when I’m out; “What store am I going to?” “What is on my grocery list?” “Remember to stay 6 feet away from others.” (I am grateful for the markings letting us know where to stand in grocery store line-ups; it means I don’t have to worry that I’m not the correct distance away anymore). I still haven’t read any of the books beside my bed that I was sure I was going to dig into right away. But I think I’m getting closer to picking one up.

Emotionally, I worry about the effect of the increased stressors on families who no longer have access to community supports. Schools, governments, not-for-profits, community agencies and others are all rising in amazing ways to meet the challenge of connecting with families who need support. I know, however, that they will not be able to connect with everyone who needs it. This hurts my heart. When I feel like this, I try to remind myself of what I can do. Having a sense of what I can contribute to the greater good helps. Sometimes it is the small things, like taking groceries to a friend who is unable to leave their home.

I am really appreciating the time with my family. Having my children around has been an emotional stabilizer for me. I would love some time by myself, to be sure! But having this extended time with my family has been more good than not good.

I am still working, and I actually feel quite focused at work – when I can work from my office. Working from home is another story – probably better left for another post! Suffice to say, I’m not always at my best when I’m working from home and attempting to school from home as well. The photo at the top is me in my office at Aspire getting ready to do an online counselling session. It took some time to find the telehealth platform that works best for me (and is compliant with privacy legislation), and the right lighting so that I don’t look like I’m in the witness protection program. But I’m pleased to say it’s coming together, and it is going well.

I continue to wrap around friends and family as best as I can – and they wrap around me and my family. A colleague shared this article with me and I have sent it to many friends and colleagues since. I found it very comforting and grounding. Maybe it will be helpful for you as well.

Here are some other ways to take care of yourself from The Canadian Mental Health Association. It is important to reach out if you are feeling overwhelmed during these times. That may mean calling a friend for a chat on the phone or seeking support from a mental health professional or helpline. The Mental Health Support Line can be reached at 310-6789 (no area code needed) 24 hours a day. They will put you in touch with your local BC crisis line. To chat online, visit crisiscentrechat.ca. A worker is there to chat from noon till 1am daily.

If you are interested, I am offering a free, one-hour online workshop on April 29^th from 6:30 till 7:30pm called “Taking Care of Ourselves in Times of Change and Uncertainty.” Please email me at suzanne@compassionateparenting.ca if you would like to attend and I will send you the Zoom invite. Community and connection is vital in times like this, and this is one way I can build community and stay connected.

Stay well and stay connected,

Suzanne

Yesterday, my daughter and I decided to make a video of our favourite board games to share with other families. (She did the filming!) It was our way of having some fun while connecting with community online.

We hope that in these unfamiliar days, it might give you some new ideas of things to do together.

You can view the video here.

If you are curious about what games we chose, but don’t want to watch the video, here they are:

1. Outfoxed – cooperative game for 2 to 4 players. Ages 5+
2. Forbidden Island – cooperative game for 2 to 4 players. Ages 10+ (but I’ve played with our 6 y.o.)
3. Qwirkle – 2 to 4 players. Ages 6+
4. Rummycub – 2 to 4 players. Ages 8+
5. Azul – 2 to 4 players. Ages 8+
6. Tiny Towns – 1 to 6 players. Ages 14+ (again, played with our 6 y.o. with modified rules)
7. Anomia – 3 to 6 players. Ages 5+

Happy Playing,

Suzanne

When you notice that your heart rate is rising, your shoulders are tensing up, and you are thinking, “This is not going to end well,” taking a mental step back and giving yourself some space can help you respond to a situation rather than react. When we respond, we are more mindful of our tone of voice, the words we are using and how our own emotions are contributing to the situation. It doesn’t mean that we are okay with any behaviour our kids (or others) dish out, but it does mean that we respond in a way that is helpful rather than in a way that adds to the situation.

Here are four strategies to help you take that mental step back so that you are more able to respond from a grounded place. You can try these strategies in the moment and see if they help. There might be one or two that work better for you than the others. Those are the ones you can return to whenever you notice you need to take a moment.

1. Name 5 Things – When you feel like your head is spinning and everything is getting overwhelming, take a moment to name to yourself five things you can see around you. You try it now. “I see a chair. I see a shoe. I see a clock. I see a window. I see a tree outside.” Bringing your attention to your sense of sight helps bring you back to the here and now of your body. When I do this, I notice my breath slowing down as I name the objects I am seeing. You can also do it by naming the sounds you hear around you. It does the same thing of bringing your mind back to the present. You can name the objects or sounds silently to yourself, so that even if others are around, they are unaware that you are practicing this strategy.

2. Ground Yourself – For this strategy, breath into your centre (about an inch beneath your belly button) and notice your feet on the ground, feeling where the soles of your feel make contact with the earth. If you are sitting, you can notice where your body touches the chair. Again, this strategy guides you back to your body in the present. It gives you a moment to take that step back and respond mindfully to the situation.

3. Breathe – Bringing your awareness to your natural breath is another way to settle yourself. You don’t need to change how you are breathing, just bring your awareness to it. If you have a particular breathing technique that you like, such as square breathing or belly breathing, you can use those as well. In the moment, simply noticing your breath will give you the pause you need to respond rather than react.

4. Notice Your Emotional Elevator – You can imagine your emotions as an elevator. At the top is where the high-energy emotions like anger and rage as well as excited and ecstatic live and at the bottom is where the low-energy emotions like calm and restful as well as sad and bored live. Taking note of where your emotional elevator is and then visualizing it going down (or up if needed) can help you regulate your emotions in the moment.

All of these strategies can be done quickly and without anyone else around being aware of what you are doing. If you are with your children, and it a situation with them that you are trying to manage, you can also practice these strategies out loud. Doing this models for them that we all feel overwhelmed at times and need to have strategies to regulate ourselves so that we can respond mindfully. It also gives them strategies that they might choose to use later when they need to pause and take a mental step back.

Do you have other strategies that you use? I would love to hear about them in the comments section.

Wishing you all a December that is filled with ease and moments of connection and joy,

Suzanne

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University. She spent years telling people that stress was bad for them; that stress would increase their risk of experiencing all sorts of minor and major health issues. Then she came across a study that made her rethink stress. Her 2015 book, The Upside of Stress, is a fascinating and intriguing exploration of her journey through the research of stress (that first study and many others) and how science is now discovering that there is more than one stress response – and that there is indeed an upside to stress. Her TED Talk, above, has been viewed more than 17 million times.

McGonigal relates that there are three other stress responses besides flight, fight and freeze. Stress can also encourage you to: rise to the challenge; connect to others; and learn and grow. These responses and their indicators are described in the table below:

How we think about stress, McGonigal tells us, makes all the difference in how our body is impacted by stress. Studies indicate that before a stress-induing situation, like writing an exam or having a job interview, if people view their beating heart and sweaty palms as their body preparing them to think more quickly and clearly, then not only do they feel more positive and perform better on these tasks, they are also viewed by independent observers as more confident than people who continued to view their body’s response as stress.

Her TED Talk is 15 minutes. I highly recommend it and The Upside of Stress. What McGonigal has to say is hugely relevant to us all.

Warmly,

Suzanne

Research has also linked families who eat together frequently with increased child and youth health. What has not been clear is if families who ate together more frequently were just healthier to begin with or if it was because they ate together that the children were healthier.

This recently published study out of the University of Montreal looks at the relationship between meal times eaten together as a family and the associated physical and mental health benefits over a ten year span. PhD student Marie-Josée Harbec and her supervisor, pyschoeducation professor Linda Pagani, studied a cohort of children born between 1997 and 1998 from 5 months of age until 10 years of age. Studying families since almost the birth of their child and over such a long period of time allowed them to adjust the findings to account for many factors (such as cognitive abilities, child temperament, family configuration, maternal education, and depression) that previous studies weren’t able to. The families started reporting data on meal times when the children were 6 years old. When they reached 10 years of age, parents, teachers and the children, reported on their lifestyle habits, academic achievement, and social adjustment.

The results show that when the quality of the family meal environment is better, children consume less soft drinks, have a higher level of fitness and increased social skills (reporting less aggression and oppositional behaviour).

Setting the intention to eat two or three times together a week can go a long way to raising healthy, socially and emotionally resilient children. With busy families, it is difficult to find a time when everyone is home and can sit down together, but I encourage you to try to do it when you can as the payoff is tremendous.

Warmly,

Suzanne

Wellbeing is a balance between your resources and your challenges. There are psychological, social and physical dimensions on both sides. It is not static; our wellbeing changes. Our resources can increase, like when we manage to fit in an evening out with friends, or they can decrease, like when you don’t get out on your regular run. Our challenges can increase and decrease in the same way. If a relative becomes ill, your challenges will increase and your wellbeing will be affected. Alternatively, if a friend who you were concerned about begins to do better, your challenges decrease. You can visualize it like this:

As a parent, it can be hard to focus on your own wellbeing. It can feel selfish, or extravagant, or unnecessary. There are always, it seems, more important things that need your attention: cleaning, grocery shopping, returning emails, helping with homework, swimming lessons to get to, and so on and so on and so on. In fact, your wellbeing is vital to not only your own health, but that of your family. Sometimes it can be easier to see the affect of your wellbeing on your family when you think about the other way round. What happens when you are not looking after your wellbeing; when you are tired, or hungry, or distracted by work stress? How do you interact with your family in those moments?

Personally, I am less patient with my children and my partner, I’m quicker to anger, quicker to make assumptions about other’s motivations and behaviours, and perhaps most profoundly, I am not able to help my children regulate their big emotions. The cycle can look something like this: I go to bed late and am tired the next day; after getting through my day, I come home to shoes and coats strewn in the entry way. In my exhausted state, I immediately go to my script of, “why am I the only one who picks up things around here?!” My greeting to my family is, “Why is this place always a mess?” My daughter, who has had a tough day at school, immediately shoots back, “Why do we always have to clean up instead of play?” Before you know it, the moment I’ve been waiting for – reconnecting with my family – has become a scene of anger and irritability. If I want to salvage this moment, I am going to have to regulate myself quickly so that I can help my daughter regulate and we can re-establish a connection. Regulating myself might look like me taking a breath and pausing just long enough to remind myself that this is not the way I want to come home. Regulating my daughter might look like me talking softly and saying, “Sorry, that’s not the way I wanted to come home. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you” and then giving her a hug. None of this is to say that I’m forgetting about the mess in the entrance way, but I can deal with that once I’ve connected with my family, and I can do it in a manner that is less confrontational. If I had better wellbeing, was less tired when I walked in the door, I may have been able to be less combative from the beginning.

Our children learn by watching us as well. How we model self-care will be how they learn self-care. If we want our children to grow up resilient and healthy, we had better start by looking after ourselves. Modelling is one of the most powerful teaching tools there is.

Increasing our resources does not have to take a long time. We can build up our psychological, social and physical resources in quick, easy ways. Wellbeing strategies such as breathing, setting an intention, and savouring can be built into our days. Learning about self-compassion so that we don’t beat ourselves up when we are less than fabulous with our families is also a worthwhile and positive step.

If you are interesting in learning more about wellbeing and some strategies to increase wellbeing, join me at a Parent Wellness workshop. The next one is May 29th in North Vancouver.

Warmly,

Suzanne