Tag: mental health

4 min read

Health Wellness Zoe

Zoe’s Self Care Routine

Zoe

November 30, 2020 4:57 pm November 30, 2020

4 min read

2520 views

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4 min read

This year, 2020 has been a very mentally challenging time – the pandemic. With the new year right around the corner, I made a pledge to myself to get in…

This year, 2020 has been a very mentally challenging time – the pandemic. With the new year right around the corner, I made a pledge to myself to get in the best mindset for a fresh new start. We all deserve it. That is why i’m going to share my simple self care tips with you.

I’ll start off with what gets me stressed. I am one of those people that gets overwhelmed easily. I struggle with having a million jobs to do and nothing getting done or, if I do get things done, I will beat myself up feeling guilty for not having quality time with my children.

During lockdown, I was forced to face myself. Spending so much time on my own gave me the opportunity to improve my day to day life and lift up my mood.

Bubble Bath

Pour it all in! Turn the lights off. Phone away and eyes closed. oh it is just so relaxing…until Mole runs in. It occurred to me that there is little time in the day I am by myself. My boyfriend works from home and I have Mole and Frankie glued to my hip. A hot bubble bath allows you “me” time.

Painting

My Grandad use to paint landscapes and it has always fascinated me. The detail, patience and talent involved to make the picture look realistic is truly a work of art in itself. The best part is you do not have to be good at it to enjoy it. Just make patterns on paper. I aim to paint once a week. It is surprising how quickly your mind can become lost in paint and any worries or stresses disappear.

Learning

Expanding my knowledge is very important for my mental health. I like to still feel I can hold a conversation in interesting topics and have enough understanding to form an opinion.

I enrolled on an online course that studies Bitcoin and the Fintech movement. There are so many free online courses to choose from. You can give an hour a week over a number of weeks and trust me, when I tell you how amazing you will feel afterwards.

Seeing how much learning a new topic was making me feel content, I decided to download an app to my phone that pops up with new vocabulary every couple of hours. It is the simplest thing but I feel so good for learning something new.

Create a folder of your best memories on your phone

When times get tough and I start to miss my family and friends, I go through a folder I created on my phone full of happy times. It puts me in a positive mood and makes me look forward to the times ahead.

Lift Heavy

No matter how tired or drained I feel, getting in a workout is vital for my mental health. Any stresses or anger are taken out. You have to move your body. Spend at least 20 minutes working out. I can promise you, your head will feel clear afterwards and you will have a better nights sleep.

Do something for someone else

Feeling good about yourself doesn’t mean you only have to do things for yourself. I started putting time out of my day to help others.

Donating toys, clothes or money can make a difference to someone else.

Whilst I had nothing physical to give, I began creating free revision tools for Computer Science students to download. The feeling is amazing reading the feedback.

Pamper

Hair mask, face mask, manicure and self tan make me feel fresh. I love dedicating a full evening to take care of my body. There is just something about the next day when you wake up with soft glowing skin and polished nails. If you are ever feeling a little bit rubbish, take the effort to look after yourself. I can guarantee you will wake up with a spring in your step.

Let me know your favourite self care tip in the comments below!

Look after yourselves, speak soon,

Zoe

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3 min read

Wellness

Should you tell your daughter she is pretty?

Zoe

July 22, 2019 12:44 pm July 22, 2019

3 min read

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3 min read

When the question “should you tell your daughter she is pretty?” first reached my ears, I was really confused. I started to question myself if I was doing the right…

When the question “should you tell your daughter she is pretty?” first reached my ears, I was really confused. I started to question myself if I was doing the right thing as a parent and began learning to understand the reason why so many parents of daughters today are avoiding calling their daughter pretty.

Mole is incredibly cheeky, she loves to dance and waves her arms to the music. Her favourite thing to do is to shout out different animal names or the noises they make when she sees them on TV or in her books. In my mind, Mole is the most beautiful person I have ever seen. My heart is incredibly full for her. But, I have decided that I am going to make a conscious effort to stop telling her she is pretty.

Here is why:

Every single morning, when Mole was dressed, the first thing I would do is give her a big hug and tell her how pretty or beautiful she looked. Once I realised I was doing this without thought, I caught myself saying it through out the day too. The more we talk about a topic to our children, they begin to understand that this topic is important. It could be anything from manners to sharing. Basically, I don’t want the topic of physical appearance to be something that Mole understands as important or more important that any of her other qualities she has.

Living up to expectations

Always making a point to someone that they are pretty or clever will give them the mentality on what they have to live up to. They can get stuck in a comfort zone and waste time and energy worrying about this. When instead, they could be spending their time and energy into being more knowledgable and opening themselves up to a full range of experiences.

What I do to boost my daughters self esteem:

I focus on praising her process rather than the outcome. I will praise her for her hard work and time and effort she has spent on something. This may even be when she is older and has spent time on her hair. Commenting on that rather than just saying “You look pretty.”
I Tell her how much she matters to me. Showing and telling her how important she is to me and how much she is on my mind will make her feel amazing and loved.
I will look at her other qualities. Make them stand out whilst also using words like “pretty” and “beautiful” so she can gain a wider understanding of how beautiful and pretty doesn’t just have to be based of physical appearance. E.G. “Mole you are beautiful for being such a good friend and sharing your toy.”
Asking her lot’s of questions. Not only does asking your little one lot’s of questions help to boost their memory and language skills. but, asking questions really shows that you have an interest in their life. I love to ask Mole questions on where her favourite toy is or which animal am I pointing at.

So focus on your values and how you can get them across to your children. Becoming aware of your words will help you to stop focusing on how looks are more important than how your child behaves or thinks. Even when it is unintentional.

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6 min read

Wellness

Building your confidence for baby classes/social events

Zoe

July 10, 2019 3:24 pm July 10, 2019

6 min read

1182 views

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6 min read

I recently attended a “Mums meet up” hosted by Mama Society. I had an amazing time and when I posted about it, I couldn’t believe how many private messages I…

I recently attended a “Mums meet up” hosted by Mama Society. I had an amazing time and when I posted about it, I couldn’t believe how many private messages I had from other mums saying how much they would love to attend a social event, however, they felt too anxious and nervous. It saddened me because, I had such a great time. I would love other mums to feel confident enough to attend a baby class or a mums meet up event.

At the same time, I truly understand the challenges you can face with feeling nervous and anxious, to throw yourself into the deep end and go in a room full of people you have never even met before.

Just because you have anxiety- does not mean anxiety is all you are

A little background on myself. After suffering from social anxiety for years now I feel that I have started to turn a corner with myself and realise that just because I have attended therapy sessions and have had medication for anxiety, the label “anxiety” is not who I am and not my personality.

Confidence boosting tips for attending a baby class/social event

I thought I would share with you some of my favourite ways to help combat the feeling of being nervous or anxious before a baby class or a social event and hopefully I will at least help someone reading this.

Plan. Plan everything either the night before or two days before. Even down to your outfit and your child’s outfit, what they will have for their breakfast, dinner or snacks and anything they might need there. Having a full plan will help you to feel like you have control over what you can control, resulting in confidence. If you wake up late, everything will all be planned for you to focus on straight away and get going. Or if you wake up feeling anxious, you have a plan to stick to, which will help your mind not wander off thinking the worst of everything which may result in you talking yourself out of going.
?Arrive early. I love trying (I say trying because we all know how hard this is with a child) to arrive early for a class or event I am attending for the first time because, for me personally, journeys to new places are extremely stressful. It is like I get myself that worked up, parking my car in a space takes me 100 manoeuvres. Giving yourself time to chill out before you head in and beat the rush of all the other mums parking and fighting for a space will help you to feel more relaxed.
Another reason to arrive early. If you are early or on time, you are more likely to be one of the first mums there. You will have more options on where you want to sit, get your child sorted incase they need a quick change before the starting time. But, most importantly, you are not going to be walking into a room full of people, with all eyes on you, feeling the judgement. (Even though no mum will actually be judging. Your anxiety will somehow convince yourself that they are). I personally find it easier to greet a mum walking in, than having to walk up to what looks like an established conversation between two people and have to stand their awkwardly smiling until you think of something interesting to say.
Avoid Caffeine. Dare I say it, coffee is not your friend (in this case). Why? Caffeine is a stimulant. That is not going to help someone with anxiety. Caffeine’s effects on your body are similar to those of a frightening event. Caffeine stimulates your “fight or flight” response, and studies show that this can make anxiety worse and can even trigger an anxiety attack.
Questions. Have an idea on what questions to ask the other mums. Take the opportunity to get to know them. Find out what their interests are and you will probably see how similar they are to you. Remember that not all mums want to attend a social event and talk about their babies and some mums all they want to do is talk about their babies. So if you feel that the conversation is awkward, just change the subject and don’t take the bad response personally.
Try again. Once I attended a class at a local church, where I did not feel comfortable. AT ALL. It was one of the first classes I attended as a new mum, living in a new area. I left half way through as my anxiety got the better of me. I sat in my car and burst into tears – even took a selfie, to look back on as one of my lows and know that one day I would laugh and not take the experience personally.The feeling of being anxious and having my expectations crushed on baby classes combined with the guilt of not being a good mum to Mole crushed me. I was super firm on myself to try a different class elsewhere, I did and LOVED it.? Fast forward a few months, I attended that class I originally felt so crappy at to give it a second chance. I hated it. The same thing happened again. I left half way and cried in my car. The point I am trying to make is, some classes/events will be for you and some won’t. It does not make you a bad mum if you need to leave and give yourself time. Remember, if you have made the big enough step to even make it out of the house, praise yourself.
Wear your confident hat. A trick I learnt from drama classes. Pretend you are wearing an invisible confident hat. Sounds very silly doesn’t it? Believing you are confident, standing tall, smiling, making eye contact and asking open ended questions will make you look very approachable, friendly and most important make you feel like you actually are a confident person; even though you may have lived however many years of your life labelling yourself as shy.

Give it a go

Hopefully these tips come in use for you and you feel that you can attend a class/event. Attending will be worth your while. I have met some amazing people I can call my friends and I have been able to see my daughter enjoy herself too.

Images by https://www.truelightphotography.net/

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