Navigating Life's Overwhelming Challenges

Speaker 1 0:10

hey guys , welcome back to PreviewLines podcast . This is Sarah and I'm with your favorite maternal mental health therapist , whitney . Hey friends , okay , whitney , not a shocker to you and probably our listeners that they've been around for a while , but but we have life at life's and it seems to take turns on us . Sometimes we both go through it together , but it seems sometimes that when things are happening , they all happen at once and they don't stop .

Speaker 1 0:40

Yeah , life is lifing and I had this thought the other day . I said you know , am I just like failing at all this , or is it really just that hard ? I'm going to say it's just that hard , yeah , and I thought you know this can be so relevant to everybody that's listening , right , because we do not choose . I mean some things .

Speaker 1 1:03

We , you know we're like oh yeah , I can see how that led to that , but a lot of things that happen in our lives . You don't choose for that loved one to get sick or to pass . You don't choose for your child to have a bully or a learning issue or an unexpected bill to hit or your boss to reach you a certain way , or for you to experience postpartum depression , you know , when you now have three other kids . Or for you to get in that fender bender when you're just trying to , you know , get a Starbucks before we're working at all spirals Right , and it seems that these things , when they do happen , they come in like threes or something and then it tends to .

Speaker 1 1:52

You know what happens with me , and recently we have had three people in our immediate family and have some really scary health issues and I found myself going . I don't stop being a mom during this . I don't stop running Previa during this . I don't stop being a daughter , a wife , a friend paying bills . You know , life keeps going on , walking by your neighbor and they're like , hey , how are you ? You're just like great .

Speaker 2 2:24

You know , you're just barely keeping my head above water here , friends .

Speaker 1 2:27

Right . So I think it's just important conversation to say is like OK , whitney , what do we do when it is not ending ? And you're just like at some point you get so tapped out and you're just like I just don't know if I can handle much more .

Speaker 2 2:42

Right ? Well , I think part of it is we need to get it out . We don't need to keep that in . And by getting it out , you don't necessarily have to do a therapy session , obviously . You can but talk to a friend , go sit in your car and scream , go to the rage room , go for a run , go get a workout , and you've got to get it out . You've got to get it out , and that is one of the few things that we can control . Controlling the controllable is big .

Speaker 1 3:10

Right .

Speaker 2 3:11

And so I would say find a way to get it out . Realize that you're allowed to have these feelings of anger , grief , depression , anxiety , all of that stuff , and I would encourage you always talk with your doctor about if you should or should not add this . But I would assume , if life is getting hard , that sleep is not very good because it's an increase in your stress . Therefore our cortisol spikes , Therefore our sleep is off kilter and all of that can have a lot of health ramifications . But one more natural supplement that you can have is magnesium .

Speaker 1 3:46

I love magnesium I do too .

Speaker 2 3:49

I've actually been . Since I was diagnosed with anemia , I've added magnesium to my supplements . My sleep is so much better . My sleep is significantly better . So anyone who's listening to this always talk with your doctor . Make sure there's not a complication that could be there from that . But magnesium is something that you might be able to take that's more natural than like a Unisom or just a sleep aid . Get better sleep .

Speaker 1 4:14

I love it and I started taking it because when I had the hysterectomy , I went into menopause and so the magnesium I was struggling with sleeping because of like hot flashes , and she's an older woman that she was like you need magnesium , honey , and I was like , oh , and I researched and I was like , absolutely , so , that's definitely something . One thing I think we struggle with as women in general and mothers is this we carry out like a heavy invisible load , right , and so you do it , and it's hard for other people to see it , right , but when you do have life , that keeps throwing at you and it makes that invisible load so much heavier it's heavy already .

Speaker 1 4:58

Yes , but now you're dealing with family crisis . Extra , then , all those like mental lists that you have in your head that you do every day to keep your house functioning and your children moving from . Even did I buy toilet paper to ? Did I send that form in to ? Did I pay that bill to ? You know , restocking all those tiny little things that you do on a day to day that mental energy that you put towards that .

Speaker 1 5:25

Then when you have some other situations that come in , that's pulling from that . It's like the straw that can break the camel's back .

Speaker 2 5:32

Absolutely , it is .

Speaker 1 5:34

And then you're like why is replacing the toilet paper making me want to have a breakdown right now ?

Speaker 2 5:39

And it's one more thing for you to have to deal with . Yeah , and you're trying to deal with it .

Speaker 1 5:45

And I think one thing too that I've had to learn in this season of just a lot of bad happening with health and just you know , we even just house stuff . You've been there too , whitney , with your house . Like you , sometimes you can't control when an AC goes out or hot water goes out , all these things , or you find mold or whatever it is is saying no to a lot of extras right now in this season . I've had to do a lot of boundaries .

Speaker 2 6:14

Right and you're allowed to have those boundaries .

Speaker 1 6:17

And I've had to say I've learned this recently , and I think you have too is if you don't rest , if you don't take care of yourself , your body will force you to .

Speaker 2 6:26

Yes , yep , your body will . You'll get sick potentially , and it could be , you know , cold . It could be stomach bug , which I get it Like . We're exposed to viruses . Sickness happens , but our immune systems take a huge hit when we're stressed and so we're more susceptible to those things . And so chances are something that could be a routine head cold turns into an upper respiratory infection , turns into pneumonia , things of that nature .

Speaker 2 6:55

It's escalated or you start having other health issues . So , like endocrine system is very tightly associated with our immune system , you can start to have thyroid problems . Yeah , you know again I mentioned this a minute ago your cortisol spikes and if it stays up high , that wreaks havoc on your endocrine system . So , again , thyroid anemia is something that can get involved with that . You may notice that you're gaining weight rapidly because of that and you don't understand the why . Behind it . It's your stress and your body is in a fight or flight mode , and so when it does that , it's also in a hoarding mode . So guess what ? It's going to hoard all of these nutrients because it thinks , oh my gosh , what if we ? What if we can't find food soon ? Yeah , and again , bad sleep contributes to that as well , and stress makes sleep hard no , that all that all makes sense .

Speaker 1 7:52

And you know , I , you , almost you give , give , give so much to your children and to your job and to your friends . And then you know I think I was hearing this other day and they're like you know there are . Sometimes we have nothing left to give and I don't know if I've really understood that until I become a mom and a wife and run a business . And then these unfortunate , unforeseen circumstances happen and you're like I was just like well , what do you mean ? You can't just check on somebody . What do you mean ? You can't just text somebody back ? What do you mean ? You just didn't follow through with that . And that's my type of personality

Navigating Life's Emotional Challenges

Speaker 1 8:28

. But I find myself sometimes being like full intention want to right , just don't have the ability to right , you don't have it in you and you don't have the bandwidth .

Speaker 1 8:42

Yeah yeah , and that is something of your capacity and bandwidth and saying you know I think you'll go back to your priorities of like , okay , okay , food , shelter , you know water , your family , like what matter . You focus in what you control , controllable . In these situations , you know it's a season If you have to say no to things and you're like I just mentally can't do it .

Speaker 1 9:03

I think that there's no guilt , no shame , yeah , permission to say no , permission to rest , a permission to say , you know , I need to prioritize my mental health . Today that looks like X for me . Or that looks like going for a walk and then listening to podcasts or just meditating , or that looks like , you know , I would love to go out with you girls . But like I'm already at this point that if I know , if I don't sleep well and I come in late , the kids get up early , I can't go through that next day , you know . And then let's talk about reframing , because it's easy for me and many others . When life keeps life in Whitney , those thoughts can get catastrophic , they can spiral . You can get back to if you've struggled with depression and anxiety before . I think it's easy to sometimes see yourself , yeah . So how do we kind of reframe when we notice it's getting ?

Speaker 2 9:57

to us , right ? Well , remind yourself . It's normal that it gets to you . I've said this in another episode . But we're not robots , we're humans . You're not supposed to be able to go through these things unaffected . So , with that , normalize that this impacts you , because it should . If it didn't impact you , I have concerns that there's no empathy . That's a whole nother can of worms of a conversation . But if you have absolutely no empathy towards this which is not the same as dark humor , because dark humor is a defense mechanism that actually means we do feel it on a deep level and we're just trying to protect ourselves from losing it all oh , okay so , speaking from personal experience , having worked in a hospital , dark humor is a defense mechanism oh my gosh medical people .

Speaker 2 10:46

I mean , I mean , I hate to say that if you don't laugh about it , you'll cry about it and it breaks you . But to get back to how do we cope with the you know , worst case scenario thinking ? Tell yourself , ok , this is bad , this is unfortunate . However , it's not necessarily going to end up like that , or I mean , a lot of our listeners know like my grandfather and father-in-law died a month apart and they were both in hospice care . So ultimately , that worst case scenario of them dying was a reality , and I knew that because they were in hospice care . But I also could tell myself , ok , they're not going to have a painful death , they're not going to have a traumatic death for them , they will truly go to sleep , they will go to sleep . Their death for them in that moment is not as physically painful for them as it is for me . Right , and so , even if you know that the worst case scenario actually is valid , remind yourself if it's like my situation , it is harder on you than it is that person .

Speaker 1 11:53

Yeah , and that's important . I think you know grief is so complicated and the stages of grief and , like you can , grief doesn't just appear at a loss of a person , right . It's a situation or a loss of a business , or financial loss , or an expectation or an well , all these things , right . So grief can appear in a lot of part of our lives and no one teaches you how to grieve , right ? There's not a rule book of this is how you grieve . There's not . And so you sometimes don't even know how you grieve .

Speaker 1 12:28

And I feel I can even say this you will grieve differently in different situations of your life , absolutely . And if you know how you grieve when you is , you know young and single and you know your life , versus now you're married and have kids or pregnant . Or you know young and single and you know your life , versus now you're married and have kids or pregnant , or you know you've lost your spouse , whatever , you're going to grieve differently . You're going to have different coping mechanisms and you're not going to have , like , the ability to sometimes just be like I need to go away for a day and just cry .

Speaker 2 12:56

Right , right . So that being said , it said you're not failing when these things are hard or consuming or overwhelming . Life is hard . There is not a guidebook or a rule book to say this is how you're supposed to handle it , which also tells me that there's not a wrong way to do it , as long as we're not harming ourselves or someone else .

Speaker 1 13:21

And that's a whole thing , right . It's like coping mechanisms of what do you fall back to when life gets hard , what is your patterns , what maybe has been demonstrated to you when you were a child and you've generationally brought with you . You know that's a different conversation , right , brought with you . You know that's a different conversation , right , as if it's involving substances and alcohol or self-harm or harming someone else . But it is saying , okay , when I'm feeling this way , what are some ways I can actually do right ? And that could be if I can't get my mind to quit thinking certain ways . Can I ground ? Can I stop that pathway ? Can I get something cold to drink ? Can I walk outside ? Can I smell something like a candle ? Can I cold plunge ? Can you know , right , like what can I physically do to kind of stop that ? And then is it I need to remove myself from situations , right .

Speaker 2 14:18

Or again , we talked about this in other episodes Do we need to decrease our social media intake ? Are we dissociating and scrolling ? You know ?

Speaker 1 14:26

what boundaries do we need ?

Speaker 2 14:27

to have in place for that , because , especially when we are going through challenging times , we want to dissociate , because life is hard . Yeah , you know , avoiding is a huge defense mechanism .

Speaker 1 14:39

You know , avoiding is a huge defense mechanism , a hundred percent , and it's , I think , having that safe person and that can be your therapist , that can be your friend , that could be you know community , whoever that you're just open with . I think it's a lot to carry alone of saying I'm struggling . I said that to Whitney recently . I was like I'm just not okay , whitney , and that person that should not scare them , that should not make them back away , but it's like you're letting them in on a heart in your life .

Speaker 2 15:08

Exactly Well , and I think , too , I understood what you meant when you said I'm not doing well . It's not Sarah's going to jump off a cliff , it's that Sarah is overwhelmed . Sarah has burdened me .

Speaker 1 15:19

Yeah , it's been a lot of once and saying and I knew , and that's the thing , because if someone just randomly texts you , I'm not okay , I'm , you know . Yes , If you have no background to that , we're asking you to get background . We're not talking about that situation . Whitney was very much aware of the one , two , three , four punches that has been occurring and so there was definitely context . But having that person or someone just to say , gosh , yeah , that's hard .

Speaker 1 15:48

Right it is , and it doesn't have to be extreme , right , and I can even say like we've both had situations where both our kids have got sick , you know , back to back and then we've got sick and like that has been where we're like this is so hard and I am so hard , yeah , and just validation and someone being like , yes , it is . So I hope this episode has given you guys just a peek . You know , I think it's a more of a personal episode , which we are very personal with you guys , but of saying we all have , no matter what you are , what you do , what you've learned , what you you know , blah , blah , blah . Life does not play fair . No , it doesn't , and you need to know you're not failing . It is really hard and I don't care what you think what a person betrays or you think you know about their life is really hard and I don't care what you think what a person portrays or you think you know about their life , it's hard for them too .

Speaker 2 16:45

Absolutely .

Speaker 1 16:47

You have a glimpse of somebody's life and you don't know everything that they're being dealt with . But to really know your coping mechanisms , set some healthy boundaries learning , finding your person . If it's therapy , if it's , you know , your best friend , is it saying no and not feeling guilty ? Is it taking 10 minutes of your day to fill your cup so that you can continue on ? In some situations you know they last shorter than others . So it's a long call and you just got to go into it , knowing you know it's not going to be over tomorrow . But what can I do today that is going to help me out , but you're not failing . Life just gets really hard sometimes , but it does get extra hard . I will preference this if you are struggling with a mental health disorder on top of it .

Speaker 2 17:38

Absolutely , absolutely , absolutely . It's going to be harder .

Speaker 1 17:42

I mean , how can it not be ? And so there is times that , like , if you're going , yes , life is really hard , but like this is a different level of hard , please reach out , talk to your provider , talk to a therapist . You know there is times where therapy and medication need to come into play , absolutely , absolutely . So just to preference that and say we're in this with you . Life is life thing , but we are going to keep showing up for you and we want you guys to know that we care and we're here to walk through that . So if someone's going through something , send them to send this to them or save it for when life happens to you .

Speaker 2 18:18

Exactly . Life gets to be hard because it's inevitable , friends , it is .

Speaker 1 18:24

And just know we're cheering you on , but we will see you guys next week .

Moms' Mental Health Support Podcast

Speaker 1 18:30

Maternal mental health is as important as physical health . The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables , like anxiety , anger and even apathy . Hosted by CEO founder Sarah Parkhurst and licensed clinical social worker Whitney Gay , each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum . Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges , as well as access , tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms . You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time . Please know you're not alone on this journey . We're here to help .