School Council Parent Presentation 2!

Caring for the Caregiver

Strategies for self-care and how to handle frustrating moments with our children.

welcome to Karen for the caregiver today we're going to talk about the importance and how to care for the caregiver which is you you are your child's greatest asset and this is it's very important that we not only take good care of our children but we also need to take care of ourselves so welcome and I hope you enjoy the talk this is me I'm Martha Scott and I'm in occupational therapist I work in a variety of settings including the community stroke Rehabilitation team where I do Rehabilitation for those who have had a stroke I also work at Forest City neurofeedback and why do a lot of psychotherapy so cognitive behavioral therapy as well as dialectical behavioral therapy do a little bit of concussion work there as well and I see both children and adults at that clinic and I also own and operate London sensory therapy and this is a specialized pediatric clinic where we offer occupational therapy Social Work board certified behavioral analysis and speech language pathology so I've got a background and diverse number of settings what today is particularly wanted to focus on caring for the caregiver and how important it is to care for ourselves so that were able to be our best self find joy in life and care for our children show me a genda today what is going to cover y I need to care for the caregiver or for ourselves some reasons why we don't I think a lot of us know that it's important to take care of our family take care of our partner but we don't always actually take care of ourselves we know we should but we do why is that and then they'll be some concrete ways that we can take care of ourselves we know the basics you know brushing your teeth eating right but there are other aspects of our life that sometimes we miss and so we're going to go over some concrete ways that you can start to think about how to find time in the day for yourself and how to cook rib tips about how to care for yourself the truck ever what is the reasons why it's important to care for ourselves so that we can be the best version of ourselves for our family how many of us go to bed at night thinking to yourself and I shouldn't have yelled at my child or you know I really didn't pay attention when they were asking me this question or maybe you know I wish I had gone for a walk outside with with my kids today there's a lot of regrets that we have is Perrin and sometimes we're not able to provide our best self to our children because we're run-down tired overwhelmed and stressed and so when we take care of our cell phones our children see the healthiest happiest of ourselves so if we're able to only think of our children then the best parent for our children is one who is rested and well taken care of and that's when you really good reason why we should take care of our the other piece is showing our children how to live a healthy balanced life so people and humans learn in two different ways one is through AR reading and listening and taking information and actively but humans more so watch behaviour and adopt based on what we see so when we see someone who we admire or are inspired by we see how they act we see how they dress and we tend to emulate that and that sometimes is a more powerful force than what they tell us so you may be very good at telling your child you know about you take a why don't you relax or if they're upset you know maybe to go take some quiet time but they're watching what we're doing and so that is a very powerful teaching tool for them and I like this picture here because it shows a little fella watching his take a break and so he's learning how to take a break and the more important one he's learning that it's okay to take breaks and so for those of us who were may be raised by parents who were always working or who were always you know busy we may have a little bit of a harder time whereas those of us who were raised by parents or we saw a lot of break taking it's okay to sit down and read a book is okay to put your feet up and have coffee maybe there is a ritual where after dinner everyone kind of sat down and read the paper or a magazine you're learning those skills through watching what your parent is doing and sometimes that's allowed our teaching to all then actually word using words or writing something down our kids are watching so showing them how to live a balanced life is an important aspect of helping them grow into well-rounded healthy adults this is one that struck me the hardest or that was a very powerful message to me and I couldn't find the quote unfortunately but there was somewhere that I read or maybe it was a podcast listening to you where they were talking about your child's greatest asset is you and if you don't take care of you then your child won't have that that amazing asset and one of the examples that comes to mind is for those of us that remember the movie Bambi there is a very sad scene in the beginning with Bambi losing his mom and it says it very very sad scene and it leaves one thinking I wish it didn't happen I wish you just had his mom if he had his mom he would be okay and thinking of that scene and how important his mother is it real brings to light how important we are as caregivers to our children and so if this alone isn't reason enough to prioritize yourself and take care of yourself then I don't know that there more powerful message if you love your child then you need to love yourself because you are the most important element of your child's life and it is critical not just it's not as nice to take care of it's better call that you take care of yourself because your child needs you to be there for them for as long as you can and they need you to be your best self around them and so a lot of us struggle with taking care of ourselves investigate that in the next couple slides but we have to remember that it's critical that we do so because if we love our child that we have to love ourselves as well and the other reason why it's important care for yourself is because you are worthy of it so all the previous reasons I've given were you know in honour of your child so take care of yourself so you can take care of your child so you can take care of your family but in and out you are worthy of care you are worthy of time for yourself you are worthy of joy and so we forget that reason we often have to link it to I have to take care of myself so I can't others and that is true but we have to take a moment and pause and realize that you are worthy of being taken care of just in and of itself in and of yourself you are worth not for the purpose of helping others but for the purpose of yourself because you are worthy and I think worthiness is one of the issues that people have and why they're not taking care of themselves are not taking breaks for themselves in continuation from the previous slide these are some of the reasons why we don't prioritize ourselves as caregivers a lot of people feel guilty if they take some time for themselves or if they children need a few minutes to themselves if they stand their ground or just Express their needs they feel guilty and I think for those of us who are raised in the Christian faith we are taught to love others as we love ourselves and I what we forget about that is loud and clear the first part is heard love others but the second part can't be forgotten as you love yourself and so if you don't love yourself very well but how are you to love others there are two parts to the statement and I think that it's intended that way I think God wants us to love ourselves as well as loving others so let's not forget both thought that the entirety of the statement both parts of that statement and so there's no need to feel guilty when you take care of yourself for when you love yourself I do think that sometimes we lack the skills and today we're going to talk about some specific skills i a how to set boundaries sometimes it's just hard to know how to care for yourself or how to stand up for your names in a in a kind and loving way and so will learn that skill today and sometimes were unaware of so sometimes it we're running run down or overwhelmed and we we find out a little too late we get sick or you know we need to do some check-ins looking. How are we doing this week what it what do I need this week I don't feel happy I'm feeling stressed what do I need or talk about that a little bit as well during this presentation one of the ways to check in with ourselves is still look at the domains of self so there is a theory here about there was five domains of ourselves and that includes the biological which is the most understood our physical needs there is the emotional which is how are we feeling emotionally how are we doing with our thinking or cognitive how is our functioning our thoughts are tensioner memory do we feel foggy are we feeling slow there is a social aspect and this kind of relates to our you introverted are you extroverted are you around too many people or do you feel shut-in when you don't have time for your friends and you miss being out and social and talking to adults and then there's a pro-social which includes our values and beliefs am I living in a way that a line my values and beliefs so these are the five domains of cell and throughout the presentation we're going to touch on all of them and that unique ways but this is a very quick way of touching base with yourself am I meeting physical needs am I meeting my emotional needs you know if one of these is not full or out of balance it can make us feel tired and emotional physically ill our immunity goes down with these are out of balance is why we're not feeling great when all of these elements are full and balanced we're feeling joyful we're feeling that we're taking care of ourselves and that were very able and strong to take care our family self-regulation refers to our ability to be able to look at all five of those domains that we saw on the previous slide and manage them our nervous system does the best that I can but sometimes it over stimulated and actually sometimes it's under simulated and either case can cause a stress response so being able to regulate ourselves in all five of those do and not just emotional but all five of those domain helps us to have a more centered Balanced Life and live in a more peaceful and joyful state so that's a very long definition of self-regulation but we have to look at the whole being all of the components that make up Who We Are how can we care for ourselves there are a variety of techniques were going to look at specifically in this presentation and those include boundary setting activities at restore us how to manage and cope with stress and empathy empathy for ourselves as well as for our children and how that can it affect our emotions so it's a go nothing but at least we managed when we look at how we can care for ourselves the first topic I wanted to discuss is boundary setting boundary setting is about knowing what you will allow it won't allow from your environment from others and in certain situations and it's not only about knowing what your boundaries are but it's about knowing how to advocate for them and how to stand your ground with them and work through a couple of examples of boundary setting types of boundaries and what to say in certain situations where you may need to communicate about Andre there are three types of boundaries psychological boundaries are what you choose to share regarding your beliefs your opinions your values you can decide how much you want to share about yourself and how much you like to keep private emotional boundaries are how far do you let other people affect you emotionally and whether or not you let other people manipulate your emotions physical boundaries are often the most we understood and they refer to any activity around your body how close you are to other people physically you know some people have a very close personal space so when they come and talk to me for example they like to stand very close my personal or physical boundary is is a little bit further away so I may take a step back it's whether or not you let certain people touch you and includes intimacy it also includes things like shaking a hand when you first meet somebody shake their hand do you politely not or do you hug people so boundaries can come in different forms there's different categories of boundaries and it's important to take a moment to decide what your boundaries are once you become aware of what your boundaries are it is very important to communicate those boundaries and this is where it can get uncomfortable setting or stating a boundary it's can be very uncomfortable for people because many times you know there's many of us that our people Pleasers and we want to make sure that we're not ruffle any feathers but the problem is is that feathers will be ruffled in any situation where you're meeting comfortable and if it's not the other person's feathers it'll be your own feathers so either way someone's going to be made to feel uncomfortable and if it's a boundary that you need to state if you're successful in doing at you can avoid having uncomfortable tuitions of that same sort in the future so it is important to know how to State boundaries and there's a technique and dialectical behavioral therapy to form of therapy they it is a technique called dear man now dear man is an acronym the deer part helps us know what to say and the Man part of the acronym talks about how to say or how to deliver the message do the D is describing the situation and this is your chance to be direct assertive and clear about what you need or what you're saying no to it's the first thing you described it's basically factual and it sometimes helps to start off the sentence with I've noticed that or I'm aware of or this happened the other day so it's you're stating and obvious but it helps to start with a factual statement to then move into the E which is expressing your feelings after you describe the situation it's time to express your feelings and it's an important part of setting the bar because it allows the other person to understand how the situation is affecting you you need to be as specific as possible because it's your chance to describe an emotional response a is a cert or ask for what you need so after you've described the situation express your feelings it's time to get specific about what you would like from the other person or from the interaction who is to be as clear and concise as possible and the more specific you can be the better are is to reinforce or reward the other person so the final part of what you say when you're setting a boundary is to reinforce or reward the person and it might sound strange but it's actually a very important part of boundary setting because it's a very effective and respectful way to end the the assertion and so when you're rewarding the other person you're acknowledging their efforts even if they haven't done anything yet or you're giving them something specific to reward to work towards so in an example might be I know you're trying to but I appreciate that thank you or I really enjoy spending time together and I really want to find another way that we can work together so there is a positive statement that happens at the end how to say it is the man part of the Akron am stands for be mindful and with being mindful we're talking about something that has emotions attached to it so it's easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole when we're discussing a thousand other things going on in a relationship but it's not helpful when you're setting a boundary so when you're doing this you want to be mindful of one thing and you want to stick to it and don't get off topic the age is for appear confident important. You're decisive and it's not about being arrogant but it's a very important not to come across as wishy-washy because the other person might take advantage of that and they also have to know that you're very serious about what you're asking for the final letter in the acronym is n and n is for negotiate and this hooks about being prepared to negotiate not to give in order to try to please other person but it does mean that you should be okay to finding a compromise that works for both of you so if you're saying no to something be prepared to offer an alternative solution or if you're asking for something be prepared to negotiate on the details the next few slides are going to go over some specific examples of boundary setting for caregivers the three examples I chose to provide our setting boundaries with your partner or your co-parent this can be a husband or wife or it can be someone that you are romantically involved with or even a friend somebody who you consider to be a partner the second example is with family members and by I mean not your immediate family I'm talking about family members who don't live in your house with you and setting boundaries with your child let's start with setting boundaries with your partner and example and providing is let's say your partner comes up to you and they state that they'd like to begin attending the gym 4 nights a week and the time that they want to go is the same time that you're typically both putting the kid's down to bed the next line shows what you might be thinking or what you might want to say to them things you might want to say or are you kidding me or sounds like you're trying to skip the kids bedtime routine another thing you may be thinking or want to say is what about me I know it's a picture of a cat but I just but there's no human expression but I can find that more adequately adequately represent the face that you make me your partner tells you that this is what they are doing swapping anything for that maybe they want to go out hunting for nights a week maybe they want to go play golf 4 nights a week maybe they want to work The Late Shift 4 nights a week maybe they want to go out with their girlfriends four nights a week whatever it is it's the same concept of your thinking to yourself you're trying to get out of a commitment with the children and I would like to lovingly a Serta boundary with you and that boundary is that I don't feel let's look at how you might be able to phrase or word that here's an example of how you could tell your partner that you're not comfortable with their proposal use the D to describe the situation and the situation is going to the gym four nights a week was brought up during dinner last night then you go on to express your feelings or your emotion I feel stressed about the thought of doing the time routine with the kids by myself 4 nights a week a ask for what you need I would prefer you be here for the bedtime routine I don't want to do it myself four nights a week and are for reinforce a reward the person I'm so happy that I have a partner who I can talk to like you you mean a lot to me so you can see that it's a four pick four sentence paragraph that allows you to assert what's going on what you're feeling what you need and show appreciation and respect to the person that you're speaking to and this will open up a dialogue in a conversation that will hopefully lead to a resolution that both of you are happy with so this is one way to assert your needs and your boundary with your partner the man part of the acronym is how to say it I'm only going to go to the Man part for this visit example cuz I think it's rather self-explanatory and it can be applied to the other examples as we go along but in this case being mindful of your partner's needs and trying not to go off topic and that is very common in conversations when you're trying to State something that you need sometimes the other person can get defensive so they might say something like well you went out for dinner tonight so weak last night with your friends the topic isn't the dinner that to the topic is the new proposal of going to the gym 4 nights a week so really trying to stay on topic is going to be important appearing confident if you start to sway and say well but you're right maybe maybe I'm being too selfish or maybe I maybe I'll be okay with it that's you breaking your own boundary and so it's important to appear confident and stick with what your need is well yes maybe we did maybe I did go out for dinner two nights a week last last week right now I'd like to stick to the topic of we can talk about that later right now we're talkin about your proposal go into the gym 4 nights a week and I am uncomfortable with that be prepared to negotiate so perhaps you might come up with a solution where one night a week they go out for the to the gym during the bedtime routine and the other nights they go to the gym at a different time during their lunch break at work so doesn't affect child care or maybe you have one night and they have one night where they are allowed to leave or able to leave during the childcare but time routine so negotiation is the last part of this but the first part is putting on the table stating what your needs are and what your boundary is let's talk about family and again this is particularly family that doesn't live in your home so they're there visiting the family members such as your parents or in-laws can be an aunt and uncle everyone knows who this person is and their family and the example that I've provided is your mother-in-law would like to is it every other day to help out with the kids you desire visits less frequently what you might be tempted to say is we're moving to an end. what's location don't follow us he might be tempted or if you feel like you want to scream leave me alone you're suffocating us these are thoughts you may have and when you have negative strong thoughts like this it used means that your boundary is being crossed so sometimes thoughts like this can be quite helpful in decoding what your boundary is so you're having negative thoughts are you having a negative emotion use that as a clue to figure out what is it that's going on inside what do I need and in this case you're hoping that the visits are going to be less frequent what can I say to search our boundary so using the D here to describe the situation I noticed family visits are happening every other day and express your feelings and next I feel thankful for help but also overwhelmed when there are people in my I was so often ask for what you need I will prefer visits twice twice a week once during a weeknight and once during the weekend and reinforce when you come over on the weekend we can order pizza from that restaurant it would be fun to try it together so there's a positive way to end it so using this to structure a short paragraph making concise and asking for exactly what you need a specific quick as possible is going to help it is going to be comfortable to say probably not it may not feel comfortable the first few times but it's actually quite interesting when we start asserting our boundaries how people respond many people respond quite well their feelings may be a little bit hurt but you're not being rude you're not being you're not on the offensive you're just stating what your needs are your stating that you enjoy their company in fact you thought of them you'd like to try out that new restaurant with them so you're stating that you still want to spend time with them but you're stating your boundaries are your parameters around how that will look skating down trees with children needs to be. in the same respectful way as we do it with fellow adults so the example I provided here is after dinner your your children want your attention they tell you they're bored and ask many questions what you might feel like saying or Screaming maybe is be quiet and leave me alone I'm going crazy with all of this noise someone else for once what might be a little bit more appropriate to say is to find your boundary Saudi describe the situation after dinner there are a lot of requests being made of me express your feelings still tired and a little frustrated ask for what you need I need 20 minutes to myself each evening so I can rest and feel happy after dinner is quiet time I'll set my quiet time timer for no interruptions during that time are reinforced and reward after the quiet time you can save your children thank you for respecting my quiet time now I have enough energy to take you to the park so what your children will start to see very quickly is that when Mummy has enough energy or when we respect mommy's quiet time then she has enough energy and she's in a good mood and she wants to do fun things with us if they're not able to respect your quiet time then you can use that reinforcer to help motivate them to try a little harder to respect your your ask in the a section so I'll need an example if you set your quiet time timer then every time they interrupt you during your quiet time pause the timer and show them and say I'm pausing my timer or maybe even restart the timer and say I really would love to take you to the park after I've had a quiet time but if you continue to interrupt me then we won't have time to go to the park so let's have some quiet time and then we can go to the park much sooner so you can see how the reinforcer than reward is going to help your children understand what's needed of them in order to get that positive reward for that positive consequence and it's also showing them what they need to do and how they can respect your boundary now that we talked about boundary setting let's talk about restorative activities what do they mean by restorative activities while there are a number of different ones that has this list is not exhaustive what is heroin on the Leisure social activities and this will depend on if you're an introvert or an extrovert we'll talk a little bit about sleep and physical exercise he sure is sometimes overlooked but there are actual scientific studies that show the health benefits of leisure activity one of the health benefits of repetitive leisure activities like knitting crocheting anything where there is a repetitive motion is they found that those with Nicole emotions enhance the release of Serotonin and serotonin can help with helping Elevate mood as well as an analgesic so it can help reduce pain so there's actual studies that show that some leisure activities I have that rhythmical property or the repetitive movement are produce these hormones that some of us take medications for so why not just go into your leisure activity Leisure activity also produces protective factors for the brain that can reduce the risk of dementia what they've done is a shown that adults who participate in leisure activities are not only getting outside and moving their bodies but they're also stimulating their brain cognitive stimulation and they're all so relaxing and those who are stressed chronically tend to produce cortisol which is toxic to the brain if it's their chronically in for long periods of time the other piece of leisure is that it can also help improve your gut microbiome and your immunity for activities that are outside so we need your activities such as gardening golf horseback riding you know you've been going for walks things that are done outside our have been shown to have these official properties I've not only getting fresh air and the physical movement but the gut microbiome is enhanced which can improve your immunity I mentioned social activities and the key here is making sure that you're having enough social activities and buy enough I mean not too much and not too little and this will really depend on if you're an introvert or an extrovert you can also be somewhere in between so AR Quizzes that can be done online you can just Google introvert extrovert quiz and sometimes it's nice to compare your score or to talk about this with other family members including your partner and your children under standing what helps someone that restore their energy levels and understanding if there's an introvert or an extrovert much bigger insight into how they experience the world and what their needs are and that's including yourself so introverts they seek less stimulation and extroverts are the opposite they want more stimulation in order for an introvert to recharge they need quiet they take their time before the king they like to have one-on-one friendships so they don't like to be in a group they like to have one-on-one they like to be by themselves and they don't like to be the centre of attention or as extroverts are the opposite there any Joy's by being around people they don't want alone time they would like to be around people they talk a lot I think out loud a lot of friends they really enjoy teams in sports and crowd they love being the centre of attention and electrics. a lot of different things it's not one isn't better than the other they are different and we all tend to fall more so in one of the categories knowing what you are or what your needs are will help you to Define what your restorative activities look like so you may not wish to go out with friends because you're more of an introvert and for you relax time doesn't involve socializing whereas someone who's an extrovert when they have some time to so it's going to be important that they get out and socialize and connect with other people sleep is a very important restorative activity and this is what supper is especially when our little ones are infants because in the middle of the night and we're awake with him sleeping has very large health benefits and so if you're not getting enough sleep at night if you have an opportunity on the weekend to take a nap even if it's a 30-minute 45-minute nap then do it to go for it because it's going to help and it's so many different ways and I have an entire other course that I've done it just about sleep it was very hard for me to reduce some of the information the one slide cuz I could go on about this the 3-hour course that I can read it so it's there's a lot to sleep sleep helps with your mental abilities what they found is that for those who are awake for 17 hours straight it showed that their reaction time and attention is decreased to the same as a person who was drinking alcohol whose blood alcohol concentration is 0.05% so for those who are awake for long stretches of time their cognitive function or they're thinking speed is reduced and their tension is also challenged sleep also has a direct correlation with moon especially depression and anxiety those are the two that come up the most with deprived sleep and a weight control is something else that sleep has a direct impact on when you're tired our body craves energy and search for food but the other piece here is when you're tired you're not expending as much energy because you're too tired so you're eating more and moving less the other association with weight control is there's an entire nism in your body. It kind of links the brain with the adrenal glands and there's a lot of different hormones going on but what studies have found with this access it's a it's an access between The Brain Heenan and the other glands and organs I just mentioned they found that one hour of sleep that you lose each reduction of one hour of sleep is associated with an increase of 0.35 kg in body mass index so the less we puke at the higher your BMI poor sleep is also linked to cardiovascular problems because of brain and heart are not getting enough oxygen and they're not able to restore and heal who sells as they do during night time and people who have challenges with sleep experience pain more acutely so if anyone's challenged with pain lower back pain or any other type of pain the more sleep you can't the better well you'll be able to handle the pain and you'll feel the effects as much sleep is critical and that's why nothing on the weekends or taking some time to go to bed a little bit earlier these are all going to make a huge impact on caring for self as a caregiver we all know that we feel better after we've done some physical exercise but one of the things I wanted to zero in on is something called be brain derived neurotrophic factor or bdnf for short This Is A protein that spur used after about 30 minutes of continuous exercise it can be something like walking doesn't need to be a very vigorous activity it can be just something that elevates your heart rate and if you could bottle bdnf a billionaire because it has a lot of very interesting very positive factors that help with growing the brain so it makes the neural development so the neurons in your brain that helps them to mature faster it helps them it helps more to grow it helps to be vascularized your brain which means the more blood vessels you have going to your brain the more protected your brain is from any type of blockages so it really helps sharp and thinking it helps improve energy and helps improve we all know that physical exercise is beneficial but it really is important to try to incorporate at least 30 minutes a day to help protect us as caregivers we're going to move on to talking about managing stress and how this is thing that we need to do to care for ourselves as caregivers there are two states that we can be in at any given time we can be in the relaxed state which biologically is called the parasympathetic nervous system this is a state that we should be in for most of our day it's the rest digest and repair mode of our body during this stage is when we can consolidate or learning we can think better we can remember what we learned that day we can digest our food and it's winter body repairs itself and our immunity takes over and protects us the stress state is known as a sympathetic nervous system and this is our fight flight freeze or van I did talk about this in my other in my other talk that we do have fight or flight but we also are finding that there are people who don't fight they don't fight but they freeze and that means that they just they'll do anything and some of us there's also a new seat called van and Van is for individuals we tend to look for the spring which so with children who this is a person who will do anything that they need to do in order to survive we often see children who are living in very neglectful homes that they learn to van because if they just do what the abusing adult is telling them to do then that's their protective mechanism and so some people who have been abused growing up they tend to van and tend to just do whatever it is that the aggressor is asking for and that's actually something to look out for her because it is a Society response we need to be in a stress State once in awhile so if you're driving and you have a near-miss on the road that's something that needs to listen to stress response because you're able to react quickly or maybe if you're doing a job interview you maybe your heart's pumping a little faster you're more of a distressed state but it's not something that our bodies can or should maintain for long chronic periods of time so it's important that were able to get into the relaxed state because that's where we can digest properly repair and rest and our brains are functioning best and our mood can stay healthy if we're in the stress State off then then you're going to have things I can ciety weight gain challenges with heart also challenges with thinking and being able to problem-solve memory the sympathetic nervous system isn't meant to be turned on all the time one of best ways to get out of the fight flight freeze or Fawn mode or the stressed state is deep breathing and the reason why deep breathing works is going to the next slide there is a nerve it's called the vagus nerve and it's the longest nerve that comes from our brain called the cranial nerve and it's the longest of all the cranial nerves I really like this picture because it shows that the nerve goes from the brain all the way down to the different parts of our body it influences our breathing it influences our heart and also influences I got and there's a list here of all the things that an influences and that it's involved in one of the key aspect of this nerve is that it's an efferent nerve so it listens to our bodies sing calls and it sends a message back up to the brain as well as sending messages down and so one of the ways that we can control our brain is through our breathing and if you look at where at branch first branches out to the lungs so we are able to control our breathing not able to control her heart rate as much we can control heart rate through breathing we have an active ability to control our breathing though we can't control it by Jack as much as we can control our breathing so breathing is like a key way to stimulate one of the cranial nerves so if you're able to slow down take some good deep breaths then what you're actually doing is you're sending a signal up to the rain through the vagus nerve just start to produce calming hormones and help reduce stimulating hormones so you're improving your acetylcholine your decreasing your adrenaline and cortisol there are some lovely metaphors when it comes to breathing and I really like this one by brene Brown she talks about there is an in breath and there was an out breath and what she we're in here is in breath is what you give yourself the out-breath is what you give to others it's easy to believe that we must exhale all the time without ever inhaling but the inhale is absolutely essential if you want to continue to Exhale taking care of yourself is absolutely essential if you want to be able to take care of others there are a lot of different ways to practice deep breathing the easiest way to explain it is sometimes uses for children but sometimes we use us for adults as well as I've never done this practice the end that is usually eat with a no so it's like smelling a flower and the oat bread is usually through pursed lips kind of like blowing out a candle one quick way to do this is to do five finger breathing when you move up your feet you breathe in at the top you pause and when you move down your finger you breathe out and by tracing the finger Edge you can achieve five they call them finger breaths and it'll I was going to maybe get through at a stressful moment that you're having or to resend to your mind box breathing is the picture on the right and that is one of the more popular methods when you're moving across the Box breathing in or out so at the top here breathing in and you're holding it for 4 seconds a box has equal sides so each side is going to be in a length of 4 seconds As you move vertically up or down you're holding the breath so it looks like you're breathing in for for holding for 4 seconds breathing out for 4 seconds holding for for breathing in hold breathe out hold so box breathing is another way to practice deep breathing and there's also something called the physiological PSI do some people will actually let out a vocal sigh and it can help them to just let go of Everett is that's worrying mom so this might sound something like this if you're not sure if it will work for you give it a shot give it a try and see what happens best method of taking care of ourselves I wanted to touch on empathy let's Dive In the first aspect of empathy is empathy for yourself and 15 means being aware of how the other person I feel and I think sometimes are very focussed as caregivers on loving and paying attention to those that we're giving care to we don't always check in with ourselves so being empathetic to yourself means doing an emotional check in why didn't out ask yourself some questions think about this in the past week have I been responding or reacting to people around me responding means that you're in control of your emotions and are able to think through what you want to say before you say it, across as calm and loving reacting is more a defensive response so have you been yelling or snapping or do you feel like you've been nagging all of those things indicate that you're in an elevated state of irritation or stress and that can give you a clue as to how you're doing emotionally ask yourself in the past week have I had a compassionate or negative train I thought so what are you telling yourself what's your what's your verbal dialogue in your own mind are you able to tell yourself you know I'm doing my best I'm doing what I can or is there a lot of should statements I should have reacted differently I should have remembered to pack a lunch I should have what kind of thoughts are you having you can ask yourself what will I let go of or forgive myself for this week and sometimes bring them out to the four front and actively saying the words out loud can be quite helpful I forgot to pack Joey extra money because they had a book sale today I know I have to forgive myself for that I forgive myself for forgetting saying it out loud can be helpful what have I done well this week taking a moment to think about what you did well and acknowledging that is very important because it's too hurts you on a path of positive thinking and being able to pick out things that you feel good about so if we're always thinking about what we did wrong doesn't leave a lot of room for what we did right thinking about things in a positive light takes practice but you can change your mindset sometimes it's just about asking these questions every night before you go to bed the last one included this was shared with me by virtual healer actually and she talked about that do things feel heavy or light and I think the only way to describe this is within your soul do you feel like something is heavy or do you feel like it's like and if it's late it's usually meaning that you're in alignment with it or your your feeling like that's the right answer if things feel heavy it means our guts telling you something's off so this is kind of more of a the song concrete technique but it's definitely some it's intuition it's how do you hear your intuition and this is one way that you can listen for that to give yourself an emotional check in it's very important to self-regulate and it's going to be tough if your child is intense reaction like sadness Guild grief isolation loneliness or anger I'll give you an example if a child comes home from school and they tell you that they've been bullied some parents May react with anger at the bully or some parents may feel what the child is feeling they may feel their child saw this they might feel that rejection maybe there is a previous history that you had as you know what the bully high reactivity is associated with a greater likelihood of using harsh parenting strategies so reactivity means how you're reacting to what your child is saying being able to control your own emotions or control your stress response is a c seated with more positive parenting so it is important to be validating and to let your child know that you appreciate and that you understand what they're going through and what they're feeling but it's equally important to be able to self-regulate like you're not becoming emotional and emotionally impacted by their story because we have to remember that our children they have to have an experience their own life journey and it won't help them if we're in with them we need to help guide them through it instead of experience with them and we can think of this in a number of different metaphors that I'll share on the next slide if we think about the left side here is of a captain steering a ship everyone else is panicking the waters are rough if the captain became angry at the waters or angry at what was making there at the other people in the boat Panic or if the captain herself begin to Panic or becoming angry then everyone's going to drown it's not going to work our job as parents is to be aware of what our children are experiencing but we need to self-regulate so that we can stay calm we can guide them through the experience the other metaphor here is lost hikers in the woods if your child is feeling afraid or lonely or confused or sad it won't help to I'm emotionally responsive and get mad at the child who might be bullying them or become very sad with your child to show them that you feel what they're feeling that's not helpful it's important that we acknowledge the fear but that we remain in motion regulated and calm let them have their Journey but you're going to help guide them through it and they're very calm loving and peaceful way so empathy sometimes can go too far if we as parents actually start experience their emotions let them have their emotions they need to be able to experience and grow from their emotions and we as adults need to be able to regulate our emotions within ourselves so that we can guide our children through the experience says no matter how painful they are we can be there to support and guide them before I close today I just wanted to talk about a couple more calming strategies there are there is something called EMDR but you may have heard of an EMDR is a therapeutic technique that lights up both sides of the brain we but I left side and right side and some of the ways that practitioners social psychologist social worker psychotherapist I trust you have been trained and EMDR what they do is they get you to start to stimulate left and right side of your body and there are different ways that we can tap into this for free and I use the word that you said pun intended there the tapping into is you can use tapping so tapping one side of the body and then the other with the same rate as your heart beat so it's a medium rate and you tap maybe you're right on your left and then your right and your left and what that's doing is it's lighting up the right side than the left side than the right side than the left of your brain EMDR for anyone who's had that experience in a counselor's office they usually use light or they put two different things in your hand you hold these two little paddles are these two little it's almost like little rocks and they take turns vibrating so one vibrates in your right hand the other one on your left and then it goes back right left right left and it's just lighting up the two sides of the brain but you can do the same thing just was tapping or with looking left and right and you do this while you're thinking of a memory or a stressful situation and the are we behind this is that your brain is able to process it or fully and that you're able to work through it a little bit more fully so that when you're done thinking about it or processing it then you're now able to cope better and able to move on from it going slow breathing as well as naming the five senses are other strategies the five senses is a technique where you list things that you can see hear smell touch and tastes and what you do is you look in the room that you're in think about things that you're seeing then list things that you're feeling and so on and it's a mindfulness exercise because we usually when we're worrying about I'm saying that thing that we're thinking about isn't actually happening but our body doesn't know that so when you're thinking about something stressful or when you're watching a stressful show or reading a stressful book or hearing a stressful story your body is released no stress chemicals so your body is reacting to what your mind is thinking about when you do something like a mindfulness activity or a grounding activity they call in like the $0.05 says it's bringing you back to the room that you're in and the reality that what you're worrying about isn't actually happening so these are some other calming strategies or lots of different things out there that you can try lots of different wonderful apps and meditations that you can try it's just about finding fits your needs you've got this as caregivers it's hard to find time to hard to find motivation sometimes but I'm hoping that with this presentation you realize how important you are as a person not only just for taking care of your family but just because you are worthy practicing every day practicing strategies that help relax you doing what you love taking woman's to figure out what your boundaries are practicing different scripts that you can help to communicate your boundaries to those around you all of this gets easier with time and with practice and you've got this for those that feel like you need a little bit more help maybe your child is experiencing some emotional challenges bullying anxiety sadness depression or diversity challenges with social skills we have a lot of different practitioners we have social workers occupational therapist or certified behavioral analysis we have speech language pathologist we have a lot of different people who are here to help so never feel too shy to reach out even if you have a question about this presentation please feel free to reach out we're here for you and if you have anything that you'd like to comment on as well I'd like to hear feedback please don't hesitate to reach out thank you so much for your time and for inviting me to do this lecture series I very much appreciate being here