What If You Stopped Complaining?
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Hi Community,
I’m excited to share this newsletter with you as we have started a new month, and it’s one of my favorite months - Mental Health Awareness month!
This week we celebrated Maternal Mental Health Day and next week we have Child Mental Health Day.
The topic of this week is relevant and I hope you enjoy and read until the end for a very special section for our mamas out there.
TOOLS
My husband sent me this article last week - This is what happened when I stopped complaining for 30 days and I was hooked. Just after an initial couple of days of effort, I realized how often I could and have found myself complaining.
It has been little things like the Instacart order being messed up or the chipmunks in our yard. It is bigger things like mom guilt, loneliness, and missing friends from home. It’s then even more things like venting or complaining about other people, passing judgment while doing so. With awareness, we realized, we can complain a lot.
So this month, our family decided to start a No Complain May. This tool includes our kiddos. We had a hilarious talk one night defining complaining and my 3 yr old did a pretty good description, “it’s like wah wah wah, I miss my mommy!” in a very nasally baby voice. Right on, kiddo.
GRATITUDE
It’s been just a few days but I can say right away that it’s working. I really don’t like gossip or talking about others, it makes my skin crawl, and it’s allowed me to set serious boundaries on that. I’ve also been able to see more good each day when I stop any negative thoughts and turn them into, dare I say, it… gratitude.
Negativity really is toxic. I’ve been known to say (sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud) in an experience when I’m feeling good and someone else is all energetically vibing low, “B, don’t steal my vibe”. It’s not “B”. You can finish that word. I’m pretty sure I stole it from Rihanna.
But truly, we often do have to protect our vibes from energy vampires. As a therapist, it’s a fine line between being empathetic and available to someone’s dark and down moods and carrying it myself, taking on someone else’s mood. I’m a highly sensitive person so I can feel the slightest changes in someone’s energy very quickly. I get sensitive to physical representations of someone’s mood like big sighs, heavy footsteps, and any air of discontent. Plainly put, other people’s unhappiness can make me really uncomfortable. Also as a therapist, I’ve learned to tame this discomfort and work with it, but I can trace back to my original intent to get into this field was to make myself feel better through helping others.
INNOVATION
A lot of us do that - we are uncomfortable with the big feelings of others so we try to take their pain away. Maybe this means a lack of boundaries, a savior complex, being a martyr, and enabling bad behavior. As a parent, this can look like snow-plowing, helicoptering, and a lot of control to try and limit any pain our children may experience.
But what I know and often have to get reminded of often is that I am only in control of my own feelings. How I react to something or someone has everything to do with my energy, my intentions, and my choice.
I’ve always loved the quote:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”. Wayne Dyer.
What may cause us stress and discomfort, leading us to complain and dwell in toxic negativity can oftentimes use a reframe. We can instead ask ourselves and reflect:
What about this can I actually control?
Is what I telling myself (or others) true?
How might this be for me?
Am I reacting out of fear?
What would it feel like to act out of love, trust and surrender?
FEELS
With it being Maternal Mental Health Week, I want to end with a message for the mamas out there.
I know that being a mom is really hard. The unrelenting neediness, worry, and tasks can create a fog and overstimulation that is unrecognizable. I know how days can fly by or drag on and regardless of what you’ve done that day, it still never feels enough. I know how you’d move mountains to protect your kiddo, losing and draining yourself in the process. I know the urge to take the edge off, make it all feel lighter, and just run away. I know the thousands of memes on Instagram are there to validate but often make us feel more lonely, guilty, and stressed. I know how you get to 8 pm finally for time for yourself and you feel pressure to keep attending to the needs of others.
I also know that while you wish sometimes you could have your old, carefree life back, the one before kids, you’d also never, ever trade being a mom.
So I have some resources for the moms (and mom-adjacent) out there to share today:
Let’s all stop complaining. Mommy culture is all vent/complain and then drink/cry it away. What if, for one month, we just don’t complain about it all? Try it with me and let’s report in June. No Complain May. Join me.
Birth trauma is one of the most under-appreciated impacts of perinatal and postpartum mood disorders. This is an area I’m deeply passionate about and our Elevated Package is distinctly efficient at serving moms struggling with mood disorders and attachment from birth trauma. Reset therapists have a unique way of working with birth trauma, PTSD, that we’d love to help you with. Contact us. We’re here to help.
We’re hiring moms. Has it been years since you were in the workforce and are looking for a way to reconnect to your past self and find more identity than being a mom? Reset is a tremendous place for mamas (we have three expecting team members right now!) to grow and get back into their careers. We are currently hiring a second Virtual Billing Coordinator and a third Practice Coordinator. Learn more and apply here.
With maternal mental health week, there are a lot of beautiful resources out there, so please check these out and give a follow:
4th Tri Sanctuary. Founded by my dear friend, Kacee Must, is a haven for moms entering 4th trimester and beyond.
May 16th, National Devotion Starts Within Annual Conference in Chicago, for moms of color and of marginalized communities
May 18th, Maternal Mental Health Webinar
May 24th, Webinar - Navigating After Birth Stress and Anxiety
Click here to learn more about mindfulness therapy.
