How Are You Really Doing?

The question I ask every time I sit down to record an episode is, What do you need to hear right now?

When I think about the summer and milspouse life, so many of us get to this place where we feel additional stress and anxiety because of what’s going on around us. If are reaching that place in the summer where you feel more drained, and more emotionally, mentally, physically exhausted than you were at the beginning of the summer, this episode is for you.

I thought back to where I was at this time last year, towards the end of a four-month-long OCONUS PCS. OCONUS refers to an overseas move. You pack all your belongings into boxes, which are then packed into crates. Those crates get shipped across the ocean by boat, and sometimes it takes months for your stuff to arrive.

Living without most of my stuff, without my routines and normal schedule, I got to this place towards the end of the summer where I was really exhausted. I didn’t have my own bed to sleep in. I didn’t have a desk to work at. I didn’t have home organization and the systems I rely on to help our home run smoothly. I didn’t have a community because we had just moved to a new location. My kids were struggling because they said goodbye to some very dear friends and they hadn’t built new relationships yet.

So I decided, let’s talk about what we can practically do to offset the overwhelm, the stress, the anxiety that sometimes builds up over the summer.

Maybe for you it’s moving to a new location. Maybe you are navigating a deployment. Maybe you work from home, but your kids are home all summer and you’re trying to find a healthy work-life balance. Maybe you were the one that stayed, but you had some very dear friends move, or your kids’ friends moved and you’re all navigating feelings of loss.

The Four Pillar Framework That Will Reduce Your Stress & Anxiety

[00:06:16] Wherever this summer finds you, I want to talk about four things that you can do to invest in yourself and reduce the stress and anxiety that you feel. There are four concepts that we’re going to cover today that are going to help you thrive. I think the skills we’re going to talk about today are so powerful, not only because of what they can do for you and for your mental and emotional health, but because when you, in turn, teach these skills to others, it transforms the way we all look at life. These four practices can help us change the way we interact with and respond to the world around us.

This framework comes from a book that I read earlier this year, or I should really say I listened to earlier this year, because I spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks now. It comes from the book, How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera, who is a holistic psychologist. She calls this framework the four pillars of reparenting.

She calls them this because, whether or not we learned these skills growing up, we can all teach these skills to ourselves, and pass it on to others in our lives. These skills will help us successfully navigate life, and the sooner we implement them, the more we are going to be able to develop resilience, thrive, and be able to handle whatever life throws our way.

The framework reminds us that while so much of life is outside our control/ we can control and change the way we take care of ourselves, the way we connect with and respond to others, and the way we relate to the world around us.

The four pillars are self-care, loving discipline, emotional regulation, and joy. You may be thinking, okay, but what do these skills have to do with my stress and the anxiety I am feeling right now? My hope is that you will see the connection, as I unpack each of these four pillars individually.

1. 1. Prioritize Self-Care

Number one, self-care. If you have been part of this community for a while, you know that self-care is more than about pampering ourselves. It’s about engaging in practices that give us life and energy, that refuel us rather than drain us.

Dr. LePera’s definition is, “learning to identify and care for your physical and emotional wants and needs”. At Milspouse Mastermind, we look at how we care for five specific arenas of our life. Number one, we’re creating space for rest and play. Number two, we’re caring for our physical wellbeing. Number three, we’re caring for our spiritual wellbeing and our soul.

Number four, we’re caring for our emotional and mental wellbeing. And then number five is caring for our home. Home is more than where you sleep at night, it is a space that you create. If your home feels chaotic, you may notice that your whole life starts to feel chaotic, rather than organized and peaceful.

How we care for our home actually impacts how we show up, and our emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing. Self-care is caring for each of these areas of our life, and figuring out what specific rhythms, routines, and actions will actually turn the dial, and make a positive difference in our lives.

So how do we practice self-care when we’re exhausted? When we don’t have the systems to support us? When we might not be getting a break from our kiddos? Do we really need “alone time” or “me time”? It can be nice to get away, to take a break, to do something out of the ordinary, but so often we place so much emphasis on our ability to do something big for ourselves.

It’s really about looking for the little things in our everyday life, in our daily and weekly rhythms, that really refresh and restore and renew us. It’s looking at and observing and asking, what CAN I do NOW to give my body what it needs in the season that I am in?

I struggled with this so much during Covid because I had come to rely on so many things for my self care that involve me getting a break from my kids, that were me getting out of the home, to engage in an activity that ultimately did refresh and restore and renew me.

But the actions and habits I relied on for my self care were not available when we were all stuck at home 24-7 as a family. It really took me giving the concept of self care a closer look and saying, okay, what are the things that really impact my physical wellbeing? What are the things that really impact my emotional wellbeing? What are the things that really impact my spiritual wellbeing?

Of those things, what can I do in my current season? What can I do that will bring me life, AND is available to me right now? 2020, for me, was anopportunity to rethink and redefine what I could do and what would truly bring me life in that season.

Sometimes it’s something as simple as choosing to go outside and get fresh air, allowing sunshine to touch your skin, spending time in nature, connecting with someone you love, going to bed a few minutes earlier, getting a little more sleep, making a meal from scratch. Especially if you have been living in a hotel for a month and you are just craving a real home cooked meal, this can be life giving!

It can be as simple as moving your body, choosing to take a walk around the block, writing in a journal, downloading a meditation app, turning on a yoga video. It doesn’t have to be something costly or extravagant. It doesn’t have to even be outside the home.

Right now we have a hammock in our backyard, and the days when I go lie in the hammock for even two or three minutes, that does so much for resetting my nervous system, for helping ground me, and remind me where I’m at and what’s most important to me.

It is little things like this that can feed our soul. So if you are in this place where you feel like everything is out of your control, take a few minutes to think about what you can do today, or this week, that will bring life to your soul, that will enhance your spiritual, emotional, physical wellbeing? That will give you a sense of rest?

Think about what those things are for you, and then think about how important it is to model that for others. Because when we all learn how to care for ourselves, we become much healthier overall, our mental and emotional wellbeing improves. We feel less stressed and less anxious because we took a few minutes to care for and invest in ourselves.

1. 2. Practice Loving Discipline

The second pillar is loving discipline. When we talk about loving discipline and feeling less stressed, that doesn’t necessarily correlate in our minds. But when we get overwhelmed, when we reach a place of burnout, when our adrenals are fatigued, often it’s because we’re too exhausted to do the things that truly help us rest and recover.

That’s when it’s really easy to fall into this trap of believing life is hard, therefore I deserve this treat, this reward, this night of the binging a tv show. Sometimes we need that. Our bodies just need time to power down and rest. Sometimes that break is good for us.

But loving discipline reminds us that we have to set healthy boundaries and establish healthy routines. We need to be able to say no to things that won’t serve us in the long run, that won’t help us move the needle towards who we want to be and how we want to show up.

It’s okay to say, it’s been a long week, I’m going to have a bowl of ice cream. But if we start to have a bowl of ice cream every day, or every meal, over time, that’s not necessarily going to lead us to the long-term outcomes that we want. That’s not going to help us show up as our healthiest, most energetic version of ourselves.

Loving discipline is really about recognizing when a behavior pattern won’t serve us in the long run. It’s about learning to keep small promises to ourselves, and to be able to focus not just on short-term gratification, but on those long-term goals and objectives we desire. Too much of a good thing can cease to be a good thing. So loving discipline reminds us of what our values are, so that we can seek to live in accordance with our values.

It’s so easy to let our routines slide during the summer. We stay up later, we relax our standards, and we tell ourselves eventually I’ll get back to eating well, or working out consistently, or getting enough sleep at night. I am guilty of this myself. That’s why we’re having this conversation. Because loving discipline reminds of what matters, and ultimately helps us stop beating ourselves up for bad decisions. More than that, it actually helps us reduce our stress and anxiety.

Loving discipline is a skill that we can offer ourselves and others. If you have kids, this is a great chance to talk about why developing discipline and responsibility and boundaries is so important, and how they can help us become health and whole adults.

1. 3. Develop Emotional Regulation

The third thing we can do to reduce our stress and anxiety is develop emotional regulation. This is the process of experiencing an emotion and allowing the sensations and feelings to pass through our body, rather than trying to avoid them, to trying to distract ourselves with a coping mechanism. It can be tough because sometimes we don’t want to feel the emotions.

Or we’re afraid of getting stuck in a negative emotion and not being able to move past it. Cultivating emotional regulation is a truly powerful skill that we can develop. Let me give you an example from last summer.

We were without our vehicle for about eight weeks, while it was traveling over the ocean on a boat. And let me tell you just how excited I was when we got the call the our car had arrived and was ready to be picked out. I was so excited to be mobile again! But that excitement quickly turned to disappointment when we arrived at the shipyard and learned that our car wouldn’t start. The battery was completely dead. Like not able to be charged from another car dead.

I started calling around and realized that I couldn’t find a repair shop nearby with openings that day. On top of that, we noticed that not only was the car dead, it had been in a wreck at some point, and the bumper was cracked.

The realization that not only did I have a damaged car, but I was going to have to pay to have it towed somewhere and it wouldn’t be drivable for at least another day was an emotional 180 from the excitement over getting my car back to feeling defeated and devastated that I still didn’t have a car…and I needed to pay for a new bumper, a tow truck, and a car battery.

I felt a lot of emotions in a very short period of time. Having emotional regulation helped me know what to do, and how to better process those emotions, so that I don’t let it destroy my day. So that I didn’t take out my frustration on my husband or my kids. Emotional regulation is about having skills, knowing what I can do in situations when I notice my emotions, so that those feelings can pass through me.

Building Emotional Regulation: The 90 Second Rule

The 90 second rule is a practical rule to keep in mind, to build emotional regulation. The 90 second rule of emotions refers to the idea that when we initially experience an emotion, if we can just let that emotion happen for 90 seconds, without trying to act or respond in some way, we are much more likely to respond in a healthier way.

Scientifically, it takes about 90 seconds for an initial emotion to pass through our bodies. If we react immediately to a stimulus, we are much more likely to say or do something that we might later regret, because we are too caught up in the emotion.

If we are able to let an emotion pass through us, and just feel the sensation without responding in a negative way for at least 90 seconds, then often our bodies began to return to equilibrium. What so often happens is that our mind jumps in, and we try to either avoid the situation and push those feelings and emotions away, or we get so caught up in thinking about that feeling and replaying negative events, the de-stressing experiences that led us there, and we get stuck there.

It’s so important to learn how to develop emotional regulation. A good place to start is just practicing the 90 second rule. When you start to feel overwhelmed by an experience, just sit with the feeling for 90 seconds without responding. Another way to practice emotional regulation, and this is exactly what I did last summer in the situation with my car, was a technique called grounding.

It’s forcing yourself to be present in the moment. It’s looking around and saying, what can I observe with my eyes right now? What do I observe with my ears right now? What can I touch right now? What can I taste right now? What can I smell right now? It’s using all of those five senses to get yourself into the present moment, rather than getting caught up in yoru feelings and emotions. I cannot control what happened in the past. I cannot control the future. All I can control is what I do right now.

[00:24:24] And the more that I put myself in the present moment, the more I am able to build emotional regulation. And the more that I cultivate emotional regulation, the less stressed and overwhelmed I become. Developing emotional regulation skills is something that I work on with my kids a lot. bI have three girls and let me tell you there are a lot of emotions in our home! So we are continually talking about what to do with big feelings.

Sometimes we’re talking about how to take deep belly breaths. Sometimes we are naming a sensation. Sometimes we are just moving our bodies. Sometimes we are practicing focusing on counting. Sometimes we’re doing yoga.

Body movement is important, because for many of us, we have to physically move our bodies to allow sensations to move through us so that we don’t get caught up in our feelings. But when we allow our bodies to process these emotions as they come, we are able to reduce the stress and overwhelm and anxiety that we so often get caught up in.

1. 4. Cultivate Joy

The fourth pillar of this framework is joy. Dr. LePera also refers to this pillar as the skill of developing childlike wonder. Back in December I did an entire episode all about the concept of joy, episode 119: How to Tap into Joy As a Military Spouse.

Joy involves gratitude, generosity, self-compassion, creativity, and spontaneity. Think about the joy you experienced as a child, before the world conditioned you to be what others expected of you. That childlike wonder, that joy of discovery, that feeling of hope and excitement for the future. That is what we want to cultivate in our lives.

What is it that truly helps you feel alive? Maybe it’s doing something that you enjoyed as a child. Maybe it’s trying a new hobby. Maybe it’s connecting deeply with others. Maybe it’s dancing as you make dinner with your kids in the kitchen. What is it that will help you not focus on the challenges of life, but on hope and the fullness of joy that is available in the present moment?

The joy that is available in the present moment. It is that joy, that energy, that vitality that is infectious and exhilarating. It is that. That will help us navigate the world around us to foster resilience and ultimately to reduce the stress that we feel. It’s creating this energy that brings life to yourself and to everyone around you.

Reduce Your Stress and Anxiety Using the Four Pillar Framework

These four vital skills will make a big difference in our lives: self-care, loving discipline, emotional regulation, and joy. So let me ask you, what do you want to cultivate right now, and what simple actions will help you right where you are this summer? Which of these skills do you want to cultivate to reduce your stress, your anxiety, your overwhelm, and help you move from a place of burnout and exhaustion to a place of health and vitality? To a place where you are not only able to give yourself what you need, you are able to be a light, a joy, and to share that infectious joy with everyone around you.

That may seem like a far cry from where you are right now, but I promise you that all of us have the ability to cultivate these four pillars in our life. Self-care, loving, discipline, emotional regulation, and joy.

I am over here cheering you on because I know you have something to offer the world, and I want to see you step into your full potential and create a life that inspires you and impacts the world for good. So if you are in a place. Where you feel stuck, please don’t stay there. Take action and cultivate these skills, so that you can live filled, fueled and full of joy.