Real self-care II – Mental clutter, respecting your body, and competence

#28 How to clear your head, prioritise meeting your body’s needs, and feel good about what you achieve

Welcome to part 2 of this real self-care series, where we are addressing how to empty our emotional cups of figurative rocks that stop them getting filled, and then how to fill them even with our kids around. Today, I’ll be talking about clearing our cups of mental clutter and the icky feelings that comes from not looking after our bodies properly. We’ll also talk about steps we can take to stop those rocks from reappearing. Finally, we’ll address what the basic psychological need of competence looks like, and how to get more of it in our lives.

In the upcoming weekend newsletter, I’ll be talking about these same three topics, but for our kids. In other words, looking at how to recognise and remove the rocks of mental clutter and icky bodies from our kids’ emotional cups, and how to help them meet their need for competence. The weekend newsletter is the premium content reserved for my paid subscribers, but while the real self-care series is running, I’m offering 20% off on paid subscriptions.

Last week, I talked about the 8 rocks that often sit in our emotional cups, preventing them from getting filled. These rocks can be remembered from the song ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’. Today, we’ll be addressing the first two rocks, Head (mental clutter), and Shoulders (icky bodies).

Mental clutter

The first rock, that of the Head, is mental clutter – easily one of the largest rocks that affect parents and mothers in particular. While much has been said of the mental load over the last few years, very little has been done to quantify the mental load. Anecdotally, we know that mothers carry far more of the mental load than fathers do, even among couples where the paid work is distributed evenly. Yet the extent of this imbalance is hard to measure – in large part because the mental load is, by definition, invisible.

The mental load refers to the cognitive and emotional work involved in planning, scheduling, caring, organising, and being responsible for family members. While it results in some physical outcomes, the mental load is performed internally. This makes this labour invisible, which has consequences for the acknowledgement, negotiation, and even awareness of this form of labour. It is also boundaryless, which means that it can be performed anywhere and anytime – like when we’re meant to be falling asleep or enjoying some time to ourselves. The mental load is also enduring, which means that it is never, ever done. Combined, these factors result in many people (but especially mothers!) feeling overloaded by the mental load.

From my own experience, I know that I have far less patience for my kids when my head is full due to the mental load. This is due to the interaction between working memory and attention; when my working memory is at capacity due to the mental load, I have less capacity for diverting my attention away from the mental load and towards my kids. The problem is that when my kids demand one more thing of me (even just a request for a hug after falling over, for example) when my brain is already trying to juggle remembering to start the dishwasher, sending out the invitations for my son’s birthday, replying to that text message, needing to add honey to my shopping list, and looking for a lost water bottle, it literally explodes (well, not literally…. But it sure feels like it).

So, here’s a short-term fix for when your brain is cluttered due to the mental load – get it out of your head!

If you notice that your emotional reserves are low and your mental clutter is high, you need to unclutter your brain. Grab a pen and some paper, or open up a note on your phone, and do a mental dump. Write down everything that is on your mind. Get it all out of your head. From there, you can prioritise what needs to get done first. Now you only need to carry one thing in your head at a time, allowing you the capacity to respond to your kids when they need you. And if more things pop into your head, grab that note and add them to the list.

The long-term fix comes in three parts.

1.       Lists, lists, lists.

I try to keep my head as empty as possible. On balance, it’s probably as empty as my kids’ money box (which is pretty empty given how often they blow all their pocket money on monster trucks). This is because whenever a task pops into my head that I can’t address straight away, I add it to one of my lists. I have a list for online tasks that lives on my phone, a list for housework on my whiteboard, a list for the educational activities I want to cover as part of our homeschooling, a list for the food available for lunchboxes, and probably a dozen more. Create as many lists as you need, and have them in locations that make sense for the times you need to access and work through the tasks on your list.

2.       Make it a habit.

I never have to remember to start the washing machine, because it always goes on as soon as I’ve finished wiping the table after dinner. I never have to remember to plan the activity for my homeschooling nature group, because my planning night always happens on Sunday. If there are things that you consistently need to do every day or every week, make it a habit to do them at set times or as part of a fixed routine.

3.       Address the imbalance of the mental load.

If you are in a heterosexual relationship, the chance is very high that the mental load (just as all unpaid labour such as housework and childcare) is distributed unevenly across traditional gender lines. However, all couples are likely to have a level of imbalance in the distribution of unpaid labour. The first step towards a more equitable distribution of the mental load is awareness, followed by negotiation. It can help to use a framework such as the Fair Play system.

Now that our heads are clear, and our emotional cups are a little lighter, it’s time to address the next rock:

Icky bodies

The second rock, Shoulders (or armpits, to be more precise), is the icky feeling we get when our personal hygiene slips.

If you have ever had a newborn baby, you know how easy it is to reach the end of the day without having had a shower or brushed your teeth. I’ve even chatted with friends who tell me that they are constantly mildly dehydrated because they limit their water intake as they can’t guarantee time for a bathroom break.

This rock will affect everyone differently, but personally I know that if I haven’t showered by mid-day, I start to get a bit cranky. Maybe for you, the bigger issue is fuzzy teeth. Whatever it is, making time to respect our bodies by meeting our basic hygiene needs is so important.

Here’s the quick fix: If your emotional reserves are down because your body feels ick, attend to your body. Jump in the shower, even if it means putting your fussy baby into a bouncer to cry there for a few minutes. Just brush your teeth or do your hair. Actually drink water, even if that means making time for a bathroom break. Respect your body.

The long-term fix is a simple extension of this: keep looking after and respecting your body.

In our home, my husband and I set aside a certain amount of money each year that we can use as we please for non-essential body care. We can use that money for a fancy haircut, massages, a visit to an osteopath, or in whatever other way we choose.

Do you know a parent who is getting burnt out? Go on and share, this article is free to read.

Now that we’ve made some room in our emotional cups by removing two rocks, we have some space to fill our emotional reserves. Today, we’ll be addressing the basic psychological need of competence.

Competence

We feel competent when we feel that we can master our environment. We feel incompetence when we receive negative feedback, engage in comparison, or attempt to take on too much.

The challenge with meeting our competence needs is that kids are very good at throwing us curveballs. Just as we get a handle on how to handle our toddler’s tantrums, our preschooler enters a phase of picky eating that we don’t know how to address. We’re never able to ‘accomplish’ finishing all the housework, because as soon as the washing basket empties a child wets the bed and the washing basket is full again. It’s very hard to feel like a ‘good’ parent, because how do you even measure that?

So how do we feel competent in such a shifting environment?

I don’t have all the answers, but here are a few things that might work for you:

-          Focus on what you value most. If you feel most accomplished when you have a tidy home, or are on top of the washing, prioritise that. If you feel more accomplished when you plan a great outing with the kids, do that! In this case, it’s a great idea to focus on your strengths.  

-          Avoid comparison. If you have intentionally decided to value going on fun outings rather than on having a tidy home, comparing your home to someone else’s is guaranteed to make you feel inferior. Comparison only ever makes us feel worse, either because we feel like we don’t measure up to someone else’s standard, or because we feel unhealthy pride in being ‘better’ than someone else.

-          Set realistic expectations and accept imperfection. If you’re trying to accomplish housework as though you’re not also simultaneously caring for children, you will fail. It’s not really about lowering expectations, it’s about accepting that you are expecting things in multiple areas at the same time – in this example, both housework and caregiving, so you need to modify your expectations to meet both of those in a realistic way. It’s also accepting that you won’t always get the balance right. You will make mistakes, things will not go as planned, circumstances outside of your control will impact what you can achieve. When that happens, be kind to yourself and practice self-compassion. You can try again tomorrow.

-          Improve your knowledge and skills. Seeking out resources (such as this newsletter) that support you in learning new strategies can help you boost your confidence and increase your parenting abilities over time. Having goals that give you a sense of direction can help, as can taking time to look back and reflect on your achievements and small wins. Progress is key to competence.

-          Cultivate competence outside of parenting. As I mentioned at the start, it’s very hard to feel consistently competent in your parenting skills. But you’re more than just a parent! You can meet your psychological need for competence through paid employment, volunteer commitments, or hobbies. Particularly if you are struggling in your role as a parent, you need to prioritise doing things that make you feel good, even with your kids around. While childfree time to explore your interest in painting is ideal, dedicating 30 minutes a week to painting alongside your kids is a million times better than not painting at all. Flexing your culinary skills and cooking a fancy dinner once a week that you know your kids won’t eat is good for you if you’re losing your mind cooking sausages every night. Do something you enjoy and are good at, every week, even if the circumstances aren’t perfect. Doing something imperfectly is so much better than not doing it at all.

Feeling competent within ourselves is a vital component in fostering our well-being and allowing us to be the parents we want to be.

---

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Are any of these things areas you want to work on?

And join the subscriber chat to find a support network of like-minded people.

Oh, and before you go

If you enjoyed this article, and want to read more, consider subscribing for free. That way you won't miss the rest of the real self-care series, they'll appear right in your email inbox.

And consider upgrading to paid to receive my weekend newsletter as well, with additional tips on how these things relate to our kids.