Real self-care III - Beating stress and developing connection
#29 Why meditation matters, how getting outside boosts your wellbeing, and how to form connections that satisfy our need for belonging
Welcome to part 3 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 the busyness inherent in our often hectic society and from the toll that too much time inside takes on our wellbeing. 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 connection looks like, and how to get more of it in our lives.
In the upcoming weekend newsletter, (which might be next weekend, who knows! Turns out writing these long, evidence-backed articles takes a lot of time), 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 busy and inside time from our kids’ emotional cups, and how to help them meet their need for connection. 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.
Finally, this article is long (like a quarter of the length of my honours thesis which took me a whole academic year to write, and has about as many references to academic journals too… this is high quality stuff guys!), so click read in app or read in browser at the top here somewhere to avoid having the end of the article truncated.
Last time, I talked about the first two rocks that often sit in our emotional cups, preventing them from getting filled. If you missed it, you can read about removing the rocks of mental clutter and icky bodies here. All of the rocks can be remembered from the song ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’. Today, we’ll be addressing the next two rocks, Knees (beating stress with stillness), and Toes (beating irritability with nature time).
Finding stillness
In general, today’s parents are busier than those of previous generations. We spend more hours in paid employment, with less support from extended family, and we engage in more intensive parenting practices. It is telling that among the strongest predictors of parental burnout are low social support, perfectionist parenting concerns, and work-family conflict. In other words, we burn out as parents when we try to do everything and be everything for our kids with minimal support and too many other tasks to juggle.
While we can’t magic away the pressures we experience as parents, there is a simple saying that might offer a solution:
“If life gets too hard to stand, kneel.”
In this case, the religious leader Gordon B Hinckley was talking about prayer. And when I think of the Knee rock, I think of getting to my knees in prayer. However, engaging in meditation, yoga, or breathing exercises all offer similar benefits – the key is in finding that moment of stillness.
Prayer may boost mental health and psychological wellbeing. The method of prayer and the perceived nature of the divine being appear to have an impact on the effectiveness of prayer: prayers of adoration and thanksgiving are associated with more optimism and life satisfaction; being patient with God’s response to prayer is linked with greater self-esteem; and reduced distress among those who perceive their relationship with the divine as close.
Meditation also offers many benefits, from decreasing stress, to improving physical health, to reducing negative emotions. Importantly, these effects are not explained by mere relaxation. Additionally, even mobile apps and unguided self-help interventions offer at least small improvements for wellbeing.
There is also evidence that mindfulness based parenting interventions (which include meditation, yoga, breathing practices, and body scans as well as parenting specific practices) reduce both general stress and parent specific stress, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and improve general wellbeing.
Here’s the quick fix: If life gets too hard to stand, kneel.
When you feel your stress and anger levels rising and you feel like you might snap, take a moment. Breathe. Pray. Repeat a calming mantra. Do whatever works for you to create space and time between you and the trigger. When our triggers are too close, we react (resulting in automatic parenting practices based on our own upbringing experiences). When we create space, we respond (which allows us to mindfully consider our own stress and that of our child, and then interact with them compassionately).
The long-term goal is similar: Do whatever works for you in creating a mindfulness routine.
Sure, the evidence shows that the quality of the mindfulness/meditation/prayer practice has an impact on the strength of the effect your practice will have on wellbeing. For that reason, the parenting specific mindfulness interventions demonstrate stronger effect sizes than a mobile app intervention does. However, the parenting specific mindfulness interventions also require a weekly 3 hour group session, plus homework of meditation and yoga totaling another hour a day. Maybe you can’t commit to an intervention like that, but you can commit to a 3 minute nightly body scan. Or maybe there’s a mindfulness app that you enjoy using. Whatever it is, experiment with a few things and do what works for you, within the time and other constraints you have.
Personally, I’d love to have a meditation practice. I know the empirical evidence about how good meditation is. However, I struggle to make it a routine in my life (despite many, many, many attempts). On the other hand, I enjoy regular yoga sessions and engaging in daily prayer. That’s what works for me.
Now that our souls have engaged in a moment of stillness and our emotional cups are a little lighter, let’s turn our attention to the next rock:
Getting into nature
Michael Easter (author of The Comfort Crisis and this amazing Substack) writes extensively about how our modern lifestyle isn’t what our bodies are adapted for. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were extremely active, carrying heavy weights while covering large distances on a regular basis. On the flip side, less than 15% of us now have jobs that require heavy labour, and we spend more time sitting at a desk than ever before.
While there are definitely benefits to our modern lifestyle (like being able to eat jelly beans whenever I want), the cumulative impact of sitting down, inside, working at a desk, takes a toll. For example, there is a correlation between occupation-related physical activity and weight, and between time working at a desk and rates of lower back pain. Yet even for those of us who don’t engage in desk work, we are still likely to spend a lot more time indoors, sitting down, than our bodies need.
The pandemic related lockdown measures and other studies on humans in extreme confinement conditions (such as space expeditions or overwintering in Antarctica) highlight the many negative impacts of too much time indoors. These include: impacts on immune function, depressed mood and irritability, misalignment of circadian rhythms which can lead to both sleep disturbances and altered temporal eating behaviour with subsequent weight gain, vitamin D deficiency, and greater exposure to indoor air pollutants. While these studies are based on extreme examples, I have no doubt that many of us are experiencing these negative effects to some degree due to our indoor lifestyles. I also want to acknowledge that our tolerance to time indoors varies widely – I think my mum could live the rest of her life indoors armed with her knitting and vitamin D supplements. On the other hand, I start to get irritable if I have to spend just one whole day indoors… especially if the weather is glorious outdoors.
If you’re getting irritable, stressed, angry, or cognitively overwhelmed, here’s the quick fix: use your toes (well… your whole feet unless you like tiptoeing around) to take you outside.
An EEG study (a study using electrodes to measure patterns of brain activity) looked at what happens within our brains when we view a natural environment. They found that the rhythmic brain activity indicated improved attentional state, and that the overall pattern of activity was consistent with increased activity of the Default Mode Network (a neural network that is more active with reduced cognitive load). They interpreted this to mean that much of the restorative benefits of nature comes from our brain being required to do less processing when in a natural environment. Importantly, they found these effects merely from participants looking at nature (it’s not really feasible to bring an EEG machine into a forest). Additionally, another study using fMRI (a different way of looking at brain activity) found that greater exposure to urban green spaces boosts wellbeing, and this benefit is related to reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex during negative emotional processing. Getting into nature literally changes the way our brains work.
So when you feel stressed or short-tempered, go outside. But do it properly and notice the nature you’re in; actually look at what’s around you. Put down your phone and look at the trees, the clouds, the birds, the flowers. Treat your brain to the benefits of nature.
The long-term fix is all about making nature exposure consistent to keep reaping the benefits.
The good news is that there’s no one right way to benefit from time outdoors.
For example, one large study looking at over 19000 people found that while at least 3 hours of nature exposure weekly maximized gains to health and wellbeing, it did not matter how those 3 hours was achieved. One long weekend adventure was just as beneficial as shorter daily forays into nature.
Another study found that the time spent outdoors was not the main predictor of wellbeing. Instead, feeling connected to nature and engaging with nature through simple activities (such as birdwatching or taking time to smell the flowers) were stronger predictors of happiness and feeling that life is worthwhile.
Make time in nature work for you. Personally, I like to get my nature fix by taking my exercise outdoors. This not only provides me with the stress reducing and wellbeing boosting benefits of nature, but exercising outdoors is also more cognitively and physically demanding, which provides added benefits to my brain and body. However, you might prefer eating your lunch outdoors while watching birds or walking your dog through the local park. Any and all nature exposure is good for you.
Now that we’ve made some room in our emotional cups by removing two rocks and boosting our wellbeing in two different ways, we have some more space to fill our emotional reserves. Today, we’ll be addressing the basic psychological need of connection.
Connection
We feel a sense of connection, relatedness, and belonging when we feel seen, heard, and valued by those around us.
Unfortunately, far too many of us are missing out on having our need for connection met.
Approximately 1 in 5 Australians report feeling very lonely. About half of us feel lonely at least some of the time. Loneliness does not discriminate: young adults are just as likely to experience loneliness as older adults. Finally, loneliness kills. It’s impact on mortality is similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It decreases mental health and increases healthcare usage.
Interestingly, loneliness isn’t closely related to the size of our social networks. It also isn’t closely related to social isolation (living alone and only seeing others socially less than once a week). This means that we can see lots of people regularly and still feel lonely, and conversely we can see few people infrequently and not feel lonely. The quality of our relationships matters far more than the quantity.
Given that transitions (such as the transition to parenthood) lead to increased experiences of loneliness, how can we overcome loneliness and boost connection?
1. Invest time
According to the latest Australian Time Use Survey, parents with children under 15 are the most likely group of people to feel pressed for time. Given these time constraints, budgeting time to spend with friends can feel difficult to accomplish. Yet most people manage to spend twice as much time watching TV and video as they do socializing. Given the enormous benefits on happiness and life satisfaction that comes from feeling connected with others, we could perhaps all do better at prioritizing friendships.
Friendships take time to develop. In an attempt to quantify how much time, Professor Jeffrey Hall tracked the development of friendships in adults. He found that it takes about 50 hours of interaction for an acquaintance to become a friend, and about 200 hours together for someone to qualify as a best friend. While we can maintain about 150 casual friendships, temporal constraints mean that we can only support about 5 best friends and another 15 good friends. To be able to form the deeper relationships that satisfy our need for connection and belonging, we need to prioritize those relationships which are more meaningful. Instead of spreading yourself thin trying to maintain many superficial relationships, purposefully invest your time in relationships that are more capable of meeting your daily and long-term need for connection.
2. Be vulnerable
Professor Jeffrey Hall found that time together is not the only ingredient in friendship formation. Engaging in meaningful communication represents an “efficient use of friendship time”. On the other hand, engaging in small talk predicts a decrease in friendship quality.
In her TEDx talk, The Power of Vulnerability, Dr Brené Brown talks about her research into connection. She shares that “shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection?” The antidote to moving past shame is excruciating – vulnerability. To find connection with others, we need to be vulnerable. We need to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen. And that can be scary. But to form the deep connections with others that our souls need, we need to be willing to share our whole selves with others.
3. Engage with the community
We can reduce loneliness and find companionship by participating in social engagement opportunities. Volunteering, caregiving, and participating in social groups can all provide opportunities to make and deepen relationships with others. As parents, there are many such opportunities available to us – from playgroups to volunteering at the local toy library to taking the kids along to your local parkrun.
4. Strengthen the connection within yourself
Reducing loneliness and increasing the impacts of social connection don’t rely exclusively on being able to spend time with other people. Mindfulness training, expressions of gratitude, and engaging in creative expression are all evidence-based approaches to mitigate the risk of loneliness. They also promote engaging in social interactions. If you’re struggling to get started on developing quality friendships, engaging in these practices can be a good first step.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! What do you enjoy doing to find stillness in your life, and what do you enjoy doing in nature? How are you going with investing time to build friendships and being vulnerable enough to strengthen them?
Oh, and before you go
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