Real self-care IV Sleep, sensory overstimulation, and autonomy

Recommitting yourself to getting enough sleep, minimizing sensory overwhelm, and intentionally making choices to take back control and build autonomy into your life... even with your kids around!

Oct 09, 2023

Welcome to part 4 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 exhaustion that comes from extended sleep deprivation and from overwhelm that happens when we experience sensory overstimulation. 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 choice/control looks like, and how to get more of it in our lives.

In the upcoming premium 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 sleep deprivation and sensory overwhelm from their emotional cups, and how to help them meet their need for autonomy. The premium newsletter is the content reserved for my paid subscribers, but while the real self-care series is running, I’m offering 20% off on paid subscriptions.

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So far, I have talked about the first verse of the ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ song. We have talked about the mental load (Head), icky bodies (Shoulders), busyness (Knees), and too much time indoors (toes), and how these things often sit in our emotional cups, preventing them from getting filled. If you missed it, you can read more in the articles here and here. Today, we’ll be addressing the next two rocks, Eyes (beating sleep deprivation with, unsurprisingly, sleep), and Ears (brainstorming ways to minimize sensory overwhelm).

Let’s jump in!

Sleep deprivation

If you’re a parent and didn’t experience a period of sleep deprivation, you either had a large team of paid support or you’re lying. Sleep deprivation is common, expected, and largely unavoidable. Babies take approximately 6 to 18 weeks to establish a “diurnal biological rhythm”, which means at least 6 to 18 weeks before a baby can be expected to consolidate sleep at night time. Furthermore, it takes up to 6 years for sleep satisfaction and sleep duration to return to pre-pregnancy levels.

Unfortunately, there are serious consequences to inadequate sleep. According to the Sleep Health Foundation and Australasian Sleep Association, 40% of Australian’s regularly don’t get enough sleep, costing $66.3 billion to the Australian economy in direct and indirect health costs. More than 1000 Australians die each year due to sleep deprivation, particularly due to its impact on heart disease. Additionally, up to 20% of Australian adults report having fallen asleep at the wheel while driving, with 5% of those reporting that they have caused an accident in the past year as a result.

On an individual level, insomnia is a significant predictor for the onset of depression and anxiety generally, and fatigue and poor sleep quality are correlated to the development of postpartum depression specifically. On the flip side, improving sleep quality has a significant effect on improving mental health generally, and on improving symptoms of depression and anxiety. These effects occur in a dose-responsive manner, where greater improvements in sleep quality are associated with greater improvements in mental health outcomes. Sleep quality for new parents is also associated with life satisfaction via its interaction with mental health.

Two things are true: 1. Sleep is vitally important. 2. Most parents don’t get enough sleep.

So what’s the solution?

In the short term, if you’re tired – take a nap or go to bed early. You only need to look at a toddler who skipped their nap to know that being tired makes us cranky. However, a large meta-analysis of 64 studies confirmed that sleep deprivation and sleep restriction does indeed have an impact on mood and emotional regulation. So if you’re feeling cranky, and you know you didn’t get enough sleep last night, put sleep at the top of your to-do list.

But what about the long term? How can we get enough sleep on a regular basis?

Realistically, we all know what we should be doing. We should go to bed and wake up at about the same time every day. We should have a relaxing bedtime routine that involves limiting screens before bed. We should make our rooms dark and minimize exposure to bright lights in the lead up to bedtime. We should avoid caffeine and sugar in the evening. We should engage in yoga or meditation to calm our minds before we go to sleep.

Yet…

It’s a real struggle to do those things! I think Emily Oster nailed the reason why when she wrote “because sleep feels passive, it can be very easy to think of it as almost a luxury, perhaps the obvious place to cut if you’re pressed for time.”

As parents there are so many things clamouring for our time. In particular, many mothers report staying up later than they should because it’s the only time of the day that they have kid-free time to do whatever they want (more on that later!).

To really get enough sleep, we don’t need to be told all the things we should do to improve our sleep hygiene. We just need to make a simple mindset shift:

Prioritise sleep!

It is so easy to put sleep last on the list, and only get to it when everything else is done. However, sleep is a genuinely powerful factor in boosting our mental health and wellbeing and overall life satisfaction. It has a stronger impact on mental health than catching up on Netflix, scrolling on social media, or almost anything else we could possibly be doing during the time that we could be sleeping.

Before I move on, I want to make a brief detour. In the name of improving parent sleep, many experts and health professionals advocate for infant sleep training. However, these interventions only offer modest, temporary improvements to infant sleep. On the other hand, engaging in intentional co-sleeping reduces overall wake times for mother and infant, resulting in more total sleep, which I describe in more detail here. In short, sleep training is rarely the solution to sleep deprivation. If you’re really struggling with getting enough sleep, consider hiring a babysitter or putting on a movie so you can take a nap, asking your partner or other family members to assist with night time parenting, going away for a night alone to really catch up on sleep, or whatever else works for you within your budget constraints and social support system to allow you to prioritise sleep.

If you’ve found value in this post so far, chances are someone else will too!

Now that we’ve recommitted to getting enough shut-eye and our emotional cups are a little lighter, let’s turn our attention to the next rock:

Sensory overstimulation

Loud noises, being touched all the time, and walking on crumby floors are triggering for many parents. The reason is simple – our senses are meant to be triggered by these things. The issue arises when our ability to process these triggers is exhausted or heightened, and these triggers become threatening.

Unfortunately, the chaos of parenthood means that there are more triggers, more often than many of us are used to, and it’s hard to avoid or minimise them. By nature, kids are noisy, leave behind messes, and especially when they’re young, aren’t very good at respecting body boundaries. As discussed previously, many parents are also experiencing sleep deprivation and are overburdened by the mental load, leaving less resources for healthy processing of these sensory signals. Consequently, many parents reach a state of sensory overwhelm on a regular basis.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, whether by noise, touch, or by any other sensory modality, here’s my quick fix: go outside.

Being in nature requires less cognitive processing than standard indoor environments. Noise from the kids doesn’t seem as loud because there are no walls for sound to bounce off. Instead of clutter and brightly coloured toys in every direction, we can look at trees and birds. Being in nature, even for a few moments, offers our nervous systems a chance to reset and re-regulate.

In the long-term, we can reduce our likelihood of experiencing sensory overload by identifying our personal triggers, taking steps to minimise their impact, and building our skills for emotional regulation. Given that everyone’s sensory trigger profile is as unique as they are, I’d like to talk you through these steps using my own experiences.

1. Identify personal triggers

I have two major triggers. The first is the feeling of walking on dirty floors. And the second is from excessive noise when I’m multi-tasking.

2. Minimise their impact

To deal with the first trigger, I wear socks or slippers all the time at home. I have three young kids who are old enough to pour themselves a bowl of cereal but not yet old enough to pour themselves a bowl of cereal without half of it missing their bowl and ending up on the floor, and a sandpit in our backyard. I could attach a broom to my body and have a robo-vac running all day long and still have crumbs on the floor. So I just wear socks.

To deal with the second trigger, I turn off the radio when I’m cooking dinner, and use my noise cancelling earbuds to listen to a podcast when I’m doing other housework.

3. Build skills for emotional regulation

This could include breathwork, meditation, progressive relaxation, or stretching. Personally, when I get overwhelmed, I prefer moving to another room and focusing on my breath.

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 choice/control.

Choice, control, and autonomy

Autonomy is the third basic psychological need. It is met when we have the ability to make choices that align with our values and we feel in control of our own lives.

As mothers1 our autonomy takes a hit from the minute we become pregnant. Our choices are instantly limited – no more sushi, no more hot saunas, no more water slides or rollercoasters. The demands of pregnancy further limit our choices – nausea may affect what we can stomach and our growing and achy bodies can limit the activities we would normally choose to engage in. We quickly learn that birth plans rarely go to plan, that newborns aren’t ready to settle into a routine, and that children always seem to get sick at the worst possible time.

Even though, for many of us, motherhood was something we looked forward to and excitedly chose, there are many things that come along with the baby that we weren’t aware of when we consented to this new role. These factors can leave us feeling a profound lack of control over our own lives, as our days are spent sacrificing our needs in order to meet the needs of tiny humans incapable of meeting their own needs.

Furthermore, the societal conditions in which we become mothers creates additional challenges. For example, prior to the industrial revolution, women rarely had to leave the workforce after the birth of their babies. A huge factor contributing to that was that women rarely worked outside of the home once they were married, and instead engaged in the equally important role of managing their homes or working on the family farms. Once they become mothers and following a period of recovery, women would recommence their domestic and agricultural work, either bringing their children along or leaving them in the care of other family members or trusted members of the community. In essence, women’s lives did not change dramatically once they became mothers (aside from, obviously, the fact that they now had a baby to care for). They still had many of the same opportunities available to them for work, leisure, and socialisation.

Things have changed dramatically since that time, mostly in good ways. Women no longer have limitations on education or employment in much of the Western world. Women no longer find financial stability only through marriage. Maternity leave entitlements and flexible work arrangements allow more women to balance work and family obligations. However, these factors have the unintended consequence that once a woman becomes a mother and begins her maternity leave period, she enters a whole new world, one where her opportunities for engaging in work, leisure, and socialisation in ways that she is accustomed to are severely limited.

Children disrupt routines, making it difficult for mothers to pursue hobbies and interests. Public spaces have increasingly become adult spaces, complicating the ability of women to bring their children to locations they may have enjoyed going to before they had children. Contrasting schedules result in making it difficult to create opportunities for leisure time with friends who have not had children.

In short, women enter motherhood with little opportunity to bring much of their pre-motherhood self with them.

Our capitalistic society attempts to fill that void advertising things like baby music classes, and baby swimming lessons, and baby art classes, and baby bilingual playgroups. Be a ‘good mother’ and fill your time with activities to give your baby the best start. Add to that the cultural expectation that women should prioritise their children and family above their own needs and desires, and women are left feeling selfish whenever they choose to do something for themselves.

But here’s the thing: we have more of ourselves to give when we make time and effort to nurture ourselves. We are better mothers when we are more than just mothers. When we are dancers, when we are athletes, when we are avid readers, when we are supporters of the Collingwood football team, when we are volunteers, when we are surf life savers, when we are gardeners, when we are wives, when we are friends, when we are whole people. When we have an identity outside of being a mother.

If you’ve let your identity shrink since becoming a mother, I’d like to challenge you to choose to expand it again. Think about something you enjoyed doing before you had children, or something you’re interested in learning to do, and choose to do it!

Instead of baby music class, rekindle your love of playing the piano. Instead of baby swimming lessons, take yourself down to the pool, track, or gym. Instead of baby art classes, buy a canvas and some paints and start playing around with a paintbrush like you did in high school. Instead of baby bilingual playgroup, join a social group for mothers doing something that you genuinely enjoy doing.

Don’t wait for ‘me time’ to engage in these activities. When we think like that it’s so harmful to our identities - it creates a binary between ‘me’ as mother and ‘me’ as a person with interests, talents, and desires. Bring your kids along, or do these activities at home while they’re awake, or even get them involved. I’m not saying that all of your activities should be done with the kids; having time alone to fully engage in something is valuable, and for some activities it’s not possible or safe to have kids present. However, there’s definitely room to chase your interests and passions during the hours when your primary role is mother.

Children don’t need parents who are just good, happy, and fulfilled parents. They need parents who are good, happy, and fulfilled people.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! How much sleep are you living off at the moment? What’s getting in the way of you having more sleep? Or maybe you’d like to share with me your sensory triggers. What’s something you’d like to choose to do more?

Oh, and before you go

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