Morning & Night Routines; A Support Beam for Mental Health & Wellness
Although we are all still living within a worldwide pandemic filled with uncertainty, many of us are starting to take those first steps towards regaining a new sense of “normalcy” in our lives again. Developing a predictable rhythm while also living within fluid and ambiguous circumstances can help you find solace, comfort, and structure. A great starting point for you in establishing this predictable rhythm is developing a morning routine.
Creating a consistent morning routine may sound daunting, but it does not need to be over complicated and can be as simple as waking up with your alarm, making some breakfast and coffee, brushing your teeth, and maybe going on a morning walk. If you feel able to include more activities in your morning routine, other pieces to consider can include going to the gym, meditating, making your bed, prayer, journaling, or cleaning around the house. Any task or action that will make you feel in the driver’s seat of the day is a great addition to a morning routine.
One of the best parts about developing a morning routine for yourself is that there are no guidelines to follow or expectations to meet, you can tailor it to fit whatever your needs and lifestyle preferences are. The only essential factors to consider are having a routine which will benefit you for the rest of the day and maintaining consistency in that chosen routine.
If this is an unfamiliar process to you, it is important to be kind to yourself while developing and fine tuning this rhythm. Everyone stumbles when trying to create change in their life, what’s important to remember is that you are doing what you can to create positive change and structure in your life. An easy trick that I like to use is writing down what your morning routine will be so after each action you take you can cross that piece off the list. Even if it is for something as simple as waking up on time, crossing it off a to do list will help reinforce that you're taking positive steps in the right direction.
Once you are able to develop and enact a plan that works for you, you will begin to experience the many benefits that come alongside a morning routine, such as:
Improved physical and mental wellbeing
Enhanced levels of productivity
A more positive mood throughout the day
Elevated sense of self-belief
Reduced mental fatigue and stress
It’s important to consider that the morning isn’t the only time of day where you can establish structure and predictability; an evening schedule is equally beneficial for your wellbeing. If you think of your morning routine as a set of actions to set you up for success throughout the day, an evening routine is a set of actions to help you unwind from the stress or effort the day may have exacted from you; the front and back covers of the book of self-care.
Similarly, to the morning routine, your evening routine can be whatever you make of it. Anything that will help you unwind or feel at ease are great things to include in your nighttime rituals. For me personally, I start my evening routine after I finish dinner at around 8pm or so. After this I start with a pleasure activity such as watching some television, practicing music, playing some video games, or cooking some tasty food if I need to prep some meals for later in the week. Once I’ve set aside some time for a little bit of fun, I may do some light cleaning around the house to make sure that my environment has the right structure to begin the next day while also reflecting on my day as a whole to create a sense of pride in my personal accomplishments. Then to close out the day I’ll go through my skin care routine, brush my teeth, and listen to a podcast or some relaxing music before hitting the lights and going to bed.
Although that routine is more specific to my life and needs, you can take what pieces of that structure resonate with you and apply them to your own life as a starting point. As I said before there aren’t any exact rules you have to follow when making your routine, it's just a collection of actions to help you unwind and ease into the end of the day.
While it may be difficult to explore, one potential part of an evening routine that is worth consideration is making sure you avoid screen time on your phone, laptop, etc. One immediate benefit of this is that it will help your eyes and brain unwind and promote a healthier night’s sleep. Another important aspect of this is that for many of us (myself included) our electronics are tethers to our work and the outside world around us. Allowing yourself time to feel removed from those pressures and expectations can help you recharge and mindfully connect to your work, family or friends the next day.
Beyond helping you relax at the end of the day; an evening routine can help you with:
Creating an improved sense of achievement throughout the day
Setting a goal to look forward to after a hard day’s work
Lowered stress
Improved sleep
Feeling more well-rested
Remember, if you feel that your new routine is starting to become overwhelming or too much to consistently do, you have the power to dial it back and change it up to reflect your needs. The purpose is to consciously invest in yourself first thing and last thing every day. Over time this investment will increase your sense of trust, your confidence and your ability to access joy, even in uncertainty.
- Eli Mick, MSW
What Does Support Look Like, Sound Like, Smell Like & Feel Like?
What does support look like, sound like, smell like and feel like?
This is a sensory based question I often ask my clients, because it moves them out of their head and into their body, into the felt sense of support. Typically, it takes them a minute or two, and even some additional guided inquiry by me to begin to open up to that part of knowing. It’s usually there, within them, they just haven’t yet acquainted themselves with it. Uncovering a felt sense of support is powerful because it can help you to recognize care, help and protection in your body before your mind catches up and creates a thought about your experience. The sensory data arrives first and when you que yourself to consciously connect with the sensory data you calibrate your guidance system in accessing support more attuned to your real time needs.
Here is a guided visualization exercise to assist you in developing a connection to your felt sense of support. All you need to begin is a quiet comfortable place where you can be undisturbed for 15 minutes and a little bit of willingness.
1. Find a comfortable seated or lying down position and begin to connect with your body by noticing your breath. Notice each inhalation and each exhalation. Notice the rhythm and process of how your breath moves and lives within you.
2. After a few moments of noticing, allow yourself to remember a time you felt support, support you offered yourself, or maybe support offered to you by someone else. The picture may even be an imagined experience of support, whatever arrives is enough and even just right to use for this exercise.
3. Now drop into your senses; what is the smell or smells in this experience of support? Is it related to food? A place? How does the support in this experience sound? Does it sound like music? A comforting voice? Sounds of nature? Really open to whatever those smells and sounds are and where you experience the sensations associated with those sounds and smells in your body. Next notice what you see? Notice the colors, textures and sizes of the scenery. What is touching you? Even what are you tasting? Follow the same process as above, not only noticing those aspects of sensory information but also noticing how you feel and where you feel that in your body.
4. Next allow yourself to use your breath to breathe in the felt sense of support, expand it as you deepen your inhalation and release any resistance to it with each exhalation. Spend at least a few minutes practicing this, until it feels less awkward and more natural to expand the sense of receiving support throughout your body.
5. Wrap up the visualization exercise by spending a moment in appreciation of the time and effort you just spent in embodying an experience of support. Affirm your intention to remain open to noticing the felt sense of support in your daily life.
Practicing simple visualization exercises like the one above, expands your ability to learn, how you respond to support, what support you may need in various situations and how to benefit more deeply from the felt sense of support.
The ABC's of Empathy for You & Your Children
Witnessing someone you love in pain is difficult. If the person in pain is our child, it can feel even more urgent to fix the pain, find a solution, and take care of whatever is going on for the person in pain, so that everyone feels better and things go back to “normal”.
Unfortunately that method of dealing with pain, doesn’t really fix anything. It sends the message to the person in pain that:
(1.) They are alone in what they are feeling and
(2.) They aren’t capable of handling the situation.
In fact, parents who are fixers often unintentionally, raise children who feel victimized and are at an increased risk of not understanding how their actions impact others and how others feel about experiences in general, in other words, empathy.
Empathy is the ability to feel another’s emotions, to really be able to put yourself in “their shoes” so to speak.
It certainly doesn’t solve anything, BUT it does validate the person in pain AND it does help them to feel understood and connected to others, which we need to feel a sense of belonging with others. When we belong among others we tend to think about how our behavior impacts those around us as well as ourselves, it improves conflict resolution, relationship satisfaction and even job satisfaction.
So how do we teach our kids empathy?
First we model it.
Yes, that’s the really hard part. We have to manage our own feelings when our children are in pain, struggling, so that we can meet them in their pain, understanding their perspective and validating their feelings. All of that can seem scary and out of control, but it works.
I can remember a time in my child’s life, an important day, and they were deeply disappointed by another family member forgetting and simply not showing up. My child was understandably devastated, and I was enraged. I wanted so badly to fix it, to smooth it over, to come up with a plan.
Instead, I sat on their bed and listened.
I said things like, “I see you’re hurt, and very sad, I’d feel that way too”. I also said things like “Everything you are saying makes sense.”
It was HAAAAAARRD.
My heart was breaking for them. However, after awhile my child started to say, “Ok, enough, I need to do something to enjoy the rest of my day.” I didn’t generate a solution, I didn’t swoop in to rescue, I just sat with them until they were ready to access their own resiliency and move through the pain. That was a time I modeled empathy well. There were also times, I didn’t, I assure you, but the point is, when we model empathy with our children, they understand their emotional landscape, feel safe with us as their parents, and feel more capable to handle the difficult things in their lives. That all sounds like what we want, right?
Along with modeling empathy, we can teach it by labeling emotions, asking our children what others involved in situations might be feeling, and when they are younger we can read books about empathy to them. All of these strategies help develop our children's skill in recognizing what they are feeling, understanding what others may be feeling and in predicting how their behavior impacts others, all of which helps them successfully navigate the world of relationships.
To help you we’ve put together a list of six books to read with your children or with the children that you love that beautifully illustrate empathy. We also have Integration Nation Episode 212: Empathy is a Magic Wand, as a resource to help you dive a little deeper into empathy skill building in your own life.
May we all hold our hearts and the hearts of others a little more kindly with a little more self awareness.
Trusting the Momentum
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’re noticing energy building in a direction that you haven’t anticipated, haven’t planned for, or even in a way that may scare you?
If this sounds familiar, then you may also relate to the notion of just not being able to shake off the building of momentum; it’ll pop up in unexpected moments, maybe you’ll notice related topics and ideas in media, articles, conversations.
Almost as if it has a life of its own, the shift will continue building energy around it, reaching a threshold point that invites us to lean in, to jump, to turn. Which, let’s be real, is a scary process to engage in.
We are in part wired for predictability, so leaning into the unanticipated with trust, whew, that’s rough.
What I’ve come to believe and understand is that actually trusting the momentum of my life in that way is strong evidence of being “in the flow” of intention. When I’m clear on intentions, that doesn’t mean I can predict the best pathway to the fulfillment of the intention. That’s where the trust comes in, and honestly, if I’m not present in the moment, I really decrease my chances of even noticing building momentum in a particular direction.
Around 18 months ago I began to think about changing my business model to a more integrative structure to model our integrative approach, I hired Haley 9 months later (best decision ever), started the podcast (such a steep learning curve and valuable tool for people to support their health) and by the beginning of 2019 I was ready to hire another integrative therapist. Shortly into 2019, some shifts within my family revealed another important affirming process was unfolding, and at the time I remember thinking, “this is fantastic and with planning, I’ll be able to be present and show up as a support beam throughout this process, for my child, whom I love dearly”.
June came, and then, through an acquaintance of mine connected to advocacy work I’m involved in, in part because of the diversity within my family, I “accidentally” actually “serendipitously” saw a listing for our dream farmette. A place that was large enough to accommodate part of my business dream and small enough to create a family sanctuary.
My first thought, “No way, can’t even look, don’t have the bandwidth at all for this right now!”
I couldn’t shake it, and well after a seamless flow of doors opening in bizarrely unexpected ways, we now own the farmette (stay tuned for exciting workshops there in 2020) and we closed on it a week before the culmination of our family transition process and 10 days before our new therapist comes on board.
NOT THE WAY I WOULD’VE PLANNED, AT ALL.
Yet, I’ve been able to navigate the concurrent demands of these three big things happening at once and I’m strangely grounded about it all. That’s the flow at work, so I’m gonna keep trusting the momentum and invite you to do the same.