Roadmap to the benefits of mindfulness

Lindsay Miller  0:07  
You're listening to The Stress Nanny podcast, and I'm your host, Lindsay Miller. I'm here to help you keep an eye on your family stress levels. In our fast paced lives, the ability to manage stress has never been more important for kids or adults. When it comes to stress, we have two choices, we can decrease stress or increase our resilience to it. Here on the number eight ranked stress podcast, I interview experts and share insights to help you do both. When you tune in each week, you'll bring your stress levels down and your resilience up so that stress doesn't get in the way of you living your best life. I'm so glad you're here.

Hey, there, this is Lindsey, some weeks here on the stress nanny podcast, I interview experts. And then other weeks, I share tips and tools that I use with my clients. And so today I'm going to be sharing a little bit more about how mindfulness works. I know I share frequently about the benefits of mindfulness, like increased focus, you know, greater emotional awareness and regulation, where a lot of times we have less negative thoughts about ourselves. A lot of times kids can connect and communicate better when they practice mindfulness. So I want to walk through kind of how all of that ties together. Because I think sometimes we can just throw out the benefits without kind of creating a pathway to how we get to those benefits. And it's really even kind of fun, it may be only if you geek out on mindfulness like I do, to think about how those skills kind of build on each other. And it helps also, because if you start to see some of these things, you know, you're on the right track. So like when I'm working with my clients, and I hear back from parents like this is what I'm seeing at home, I'm seeing like, a little bit more of awareness around emotion, maybe not the ability to regulate quite yet, but at least awareness and the ability to have a conversation and articulate what's going on. That's what I know we're making progress, right. And then we build up to this idea of like being able to regulate emotion, and sometimes that can take, you know, a long time to get to. So it's nice to have these little stopping points along the way that help us know mindfulness is working. Okay, so we're gonna go through the four things. The first one is increased awareness. The next one is less rumination. The third one is an increase in attention, which means we kind of free up some working memory. And then the last one is emotional regulation. So awareness, let's start there. There's a part of our brain that's designed to kind of oversee everything and take a high level view of what's going on. So we can call this metacognition, there's just like a sense of kind of oversight. And you I explain it to kids, like you zoom in, and you zoom out of that perspective. So just like with a camera, you might zoom in on a specific thing, like your emotions for just a second and be like, What am I feeling right now. And then you zoom back out and kind of take in everything, like my emotions, my mental state, my physical state, like, you get that big picture of you. Similarly, you might zoom in, if you're waking up and feeling really tired, and like you can't really get going in the morning, maybe you're like, oh, wait, I didn't drink any water this morning. So that's why physically, I feel this way, this is what it feels like when I'm dehydrated. So again, you would zoom in and just really focus on physical for a second, zoom back out and kind of tie it all together. So when we can practice having increased awareness, it really does us a ton of good because we can quickly make those assessments. And instead of kind of just saying, like, I feel blah, today, I don't really know what's going on, I'm just really tired. And whatever, we can say like, Oh, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. And so I'm feeling a little bit lethargic. I'm kind of overwhelmed, because I have a lot to do today. But I think I can make it through because I'm going to take really good care of myself or whatever, you know, but we just go from being like barely able to articulate what's going on with us to really clear on what it is is going on, which means we can find what we need. Right. And this is one thing that that I emphasize with kids, like if you know what emotion you're feeling, then it helps you clarify the thing you're looking for, right either to help you process the emotion to help you feel better, if it's an emotion that's making you uncomfortable. Like if you don't even know, you're kind of just trying random stuff, right to try to try to make it stop or make it feel better. But if you know what you're feeling, you can very clearly step into, like the next thing that you need. So that increase in awareness is huge. And it comes over time. Like it takes time for those neural connections to develop and for us to get that part of our brain really working efficiently. But once we do, we can take stock pretty quick of what's going on inside of us what's going on outside of us, like mentally, emotionally, physically, this is how I'm doing. And then externally, you know, like, this is how my family environment is right now. My relationships are kind of like this my work, you know, is causing or letting you know helping me let go of stress, whichever it is. And then you know my like the fun things that I do my recreational activities. Those are feeling really supportive right now. Whatever it is we can kind of just like look at the layers outside of us and see how they're interacting with The way that we are feeling and thinking and being right in that moment. So awareness is huge on on a lot of levels. So when we can get more efficient with like cultivating a sense of awareness, we've already kind of exercise that metacognition muscle, where we're looking at things from a higher perspective and kind of like thinking about thinking, which leads us to our next progress marker, which is rumination. And it's an decrease in rumination. So when we ruminate, we kind of fixate or get focused on thoughts that aren't supportive, or that aren't really like moving us forward. So we can kind of get stuck in our brain. Thinking about like things we don't like about ourselves or things we did wrong, or things we're worried about in the future, or ways we would change the past. So rumination is when we just kind of get stuck, I call it like on a thought hamster wheel, where we're just kind of spinning around the same thought over and over and over and over and over again, and we're not really getting anywhere, like focusing on those thoughts isn't supportive, doesn't really give us energy doesn't give us clarity on what the next thing is like, it just kind of makes us feel stuck. And so when we have started to exercise this part of our brain that thinks about thinking, it starts to recognize, like, Hey, you're in rumination, right? Now, let that one go. You know, like, Hey, I know, you're worried about how you came across when you were talking to, you know, your co worker the other day, but, you know, you guys have already resolved it, you don't need to keep thinking about it, you already addressed it with her, you're good to go. So that part of our brain can start to let go of some of the thoughts that really keep us stuck. And a lot of times those thoughts are negative towards ourselves. So when I'm working with kids, a lot of times those thoughts are like, I'm gonna do bad on this test, I'm so stressed about this test, I'm super dumb. And I'm going to notice it, because I'm going to take this test and I'm going to fail, I'm never going to be able to figure this out, I'm probably going to flunk I won't graduate from high school, I mean, it just goes downhill quick, right. And we've all had those experiences where that happens. But when we can start to decrease those thoughts, or at least not pay attention to them, and get stuck with them, and just let them go, then it frees up so much attention and energy. Because what happens when we're having rumination is we're usually like spinning a story around it, and then thinking about how it's gonna affect us three years from now. And it just like overwhelms all of our like cognitive ability, right. And we're like, so worried about our worry that we don't have space for very much else. So when you can let go of that stuff and just let it kind of float past, you realize, like, oh, my gosh, I have so much space in my brain. And that's where we get the increase in attention. So we start to see gains in working memory, because we're not like keeping hold of all these thoughts and worries all the time. We're like, there's like some space, right? Some flexibility, we can have new thoughts and new ideas. And all of a sudden, we start to realize there's a lot going on in our brain that we haven't been paying attention to. Because we were so fixated on what was wrong with us or what we did wrong or what we're worried about. And so that you can see how those kind of build, right, like we increase that awareness part of our brain, we decrease rumination, which increases our working memory, and we have this greater capacity to pay attention to stuff. And when we pay attention to stuff, we can problem solve it, we see things that we hadn't seen before, which helps us get creative about looking for solutions. And it just it really enhances our mental capacity, when we you know, get that additional boost of attention attentional ability. Now, again, these are like slow and steady progress markers, right. So you may see increased awareness, and then it may be months or even years before you see a decrease in rumination. And then it might be a little while longer before you see this gain in intention. Because each of those skills takes time. And it takes intentional effort to cultivate the ability to notice what's going on our brains, let go of the stuff that's not serving us and then focus our attention in on the things that are. So then the final one is emotional regulation. And as you can imagine, what happens is, if you're not like beating yourself up constantly, and then something hard happens and it kind of puts you over the top. If that's not happening, and you're kind of stable, most of the time when when emotions come up. They're kind of like little blips on your radar. And it doesn't become this huge disaster, right? Because you have a level of stability because of these other skills you've cultivated. So in those ways, your emotions don't kind of carry you away when they come up. They just become like another thing you're aware of, and you have the capacity mentally to manage them. And so when we're talking about this with kids, I think it's super important to point out that like when they're younger, and we're just helping them build awareness around what they're feeling, what they're thinking how they're doing. If we shut that down, and if we say to them, like you're not feeling that way, or you shouldn't feel frustrated, it was your sister's toy, like she could play with it first or whatever. You shouldn't feel this way, I can't believe you're doing this, we do them a disservice, because we were like putting them out of touch with their awareness. So kids are a lot of them super attuned to how they're feeling and what they're doing. And while they might not always have the language for it, they do have the conviction around it. And so if we can channel that and help them get, give them the words, help them articulate it, we build that that very first step right of mindfulness into their lives at a really young age, and we help them be aware of what's going on within them, and then what's going on outside of them. Which then means we can help them process and filter rumination with more ease. So I see this in kids that I work with, where over time, their self talk improves, right. And maybe when we start working together, their self talk is pretty negative, and it's pretty consistently awful, you know, and I find that with grownups as well, there's just a lot of us are really hard on ourselves. And if we anticipate bad things happening, if we anticipate ourselves not doing well, on something, if we anticipate something really sinking us, it can be really, really challenging to muster the energy and courage and competence that a lot of kids want to have, as they you know, face the world. And as, as parents and caregivers, we want them to have that kind of competence, right? So when we can decrease rumination, we free up that confidence, right? If we can help them not get stuck on that hamster wheel of self doubt, then we put them in a position where they are free to think whatever they want, and a lot of times, then competence can flow from there. And then again, they have increased attention. So maybe they're able to focus at school more, I see this with kids a lot, who give themselves a hard time, they have a hard time focusing at school, well, understandably so right. Because if they're constantly worried about how they're feeling, and how they're being received outside of them, and if that is informing their thought processes, they don't have a lot left to focus with, right. But if we can free up some of that mental space, by increasing awareness, getting rid of the ruminating thoughts, then we allow them to just use their attention to learn, which is really, really powerful. So as there's capacity, we also then teach them to regulate emotion. And we help them get creative and problem solve. So because they've been honoring emotion for a while now, starting with that awareness step, they know what they're feeling. And then they start to cultivate tools to deal with it. So because we have the awareness, because we're not wasting time on thoughts that aren't serving us, because we have additional attention, because those thoughts that were weighing us down, aren't getting our attention anymore, then we can turn our attention to like, what is this emotion? And how can I process it? Like, what do I need? How can I manage it in a way that you know, doesn't get me in trouble, or that doesn't make this worse. A lot of times, kids don't want the emotion to escalate either. But they're not quite sure how to defuse it and bring it down. But when they have the attention, you know, the working memory is available, they can start to problem solve, and sit with it and be like, what happened? How did I use this before? What was the last time when I felt angry before? What did I do? Like what was the most effective way for me to manage it? Would I be able to do that this time, because I don't want to deal with the consequences, you know, of letting my anger go wild. So you can kind of see how those skills all build, right. And I think it's important to note that as kids are cultivating the skills, we might be cultivating them right alongside, right. And we might see them doing really well in one of those areas. And then they might backtrack a little bit, or a new stressor might come up. Or they might have you know, like a new school year starts or whatever it is where they kind of have to learn how to do some of those things in the new setting all over again. But they still have this foundational knowledge in place and foundational experience in place that they can build on. So often, when we've taught them mindfulness beforehand, when they hit a new stressor, they can rebound and recover more quickly than they could if it was just like them trying to learn mindfulness for the first time. Similarly, as grownups, we may face situations where we're in complete crisis. And we are not in a position where we're regulating our emotion Well, or we feel like we're just getting totally overwhelmed by, you know, thoughts or worries based on something we're going through. And in those moments, again, we can choose to practice our mindfulness tools in order to bring some of those skills back online. But if we see ourselves slider, a kid slide, it's not evidence that they don't work or that we're doing something wrong, it likely means we're facing a situation we haven't faced before. And we're trying to figure out how to do these things in this new setting. And so I think that's really important to recognize, but I'd love to hear if you're practicing mindfulness where you feel like you're at, do you feel like you have increased awareness? Do you feel like you've been able to decrease the amount of time you're spending with ruminating thoughts, which has then freed up some attention and helped you have some working memory, more working memory to work with? And do you feel like emotional regulation is something that is, is growing like, Are you are you able to manage your emotions with more ease?

I'd love to hear it. I think that that's right. process of learning, mindfulness and then seeing these skills come online is really powerful because it translates into really, really specific and incredible benefits in our day to day lives. Like if you think about it from a kid's perspective, while it takes some effort to cultivate awareness, being able to kick those ruminating, like those thoughts that we tend to ruminate on out the window at a young age is huge. Like, can you imagine if you had grown up knowing how to manage the flow of your thoughts at age eight, instead of learning it? Like, at age 30? No, how many more? More incredible, creative, and like Novel Thoughts would you have had if your brain hadn't been so worked up, you know, on beating yourself up. And that's where I think for kids being able to manage their thought processes know their emotions and their physical space, and then being able to use that awareness to move more skillfully in relationships. And in the contexts in which they live is just such a powerful gift. And it's worth whatever sacrifices we need to make in order to give, give that to our kids because it really does change the whole trajectory of their, their development and their lives. So thanks, again for being here. Always a pleasure to connect. And if you have any questions around this, I would love to hear them. Until then take good care of yourself. Bye. 

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