#TherapistinTherapy meets #NewMom #HelpingProfessional

When I started therapy about two months ago, my therapist brought two things to the forefront within a 3 week period.

1. I had to embrace my new identities and the shifts that came with them

2. I need to take care of myself with these new shifts.

So she had me explore what that would look like. We looked at the different roles I play in life, which included

• Wife

• Mom

• Supervisor/Boss

• Church Member/Leader

• Daughter

• Friend

Then she had me look at all of these things and I admitted, wife life is first, period. Of course my relationship with God comes before that, but I don't consider that a role, I consider that an embedded part of my life. If everything else goes away, my relationship with God stands. Anyways, so the things I knew for certain that stand firm were my roles as wife, mom and as of right now boss. Then she had me prioritize the other roles and figure out how to restructure because the top three were already a lot for me to juggle. I was able to admit that I wasn't necessarily prepared for mom life and/or how demanding it would be AND how much strain it would put on my marriage.

She also gave me suggestions on how to prioritize my relationship with my husband and reminded me that if we are not okay, Nehemiah will not be okay. She suggested reading a book by John Rosemond called Six Point Plan for Raising Happy Healthy Children which I love and you can find on Amazon!! I am still in the middle of reading it now and it is amazing. The main theme of the book is that your marriage comes first in raising your kids and that you have to teach your kids that very fact in order for them to become independent as they get older. We aren't perfect, but we definitely are trying. My husband is a rock star and amazing father and is with Nehemiah during the day and working on his business while I am at work. This is an extra challenge i our family life, but we are working on it! So that's one thing and a major thing!

The next thing she suggested is I find some things that help me decompress and things that highlight self care. (It is interesting how you encourage people your entire career to do something and at the end of the day you still need a reminder!) So I chose things that make me happy:

1. Going to the Farmers market

I love Market at Pepper Place in downtown Birmingham, but I am working on adding others so I can have variety, so in the next couple of months, I plan on going back to Woodlawn Market, trying out East Lake Market who apparently have $30 boxes!!!

2. Exercise

I haven't done it since I was like 4 weeks pregnant! I lost ALL momentum to work out in my 1st trimester! ALLLL my energy was gone and I just never picked it back up! I am determined to find a fun yoga class I can do with nugget and maybe a swim class for the both of us as well!

3. Writing

This is another thing I lost momentum in during my pregnancy! I had this major plan to document everything and I probably documented a quarter of what I expected. I have always been someone to write out my feelings so most of my journals either come off really angry or extra spiritual because I'm always writing to "find myself." Haha Either way, it's therapy for me and I need to do it more!

Those are MY THREE..what are yours?

More on #TherapistInTherapy later! Until next time!