That nervous feeling when you’re about to meet your baby for the first time is engraved in your heart.💓 You just look at them in awe every time and gain strength to become the best parents for them. But you can’t avoid stress along the way…
Parenting stress
👪What is parenting stress?
Parenting stress is the distress when you feel you can’t cope as a parent.😞 After pregnancy, expectations and demands placed on you are so high that you seem to run out of resources and strength to meet them.
👪What causes parenting stress?
The causation varies depending on each family. Stress can originate from poor economic status, inadequate support system, and exposure to hostility.⚔️ Anything that makes you worry about your ability to protect your child and thrive can contribute to parenting stress.🙁
Ways to cope with parenting stress
👪Reach out for support
Parenting is a lot easier if you have your supporters on your side.👪 Contact your friends, family members and especially your partner to share your feelings. You can always count on their support for emotional support, financial aid💰 and childcare help.
If you don’t live near friends or relatives, you can look for local parenting cooperatives, online communities and trained therapists.😀 Enrolling in parenting classes can be helpful too as you can seek new friends, reduce your feelings of guilt and stress while gaining more knowledge.
👪Avoid unnecessary exposure to signals that drag you down
After a very brief exposure to negative emotional content, it’s natural that you pay attention more to upsetting images, replay bad memories and worry about the future. Such thoughts keep circulating in your head, causing more anxiety and gloom.😥
Overdosing on bad news spikes up your stress levels, undermines yourself and hurts you gradually. Instead, try to put yourself together, think constructively, think brightly.🤔 Everything will be just fine and you can do it!
👪Focus on the good
You can induce good moods by downloading happy memories into your head. Do you remember when your little one just took the first step or called your name for the first time? When you return home from work, remember how you feel when you see your child’s smiles and hugs.🤗
Reflect on good memories and read jokes, uplifting stories to make you feel better. Focusing on acts of kindness and positive messages will help you decrease stress responses.😀
👪Re-appraise the situation
We often think that we are good at predicting things if we have a plan. Actually, we are pretty bad at anticipating future discomforts. Sometimes, stressful things just occur along the way.😞
When bad things happen, you may find a coping strategy when you reconsider the situation from a new angle. Stop dwelling too much on your personal emotional reactions, try to view the problem with more objectivity.💪