Posts Tagged ‘stress’

Crisis Pregnancy Is Age-Old: Adoption’s Beginnings

 

Adoption Insight by Marcy Axness, PhD | Parenting for Peace

I published two Adoption Insight booklets exactly twenty years ago, and how happy I would be if the contents of those booklets had become obsolete in that time. Oh how I wish they were relics of an outdated, reformed adoption system. Alas, that isn’t the case. Women facing crisis pregnancy is a situation as old as human history.

Volume III of Adoption Insight was going to be titled, Nurturing This Untimely Miracle ~ Insights for the Mother with a Crisis Pregnancy. It was going to dispel common myths, like the misguided one that says,  if you are planning or even considering adoption for your baby, it is your “job” to begin the process of detaching now, while you’re pregnant… that it will make it easier to separate when the time comes. (more…)

Do You Suffer from Stressed-Parent Syndrome?

Stressed-Out-Janet-Leigh-momWEB

It seems epidemic these days: an undercurrent of stress and anxiety thrums at the heart of parenting, even for the most “conscious” parents. In fact, probably even more for the really conscious, attuned ones — ever more conscious and attuned to our shortcomings!

How about you — do you feel this parenting stress? Do you perpetually feel like you’re a just a little behind the 8-ball, probably missing some crucial enrichment opportunity so now your child will be behind? I have some thoughts on this, and an awesome FREE resource for you to turn it around. Read more at Mothering.

 

And / or, if you want to zip straight to the awesome free resource for you to turn it around, here you go — it’s a webinar happening this week, so save your spot!!

MissingPEACEbanner

Thursday, October 22 | 11am OR 4pm Pacific

 

I thank you ten times a day for the depth and richness
yet simplicity your work has introduced into our already
thriving little family. ~ Elizabeth Bolden, mother of two sons

Free webinar registration

 

 

Past related posts:
Ease Parenting Stress Through Mastery
How A Coach Helps
AuthoritaTIVE Parenting Not AuthoritaRIAN Parenting

4 Ways to De-Stress Back to School

I have to giggle, since it seems like just a few weeks ago that I was writing about the stress that happens for some parents when school ends for summer vacation! And now here we are at that other kind of “Eek!” moment — back-to-school.

I happen to think it’s just plain un-American to have school start up before Labor Day, but hey, I’m just old-school that way. I know many of you are not only already back to school, but also back to a smooth, well-oiled school-season routine.

If that doesn’t describe you (and it sure didn’t describe me in the early weeks of oh-too-soon fall), then you might enjoy these ideas for bringing more ease, confidence and enjoyment into the whole affair. They’re right here, at mothering.com. 

Got Trust? The Antidote for Insecurity & Stress

One fundamental intention in parenting for peace is to foster trust and hope within your child from the very beginning. When we nurture trust in our children’s souls, it can unfold into an unending arc of confidence — in themselves, in you, in their fellow humans, in Life.

By trust I mean a calm reliance upon things that you cannot necessarily perceive much less control. (What a quaint notion in this era when we can perceive pretty much everything by virtue of our many technological devices!)

Insecurity, the antithesis of trust, carries a scent akin to fear — it repels and undermines the connection and collaboration required to be a person of peace and innovation. By contrast, trust is the great attractor; it is possible to tame the most powerful forces simply with deep and abiding trust.

Spring Simplicity Series

But how do we foster trust within our children if we ourselves suffer from a drastic lack of trust? After all, our children learn mostly from how we are rather than things we say. Here are a few tried and true ways to fill your inner reservoir of trust. {Read more at mothering.com}

Mental Health Begins in the Womb

Pregnant w ultrasound picGone are the days when we could consider pregnancy a 9-month “grace period” before the job of parenting begins. Mounting research tells us that lifelong wellbeing, including mental health, begins in the womb, and everything parents do – beginning even before conception — shapes their children in critical, life-altering ways.

I began last year by writing about the power of beginnings. This year I invite us to recognize that this applies to virtually everything, from baking a pie to building a company to developing a human: the beginning contains within it the seeds of the project’s ultimate success…or less-than-success. {Read more}

Image
Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

The Function of Joy in Pregnancy

Mothers, some of the most potent parental influence you will have on your child takes place while he or she is still in your womb — so let’s hope that most of your days while pregnant are Happy Mother’s Days! While you are pregnant, your baby’s organs and tissues develop in direct response to lessons they receive about the world. These lessons come from your diet, your behavior and your state of mind — thereby hinting at the function of joy in pregnancy.

If there is chronic stress in pregnancy, if a pregnant mother’s thoughts and emotions are persistently negative, if she is experiencing unrelenting anxiety, the internal message — delivered to the developing baby — is, “It’s a dangerous world out there,” regardless of whether or not this is objectively true. The baby’s neural cells and nervous system development will actually mutate (adapt) to prepare for the unsafe environment it perceives it is going to be born into. {Read the rest of this post at mothering.com}

Images:
emilianohorcada under a Creative Commons license

From Supermom to Sane & Centered Mom

*** This post is your invitation to an empowering FREE webinar next Wednesday ***

“5 Tools for Transforming from Stressed Out to Sane & Centered”

Wednesday, April 24 | 10am – 11:30am Pacific5 Weeks to Transform Stressed Out into Sane & Centered | Marcy Axness PhD

Free webinar registration

 

I thank you ten times a day for the depth and richness
yet simplicity your work has introduced into our already
thriving little family. ~
Elizabeth Bolden, mother of two sons

It seems epidemic these days: an undercurrent of stress and anxiety thrums at the heart of parenting, even for the most “conscious” parents (and probably even more for the really conscious, attuned ones — ever more conscious and attuned to our shortcomings!)

How about you — do you feel this parenting stress? Do you perpetually feel like you’re a just a little behind the 8-ball, missing some crucial opportunity that’s going to put your child behind? Yikes, we didn’t play Mozart through speakers on our pregnant belly… we didn’t use the latest pre-reading iPad app… we didn’t get in on that whiz-bang college-prep (or high-school prep, or for that matter, pre-school prep) program! (more…)

Mental Health Begins in the Womb

Pregnant w ultrasound picGone are the days when we could consider pregnancy a 9-month “grace period” before the job of parenting begins. Mounting research tells us that lifelong wellbeing, including mental health, begins in the womb, and everything parents do – beginning even before conception — shapes their children in critical, life-altering ways.

I began 2013 by writing about the power of beginnings. This applies to virtually everything, from baking a pie to building a company to developing a human: the beginning contains within it the seeds of the project’s ultimate success…or less-than-success. (more…)

Navigating Stress in Pregnancy

Navigating Stress in Pregnancy | Marcy Axness, PhDThe brain development needed to equip an individual with the kinds of qualities needed for peace and prosperity — self-regulation, creative innovation, mental flexibility, robust will — begins during pregnancy, and it isn’t just diet and lifestyle choices that influence it. A pregnant woman’s thoughts and moods have a significant impact upon the brain development of her baby in the womb.

Stress in pregnancy is associated with a daunting list of bad outcomes, but some basic “perception hygiene” can help pregnant moms navigate this reality. While I’m confident that scientists will soon “prove” what so many wisdom traditions and cultures have long known about the role of joy in optimally prenatal development, what we do now know for sure is that a pregnant mother’s chronic stress has enduring negative effects upon the developing fetal brain. (more…)

A 3-Way Toolkit to Ease the Stress of Mothering

I’m going to try and keep this post short and to-the-point. A handy toolkit to ease the stress of mothering, regardless of the “brand” of mothering (working, stay-at-home, by fathers, you name it). This is a summary of the gems that emerged from my appearance this week with Mallika Chopra and Sarah Ripard at the California Women’s Conference. The audience loved what we shared, so I wanted to share it more widely.

Mom stressFirst, why do so many of us tend towards feeling overwhelmed with the stress of mothering these days? Since humans are by nature meaning-making creatures, it helps a great deal to shine a light of context on any problem. In this case it helps us to not feel crazy, or incompetent, or alone in our suffering!

Here are The Big Three as I call them: overarching reasons for what seems like an epidemic of anxiety that thrums at the heart of parenting: (more…)