Prioritizing Mental Health in Parenthood

(gentle music) Headspace Studio. Hey, my name is Samantha Idu and welcome to Radio Headspace. I am super excited to be here. As you know, I'm a therapist here at Headspace. I'll be here occasionally to talk about some things I think you might find helpful or interesting in the world of mindfulness and mental health. So I'm a mom of three daughters and I love it. I love my girls. They are everything to me. But y'all know what? It's not easy. And I think it's time we talk about parental mental health. It's something I've struggled with, my husband has struggled with, my friends have struggled with, but it's not something we talk about that often. So while this is a broad topic, I really wanna use the time today to just acknowledge that this is something we need to pay attention to,. Because by doing so, we're making it better for us, our relationships, and our kids. So let's get into it. So I think people overlook the mental health struggles of parents for a few reasons. One, people don't always look like what they're going through. And if someone doesn't know how to explain the feelings they're having, then it's a little bit easier to dismiss their feelings as not being big enough. Meaning like if I have a friend who doesn't look like they need help, then I might say, "Oh, well she got it." The other reason that people might overlook mental health struggles of parents is because they think that it is just a part of parenting. So they think, "Well, parenting just comes with anxiety, no sleep, depression, all of these things." That's not true. Parenting does not always just come with mental health struggles. So these people might really need additional support. A big transition for me was when my first daughter went to high school. What I found was that I was done. I was really exhausted and burned out. I was trying to be super mom while also attempting to be super wife, super leader at work, super friend, super sister, super Samantha, super everything. And that was just unsustainable. I couldn't do it. So to deal with that, I needed to unlearn a few things. The first thing I needed to unlearn was growing up, moms did everything: cook, clean, transportation, work, everything. You juggle it all. None of the balls fall out of the air ever. And that is so much pressure. But I went into being a wife, motherhood, the work world with all of these thoughts. So I decided to relieve the pressure that I was feeling and start to really, really rethink how I was showing up in these different roles, and in this case, how I showed up as a mom. One of the things that I changed was cooking. Once they went to high school, I was like, "Why am I cooking every day?" Driving an hour and a half to get...