As parents, we often prioritize the well-being of our children, especially during the tumultuous teenage years, when personal, academic, and social changes are a constant. While we encourage healthy habits for teens to help them navigate these challenges, many stressed parents overlook their own need for self-care. For many, the words “stress and parenting” may become synonymous in their minds. The demands of juggling work, sports, and other activities can make it easy to forget that we, too, need to model healthy habits.
At Suffolk DBT, we believe that DBT self-care is essential—not just for your own mental health, but as an example for your teens. After all, you can’t pour from an empty cup. By embracing self-care and demonstrating it to your children, you provide them with the tools to manage stress, while showing that taking care of oneself is a vital part of life.
What is Self-Care?
Self-care refers to actions you’re intentional about doing to improve and maintain your health. It’s looking after yourself and improving the physical, emotional, mental, and behavioral aspects of your well-being through a combination of routine tasks such as- Exercise and physical activity
- Following a balanced diet
- Meal planning and prep
- Getting enough sleep
- Praying or meditating
- Journaling
- Going outside and connecting with nature
Why prioritizing personal well-being is crucial for stressed parents
Parenthood, while rewarding, is ever busy! Keeping up with a teen’s academics, extracurricular and social activities, and household duties on top of handling one’s own professional, personal, and social to-dos can make for some very stressed parents. When so much of your time goes into juggling such responsibilities, you may think it’s impossible to start a sufficient self-care regimen. It’s worth making the effort, though, because the stress stressed parents experience can manifest as- Irritability
- Difficulty concentrating
- Exhaustion
What Makes DBT Self-Care Work for Wellness
A part of understanding what DBT self-care is and what makes it a game-changer for stressed parents is knowing the principles of DBT. Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is a specialized psychotherapy form developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan after observing that traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) wasn’t effective in treating patients of hers who had borderline personality disorder and chronic suicidal ideation. DBT emphasizes helping individuals who experience emotions intensely. It empowers them to increase awareness of their emotions and manage and regulate them better without turning to harmful behaviors to cope. It’s effective because its basis lies in dialectical thinking to cultivate acceptance and change simultaneously. Dialectics is a concept in which two seemingly opposite ideas—such as acceptance and change—can coexist and both be true. When implemented in therapy sessions in New York, our specialized therapists at Suffolk DBT teach clients to accept their present circumstances, embrace that their futures require change, and make positive changes. In essence, we’ll help stressed parents- Recognize and accept their current reality of dealing with work-related stress, relationship stress, and parenting stress
- Embrace the fact that they need to learn, practice, and model healthy habits for teens to take on for themselves upon seeing the pro-health example set for them
- Learn how to implement DBT self-care skills that will help improve their daily functioning and mental, emotional, physical, and behavioral well-being, especially during stress, exhaustion, and overwhelm caused by having multiple, simultaneous responsibilities
The Dynamics of DBT Self-Care
Most therapy modalities prioritize changing one’s thoughts and behaviors to heal, which can be invalidating to some clients as it inadvertently makes them feel like they aren’t receiving the support they need for their present circumstances. DBT emphasizes clients’ experiences in the present moment and treats symptoms as more than just issues that need solving.
Here’s how DBT’s core principles can enhance your self-care:
Mindfulness
Being mindful is having an awareness of the present. It’s being judgment-free as you acknowledge your thoughts and feelings as they come. It’s gaining awareness of them without becoming overwhelmed. Mindfulness is essential to self-care considering much of the stress parents experience is due to feeling they must be multitaskers for their families in such a fast-paced world. Mindfulness skills learned in DBT sessions empower stressed parents to recognize when they’re overwhelmed and self-regulate themselves without self-judgment. Whether exercising, meditating, or reading a book, DBT self-care encourages stressed parents to savor the moment and be fully present and engaged.Emotional regulation
Emotional regulation skills help parents understand, accept, and even change their emotional responses to stress and parenting as necessary. They help stressed parents see what pushes them to react and overreact and identify the consequences of reacting and overreacting. These skills are a part of DBT self-care because they empower stressed parents to handle themselves and their raw emotions, which can help them support their teens and model healthy habits for teens to use to manage their emotions.
Interpersonal effectiveness
In DBT sessions, we teach clients interpersonal effectiveness skills that help them cope with stress and parenting and enhance their relationships with others. Learning such skills is an essential part of DBT self-care because it enables parents to employ and model healthy habits for teens to use in their familial and social relationships. These skills strengthen parents’ ability to- Manage conflicts
- Set and enforce healthy and respectful boundaries
- Improve communication
- Assert themselves and validate their feelings while simultaneously hearing and validating others’
- Have serious conversations about physical, emotional, mental, behavioral, and social situations and struggles without engaging in a power struggle that could strain relationships or intensify stress.
Distress tolerance
DBT self-care isn’t only about preventing stress. It’s also about dealing with stress constructively when it arises. Distress tolerance skills learned in DBT sessions provide effective strategies that enable parents to implement and model healthy habits for teens to use to manage challenging situations instead of resorting to harmful behaviors. In essence, distress tolerance skills empower stressed parents to initiate coping activities when stressed instead of abusing substances or starting intense fights.
