Moms On Overdrive During the CoronaVirus Pandemic

With everyone up in arms over the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, our mothers have been hit the hardest. The loss of jobs, partners home either jobless or working from home, the children in a forced homeschool environment. Our sanity is about lost.

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So how can mothers navigate in overdrive during the

coronavirus pandemic?

1. How are mothers working on overdrive during the CoronaVirus pandemic?

First, it’s important to understand living through a pandemic is a trauma. Parts of all of our brains have shut down in order to survive. We feel numb and removed from our emotions. Some of us are hypervigilant and anxious, some of us are depressed and inactive.

Moms are handicapped by their fears as they handle home life with children who are miserable, too, and who likely take it out on her. 

She doesn’t have time to think her own thoughts. She’s their Health Director, worried about their future, their therapist, cook, entertainer, camp director and now  TEACHER. 

  

2. What can moms do with their children to bond while staying safe at home?

Bonding happens in big and small ways, when Mom and kids accept how each other is feeling in the moment.

Kids don’t need us to fix their feelings and we don’t need them to fix ours. Simply putting words to feelings is the way our brain relaxes in uncertainty. 

Acceptance of how we feel, and self-soothing being our number one need, opens better ideas for how to cope. 

Let them tell you what they think they need. Let them act on their ideas to learn what really is satisfying to them. Playing Minecraft for several hours can be educational. 

 

3. Why is social media a blessing and a curse - Why does social media make us feel worse at times?

Social media is like reading a gossip magazine. It’s fun for a short time. Since it isn’t real life, no Mom shows herself losing it and screaming at her family. So slowly it can turn depressing when it isn't matching underlying fears and insecurities. 

Moms report feeling worse when they see Mom’s enjoying this time, and adding  cheerleading, “I got this!." Cheerleading is ineffective when hard feelings are on the surface.

 

4. How can we manage our stress and anxiety during this heightened time full of the unknown?

We need to put on our emotional masks, and not look at the suffering around the world. I strongly urge people to not watch the news. Nothing changes so rapidly we can’t go a day or two without catching up with a few headlines.

This pandemic is setting us up for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome following recovery. The emotional recovery can take a long time to heal. 

We may think watching everything gives us some control, but the only control we have is managing how we feel. We need whatever soothing we find to crawl through this experience.

5. How can mothers communicate with their children what is happening in the world or why mommy and daddy are working from home without scaring them?

 Early in the day is the time to have any sort of discussion about what they’re feeling about what’s happening. Everyone is stronger to have a talk and listen to moments about how everyone is really doing. In small bits. 

At Bedtime they may need to regress and feel afraid of being too far away from Mom. One client has given her six-year-old daughter a little bell to ring in a kind of call and response way. She knows she can ring it and Mom will answer back, until she falls asleep. And the bell is still there if she wakes again. 

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Love is Possible at Any Age

Love is Possible at Any Age

I've witnessed numerous people find each other when they felt there was no chance. All you need is one, and one is ready and close by.

How Do They Find Us?

It's an inside job:

  1. We release a lingering old hurt. 

  2. We "see" ourselves with our partner now

  3. We act in new ways, and the world around us surprises us with new people.

Interested in a fifteen-minute consult? Let me know!



Paula Heartland has supported me in such a deep, heartfelt way in finding a life partner. Her certainty that the “right” person for me would appear when I became clear on how that would feel, worked.
— Ginger Clark, Ph.D. 

Paula offers hope, optimism and clarity to women to find love and partnership. She has honed such a concentrated set of tools that even a couple of sessions is valuable.
— Lauren Z. Schneider, Psychotherapist
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SCHEDULE YOUR FREE 15 MINUTE CONSULTATION TO HELP DECIDE THE BEST WAY FOR US TO WORK TOGETHER.

Introduction to The Faith Compass

My sense of direction is a joke. I turn left when my car is to the right...It's a real thing called Geographic Dyslexia.  

However, my affliction one day, led me to develop a miraculous tool I now use for answering not only which way is home(GPS does this nicely) but all answers to my questions big and small. 

An intuitive spark lit in my mind one night many years ago when I drove down 10 Freeway to a writing class I’d been too a few times. When a sign came up saying the 405 Freeway was approaching, I immediately was confused. Was Santa Monica Boulevard off the 10 freeway, or the 405? Then the spark came. I’d heard a shaman once say the correct direction would become brighter in front of you. So I stared out. For a second it seemed up to the right onto the 405 was brighter. It wouldn’t be the last time I was late to a meeting, so I continued up onto the 405. As I sloped down to merge with it, there was the sign  Santa Monica Boulevard next exit!

I also used to suffer from what my ex-husband called ‘menuitis.’ I’d take forever deciding what to eat. Not just with food, but with every decision I would obsess and roll over every possibility 5 times before deciding.  

A week before Christmas I stood in front of a rack of navy pea coats stressing if one of these was what my daughter wanted. I had the idea, what would happen if I closed my eyes and imagine the left side of my inner vision saying yes, and the right side saying ‘no.’ I did this over and over and the inner vision on my left side seemed to be significantly brighter, which signaled YES to me. 

Christmas morning she opened it and said, “Oh no, Mommy, this isn’t what I wanted.” I thought oh well, my little trick didn’t work. But, the next morning she came twirling down the stairs into the living room beaming, “Mommy, I love this coat.” It became her favorite for a long time.  

At dinner with friends I shared what I was practicing, saying I always ask, “Is it the highest good that…” My daughter's   friend piped up, “That sounds like a faith compass.”

“It does!” I said, And thus the name The Faith Compass stuck! 

I use The Faith Compass now to save wasted time making my decisions. Over the past 20 years my faith in it has truly grown. And so has trusting my intuition. I know now that all answers are really right in front of us. We just need to know how to look. 

Over the past 20 years I have used the Faith Compass with clients to help them make yes or no decisions about their relationships, parenting, marriage, career, moving, big purchases, investments, and more.     

I fantasize about how wonderful it would be if everyone trusted all their answers are right in front of them.  What a wonderful creative world it would be. 

My gift to you is experiencing The Faith Compass on your own. You are one step closer to getting closer to your intuition. 

The Faith Compass itself is beautiful. I felt guided into a deep mediation and got a very clear answer to my questions. More amazing, I got a deeper understanding about the issue.
— Lauren Schneider, MFT Found of Tarot
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CONTACT ME TODAY TO GET STARTED…