Author: shrinkwrappedmom

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Do you feel like you have constant racing thoughts? Can never really relax and enjoy things? Feel like you want to have hobbies and passions, but have no idea where to start?  In our fast-paced world, taking care of our mental well-being is more important than ever. As a therapist, I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of prioritizing self-care. Creating your own personalized self-care plan is a crucial step towards reducing stress and enhancing your overall mental wellness.

A self-care plan is like a roadmap that guides you towards activities, hobbies and practices that nourish and replenish your mind, body, and soul. It’s not just about pampering yourself, but about making conscious choices that support your mental health. This may include setting boundaries, practicing mindfulness, engaging in regular physical activity, and nurturing meaningful relationships. By investing time and energy into self-care, you can cultivate a greater sense of peace, joy, and resilience in your life.

To help you create your own self-care plan, I’ve developed a self-care planning workbook. This workbook provides guidance and prompts to help you identify your unique self-care needs and preferences. It’s a valuable tool that can empower you to take charge of your mental wellness and prioritize self-care in your daily life. Remember, self-care is not selfish – it’s an essential component of maintaining good mental health. Start your self-care journey today and discover the profound impact it can have on your well-being.

Click Link Below to View Workbook

https://shrinkwrappedmom.net/recommends/self-care-planning-workbook/

First, let me just say I had never golfed one day in my entire life before this particular event. I did not grow up in a golfing family, I didn’t grow up going to any country clubs as a kid, and the only golfing experience I had was miniature golf at the Jersey Shore. Golfing was just not available to me growing up. Keep this in mind for context.  When I was in my 20’s my new boyfriend’s family invited me along for a vacation in the Carolinas for a week of beach, sun, and fun and I was all in. I had been warned that there would be “golf days” but I was also told I wouldn’t have to participate, so the trip sounded like a dream.  One beautifully sunny afternoon during this vacation, my boyfriend asks if I would like to go with him and his older brother and his brother’s new girlfriend to “just check out a nice golf course and hit a little?”

Now I wanted to impress my new boyfriend and didn’t want to say no immediately. After chatting with the brother’s girlfriend who was also not a “golfer” she said she would go if would…so the pressure was on, and I said yes. I figured it would be a cute little adventure. My boyfriend and his brother assured us that we would be entering the golf course after peak hours, therefore there wouldn’t be a lot of people on the course. They made a promise that we could take our time and hit only if we wanted to and we would get our own golf cart, beverages, and music so all in all, couldn’t be a bad experience.

We get to the golf course and it’s beautiful. “The greens” were beautiful, the landscape was gorgeous, and we got to drive the fun little golf cart around while enjoying some beverages along the way; the afternoon was quite wonderful. My boyfriend and his brother decided that since they were more seasoned players, they were going to go in a cart ahead of us, so we didn’t hold them up. The girlfriend and I were just hanging out, taking cute pictures, and even hitting some golf balls when we felt like it. Honestly, we were having a blast.

At one point I decided to hit a few times in a row, and I finally made a shot that landed somewhere near the hole that I was supposed to be aiming for; since it was my turn to drive the cart I jumped in and drove up to the location where my ball landed and parked the cart. In the meantime, as we were driving towards the hole, I noticed that some elderly gentlemen were less than friendly towards us. In fact, at one point two of the four men decided to give us the finger as we were driving by to make our next stop and I commented to my partner in crime, “Ugh they were so rude” and in my head I kind of thought “men of that generation…just so moody and irritated all the time. How could you be so irritated in such a pretty place?”  Disregarding their rude behavior, I get out of the cart, golf club in hand (and by golf club, I mean the first club that I grab out of the bag) and I forge on to hit my ball. Just as I go to make my shot I hear a bunch of yelling and commotion behind me. Keep in mind NOT A COUNTRY CLUB PERSON, so my first thought was, “Do fights break out at golf courses? Is there a fight going on right now? Is there a random alligator on the loose? Do we need to get out of this place immediately?”  As I look to the side, I see my boyfriend and his brother running in an all-out sprint towards my location, which is even more concerning because my boyfriend does not run…ever. So now he’s got my attention. I turn fully towards them both, to which I see my boyfriend flailing his arms all over the place and yelling, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. As he gets closer to me, I finally hear that he is screaming “Get off the greens!” This causes me a great deal of confusion because the whole freaking place is greens. He sees I am not moving, but he puzzles me even more because he is no longer running towards me, he takes a quick turn to my unsuspecting partner in the cart (who is finishing up her Miller Lite). I shout out, “What’s going on I am trying to hit the ball?”  To which he yells back (in a very agitated tone I might add) “You have to get the cart off the greens!” and he jumps in my golf cart and takes off. My partner in crime is holding on for dear life.

Apparently, there is a rule that you do not drive your cart up to the actual spot where your ball lands, which was an unfortunate misunderstanding of mine as I thought the vehicle’s whole purpose was to bring me to my ball, so I didn’t have to walk.  As my boyfriend explained my mistake on the course, I began to reflect on the group of elderly men. I realized that they were giving me the finger because I was breaking one of golf’s most cardinal rules, which is to protect the greens, and I was left with the very sad truth that those gentlemen, who saw me drive up, think that I am a nasty, rule-breaking entitled female who just decided that none of the rules of their beautiful establishment applies to me. I was immediately humiliated! This is not how I operate in my day-to-day life, nor is it how I would want to be perceived by anyone and I usually fare well with winning over the elderly!!  So, what does a person do with all these feelings and misconceptions now? Now that I have people who think I’m a jerk, who think I would break their important rules, and who think I just don’t care about anything except what I want?

Well, what does one do? Do you sit in this forever replaying it over and over? Do you let it resonate for years, and make you feel terrible about yourself? Do you live in this feeling of humiliation or regret because there are people out there who don’t like you or have a perception of you that you can’t change?  Or do you accept that this happened?  Do you accept that on one random day on a golf course where I had no idea what I was doing, I was perceived by some other people as an obnoxious jerk? Do I think that’s true about myself every day? No. Do I need to allow myself to laugh about this and forgive myself for this? Yes. Do I need to accept that I will never change the opinion of those men and what they feel they saw of me that day? Yes.  I do have to accept that, and I do have to let it go.  I must give myself permission to laugh at the fact that I could be perceived that way, to retell this story for years and own it myself. Claim it as a part of me because it was.

The key to this whole story is that you can be perceived by others in a particular way that is not true to your character or how you would ever want to be represented. But we don’t always control what people think or perceive of us and we must be strong enough in our own self-confidence and in our own self-esteem to believe we know the truth about our own true character.

So, in your past, if there have been times, or in the future if there are times when you feel perceived outside of your typical character, know who you are and let it go. You let it go, you move on, and you remain confident in yourself. There is a way to “not care what people think” if you leave their perceptions of you in their heads and not in yours, because let’s face it every once in a while, you just may be caught driving on the greens.

At some point in your life, sleep becomes an issue.  Whether your young children cannot sleep through the night, or you can’t sleep because your kids can’t sleep, or your mind races all day long and will not quiet at night. Or the quiet of the night just won’t let you sleep. Whatever the cause of your unrest, it is natural that sleep is not so easily found. We all at some point struggle with falling asleep, staying asleep or both. Two things are very important when you are trying to improve sleep, one is your sleep routine, and the other is your consistency with your sleep routine. Establishing a sleep routine is extremely important and if you want more information regarding that check out our post called “5 tips for better sleep”, once you have established a routine, you must remain consistent with this routine for it to work and allow you, for the most part, better sleep.

Along with an established nightly routine, I have found three additional products that assist with the nighttime quest for sleep that I have added to my routine and have recommended to clients as well. These products are Magnesium, any eye/sleep mask and a sound machine (with whatever sounds you fancy). These three inexpensive additions to a sleep routine can help give your brain alternative sensory clues that it is time to power down and get ready for bed.

Here are the links to my favorites, but you can use any of your favorites as well.

Magnesium                                  Sleep Mask                                           Sound Machine

https://amzn.to/3ImBGUy          https://amzn.to/49Ar6W6                       amzn.to/49DScvE

Please know these products may contain affiliate links and if purchases are made, I could become eligible to receive possible commissions from the sale.

I wonder sometimes if I am in a cult and now that I am in it, I can’t get out. Or I might be in a pyramid scheme with youth sports, where I just keep giving my money away into these programs, thinking somehow it will come back to me. Let me explain. First and foremost, my husband and I are Gen Xers, we both played sports growing up so we thought it would be great if we exposed our kids to different sports to see if they found any interest and low in behold, they found interest. We have three kids and had no idea about travel sports when our oldest began this journey, again Gen X, we didn’t have travel sports when we were young. My parents are lovely, kind people, but there is no way in hell that they would have set an alarm for 4:30 am on a Saturday to drive two hours to spend their entire day off from work at an all-day tournament or even better drive two hours for one 50-minute game and then drive two hours back. Beyond the fact that this did not exist when I was young add to that the fact that you now pay for your kids to be on a team, then you pay for all the swag gear, pay to travel, pay to stay in hotels, sometimes pay to get into the event to watch sed kid and you will always pay for parking, food, and gas. This process rinses and repeats weekly. We are constantly exhausted, financially drained, and if I am honest, always in a state of chaos. The kids have practices two to three times per week, games, and tournaments almost every weekend, and here is why I wonder if it is more of a cult-like situation…it never ends. The minute you think a season will come to a glorious conclusion there will be a spring league or a winter session, or a skills session, something that requires more time and more money. As if that isn’t enough, then there are inter-whispers from teammates and other parents of additional training that the kids could be doing to improve their performance such as personal trainers, nutritionists, strength and conditioning coaches, and therapists that specialize with athletes to improve the mental game.

I often wonder how youth sports got this intense. Maybe it is my generation of parents’ fault…maybe we Gen Xers never had these opportunities when were young and maybe we think we could have gone further, played longer, and been more successful as an athlete if we had these resources, so we are making sure that our kids have every chance to be amazing athletes. You may be thinking, from the tone of this post, “Why doesn’t she just pack it in and say all done?” Well, here is where the cult/pyramid scheme gets you as a lifelong member…they have my kids! My kids love their sports, it is basically their full-time jobs at this point, they have friends, strong attachments, and memories, so I can’t get out without my kids, and guess what, they unfortunately aren’t moving. Now remember, I am not SURE if we are in a cult, but I am just saying if you think we are…blink twice.

Ask yourself this question about relationships in your life…Does the relationship add to your life or take away?  When you are with this person, do they add laughter? Do they add joy? Do they add positive experiences? Do they add support? Do they make you feel stronger, better, more confident? Do they add to your feelings of being loved? A good relationship adds, and a bad relationship takes away.

If the relationship is poor, then the following will be true. When you are around this person you feel worse about yourself. You will feel less joy. You will feel less laughter. You will have negative and stressful experiences. This relationship is taking away from your life, taking away from your self-esteem, taking away from your positive experiences.

If you are in a relationship with someone, they should be adding to your life and never taking away. If you find yourself in a relationship with someone who is taking away joy from your life, reexamine the worth of this relationship. Remember this phrase “Good relationships add, they do not take away”.

When a woman cries do not look for the tangible event that just occurred that made her feel so emotional, instead recognize that those tears are the culmination of countless events that she has experienced recently where she could not let herself cry.

Do you suffer from analyzing your thoughts and emotions? Constantly ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way”, “Why do I act this way or why do I think this way”? What happens when you ask yourself these big “why” questions is that you begin an anxious train of thought. These questions make you examine and analyze every feeling and emotion and often ends with a feeling of “I don’t know”. There becomes a sense of dread not knowing the answers to the vast why questions.  

In contrast what if instead of asking yourself why, you ask yourself WHAT? Ask yourself what just happened that made me feel this way. What just happened to make me act this way? What just happened to make me think this way? In most cases, there is a what that connects you to how you are feeling. It is not always something that just occurred, sometimes it’s a thought or a memory that popped into your mind that provides the answer to the question. Asking what versus why allows for more progression in your thoughts and less existential examination. Asking what versus why helps to put something concrete to associate with your emotions versus looking for an exaggerated cosmic answer to a why and allows for more power in developing an action plan.

Click the link below for your own copy of the What not Why Daily Journal!!

                                     https://a.co/d/gMTw8fR

I’ve been a therapist in the community where I was born and raised for 20 years. And within that 20 years, I heard heartbreaking stories that I will honestly never forget. The most difficult to hear are the stories concerning children who witnessed or experienced things that they did not deserve or adults sharing about the lack of care they received when they were young and how they never felt as if they were somebody’s most prized possession. I’ve also had clients with severe illnesses, whether they be elderly, middle-aged, or young children. One of the things that has always struck me the most while counseling over the years is one phrase that has made me think repeatedly about what it means. That phrase is, “It was god’s plan/god’s will.”  Now let me preface, this post is not about religion, nor is this to question any religion of any kind. I understand why people use this phrase. It helps them to get through some of the darkest times in their lives. It gives answers and purpose to things that are unfathomable and gives hope in times of utter despair. My question about this phrase doesn’t lie with the people who use it, it lies with the concept of it, so bear with me.

I also need to address that I acknowledge that I am not well versed or well educated in biblical or theological topics; this is a very layman’s view from someone trained merely in psychology, about this phrase. And yet still I often wonder…. If you thought about this highly used phrase, from god’s perspective, would God be desperately sad?

The way that I envision most religions, is that the “god,” whichever or whomever that may be, has been depicted as a being that created life. The religion that I am the most familiar with states that God made children out of love and his likeness. So, in my layman’s thought process, it would be as if you love something so much you create it out of love and then set it free to have all the rights to make their own choices.

If I were allowed to imagine this from God’s perceptive, how would I cope with being labeled as the root cause of everything that occurs both good and bad? If I were the Supreme Being that gave life and free will, but then I was held responsible for all the consequences that came from that free will being utilized…how would that feel? If I allow myself the complete freedom to just for a second, imagine what this god would possibly be thinking, I imagine that they may feel a little bit like this, “I gave you free will to do and make whatever choices and actions you wanted. It was the greatest gift, and you acted of your own free will. You had prosperous economic dreams but that also awakened greed. You built crops and biochemically engineered your food and beverages but that may have caused great illness and sicknesses to your bodies. I let you have the freedom to explore and from that freedom, you built imaginative ways to travel; however, those inventions cause horrible accidents and loss of lives. I gave you freedom of thought, but it also allowed you to think of ways to protect yourself from harm and others and then eventually from people you just did not like. I gave you free will and you ran with it and all I could do was watch. Then when this free will goes wrong, or sicknesses and illnesses come from the things you’ve created with your own will… the answer is that it was all my plan, all my doing?”

As a parent myself, having your children thinking that you would ever wish ill or harm to them, or think that you are planning life-threatening things to happen to them…well that would be the most utterly depressing concept. So, it often makes me wonder… does God need a therapist?

You know that sense we often get when someone makes us feel bad, and we instantly think “I should cut them out of my life”? Or the eerie sense we get when we think we should probably start looking for a new job, but don’t, and then sure enough end up getting laid off or fired? How about when you have an instinct that your partner is cheating only to find out months later that they were cheating? How about that annoying feeling when we know we should not procrastinate, yet we choose to procrastinate anyway and end up regretting it? What if I were to tell you there is no such thing as a gut instinct? Honestly, just think about it…the answers to our problems do not originate in our stomachs, they come from a place much more advanced.

What if we looked at the information formally referred to as a “gut instinct” differently? Let’s stop calling it a gut instinct and call it what it really is…our very smart, very capable brains formulating the solution to a problem.  Once our brain has recognized the answer to a problem, worry, or issue, it sends a quick, impromptu flash of the answer to us. For instance, when our brain flashes on a particular answer on a test but we debate it in our heads and decide to go with a different answer, only to find out later, that the initial answer was correct. Too often we have a “gut instinct” moment, then dispute or refute the information and disregard the “gut instinct”.

So how can we address this “gut instinct” in a more productive way? Whenever our mind is worried or anxious or struggling with a particular problem and instinctively gives us an answer, we need to recognize that it is absolutely one hundred percent coming from our brains.  Our brain was working alongside us the whole time, doing its job, computing answers for us, and has already calculated the best answer to our present issue…. we just need to listen. So, from now on, let’s stop listening to our stomachs and give our brain its proper credit.