Struggling with stress is a familiar battle for many of us, but when you add the unique pressures of foster care and adoption into the mix, the weight can feel unbearable. That's why it's critical to prioritize self-care, not as an indulgence but as a vital necessity. Join me, Nicole T Barlow, as we unpack the reality of stress in the lives of foster and adoptive parents and explore practical strategies to manage it effectively. I open up about my personal experiences with stress-induced health issues and offer insights into the biochemical nature of stress, emphasizing why it's essential to be proactive about our well-being for the sake of ourselves and the children in our care.
Embarking on each day with intentionality can transform our mindset and our ability to cope with the challenges that come our way. This episode dives into the heart of spiritual practices and daily routines that have personally grounded me, such as scripture and prayer, and how they can offer peace and perspective in the midst of chaos. We'll discuss the benefits of physical activity, the power of nutritious food, and the art of setting boundaries to safeguard our emotional space. Through these strategies, we can fortify ourselves, becoming the stable, loving parents our children need while honoring the divine appointment of our parenting role.
In our journey as parents, it's easy to overlook the subtle stressors that infiltrate our lives, from household products to food choices. This episode shines a light on making intentional adjustments in these areas, the positive influence of less toxic living, and the significance of nurturing supportive communities. I also guide you through a prayer for strength and balance, inviting divine assistance to help us navigate parenting's challenges. As we wrap up, I hope you'll feel empowered to make self-care a priority and experience the divine support that comes from managing stress with grace and wisdom.
Struggling with stress is a familiar battle for many of us, but when you add the unique pressures of foster care and adoption into the mix, the weight can feel unbearable. That's why it's critical to prioritize self-care, not as an indulgence but as a vital necessity. Join me, Nicole T Barlow, as we unpack the reality of stress in the lives of foster and adoptive parents and explore practical strategies to manage it effectively. I open up about my personal experiences with stress-induced health issues and offer insights into the biochemical nature of stress, emphasizing why it's essential to be proactive about our well-being for the sake of ourselves and the children in our care.
Embarking on each day with intentionality can transform our mindset and our ability to cope with the challenges that come our way. This episode dives into the heart of spiritual practices and daily routines that have personally grounded me, such as scripture and prayer, and how they can offer peace and perspective in the midst of chaos. We'll discuss the benefits of physical activity, the power of nutritious food, and the art of setting boundaries to safeguard our emotional space. Through these strategies, we can fortify ourselves, becoming the stable, loving parents our children need while honoring the divine appointment of our parenting role.
In our journey as parents, it's easy to overlook the subtle stressors that infiltrate our lives, from household products to food choices. This episode shines a light on making intentional adjustments in these areas, the positive influence of less toxic living, and the significance of nurturing supportive communities. I also guide you through a prayer for strength and balance, inviting divine assistance to help us navigate parenting's challenges. As we wrap up, I hope you'll feel empowered to make self-care a priority and experience the divine support that comes from managing stress with grace and wisdom.
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we have real candid, faith-filled conversations about all things foster care, adoption and trauma. I'm your host, nicole T Barlow. I'm a certified parent trainer, a certified health coach and an adoptive parent myself. This is a space where you can find support so that you can care for your kids with a steadfast faith, endurance and joy. I want you to, Nicole T Barlow. Today we're going to chat about stress. We're going to talk about its impact on us and how to prioritize self-care when everybody else's needs are so important.
Speaker 1:
I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like I live in a constant state of stress. I laugh when people talk about the need to reduce stress or to eliminate the things in our lives that cause us stress. As a foster and adoptive parent, we know that isn't possible. Our very calling is to step into stress in order to take some of it off of others. But I got to a point in my journey as an adoptive mom when the stress was affecting my health. I'd gained a lot of weight, I struggled to sleep at night and then I struggled to get up in the morning. I had anxiety, I had trouble concentrating and I just was living in a state of constantly feeling overwhelmed. My blood pressure had gotten high and I had always had really low blood pressure. I started getting headaches. It just seemed like my body started to fail, like it could no longer withstand all of the pressure that I was under. Maybe you're there too, or maybe you aren't there yet, but could see how you could get there. Regardless, I wish I would have been more proactive in self-care and stress management from the beginning.
Speaker 1:
You know we talk about stress management and pre-service training. I am a pre-service foster and adoptive parent trainer, so I train perspective foster and adoptive parents as they're starting to go through the process and we talk about stress management but I don't think we connect it enough to how it affects our parenting when we don't do those things. I know nobody ever pays attention to that part. I know I blew it off Like I won't need that stuff. I got this but the reality is is that as we parent kids with a previous trauma history, we ourselves shoulder some of that trauma. In fact, that's the thing that we've been called to. It is a blessing and a privilege to have that opportunity, to have the opportunity to step into a child's story and to help relieve some of their burden. But our bodies have limits. Our bodies are equipped to handle a little bit of stress, but when stress goes beyond that capacity, our body begins to adapt and to go into survival mode.
Speaker 1:
In order to manage the stress isn't just about being busy or worried. It's something that's happening at a cellular level and it's something that mainstream culture really doesn't understand the type of stress that we're under on a regular basis. So there's an actual complex biochemical dance that's happening in our bodies, and at the heart of this dance are hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol is released by the adrenal glands in response to stress. It also is that thing. I mean cortisol is not all bad. It also is that thing. I mean cortisol is not all bad.
Speaker 1:
Cortisol is the thing that is elevated, usually in the morning, and it kind of helps us get going with our day. And when cortisol is released at the right times in the right amounts, it's a good thing for our body. But when, because of stress, cortisol stays too high for too long, it starts to disrupt the balance and the chemistry of other hormones in our body. Then there's also adrenaline. Adrenaline kicks your heart rate into high gear. It pumps more blood to your muscles, it sharpens your attention and it's perfect for a quick escape or response if we're truly in danger. But if our body stays in a long-term in this alert state, this leaves us with a feeling of being wired and tired all at once. So it can be hard to concentrate, but you also may struggle to relax, even if you happen to have a rare moment and a quiet space to do so. But there's more than just hormonal responses to our nervous system plays a key role in this, and it alters the way that our brain functions.
Speaker 1:
Chronic stress can hinder your brain function. It can affect your memory, your learning and emotional regulation, and this is super important because we need the ability to regulate our bodies, to regulate our emotions, so that we can be the calm and steady presence that our kids need in times of their stress. Right, we have to be their external regulator. But in order to be an external regulator, we need the ability to regulate ourselves, and chronic stress can hinder our ability to do that. Our amygdala can become overly sensitive and this can make us feel anxious and reactive to situations that shouldn't really warrant such a response. Our prefrontal cortex can also be impaired. This is the part of the brain that is involved in planning and impulse control, and stress can impair the function of the prefrontal cortex and it can make it hard to make decisions and to manage those reactions.
Speaker 1:
So, as we are navigating these things, our ability to manage stress and to cope with stress is a very high priority. It's not just about our body and our health, though it is about those things but it's also about our ability to parent well. Stress has the opportunity to impair our ability to parent the way that we need to. So where do we start and how can we fit it all in? So I have three ways that we can work to manage stress, and then I talk about how we can fit those things in on a regular basis. Number one is about adding self-care into your day, and I know right off the bat you're thinking I can't fit anything else into my day, but we need to start by shifting our priorities. We need to understand just how important this is. Our ability to manage stress is the guide for how well we're going to be able to parent and do all the other things that we are going to be able to do. We need to flip our priorities on its head a little bit, and, as we're talking about adding self-care into your day, keep in mind that this needs to be a priority, but we're also going to talk about doing it in ways that are manageable.
Speaker 1:
Here are a couple of things that I do every day, and let me note too, when I am talking about self-care, I'm not talking about binge eating ice cream and laying on the couch watching TV all day though I know none of us actually have the ability to do that but that's not what I'm talking about in self-care. I'm not even talking about going to get your nails done, and those things can be self-care in that it is a break away from the stress that we're under. But the type of self-care that I'm talking about is doing regular things to care for our bodies. I think the world and the culture has kind of hijacked the term self-care a little bit, and it leans towards. When we think about self-care, we're really a lot of times thinking about self-indulgence, and those things are fine in its place every now and then, but eating ice cream and binge-watching your favorite show isn't actually caring for your body. Well, what we want to do is actually the opposite of that. We want to make sure that we're filling our bodies with nutritious things, that we're getting movement, we're not being sedentary for long periods of time we want the definition of self-care is literally to care for your body, to care for yourself, and so we want to make sure that the things that we're doing for ourselves are not just helping us in the moment, but they're also helping us be better in the future.
Speaker 1:
So some things that I do being in the Word each morning that I do. Being in the Word each morning, meditating on Scripture throughout the day, centering myself on who God is and His promises, helps me to be better. It helps me to be a better person, it helps me to keep my mind focused on what it should be focused on, it helps me have a level of felt safety and it helps me be a better parent. Making sure that I set aside time each morning to be in the Word and to meditate on Scripture throughout the day. So what this looks like in my life is I get up before my kids get up, get up before my kids get up, and I spend some time in the Word. Now this may mean that I'm spending 20 minutes some days. Some days it's 10.
Speaker 1:
Some days, I have on the Bible app reading aloud to me as I'm getting ready in the morning, right, like it's not always this perfect little picture in the morning right, it's not always this perfect little picture, but it is about me being intentional, about being in God's word first thing in the morning. That's my first act of self-care, and then it's prayer. So I actually have an app on my phone that I can put prayers into and it will send me prayers throughout the day on my watch and a prayer will pop up and it will prompt me to pray for something. And I find the more that I am praying instead of worrying when I am taking those requests to God throughout the day requests to God throughout the day I am reminded that he is in control. I am reminded that all of that doesn't fall on me, right, and I am in regular communion with God throughout the day, so that has been super helpful.
Speaker 1:
Some other things that I do I take daily walks. Sometimes I do this by myself. My husband is really good about setting aside time for me to do this alone when I can. There are times when he travels he does travel a good bit for work and so there are times when he travels where I can't do this alone and the kids have to go on my walk with me. But getting that regular movement in every single day, that time kind of disconnecting from my to-do list and all the things and to get outside in the sunshine, in the fresh air, is probably I would say this is one of the most impactful things. Impactful changes that I have made is making this daily walk for me a non-negotiable.
Speaker 1:
The other things that I do is like I've been working on my nutrition the last year or so and really paying attention to how I'm fueling my body, making sure that I'm fueling my body well, that I'm putting good things into my body that are going to give me energy, making sure that I'm eating on a regular basis. A lot of times, as foster and adoptive parents, we are very conscious of our kids and what we're putting into them and how often they are eating, because we know that their body can get dysregulated if they are hungry right. But the same is true for us. It is going to cause stress on our bodies if we aren't eating at regular intervals, if we're not eating throughout our day. So we want to make sure that we're fueling our bodies well, that we're teaching our bodies that it's going to have food on a regular basis and nutritious food that is really going to help sustain all the things that we have to do throughout the day.
Speaker 1:
And then sleep and rest and I know sometimes we don't have control over our sleep, over when we can go to sleep or when we can get up in the morning. Sometimes that is dictated by our kids and their needs. But when it's within my power, I do everything that I can to try to make sure that I am going to bed early and that I am giving myself enough time at night to get the sleep and rest that I need, that the things that I'm doing to prepare for bedtime are allowing me to sleep better at night. So we talked about some self-care things that you can add into your day, but now I want to talk about what I take out of my day, because a lot of the things that we are filling our days with actually cause us more stress.
Speaker 1:
When people are saying that you need to eliminate stress in your life and we look at our lives and go, we can't eliminate the major stressors in our life, and that is true, but there are things that we can eliminate that cause us stress and some of these things you may not be thinking about as stressors. So if there are relationships outside of your family or ministry that are causing stress for you, you may need to set some boundaries. This will help you give energy to the things that God has specifically called you to lean in on, so don't feel like you have to be everything to everyone. You have been called to specific things and one of those is your family. So how do you best serve your family and set boundaries with those other things? If there's busyness in your schedule that you can eliminate, do it.
Speaker 1:
Our busy schedules can often cause a lot more stress for us, especially sometimes when the busyness can wear on our kids and and there are some unpredictable things that can happen I know for us when we are rushing around and trying to fit a bunch of things in. It really stresses me out because I never know when a child's going to have a meltdown and how is that going to set back our schedule and we're going to be late to this thing and we're not going to make this thing and we have to cancel this other thing. Right, because there's just some unpredictability to trauma and triggers and we never know when things are going to come up. So reducing that busyness and giving our family some margin in our day has been super helpful in reducing some of that stress on me. Working out is another one that is good for our bodies. I said in the self-care you know, in adding in self-care that's, you definitely want to add in movement, but we have to watch the way that we're working out. We have to watch the way that we're working out as individuals that are usually overloaded with stress. Already.
Speaker 1:
Exercise is a stress on your body and so we have to be very careful about how we do that. We need to make sure that the way that we're working out doesn't add too much additional stress to our body. If we are doing long, strenuous cardio workouts or if we're pushing our body beyond what it can handle in our strength training and we're not giving our body time to rest, it can actually cause a lot of additional stress to our body, which counteracts the effects of the workout, because it's telling our body that it needs to hold on to fat. It's telling our body that it needs to be in protection mode, and so a lot of the benefits that we would see from that workout we may not see because we're overstressing our body. It also can tank our system just in general and it can leave you susceptible to injury because you're pushing your body beyond the amount of stress that it can handle. And then, while we often think of stressors as circumstantial and some of the ones that we have just talked about those extra stressors on our body are kind of circumstantial, with relationships and busyness and exercise and workouts.
Speaker 1:
But some of the things that we expose ourselves to also put stress on our bodies. So think about things that you use every day, like skincare, processed foods, cleaners. If there are ingredients in those things that are toxic or harmful for our bodies or even just hard for our bodies to process, then those things add stress to our body pretty quickly. And many of those things can be switched out very easily and don't require really any extra amount of time a lot of times, really any extra amount of time. A lot of times. One of the things that I know was good for me to cut out or limit is cutting out things like late night snacks and alcohol. Sometimes eating a bag of chips or having a glass of wine at the end of the night might make you feel like you're reducing stress in the moment, but it's actually causing a lot more stress for your body in the long run. It takes a lot of work for your body to process alcohol or processed foods and we don't want to add additional work for our body.
Speaker 1:
I try to be really conscious of the things that I use every day and I've made switches on a lot of products. So I switched out my coffee to an organic, mold-free coffee brand that only has a third of the caffeine of regular coffee. Caffeine can be a stressor on your body and I'm not ready to completely give up caffeine yet, but I have changed my coffee to reduce the caffeine intake a little bit to hopefully reduce some of that stress on my body. I've also changed out my makeup and my skincare. I've reduced the amount of processed foods that I eat, especially when it comes to inflammatory oils. Inflammatory oils add a lot of stress to your body, so I now look to use mainly coconut oil, olive oil and avocado oil and I've tried to get rid of all the vegetable and canola oils and really limit those or eliminate them altogether, because they add a lot of stress to your body. I got a good air purifier to reduce the contaminants in the air. I'm just trying to find those things that I'm exposed to every day that cause stress on my body and figure out how to eliminate those things. I will leave a link for some of these things that I have switched out in the show notes. I will also leave a link to sign up to get my newsletter where I share some of these things that I have switched out in the show notes. I will also leave a link to sign up to get my newsletter where I share some of my favorite products every month, because eliminating products really doesn't take any additional time for you, but it can reduce the stress that is put on your body.
Speaker 1:
The third thing that you can do to reduce stress is to find community. Just like connection and relationships helps to increase felt safety and reduce stress in our kids, our relationships do the same for us, but we shouldn't be looking to our kids for that relationship. Our kids are not going to fill our cup in that way. They're not meant to, and so we need to make sure that we have built up good community to really pour into us and to provide that support and encouragement that we need. I have some great community at my church, we have several families that have fostered and adopted, and we can be a great support to one another, and most of us are close in physical proximity, so a lot of that interaction can actually be face-to-face, which is huge. You need some face-to-face relationships.
Speaker 1:
I do think that there is a place, though, for online community. I have several online communities that I'm a part of, either on Facebook, or I have a coaching community that I joined specifically so that I can have a place where I get guidance and encouragement from a community of foster and adoptive parents and from a coach. Yes, even as a parent trainer, I need support and guidance too. Sometimes we may know all the things to do in our head, but the stress of everything makes it hard, and so we need reminding and encouraging, just like everybody else. I will leave a link in the show notes for the coaching group that I'm a part of, in case that's something that you need as well.
Speaker 1:
And then there's another part of community that I want to mention, and for me, it's probably my most important community and support, and that is my husband. If you are married, your spouse can be a huge resource for you to lean in on. We have an episode coming next week where we talk more about marriage, relationships and foster care and adoption, but this is such a crucial place for connection and support, so I don't want you to forget about that part of it. Make sure that you are investing in that relationship. If you're married. I know that you're thinking in all of this. Okay, so you want me to add in self-care, you want me to cut out toxins and things that are harmful for my body, and you want me to find community. This is all great, but where do I fit all of this in? There are already so many needs in my house. I just can't do it all. So I'm going to give you a couple of quick tips so that you can work on this self-care and stress management piece.
Speaker 1:
The first thing is it really comes down to priorities. You can fit anything in if it's a priority for you, and self-care needs to be a priority as a foster or adoptive parent. Self-care is not a luxury anymore. It's a responsibility. You need to take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. Well, it's like in an airplane. They tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping your child with theirs. The same is true here. If you want to be able to take care of your child, you have to take care of you.
Speaker 1:
The second is just to do the things that we know that we're supposed to do. Most of us could probably go to bed earlier and wake up earlier to be able to get some of that quiet time or a quick workout in. But that means setting a bedtime alert. It means not staying up late watching TV. All of those things we also need to plan. Plan and plan some more Meal prep for your week. Keep some protein already cooked and on hand in case you need something quick to grab for lunch or your original plan for dinner falls through Schedule some time where the other parent or babysitter has the kids and you can have some time away.
Speaker 1:
I know my husband does something for me. Usually once a quarter or so he will either take the kids out of town usually to his mom's house for a day or so, and he will leave me at home by myself so that I get some time to kind of breathe and decompress, and that has been huge for me. So just planning for those things ahead of time and then give yourself reminders throughout the day Post scripture around your house that helps you meditate on it all day long. Set up phone alerts to pray or to think about certain things throughout the day. Set up moments where the whole family practices deep breathing together. Put on praise and worship music in the house. All of those little moments of investing in yourself adds up.
Speaker 1:
I know that our days don't always go as planned and sometimes we just can't fit everything in, and that's okay. Some days my walks are long and I'm alone and those days are glorious, but other days I have little ones in tow and my time walking is cut short. Either way, I still try to get it in most days. Some days may look different than my ideal plan, but when I'm prioritizing self-care elements in my day, I'm bound to get many of them in most of the time, and even that can make such a huge difference in our ability to parent well, which is our ultimate goal. So I hope this discussion has been helpful for you today. Just know that you are not alone. We are all in this together. If you want more tips on how to manage stress and to care for your own health, subscribe to my newsletter. It always has some great tips and resources for you to use the link for that, as well as some other things that we talked about today, will be in the show notes. I look forward to next time as we work together to foster parent.
Speaker 1:
Well, let me pray for us, lord. God, thank you for this community of believers doing this hard work. God, help reduce our stress. Help balance our hormones, strengthen our bodies and remind us to lean into you. Help us to cast off any weight that is not meant for us to carry. Help us to steward our bodies well. Let us be a vessel of love and connection for our children. Jesus, we want to be your hands and feet. God, we want to honor you in all that we do. Help us discern our priorities rightly. We love you. We trust you. Thank you for this gift of parenting that has been given to us. In Jesus' name, amen, thank you.