Case Study: Meet Denise*

Denise, (*name changed to maintain privacy) was a mid-level manager who was a month and a half back to work after her second child. She worked full time; 5 days a week, 35+ hours, plus the commute.

Her husband also worked full time, had a similar commute each morning and occasionally had to travel abroad with work. He was also one of the primary care providers for an elderly parent.

Life was busy with 1 child and now with 2 children she was feeling more overwhelmed, stressed, increasingly anxious and like life had control of her as opposed to the other way around. This was making her cross and frustrated and leaving her feeling like she was failing at everything. She both mentally and physically drained. Her husband and her zoomed past each other during the week and spent a good lot of the weekend getting prepped for the week ahead. She often felt alone and disconnected from her husband and remembered fondly their child free spontaneous date night’s mid-week when they both didn't feel like cooking. This was not what Denise had envisaged as a ‘happy’ family life.

When I spoke to Denise first she was lost, not knowing where to start or what to do to make it better. She did however hold a belief that there had to be more to life than this. And she was right!

How coaching supported Denise

To support Denise through this period, we first explored how she was feeling. We delved into the stories she was telling herself and the beliefs that accompanied these. This allowed us to pinpoint when she felt most overwhelmed and stressed and also identify the small pockets of time when she didn't feel consumed by feelings of being overthrown or franticness. This was really helpful when we looked at how Denise would like to be feeling, how she would like to be spending her time and how she could incorporate more of this.

We separated out things within her control and those outside her control and began to work on a plan of action that was going to support her to feel calm, in control and ultimately happier as a busy working mum.

The goal was to create an objective viewpoint, create space for Denise to cultivate awareness of how her thinking guided her emotional and reactive state and with this she could make better decisions for herself and her family. 

Once Denise had identified her emotions and her resulting behaviour, plus the objective facts of the situation, she was better able to cut herself some slack and be compassionate towards how she was feeling and behaving. She also knew that the first place to start was with her.

Together we could then develop some goals and strategies to support Denise.

Here are the 3 goals/strategies we followed:

Goal/Strategy 1: Finding out what was really important to Denise and her family. Values are the foundation of family life.

Tools: Heart-to-heart with your values exercise

Overview: Life was passing Denise by and both she and her husband were living in the functional (necessary but not everything) aspect of family life. Values make you who you are and according to Lorraine Thomas, the Mummy Coach, ‘having a child is a good time to take a fresh look at what is important to you and how you want your family to live. Understanding and living common values can be the foundation of a happy family’.

How this worked out: Together we worked on prioritising Denise's values and thinking about which ones were most important. As a take away we talked about chatting this through with her husband and together coming up with household values that were important for them both to live authentically through and to pass onto their children. She then worked on drawing a large heart and choosing 3 - 5 values that were the most important and then adding examples of what they could do to demonstrate each of the values.

An example of this might include:

Value: Fun.

Demonstrate: Each weekend we spend time together as a family outside the house mucking about (playing football, getting ice-cream, going to the cinema, going for a cycle etc). We ask each member of the family to pick an activity each weekend and rotate (lessening the mental burden on Mum to come up with something every weekend). 

I asked Denise to think about where he could display the family values as a constant reminder. As she and her husband thought of new things they were to add them to the heart.

Goal/Strategy 2: Getting some ‘Denise’ time in order to reduce stress and feel more calm and in control. 

Tools: ‘Me Time’ Wheel

Overview: Denise felt like life was ruling her as opposed to the other way around. Her energy was low, she was stressed and focusing on the functional aspect of running a household putting everyone’s needs before hers. Burnout alert! In order to start claiming back time and having the energy to do a lot, we looked at how Denise was looking after herself.  One way to boost energy and increase optimism is to create some distance from all the mundane, week in and week out stuff. It was time to find Denise some quality ‘me time’.

How this worked out: We started by exploring what would be a real treat to give herself. Within the ‘Me Time’ wheel Denise wrote down numerous things that she would like to do for herself (8 in total)and was encouraged to be as specific as possible. I then asked her to make a date with herself, this was to go in her diary, and her husbands if necessary, and we discussed how she could actually make this happen. She chose yoga. She had done prenatal yoga and mom and baby yoga and loved it. Now she was going to sign up to a 6 week programme with the same lady and this was going to be her decompression time every week. Bliss!

This would allow her to develop a relaxed and more positive frame of mind, particularly in those more demanding family situations. Knowing that she had pockets of time to retreat into worked in favour of the whole family. Denise recognised that she is the helm of the family ship and if she was not in a good way the whole family wouldn’t be in a good way.

This also tied into our value exploration as Denise knew that ‘fun’ and mucking about were also rejuvenating for her.

Goal/Strategy 3: Taking back control of the clock.

Tools: A day in the life of (Denise in this instance!) tool

Overview: Now that we had looked at ways for Denise to replenish herself it was time to tackle ‘time’ and take control of the clock. I encouraged her to believe she could (as often as busy Mums our default answer to everything is ‘I don't have enough time’). The amount of time we all have is out of our control; we all have 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 52 weeks in a year - fact! How we use it is up to us and this we can influence. Conveying to Denise that she was the master of her time I wanted to encourage her to re-think her attitude to time dramatically: to stop thinking about time negatively and as the old saying goes ‘time is a gift, not a burden’.

How this worked out: We focused on time as a positive commodity; removing ‘I have no time, there is not enough time’ from her narrative and replacing it with ‘great, I have 24 hours, what shall I do with them?, how shall I spend that time’. We examined how Denise typically spent 24 hours in a day using the ‘a life in the day of’ tool.

We identified which activities she spent most of your time on and which activity she spent the least amount of time on. I invited her to relook at the list of activities but this time fill in the number of hours that she would like to spend on each activity, leaving all the ifs, ands and buts aside. We compared each list and this was an eye opener for Denise. From this she was able to identify what she wanted to spend more time on and what she wanted to reduce, eliminate or re-introduce into her 24 hours a day. Then we made an action plan around doing it to make sure it happened.

Wrap-up:

When Denise and I started working together it was important for her to have a non-judgmental space in which to validate her experience. Equally important was that by the end of our work together Denise wanted to feel less overwhelmed, stressed, anxious and more in control, calm and happier and she did.

Giving Denise this space to take time out and to be objective about her situation enabled her to identify where she was currently and where she wanted to be and our work together consisted of closing that gap with some really practical solutions. 

The tools above are a sample that we worked on together throughout our sessions. These 3 tools specifically allow clients to clarify what is important to them within their family life, carving out vital mum time in order to stay sane in the journey of motherhood and then finally with the ‘a day in the life’ tool we are able to make sure this happened on a weekly basis.

Once clients are given the opportunity to slow down, assess and put practical solutions in place it's amazing the transformation that can be achieved in hectic family life. When they can see a more objective truth in their situation and own their feelings, there are many tools and strategies that can be used to move them from where they are to where they want to be. These include strengths, self-care, visioning and asking for help and support from a place of strength.

Finally, some helpful resources:

For Reading: The 7 Day Parent Coach, Lorraine Thomas

Check it out: Maternal Mental Health Research Collaborative - 5 Ways to Manage Anxiety

Give it a try: ‘Creating Valuable Me Time’ Tool is available here.

This is a great tool for you to identify ways to give yourself some time off and to actually make it happen.

Want help on the journey of Motherhood?

Reach out, I’d love to chat.  Email me on hello@lornalambert.ie or give me a call 087 646125.