Overcoming Mom Shame: Finding Compassion and Empowerment to Manage Stress and Guilt
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Show Notes
Paty explains how shame is an internal message of unworthiness while guilt is linked to specific actions. They explore the roots of these feelings, often tied to past experiences, and offer practical strategies for self-regulation to break cycles of intergenerational trauma.
Learn how to foster a healthier self-dialogue and pass down positive behavior patterns to your children.
04:29 Understanding Trauma-Informed Care
07:53 Exploring Mom Guilt and Shame
10:46 Differentiating Guilt and Shame
18:04 Addressing Core Beliefs, Self-Compassion, and Grieving
24:30 Understanding Trauma and Its Impact
28:04 Self-Regulation Techniques
32:43 Daily Practices for Self-Regulation
Paty ‘Mariposa’ Hernandez is a Trauma-Informed Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Reiki Master specializing in education, training, and leading retreats. She helps transform stress and trauma into inner peace using complementary therapies. She’s happily married with 3 cats in Miami!
Connect with Paty ‘Mariposa’ Hernandez
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Paige Bond is an open relationship coach who specializes in helping individuals, couples, and intentionally non-monogamous relationships with feeling insecure in their relationships. She is also the founder of Sweet Love Counseling providing therapy in CO, FL, SC, and VT. Paige loves educating people about relationships through being the host of the Stubborn Love podcast, hosting workshops, and speaking at conferences.
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Transcript
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[00:00:00] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Welcome to the Stubborn Love Podcast. I'm your host Paige Bond. I'm a Gottman and attachment trained, solution focused marriage and family therapist. I specialize in helping folks design and build their dream relationships through structured therapy and resources. And also use modalities that go beyond traditional talk therapy, like accelerated resolution therapy and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.
School didn't teach us how to be good at love, so I created the Stubborn Love podcast to help you navigate it. Every episode has actionable tips that will help you create a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life with the people you love. Join me on this journey of love and learning for the stuff they didn't teach you in relationship school.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Now let's get ready to rock and roll. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Summer in Love. Here today, we have a guest that I specifically actually requested to talk about this topic. So we have Paty, who is a trauma informed clinical social worker and many other things.
We met in a peer consultation group because us therapists, we got to get more eyes on our cases and we always need help. So, Patty has been a great help being part of that group for me. And today we're going to be talking about mom guilt and why it's so hard to choose self care as a priority. So I'm going to let Patty introduce herself and we'll go ahead and get the show started.
So Patty, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, the type of work you do and how you even got into this field?
[00:01:43] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: All right. Awesome. Thank you so much, Paige, for having me on. Severin love podcast. I just love the name I could Say it numerous. I'm like, yes, Deborah. Oh, yeah. I am born and raised in Miami, Florida And I, as you mentioned, a trauma informed Licensed social worker.
I love the work that I do. Really, I love being in private practice I cannot imagine going back and working in a job Like, I just, I do so many different things, so I, I praise all of you who are working those steady, consistent, stable jobs, I should say. So I applaud you for that and I honor you. So I am a part of that.
Also an energy healer. I'm a reiki educator. I teach from a trauma informed perspective. Reiki that is to ensure because when we relax, when we start to calm down, and this happens also in meditations, our body starts to react in ways where like, I'm not ready for this. What is this emotion coming up? What is this feeling in my body coming up?
And that could very well be trauma. That's like, Oh, I see a way out. Let, let me come out and pop, but we're not ready or understanding what's happening. So as a trauma informed practitioner, whether it's therapy or Reiki, I mostly remind people. It's okay. This is, I don't like to use the word normal. Gosh, I'm constantly having to explain what that means, but it's okay for this moment.
Let's just breathe together. Let's allow it to happen. And that's why I love to be present with people. And that's where compassion comes in. Oh, I work both in person in Miami as well as traveling to Miami. Different areas of the U. S. are international. I speak both English and Spanish. What else? And I am a mom of three kitties.
Those are good enough for me. Happily married to a Colombian for three years that we met on a dating app. So if anybody has questions on dating apps, like I can tell you about that And yeah, again, I'm just really happy to to be here. And of course, I also work virtually either offering therapy, Florida clients only, or coaching and energy, which I can work virtually as well around the world.
[00:04:23] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Love it. And I love how you just have just a variety of offers to work with clients. And I want to go back to the talk about the trauma informed care. Because I see this a lot on, you know, Psychology Today profiles or people's websites. And from my understanding from how you just described it, trauma informed care is essentially maybe just kind of holding the trauma for them and letting them know like, hey, if you've got something showing up, like That's okay.
Like, we're gonna go at a slow pace. We're not gonna, like, you know, make you tell all your traumas and, you know, get riled up or anything. It's just like kind of going at their pace and being really, having a gentle approach. Is that it?
[00:05:08] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Correct. Oh, so if you think about trauma, what happens with trauma is that it's power being taken away.
From one thing or another, this could be environmental, so we were just before the show talking about the storm Debbie that's came through the Caribbean and then heading into Florida. That brings up trauma. People who've experienced hurricanes in the past, people who are just like, what is happening? So when we feel any kind of way out of control.
We go into what we know as fight or flight response, and if that person wasn't able to resolve that fight or flight response, then that energy stays within our body. And then our brain constantly acts as, am I safe? And I always say this to clients, they're like, you're so dark. And I'm like, no, but that's really how our brain thinks.
It's really always about like, am I going to die? Like, you know, this guy, when I'm in a conversation, am I going to die right now? Right. And we say that loosely. But that's how our brain processes that fight or flight response. And though with a trauma informed care, we work on giving power back to the person.
Though we're constantly just saying, Hey, would you like to sit here? Would you like a glass of water? Do you want some tissues? What do you want? And so that lets that person know, Oh, I get a choice. I get to say yes or I get to say no. In a lot of trauma cases, especially if it's chronic, they don't have a choice.
They're either just going to get their stuff beat out of them, the way that emotional, psychological trauma, when they're just like, wait, Is this real? Is this normal? Like, what's happening right now? And so we bring back this idea of, well, what do you think? And let's see if what the facts are, not what's real, but what the facts are, and then Okay, well, where'd you get that conclusion?
And so then that leads us to, you know, what we're going to be talking about, the guilt and really the shame that comes with a lot of behaviors or decision making. Does that make sense? Does that answer that question?
[00:07:28] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Yes, it does. And I love that you went there. It sounds like the process is very consent focused.
Like you're asking permission of like, okay, is it okay if we go this step forward? And I love that. That's so beautiful because like you said, it's that power being taken away from them. How empowering for it to feel like, Oh my God, wait, I have a choice in this matter. Like that's so beautiful. So We kind of got to talking about, like, on Instagram of, hey, I'm having, like, some clients struggling with, like, mom guilt.
Like, would you like to talk about that? And you're like, yes, let's do this. I love that you were so passionate about it. First, can we talk about and define, like, what is mom guilt and how you see it show up with your clients?
[00:08:16] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah, I love to differentiate it. Because a lot of people focus on guilt, but what they don't talk about is the shame and shame is the general concept about feeling bad about yourself.
And that's different than the guilt. And we'll go into that in a moment. So what shame is like, I'm worthless. I'm not a good mom. I'm not a good wife. I'm not a good person. That's so general. Whereas Guilt is a certain action of, for example, I can't tell you how often most of my clients were like, I told my child no, and I feel horrible.
Right? So they go from, I told my child no. So I'm feeling guilty for saying no. And then they go into shaming. I'm such a horrible mom. I actually was working with a client recently and she was like, I'm going to ruin my child's life. Because I said, no, that is huge for saying no. When time to this idea that you're going to ruin this child's life, let's talk,
let's bring that up because again, here's that story. I'm a bad mom. I'm not good enough, or my daughter or child is going to hate me. Like I hated my mom. And so then I'm like, oh, okay. Now we're getting to the good stuff. You know, they're like, yes. Why are you excited about that? I'm like, sorry. I get excited when we start hitting that nail on the head.
That comes upon your storytelling, right? Where we start not going into why you feel this way, but let's go back to when did it start? When did that first inkling start to happen? And a lot of where shame and guilt come from honestly is not present moment. It comes back, right? So I always talk about, let's talk about your mom.
Let's talk about your dad. Let's talk about religion. Let's talk about where you grew up. And then they started seeing this much bigger picture. They're like, Oh, well, my mom was constantly saying, well, guess what? You're repeating that to the T. I didn't realize. You know, so that's where I hope my clients is like, let's just look at this and let's be gentle.
[00:10:43] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Yeah. Okay. So there's so much you said there. I love everything first to go off in and discern between the guilt and the shame. So it sounds like guilt is more externalized and we, we can make a little bit more understanding of it of knowing, okay, there's a behavior and like, That I did or that someone else did and now I feel a certain way.
But the shame portion is this internal message or belief that we have about ourselves that can be really damaging, really critical to our core being. Okay, love that because I think we call it mom guilt, but it's actually mom shame. It's not like yeah. Okay. And so it sounds like usually what happens the situation that they're going through that they're talking to you about.
It's not really rooted in the situation. There's some other message or situation that might have happened earlier in their lives or a multitude of situations that really contributed to this view. of how shameful they feel, right?
[00:11:48] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Exactly.
[00:11:48] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: That's heavy. Yes. And you talked a lot about like the different aspects too.
It could be religion. It could be family. Maybe there was, you know, a weather event somehow that could have contributed. I'm saying weather because we're both in Florida and experiencing, you know, a little bit of a hurricane right now. So there's so many factors that can go into this. What do you do when that shows up in the room?
How do you help?
[00:12:15] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah, for sure. Well, one of the things is I help them to differentiate. Right. Let's talk. Is this guilt or is it shame? And once they move away, because again, it kind of goes back to just even focusing on feelings. Because a lot of people just like, I always say like babies, right? Babies just really focus on anger, sadness.
I mean, hunger is more of an action. Right, happy and joy, like, those are basically the emotions babies show. And moving forward, we still keep that vocabulary, I'm angry, or I'm sad, or I'm happy. And I like to tell them actually one of the handouts that I give them and they, they love it. And you can look this up or if you want to email me, I'll happy to send that to you.
But it's called the anger iceberg and it just shows, I don't know, have you seen that page or use it? Yeah. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Love it. So with the anger iceberg, like it's easy to say, okay, this is what I'm feeling. Here's the anger. But when we break it down, it's like, no, it's, it's really more than that.
It could be disappointment. It could be frustration. It could be worried. And so once we start understanding, well, what is happening? So I'll give you an example. I have a very sad situation or a client that's in a sad situation. She's a mom. She was a single mom. She left an abusive situation and she and her son went on.
She did everything right. Then here comes the sacrifice. I did everything for my child. I put him in front of me, right? So here's this concept I have to process. And now, for whatever reason, we haven't been able to figure it out. The son just decided because it really was his decision that he wants nothing to do with his mom.
No explanation. Just like, I'm done with you. And she's obviously heartbroken. She doesn't get it. Right. And so her birthday just happened and he didn't call or text or reached out. And she's like focusing on Shane. I'm the worst mother. What did I do? How could I have been better? Right, here's this, I'm not good enough, kind of attitude, instead of like, wait hold on a second, this isn't about you, let's look at his actions.
What did he do? What did he say? What are we not taking into account? Right? These are his actions, but it's so much easier to blame oneself. This is again the mom shaming. I'm not good enough. I'm worthless. Let's look at what is the actual behavior, the words, the situation. Right? So as a parent who's helping or raising a young child or Teenage years, we won't even get into that.
Yeah, there's so much conflict there. But as a young child, remember as a parent, there's no guidebook. There's a lot of books coming from different perspectives. And all you can do is take that information and say, okay, what works for me and what can work with my child? One of the things I constantly tell my clients is let's have dialogues.
Let's check in. Right? And there's so many ways to have that dialogue. But one of the things, and I remember this from my own personal childhood, is that something that lacked is that communication. So I constantly thought I was a bad child because I would get into trouble a lot. Or my mom would ignore me.
And so that brought up a lot of self esteem issues because in my family, I wasn't, I'm like, hello. So I would literally act out, yell, do all of these boundary pushing things just to be like, can you look at me, please? Of course I was getting the wrong behavior. I can't tell you how many times I would be.
Left in timeout, you know, there was no like, oh, three minutes per age or whatever that is. No, no, go in timeout, go to your room and I would just be like, okay, I'm here for like two hours. Are we done yet? And my mom would totally forget that I was even in timeout. And so then I'm like, wow. Am I not worth it?
You know, and so I would start shaming myself. And that's what happens to kids. So imagine if we haven't worked on that as a child, then that shame or embarrassment or whatever are going to go into adulthood. We don't move very far. You know, in our minds, we grow physically, but our minds may stay the same and regress constantly.
And bringing up a child brings up a lot of those traumas, a lot of those scars. I was like, Oh, let's reopen them. And we're bleeding out.
[00:17:21] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because we're bringing these messages from childhood or from, you know, whatever period of life that we gain them. And now it feels like, oh my gosh, this is kind of happening again, like the, the situation, you know, hey, there's this ignoring of, of me, you know, from my child, not reaching out.
It's my birthday. Why are they not, you know, calling me. So I'm going to guess maybe a similar experience probably had happened for them. And it's like, Oh my god, the same thing happened. I'm the common denominator. I hear this all the time. I'm the common denominator. It must be me. There must be something wrong with me.
[00:18:02] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: And that's the shaming. I'm not good enough, right? And so that's where we start breaking down what is that core belief so that then we can start cleaning it up, clearing it, and rebuilding. But one of the most important things, and this is what I teach consistently, is the self compassion, is the moment you are aware that these words are coming out of your mouth, it's like, Oh, hold on a second.
Is this helpful? Am I hurting myself? Right? Which, for example, in, I work with a lot of people who are still in either the Catholic or Christian religion, which is fine. But one of the things I always tell them is, what is the message that you're hearing? Are you hearing that everything you do is a sin?
Okay? If it's a sin, boom, you're going into shame. I'm a bad person for having these thoughts. Like, no, you're a human being. It's when you act upon them. Now that gets us into what's happening there. And so that's why I like to ensure, like whenever I, with my clients, I say, imagine you're having a conversation with me, go ahead and have it out loud.
Don't have it in your head, have it out loud and hear what you're saying. Then we can. Cause that more into awareness. They're like, Oh, I'm talking to myself. Am I crazy? And I'm like, no, quite the opposite. The more you talk out loud to yourself, the less ideal of crazy because you're not combating 30, 000 thoughts that happen in your head from all different areas, all lifetimes.
It's a whole different subject, but you know, like all like your childhood, all of these memories are coming back. And if you keep stay in your head, that's where the chaos and the guilt and the shame just keep magnifying.
[00:20:08] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: So The first step is to identify, ooh, so this is actually a core belief. Let's talk about it.
You know, let's start slicing away to see, you know, between fact, between feeling, between what's going on right now, and then moving into once you get to that part, okay, let's externalize this. Let's actually, like, get it out for you and talk about it so that you're not. Fighting this war internally, just constantly, because that's where the I'm guessing the anxiety comes from.
That's where the shame spiral, the worst case scenario, right? Okay. All right. So once we do that externalization, so we have it out, we're having the conversation. Well, then what it still feels. Pretty bad, usually, at that point. May make it a little bit of relief, at least we're like talking about it, but it's still, we're in the same situation, right?
So what's next?
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[00:21:44] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah, going back to is having that self compassion. One of the most important things is kind of like going back to that client I was talking about is you can't change what happened in the past.
So if you made a mistake on how you think you raised this child, you can't go back there, right? You did the best that you could. with what you knew and appreciate that, just remember that, honor that, right? And so here it comes back to let's have self compassion towards the past and self compassion towards what's happening right now.
But also it's important to grieve, right? So in this situation, we're working on grieving the loss of a child that is still alive. And unfortunately, it happens. We see this, I don't know if you do, but I see this a lot of times in inner circle, right, like the family cycle where all of a sudden the adult child gets mad at another adult child or sibling and they go at it and they still go at it as though they were 10 years old.
And they can't get past it. So then that causes chaos with the mom. Or trying to bring in the peace, be like, Children, let's all get along. But we have to honor that they are choosing not to get along. That they're holding, bringing in more than likely the past of not feeling good enough. And then they argue, right?
And it comes out in anger. Again, if we broke, broke, broke it down, it would be they don't feel good enough or whatever core belief that is. But the reason I always say, let's just talk about it, right? Be very careful of also who you talk to, because a lot of times we go to our friends, but our friends are going to give, a lot of times, advice based on their experiences.
They're like, do this how I did it, because it worked for me, but like they said, it worked for them. Doesn't mean you're in the same situation, so it may not work for you. That's again why talking to a professional, a therapist, is going to be very helpful because we come from it at a neutral state. And one of my clients, or all of my clients are like, you ask so many questions, but they're always good and laser point.
They're like, you're good. I'm like, here's a practice. Yeah. And it's just like asking like, okay, where's that coming from or how is that coming in? But again, self compassion is really important and knowing and removing this. What I'm doing now, in this moment, is going to permanently scar this child. And this is again where trauma comes in.
A lot of people believe that trauma is forever. Or that somebody who goes through a traumatic event is going to experience traumatic symptoms. That's actually not true. Trauma, people experience trauma because it becomes almost like what? Gabor Maté says it's a psychological wound. that hasn't been healed.
Oh, let's say, here's like two different examples. Let's say a parent is doing something, and a dog comes and bites the child. If the mom freaks out, and like, oh my god, I'm the worst mother! And the child is like, freaking out, because they got bit by this dog, and then they're seeing their mom freaking out, and then the child internalizes it, like, what did I do?
Trauma. Right there. Because of how the behavior happened. How to move away from trauma is, okay, the mom is busy, comes back, the child gets bit by a dog, well, let's make sure the dog is away, and then go to the child. How are you feeling? Are you okay? You must be so scared. I know I was scared, right? So I'm not as a mom, I'm the worst mom, no, my focus is, is this child okay?
I need to be calm. So my child is calm. That reduces trauma.
[00:25:55] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Wow. So it's coming to the care of the person who is wounded rather than focusing on this personal internal experience. That could actually end up wounding the person who's experiencing the trauma. Correct. Oooh. Okay. But that's so hard to do. I could imagine in that moment, let's use the dog bite scenario, sure, I could see like, you know, many people easily freaking out, oh my god, my child just got bit by the dog.
Like, how do you not have a reaction like that? How do you? become more focused on the person who's experiencing it rather than reacting from their own internal fear, anxiety, whatever's going on.
[00:26:37] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah, and that can be challenging in only understanding our fight or flight response. So some moms, and we're talking about moms, go into the fight response and the fight is, I need to go protect or I need to defend.
They don't even think about am I going to get into danger? Am I going to be okay? They don't even think about that. The flight response is They want to run away. They're like, oh my gosh, this is chaotic. I don't know what to do. I'm freaking out There's blood. My child is screaming. That's a flight response Okay, and that response is a lot of times more coming from a trauma response Such as shame is coming from a trauma response, and these are things that haven't been dealt with.
And once we recognize, okay, that first instance, that would be my cue for you to go seek help. Let's process what happened. Discuss it. Let's break it down. How did you react? And was this coming up? Because I also work with a lot of clients that disassociate, right? Or go into that freeze response and they're like, I don't know what to do.
My child is dying, right? That freeze response, 100 percent trauma, right? They're not there. So again, it's recognizing, how do you respond to traumatic or challenging situations? Work through it, because then that's where we practice self regulation, and the more you self regulate on a daily basis, which is different from self care.
Self care are different actions that you take, but self regulation is, I'm going into anxiety, or I'm going into crisis, oh, what can I do to calm down, right? So, it's that the more you practice these self regulation techniques, the more calm you are, and the less reactive. You are, and that's going to be really important to be less reactive and more attentive to the situation.
Kind of like one of the things I learned in, in wilderness first aid, cause I was doing a lot of traveling. They're always saying, let's triage, let's look, stop. Am I in danger? Is the other person in danger? What can I do? And this is all split. I mean, I'm breaking it down slowly, but this happens really quickly.
Based on training, calming oneself down and then taking action. But again, that self regulation, that's another important part is once we start noticing, we're like, Oh, I go like freak out mode, right? Which some moms do, Oh, what can I do to calm down? Do I breathe? Do I go for a walk? Do I go like the silly Willy and just be like, right, just moving all that energy out and then be like, okay.
Now, what can I do? And if you, for any reason, if a parent yells at a child, one, recognize you're yelling at a child. Stop, walk away, calm yourself down and then come back and sit at the child's level and be like, again, instead of going into guilt, let's go into like, let me take personal responsibility. I apologize for yelling.
What happened was again in the child age and then having that communication and then just acknowledging like, that must've been really scary seeing me scream, wasn't it?
[00:30:14] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Yeah, that was
[00:30:16] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: and then be like, well, this is what happened. What can we do differently? Boom, let it go. No more guilt. No more shame. You took care of it.
You mean the pain? Yeah.
[00:30:29] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: I really love how you discerned between self care and self regulation. And it sounds like if someone does not have a routine or a pattern of self regulation strategies, This is how we can easily pass down. This intergenerational trauma, like I saw it so vividly as you were explaining this of like, oh, if parent is in fight or flight mode, they're going to pass that on to their child.
Child's gonna grow up experiencing that kind of like Oh, this is how I should be reacting because this is how mom reacted in a scary situation. I just saw that clear as day. It makes so much sense. And so it sounds like it's very like one of the utmost important things to do is to work on that regulation to be able to teach your child how to regulate and move about in the world the day.
[00:31:25] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah, exactly. It's again, kind of going back to like, when I noticed, like, if I'm yelling, right, my fight or flight is I fight, I'm like, I just become an ogre. And again, because of my personal therapy, practicing self regulation, doing all these different techniques every single day, I recognize when I call it the the ogre starts to come out.
I'm like, Oh, here it comes. I put myself in timeout. I talk out loud. I figure out, okay, what just happened? Why did I get so mad? What do I want to do about it? Calm myself down. And then I go back out. I'm like. Okay, I'm ready to talk. Are you ready to talk? And then the other person can say yes or no, if they're not ready to be like, okay, well, I'm good.
You let me know when you're good. And again, it's giving that permission even to a child instead of saying, Oh, you need to listen to me right now because I'm your mother or I'm your father. Oh, gosh, we need to get rid of that. That brings up a lot of shame.
[00:32:30] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Yes. Yes. Wow. I'm so glad we got to this point.
Like, I didn't think that this is where the conversation would go, but again, it just makes so much sense. So you gave a couple of examples of what that regulation looks like. How could someone put this into a routine of daily practice that is You know, separate, like you said, from their self care practice, or maybe they also need to work on the self care too.
But what are the specific strategies that they could work on to start putting self regulation as a part of their practice?
[00:33:03] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah. So three self regulation techniques that I teach my clients right away, because again, working with trauma, that starts to come up and then I say, okay, let's pause. One of them is.
What we call the butterfly hug, right? And there's different techniques, right? I mean, I usually say you can do it from here You can do it from here or even here say which one feels good to you, right? And so you find oh some people like it here Some people like much closer and then you hold on to yourself and you're just like, okay, then just slowly start tapping I can feel the tap.
I can feel it. I'm calming. I'm being present. And so we just keep tapping slowly left to right until we notice our breathing, which is probably shallow, right? That's the fight or flight response starts becoming deeper. And it's almost like this big bubble that's up here starts to decrease and start moving down.
And we're like, okay, once it's down there, we're like, That's one technique. Another, we're going into the
[00:34:09] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: others. Actually, I want to ask. Yes. Why is that helpful? I mean simply just you know, putting yourself into a tighter position into like this self hug position and tapping Why would that help you feel more comforted and down regulate yourself?
Yeah,
[00:34:27] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: great question. Well one We're crossing the left or right hemisphere. And so once we do that, now our brain goes from being chaotic to like, Ooh, what's going on? We're doing something different. Okay, so now we're on opposite sides. And it's giving our brain a little bit more work, because this isn't automatic.
Well, It can be. Some people do this automatically, but they don't realize it. Right? So when we start doing this, and then the tapping helps to actually bring down the nervous system. And we do this a lot. A lot of children do this. With the rocking. Right? Yes. And some kids tap themselves, right? Or they tap their legs and they do this.
They're self regulating, right? Or sometimes they start to, which is why I do like the silly willing, right? It's just a silly name, but that's another self regulation where you're actually shaking the energy out. And this has been proven in science and we see this in animals, where that's a self regulation technique that reduces the anxiety or the trauma response.
You shake out that energy, let it flow through, and then we're like, okay, now I'm going to go back around our day. Right? We can think of, like, the deer in headlights kind of situation. That's a freeze response. And the moment the deer is like, I'm good, it shakes off that energy of fear and it's like, hey, let's go jump along.
Let's go jump away from danger. Right. Are they thinking this? Of course not. Right. Those are two practices. And the third one is using your five senses. It's a mindfulness practice. And that's where you look around the room and you say, okay, what is one thing that I'm looking at? Okay. I'm looking at this wall.
What is something that you smell? What is something that you're listening to? Start with one thing at a time. And if you realize, okay, I need more. Okay, what are two things that I see, right? And let's describe it. Are we looking at this wall? Am I looking at my, you know, don't look at technology. Leave your phone alone.
That's going to just regulate you even more. We want to say in this present moment, where are you now? And that could even be like, let me touch my skin. Oh, it's a little bit, you know, dry or it's moist or I'm feeling sweaty or wow, I think I'm thirsty. Or what would this glass of water be like? And then we start breaking that down.
People are like, but that's so simple. That's self regulation. It is much more simple than staying in here, which is. Full of chaos. We need to get back into our bodies because our body is really what's going to tell like Physically move us in one direction or another but if we tell our body we're safe.
We're in control We're okay And again, this takes less than a minute people think this you got to be doing this for like five minutes No one minute is really enough to start bringing yourself down. The more time you have, the couple more minutes, it just really keeps you in that self regulation. So you stay calm.
So if something else, like, pokes at you, you're not, like, back up to, like, ten. Right? You're just like, Oh, okay, I'm at a five. Okay, we're good at five. Do I want to go down a little bit lower to, like, really calm three? You can ask yourself. Okay. Yep. Let's keep breathing. Let's practice that mindfulness. Do I want to hug myself a little bit more?
And another thing, going back to the, the hugging, if we know in a lot of cultures and some even here in America are swathing, right? I don't even know, swaddle, I think where they wrap the babies really tightly. So that's kind of what we're imitating. We're bringing back together this idea of we're being hugged.
And it's not somebody outside of us, but it's us doing it to ourselves. Be like, I'm going to hug myself and you're like, and it feels so good. The brain doesn't know if it's somebody else
[00:38:52] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: or if it's you. Yeah. I love that. And I'm quite often a self hugger. I love it. Like this is something that I think I even do automatically.
I don't even notice. So it could be, you know, as a break in between sessions to kind of get myself back down to regulation, be prepared for it. The next thing I love it. This is so comfortable to be able to do this self hug. So I love all these strategies you gave, like you can do this at work. You can do this in between.
you know, setting your baby down for a nap. Like these are some really great, like you said, easy, simple strategies. They don't have to take forever, like one minute. I love it. Okay. So we have to start winding down, but is there anything that we did not cover yet that it would be really important for listeners to hear, or is there anything you want to leave listeners with before we wrap up?
[00:39:46] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Yeah, the most important thing I want listeners to keep in mind is what is the dialogue you're having with yourself. If you continue to point the finger and say that you're not good enough, or you're a bad mom, or you're going to ruin your child, that language is being picked up. I can't tell you how often I hear that from even my loved ones and like parents who constantly criticize their weight, like I'm so fat or if I eat that, I'm going to gain five pounds.
And then they look at their child who's suffering from, you know, unsure what to eat or they overindulge because they're like, well, I don't care. Well, they do, but in a way, they're kind of telling their mom, Stop caring about what you look like. You're beauti You're amazing. Right? So again, it's just coming back to that self dialogue, noticing what you're saying and start practicing with compassion and separating the shame of I'm not good enough to like, what is the action or the behavior?
Separate it. You're not. Pointing the finger, but you're saying, okay, this is what I said, or this is what I did. How can I be better or shifted
[00:41:05] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: beautifully said like everything else you've talked
[00:41:08] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: about today?
[00:41:09] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Juicy goodness. Thank you so much for talking about all of this. And I would love to open the floor to let listeners know what do you have going on?
I know you do a lot of events. So where could people find you? And, you know, if people want to work with you, could you tell them how?
[00:41:26] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Of course. Well, if you're on Instagram, how we connected, you can just find me at stress less with Patty and Patty is with one T or they can go visit me on my website at Mariposas, M A R I P O S A S holistic.
com slash events. And you'll see my virtual events, my in person events. I do retreats. I teach Reiki classes, I do sessions, I do a little bit of everything that makes things more enjoyable for me. Again, I can't imagine going to even the same place. Day in, day out, but that's just me, but that's because of the lifestyle I've created for myself.
But that's how you can find out more about me. Let's have a conversation and I'll be more than happy to pass on some resources that I've given to my clients so that we create new words to say to ourselves, instead of the same, I'm not enough. We're going to switch that.
[00:42:32] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Yeah, let's kick that negative self talk to the curb.
Very cool. I'll make sure to have all the links in the show notes so people can find you, go follow you on Instagram, check out what events you have going on, or schedule a consult with you. Again, thank you so much for taking your time today to talk about this. I super appreciate it.
[00:42:51] Paty Mariposa, LCSW: Thank you so much, Paige.
I love that you have this podcast. It's a dream I have eventually, just not right now. So I applaud that you have it.
[00:43:01] Paige Bond, Relationship Expert: Coming up though, on the future, it's always good to dream. Exactly. All right, listeners, I will catch you on the next one. See ya. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Stubborn Love. I hope you gathered some wisdom to bring into your love life and improve your relationships.
If you enjoyed today's chat, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. That'll help this episode reach even more listeners. If you have any questions or stories you would like me to cover in the future episodes, drop me a message. I love hearing from you. If you need extra support in your relationships, check out how we might be able to work together by popping on my website at paigebond.Com. Until next time, don't let being stubborn keep you from secure love. Catch you in the next episode.
