The article is developed in partnership with BetterHelp.
With the rising costs of daycare, many parents are choosing to bring back what was once the norm: staying at home full-time to care for children. There’s simply no substitute for spending time and bonding with our offspring, and stay-at-home parents get more of this time than parents who are employed part-time or full-time.
However, it is certainly not the case that being a full-time, stay-at-home parent is all bliss. Many people will claim (with good reason) that being a stay-at-home parent is the most difficult job there is. No matter how much time you are able to spend with your children, your mental health needs are just as valid as anyone else’s. Plus, being mentally healthy yourself can trickle down to your kids and help them adjust to changes in their lives.
The internet has made accessing therapy easier than ever for many people, and the COVID-19 pandemic helped normalize remote healthcare. If you think fitting in therapy to your busy schedule as a stay-at-home parent is too much, we urge you to explore your options. It might be easier than you think, and one of the following types of therapy may be the right one for you.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
If you’re familiar with any specific type of therapy, you’ve likely heard of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on common thoughts or patterns of thought that influence how we feel and, ultimately, our moods.
When you have negative feelings about something, it’s often the result of stories you tell yourself. You might even do it subconsciously. You might tell yourself that you’re not a good parent because your newborn seems to fuss all day and night. If you tell yourself that story repeatedly, you begin to take it as fact.
Cognitive behavioral therapy aims to disrupt these unhelpful thoughts and redirect them so they have a more positive ending. So, instead of telling yourself that you are a bad parent because your child is always fussy, you might affirm that you are an attentive parent who is doing your best to soothe your child and fulfill their needs. Other techniques that fall under the CBT umbrella can help you respond to challenging situations.
Dialectical Therapy
Dialectical therapy is an offshoot of CBT. While CBT can give people a strong foundation in recognizing negative thought patterns and positively reframing perceptions of themselves, DBT goes a step further and aims to give people the tools they need to handle emotionally challenging situations.
When confronted with an emotionally challenging situation, some parts of our reaction are out of our control. Your brain will send you certain signals based on how it feels you should respond to a situation. However, the way we choose to respond is generally within our control. We cannot avoid stressful or upsetting situations, but we can objectively observe and recognize emotions. The more we can be present in stressful situations, the more tolerance we will have for distress.
Interpersonal Therapy
Humans have an underlying biological need to connect with others. We’re social creatures, and we thrive on positive interpersonal relationships. Aside from being social creatures, though, people are complicated. As a result, some relationships you have with key people in your life could use some improvement.
Interpersonal therapy aims to help you improve those relationships and, thus, improve your mental health. Some people need effective communication strategies for their interpersonal relationships; others might need help asserting healthy boundaries. This type of therapy can also help you understand how your words and actions shape others’ perceptions of you, which can help improve self-awareness.
Psychodynamic Therapy
This is the type of therapy you often see in movies and television. In psychodynamic therapy, the therapist usually asks clients questions about their childhood to uncover relationship patterns and unresolved conflicts. Because our behaviors and values are influenced so much by our childhood experiences, clients will sometimes have revelations on seemingly benign past events that heavily influence their unconscious minds. It can also give parents critical self-awareness that is helpful when raising children.
Thank you for reading.
