Claim your Space

Nurturing your relationship and quality time is important. However, it is equally important to nurture yourself as individuals. Take time occasionally for yourself away from your spouse. Go out with friends...get involved with a hobby...whatever interests you have, foster them. It gives you a chance to regain your identity separate from your relationship, and provides you opportunities to share more with your partner at the same time!

Where do YOU fit in?

There seems to be a common belief that the children must come first in a person's life. To some degree this is true, as the infant is completely dependent on you for everything: feedings, attention, clothing, changing, etc. However, many couples take this to an extreme, resulting in a disconnect in their relationship. While you never want to neglect the needs of a child, you also do not want to neglect your own needs... you're only as good of a caretaker to another as you caretake of yourself.

Prior to children, you might have been a wife/husband, employee, and good friend. Adding in a role of parent may be a juggle, but that additional role should not replace the other roles altogether. If you find you have completely given up other roles to add in the role of the parent, it's time to start doing something different. Reconnect with friends, have a date night with your partner, let your partner take care of the children for a few hours and engage in yoga classes. Whatever you do, it's important NOT to lose yourself in the role of parenthood. At some point, your children will be grown and out of the house, keeping your sense of self in tact will help you with all the transitions in life that face you.

Counseling through the Holidays

The holidays prove to be a stressful time, between dealing with family, buying gifts and trying to please everyone around you, you may feel overwhelmed and feel like you can't add one more commitment to your schedule. I can appreciate this as I also feel overwhelmed at times.

If you've been going to therapy for a while, you may want to feel like cutting therapy out of the schedule to have extra time or extra money for gifts. Consider carefully if this is the right move for you. I'm not automatically saying it's not, but weigh the pros and cons carefully:

Pros:

•Have more time to get things done
•Have more money to invest in gifts and other holiday necessities.

Cons:

•You have difficulty managing stress on your own.
•You allow all the holiday activities to overrun your calendar. Counseling is a guaranteed hour to focus on yourself.
•If your counseling recently took a positive turn, now may not be the best time to suspend sessions as you may lose motivation.
•If the holidays are a difficult time for you, suspending counseling to save a few dollars may not be best for your mental and physical health.

If you are deciding whether or not temporarily suspending sessions through the holidays is appropriate for you, speak with your therapist about it. Together, the 2 of you can look at the progress you've made to date and determine if taking a break for a few weeks would be in your best interest. Ultimately, this discussion could be the catalyst for a positive holiday season!

Taking Care of Yourself

You take care of your spouse, your children, your pets, your friends, your parents and maybe even extended family, but who is taking care of you? If you're feeling stretched thin, it could be due to the fact you aren't putting in enough time for some self-care. This can result in increased stress, which in turn causes you to get sick, resentful and cause tension amongst those you love.

Think of it this way:

Imagine you are holding onto a basket of marbles. Each marble represents a moment of care to be bestowed onto another. For each act, you give out marbles to the individual who is receiving the benefit of that act. So you make time for your kids, those are marbles being given out. Same to your spouse as you take their dry-cleaning in. Same to your friends, who need a shoulder to cry on. You get the idea. After a while, if you aren't receiving marbles as fast as you give them away, what happens? You run out of marbles to give. This is known as "burnout" or some may say, "I've lost my marbles!"



It is important to make sure you are replenishing your own marbles constantly. Whether it be taking a hot bubble bath, long walks, a trip to the beach or time to read a book on the back porch, indulging in a little "me" time allows you to refill your basket and continue to be the giving person you want to be.