Parents of Multiples: Multiples of America April Wellness Month Article

Parenting multiples has unique challenges and rewards. While raising multiple children simultaneously brings joy, it can be overwhelming. Maintaining wellness is essential for both parents and children. Negative emotions like fear, anger, sadness, and overwhelm are all part of being human.  But that does not make them easy to manage.  Whether it’s the sense of dread we get before a challenging task, or the frustration of dealing with unmet expectations, our big feelings can drain our energy, mess up our performance, and make us feel terrible.  With appropriate strategies, it is possible to manage emotions effectively and utilize them positively, regardless of life's challenges. 

We often wonder why we experience certain emotions and how to control them when they become intense. Most people learn physical exercises at a young age but rarely learn how to manage emotions formally.  It is crucial to equip everyone with tools to cope with big feelings. Between work, life stress, politics, and planetary concerns, it's easy to frequently feel fear, anxiety, and overwhelm.

Here are some practical tips for managing intense emotions remembering that different tools will work for different situations.

·        Listen to feel-good music to dispel negative moods.  Find the right outside sensory stimulus such as, sipping a warm drink, smelling a comforting scent, hugging a cozy blanket.  Research shows that using our senses can be a great way to break out of big feelings and to effortlessly shift our emotion.

·        Divert your attention by running or solving puzzles, like Wordles.  If it is pleasant and cognitively or physically demanding, it will capture your attention and be useful for distraction.  You want a distraction to capture your attention to prevent it from going right back away to the situation that provoked you.

·        Step back and shift your perspective by reframing how you think about your circumstances. This can be hard to do when we are totally immersed in the situation and emotions are flooding us.  So, when you use the word “you” to refer to your own problem, “so, Margot, why are you doing this and what do you think you should do?” it puts you in a frame of mind where you are essentially giving advice to someone else.  Another perspective shifting tool is called mental time travel. Consider how you'll feel about this in a day, month, or year.

·        Get physical distance from upsetting environments or individuals.  Go to a space that has restorative properties and makes you feel safe and secure.  Identify safe places such as your bedroom, a park, or a place of worship where you can go to manage your emotions. These locations allow you to simply be present without needing to take any action.

·        Surround yourself with positive people to balance your emotions.  Emotional contagion provides opportunities to influence not only our own emotions but also help regulate the emotions of those we care about.

Remember, your emotions are functional signals. Feeling lonely or upset by a boss's comment is a cue to act. Once you understand the lesson from your emotion, it's time to move on.