%20(1080%20x%201080%20px).png)
The Mostly Mental Mom
Real talk on the rollercoaster of mental health—it's affect on every part of your life, survival hacks, and a little bit of funny banter to remind you that showing up for yourself is the most important thing you can do in the mental health game!
The Mostly Mental Mom
EP.9 Real Talk | Embracing 2025 with Goals That Support Mental Health
Ever felt swamped by the relentless societal pressure to start the new year with grand resolutions, only to find them slipping away amid life's chaos? You're in the right place. Kicking off season two of the Mostly Mental Mom podcast, I, Lauren, am here to share my take on embracing 2025 with a fresh mindset. Instead of falling for the usual new year's hype, I reveal five practical goals designed to support your mental health journey. From practicing self-compassion to setting micro goals, let's explore how these small, intentional steps can create clarity and progress in the unpredictable dance of life.
In this episode, we tackle the everyday hurdles of mental health, like insomnia and loneliness, and how to build stability through small, positive actions. Together, we'll uncover the power of having a consistent wake-up routine and the calming effects of meditation as a mindfulness tool. I also discuss the often tricky path of reaching out for support and the surprising ways social media can help maintain connections during isolating times. As we wrap up, the focus is on the profound impact of micro goals, reinforcing that even the smallest steps forward can lead to significant transformations in our mental well-being. Join me as we reshape our approach to the new year with realistic, achievable goals that matter.
Show up friends!
Lauren | The Mostly Mental Mom
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Mostly Mental Mom podcast. I'm Lauren, your podcast host and your resident Mostly Mental Mom. Happy New Year Y'all. It's 2025. I am in denial. I don't know about you, but here we are nonetheless. I apologize for missing out this last week. I unfortunately got sick at the end of the year and you wouldn't have wanted to have this voice hacking and coughing up a lung trying to host a podcast. So here we are, january 3rd, launching season two of the Mostly Mental Mom podcast. This will be episode one, and I'm going to go ahead and change my drop dates to be Fridays and Tuesdays. This is going to work better, just being able to record when no one's at the house.
Speaker 1:So I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, or you were able to get through your holiday if it was not the ideal scenario, and I hope that going into this new year, you are filled with a sense of community and people rallying around you and a sense of you have the strength and you have what it takes to conquer this next year. The word hope is not my favorite and you know that already. Wish for us to get to a point to where that word doesn't kind of emanate this negative emotion of what am I hoping for? Um, because I'll be honest, going in 2025, everyone's you know, most posts are this is going to be the best year yet, like I learned so much in 2024. So this is gonna be it, and I see all my memories flood on Facebook and Instagram and all the things and all it says is, every single end of year, I'm going oh crap, I hope this next year is good and, frankly, I'm at a point where I'm going. I don't really believe this is it. I don't believe this is going to be the year, and I hate to be that forthcoming with my pessimism about it, but it's the reality. A part of it is a coping and protective mechanism, because if I get too hopeful and you know I've talked about this already it is an immediate expectation that I've set too high, that usually causes too much of a repercussion that it's not worth setting that. So, anyways, I hope you're hopeful, but if you're not, that's also okay. Okay, it's okay to be a little fearful of this year, to be intimidated by it, to be intimidated by the new beginnings and the societal pressures that immediately everyone's like you should join a gym, you should go on a diet, you need to lose weight, you need to stop drinking sodas. This is all these big life changes you should do now because it's a new year. Forget all that, don't worry about it, because I ain't doing any of that. I'm still trying to hold my crap together, y'all. So I can't be doing all those changes.
Speaker 1:So this brings me to today's episode, season two, episode one, of setting five goals that are realistic for people that are still in the midst of chaos, in the midst of crap and are digging through the mud. They just scraped by last year and they're nowhere near a place of grand revealing of their purpose or what is next, but just trying to still get by, just still trying to show up for their life. And I went over five goals that I told you I was going to set and I would talk about on here, and that's what we're going to do today. So quickly, I'm just going to go through what the five goals are, and that is self-compassion was the first one, and then the second one was to set small, routine actions in place Positive, small keyword, small there y'all. And the third was healthy coping strategies. The fourth was seeking and accepting support, and then the last one was micro goals that would help you gain clarity and see progress in your journey. So, with that said, I'm just going to go ahead and dive into my first one, self-compassion. Goal number one this is probably. I'm probably going to say they're all hard, but this is very hard because whenever you, in my experience, dealing with bipolar disorder and living with it and living with mental illness and those that I have encountered that live with it, I think that we have a tendency to beat ourselves up more than most, and I say that because it's not a badge of honor to be able to do so, trust me.
Speaker 1:But our mind is what we are fighting. We are fighting brain chemistry that is off and due to it being off, we basically have this little other extra voice in our head, this kind of alter ego for lack of a better word this kind of other sense of self that is usually not feeling so great all the time. This person's never happy. We may look happy and feel all the good emotions and all the joys of life on this portion of it, like the person you see in front of you, but that little piece of us in our heads, that silent battle that I talked about from day one is always looking for a reason to go no, you suck. Like you're awful, like you're a burden, no one wants you around, you're miserable. Like you are terrible, like it just beats us down internally and therefore we feed it and we give into it and we say, yeah, you're right, I am a piece of shit, I am worthless, I shouldn't have anybody that cares about me, I don't give anything back. Why should anyone love me? Well, there's lots of reasons why people should love us and why all of that is a lie.
Speaker 1:However, it's not that easy to dispute, so, self-compassion being the number one goal for those of us that are in the trenches, um, with a mental warfare, or if you're in the trenches with a mental warfare, or if you're in the trenches with some other warfare. You have to be easy on you, you have to give yourself grace. For anyone else to give you grace, you have to show yourself love. And that is hard to do because, believe me, there's little, very little, that I love about myself right now, because I only see the negatives of what I have done or what's been a byproduct of my bipolar disorder. That to be like, yes, like I value you and love you, like that is very hard to say or believe. Nonetheless, don't even say it. I could say it, but I may not believe it.
Speaker 1:It is the first, very first defense against that dark voice, against the, against the battle against the negative. Um, you have to oppose it. You can't, you can't give negative to negative, right, it's just like magnets. Um, you have to do the opposing and we are naturally going into the negative, self-deprecating mode. And so self-compassion allows us to see okay, I live with bipolar disorder. I am not bipolar disorder. That is not what defines me. It is a part of me and for me.
Speaker 1:How I'm going to use self-compassion, how I'm going to use this goal, is whenever I want to look at my bipolar disorder as a crutch and as a negative and how it hinders me from things in life. I'm going to challenge myself to counter with. That may be true that relationships are hard because of your bipolar disorder, because you are unpredictable and it's a chronic illness and it's manageable, but it's not curable and it's hard for people to love you and be around you. I'm going to hear all that negative part to it. But when I start hearing that, I am going to counter with what does my bipolar bring to the table. That actually is a gift that actually enhances my life and gives me ability to do things that others simply can't, and that is showing myself compassion, because I'm highlighting what is also good, I am reminding myself what is also valuable about me, and that it ties in with my bipolar.
Speaker 1:It isn't just, oh, lauren, you're smart or you're creative. That doesn't tie into, like how my bipolar somewhat serves me at times. Um, for me, that's how the self-compassion piece is going to. I'm going to try to foster that and an example will be um, that, yes, it's unpredictable and there are many frustrations that I have with how my bipolar functions within me, on how it's unpredictable and how normal schedules do not work well for me and I can get quickly overstimulated and or set into either like a depressive state really quickly, especially with life stressors happening, and then it allows me to quickly sink into I'm just failing, because I feel like I can't show up for things, because I'm literally struggling to just do the day, much less any tasks.
Speaker 1:Leaning into that and saying yeah, that's it, that's all my bipolar does is just send me into useless depressions and makes me unable to provide for my family and makes people not want to be around me, I'm going to flip it and I'm going to say but it also allows, whenever I am able, to come out of those depressive episodes and those depressive states, I am usually followed with a more not manic day or manic times, but I am on a more high, functioning, very superficial level of I can just then really tackle projects like no one else can and in a way that nobody else can. I know it is unique to me and so I need to highlight those moments, and that is showing compassion for myself and allowing myself to see the victories and the setbacks. Seeing the setbacks, knowing it's okay that that happened, but also highlighting that, hey, there's good that comes from this too, there are gifts that comes from this too. So goal number one self-compassion. Goal number two create a routine of small positive actions. The biggest thing here for me is remembering small Along with those flips of kind of riding a tiny bit of a hypomania wave, I can then go oh my gosh, I can conquer the world. No, no, no, no, no, like that is an ultimate just set up for a crash and burn. So a daily routine, like one or two small positive actions a day, is what we're looking at here for this, for you're in the trenches Every day.
Speaker 1:Right now is a struggle. It's hard. You are going through something. Maybe it's not mental health, maybe it is For me. I'm in the trenches. I am struggling to really figure out what life is supposed to be at 38. And that's humbling to say, because everyone expects you to have it figured out. But I have to show myself compassion. It's my journey, that's all that matters. But for routine, small positive actions, the first thing I'm going to do is quite literally make myself get up the same time every day, like. That sounds very uh, something you'd have your high schooler do, I guess. I don't really know, I have a seven-year-old so, but um, I have gotten lax in keeping routine just in my day now.
Speaker 1:Sometimes this is harder to follow when you struggle with mental health disorders, because there are other things that can fall into suit with your disorder, like insomnia. That is one for me, so I may be up a majority of the night and I may not fall asleep until 4 am. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have the ability to still set a start time for the day and I can't rest later. I let that be a crutch as in like I didn't sleep well, so then I can just waste the the day away kind of deal, when really I could get up, get stuff done and then rest if I need to. And I may not need to rest, and I may sleep better that following night if I'm not lazy, as I'll get out that entire day. So that goal may seem ridiculous to you, and that's okay, it's fine, it's my journey, not yours. But it's a small goal. It's a small positive action that I know will make a difference and lead to more small positive actions, and that's just where I'm going to start. So that's that.
Speaker 1:One Number three healthy coping strategies. Healthy coping strategies. This is a big one because, um, life is just one big trigger, especially when you're already on edge and you're already struggling and going through a tough time. There's just a lot of things that can trigger you, more so than they probably would or should do so, and it's so tempting to mouth off to anyone who's talking to you that may be a trigger. Or it's so tempting to like viciously, type away on social media. It's tempting to just shut down. It's tempting to cry and just roll up into a ball and forget the day. However, it's not realistic. It's not realistic for moving forward and really facing what is going on.
Speaker 1:And so, with healthy coping strategies, something that I've never really tried and I think that I should is meditation. So again, with the small efforts here, I'm not going to go start going to a meditation class that's an hour long every Tuesday and Thursday at 6am. I'm setting myself up for failure by that notion. I am going to simply use the meditation app on my phone and just do five to 10 minutes whenever I feel like I need it and just try to practice that more daily. In general, I think mindfulness is a key coping strategy, especially whenever you don't necessarily have people readily available to talk to about what you're dealing with or what's going on. You don't have necessarily someone you could just call and talk it out. I think that meditation and being able to take what you're thinking and feeling and try to allow it to not stay pent up, and whether it's through breathing exercises in meditation or just kind of repeating and releasing the thought, I think would be very valuable. So for healthy coping strategies, I'm going to start by some meditation.
Speaker 1:Number four is seek and accept support. I told y'all I was going to say every one of these is hard. This is actually probably the hardest for me and we've talked about it already. Um 2024 was basically the year of pruning, I would say on. I had to be stripped down to just me and just my singular self in my bipolar disorder, and that came with a lot of benefits to realizing myself and realizing how I was coping, and or not coping, with my mental health. However, it also brought about a lonely season, how I was coping and or not coping with my mental health. However, it also brought about a lonely season, and that makes seeking and accepting support challenging when you really don't feel like you have that you know, like it doesn't exist. Um, I have been fortunate to have made connections through starting the podcast and through being vocal about this on social media, that I I am building connections and support.
Speaker 1:But you know, if you have something deep, like a mental health disorder or any topic, that's hard to explain to anyone else, it's just, it's always hard to just say that first word I need or that first phrase I need help or can someone listen. Um, I need an ear, like I, it's. It's hard to get that out. And so, um, with this one, with the seek and support.
Speaker 1:The fourth goal mine is one. I do need to go see my counselor more. Um, finances have been a big part of that, but I could manage at least enough for, like you know, once a month or something like that, you know. But I am going to make sure I continue doing this. It is seems like this is very easy for me to do. It is seems like this is very easy for me to do.
Speaker 1:Probably from your vantage point, I don't really know. However, I fight quitting, I fight giving up, I fight not getting on here and talking out of fear. I, that is a constant struggle and so, but you are also my support system. You are also where I seek support in how I also share what's happening so I can get it out. Um, so, maintaining this avenue and maintaining it on my social platforms, um, and then building the relationships within the communities that I have found. Um, that's going to be my number four and that brings us to number five set micro goals for clarity and progress. So, micro goals focusing on small, tangible steps to gain clarity and take action for what's next.
Speaker 1:So what is next? That question alone scares the bejeebers out of me y'all. Just I don't know. I have spent years, 20 years, feeling like I know what's next, and now I'm at the spot where I don't know, I have no idea, um, so what I can only do with the thought, the thought of what's next, is what I can hope is what's next, um, and that is to continue showing up every day. I am so quick to throw in the towel and give up that right now, I am trying very hard to build a brand.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to build this podcast, I'm trying to build a community and a platform that not only raises awareness about mental health and makes the conversation vulnerable and authentic and encourages others to do so, but I'm also trying to pave a path, a career, a purpose for myself in the middle of it. In the middle of it, the greater good is the number one goal. I still firmly believe that if we all try to be authentic and vulnerable, the human race could bond much more effectively and it would be real. But this is also a path for me. This is also me trying to show myself and show others that there are avenues you can take that are not traditional. If you don't, if you struggle with traditional routes and you struggle with the way society tells us we're supposed to live and act and work and behave and function. I'm your girl.
Speaker 1:That's me in both the grandiose sense of it, but also just my purpose as a mom and a wife and trying to help support my family too and not just be the one that's here with bipolar disorder. So my I kind of got a tangent there. But my micro goals are it brings it back to is showing up every day. That is my micro goal showing up every day to hopefully reveal clarity that I'm on the right track with what my goal is right now of this journey of sharing mental health and, in the same time, discovering my purpose along the way and hopefully seeing progress with that by just showing up. And if it's not, this is not the avenue I'm supposed to take then hopefully that provides clarity by just continuing consistently consistency Words are hard by consistently showing up for this purpose. That should reveal the path and what's next. So those are my five goals for those of us that are struggling in the middle of it all, in the thick of it, and you're sitting here looking at your friends drinking their green juice and going to the gym every day and you're like good luck, friends, like more power to you, but I can't get out of bed. So I need realistic goals and goals that are going to help my mental state and not make me feel worse because I didn't show up to the gym, or because I showed up at the gym and you've already lost 10 pounds and I gained 10 pounds somehow in two hours. So, yeah, you get where I'm going, but I hope that that was helpful, if anything, just to relieve pressure of what a new year brings.
Speaker 1:A new year brings, yes, a fresh start and new beginnings and hope and joy and all of the good things that you think of the new year. At the same time, some of us and some of you are coming off the tail end of a hard year, a hard year, and it's not so easy just to switch in to the new. It's just, it's it's not a light switch. There is healing that needs to take place. Switch. There is healing that needs to take place. There is conversations that need to be had. You are doing good by being present and that is okay and that is enough. And if you need to set smaller goals and you need to set just one goal for yourself, if your one goal is to show up, is to breathe the next breath and live the next day. Then, friends, that's good and do it. Don't let the world tell you how it's supposed to be, because none of us know the right answer and all of our paths are different and all of our journeys are different and how we heal and how we feel all of it is different. There's no right or wrong way. So let's just grow and learn together.
Speaker 1:Okay, so thank you so much for tuning in to episode one of season two of the Mostly Mental Mom podcast. As always, I'm so grateful you're here and I look forward to more stories, guests on the podcast and, hopefully, just lots of growth amongst all of us, from our personal journeys to. I hope the podcast grows. So if you do like what I'm doing so far, please do share, comment, like on all the social platforms. Help spread it out. I would greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So, but yeah, happy 25, 2025, happy 2025, y'all. Um, it's nuts and it's going to be. It's going to be all right. I have no idea how it's going to be for real, but it's going to be all right. Just show up, friends. Just show up. Uh, let me go ahead and make sure I thank my podcast host Buzzsprout the best in the biz. Love them so much. Got a referral link for you. If you're interested in starting your own podcast this new year, I highly recommend it. Please use the link and you'll get a discount. Be great. And PreSonos, the recording gear that I use, makes it so easy and allows for the version that you hear come out pretty crisp and clear and cuts out any weird cat noises that you might hear in the background and kids and all the things so pretty soon as I'm very much appreciative to having your software for recording. That'll be it for today. This is Lauren, your Mostly Mental Mom. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today and I hope you have a good one.
