FATHERLY STRESSORS
If you are a human being, you’ve likely felt the stress button get pushed in new ways during this first month (not to mention the whole global pandemic thing). For some, it’s a big unexpected push, but even the most zen of dads will feel it. The good news is that challenging situations are also opportunities to build fatherly stress management skills.
If there has ever been a time to learn about and grow the stress management muscles – it’s the first year. The goal of FD03, the first in the progression on fatherly stressors, is to 1) introduce a structure for navigating new stressors and 2) add some initial, high impact tools to the stress toolkit.
Enough soundbites – here’s the practical stuff.
TL;DR
New kids bring new stressors.
Slow controlled breathing helps.
Access the complete audio series on Soundcloud and Apple Podcasts (Coming Soon)
WHAT (6 min)
Regardless of where you are in your journey – the three concepts below are meant to build/reinforce your foundations upon which you can build more capacity to manage stress – and maybe even welcome it.
NOTICE
It’s important to learn how to identify and recognize your own feelings of stress and frustration. It all starts there. Extensive research shows that many people don’t know how to do this well, and even those who do have room to strengthen this skill.
Easier said than done. Simply start by paying attention to the feelings, the triggers, the context of stress and frustration. Practice noticing physical sensations in your body, such as your blood pressure rising, muscle tightness, your posture changing (shoulders rising up is a built in stress response to protect the neck). Try it now – how do you feel in this exact moment? To begin, just notice it and learn to accept it for what it is – stress, calm, joy, frustration, whatever you are feeling – feel it. As you build awareness of stress coming on, it becomes easier to make changes or even get ahead of stressful events. It also works for appreciating and noticing moments of calm as well. Try this…
Practice Finding Comfort in Discomfort
When the baby cries, for example, resist the urge to immediately pass to your partner or give in. Sit it in for a bit. Note the feeling. Acknowledge it’s there. Feel it out. If you can – think of a joyful moment as a distraction. Breathe through it. But remember, this is about noticing and sitting with the stress to build the skill over time, so tap out when you need to tap out – it’s not a race.
Try a Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Taken from the playbook of elite athletes, PMR is a well researched method of building a stronger sense of our bodies’ internal state, of how we feel and understand what’s happening inside ourselves. This is another way to build awareness. It’s a sequence of tightening and relaxing the body from head to toe. It creates stronger connections from the brain to the body. Try a guided PMR [YouTube 15min 52sec]. It can also be used as a sleep aid.
MANAGE
Stress is just the reaction to changing conditions. It can be good, it can be bad. New parents have extra loads of both physical and emotional stressors. For dads, there can be disruptions to routines, work, lost sleep, tiredness, sleeplessness, irritation, and feelings of having less control with the unpredictable nature of kids, amongst other new stressors.
Here are some high impact, manage-in-the-moment, science backed tools to quickly lower stress and regain energy.
Breathe | Slow Inhale, Long Exhale
If you feel stress boiling over, one of the quickest and easiest ways to tame it is to breathe in through the nose, and do a longer exhale through the mouth (easier) or nose (harder). Nose breathing naturally activates the diaphragm (belly breathing). Start with 4 seconds in, and longer than 4 seconds out, focusing on the exhale, as if breathing the stress out of the body (also called “exhale emphasized breathing”). A recent modification, advanced by Andrew Huberman’s Neuroscience Lab at Stanford, can drop stress in 14 seconds. It’s called the Double Inhale, Extended Exhale or “Psychological Sigh”. This taps directly into the calming circuits of the brain. Two short breaths in through the nose, one long sigh-like exhale through the mouth, repeat 2-4 times. [See it in action | Instagram @hubermanlab].
Relax Your Eye Gaze
Recent neuroscience (also from Stanford) has shown that relaxing your gaze can override stress response signals in the brain. When stress goes up, your eyes react by narrowing and creating focus (tunnel vision). This natural response can be combated with a relaxed gaze, sending a signal back to the brain that we can calm down. To relax your gaze, look into the distance, as if you are daydreaming with your eyes open – looking at everything, but not really anything in particular.
Change Your Posture | Stretch
Stress causes tightness in the body. Do a quick scan of where you are tight and stretch that. Move the body into a more relaxed posture (shoulders down, arms uncrossed) to signal to the brain that the coast is clear.
Deep Recovery Break | 10 minutes
If you need to recover some energy, try this 10 minute, lay down, non-sleep deep rest guided audio [YouTube 9min 48sec]. Brain wave studies have shown that it may recover sleep, something previously thought impossible.
BUILD
Awareness and management strategies are a great starting place, but building the capability to better manage stress is the empowering path. Imagine being the flame that leans into the wind to become an energized fire, vs the flame that hides in fear of being extinguished.
Here are three ways to start building more capabilities (more in future progressions).
Sleep
Better sleep gives you more capacity for handling stressors. Simple, but sometimes difficult, ways to start are by avoiding caffeine and alcohol within 3-5 hours of bed, grabbing a nap in the day if you can (or a yoga nidra session, see above), and working on bed time routine to tell the body it’s lights out time, such as a PMR or listening to calm music or reading a book. Depending on your unique situation, sleep can be hard to come by in the first year. A 2019 research paper found that sleep is disrupted for up to 6 years post birth. Focusing on getting quality rest, when you can, will help keep your capacity high.
Light Exposure
Recent research is continuing to show that blue and yellow light exposure from the sky in the mornings and evenings helps keep our wake/sleep clock in tune. This clock promotes immune function and mental health. Try to get 2-10 min of sunlight exposure as close to your wake time as possible (dark sunglasses off, but don’t look at the sun), and try again in the evening as the sun sets. Overcast or sunny – the photons are still making their way to you. Limit bright light exposure between the hours of 10pm and 4am. Excessive and frequent exposure during these hours has been found to activate pro-depression (poor mood) circuits in the brain.
Mindset Check-in
A mindset is simply how you view something. Your stress mindset is if you view stress as a threat (something that will negatively affect you) or as a challenge that lifts you to a higher level or learning and growth. Research in 2017 produced the concepts of “stress-is-enhancing” vs “stress-is-debilitating” as a mindset. Specifically, individuals who view stress as a challenge, rather than a problem, tend to have better health, lower stress hormones, and find greater satisfaction in life despite everything. To strengthen that mindset – focus on what you can control, and realize this is all part of the journey that you intend to enjoy and grow from through inevitable ups and downs.
In closing, and with honesty – nobody is perfect. Everyone has different stressors, thresholds, and blind spots – and many people don’t like to talk about it. We get it. The point is that the transition from man to dad can be challenging, beyond what anyone told you about prior, but even the slightest gain in self-understanding can empower you to find more reward in the experiences ahead.
WHY (2 min)
Numerous scientific studies have shown that Dads (parents) that are able to control their emotions and manage their stress well (also called self-regulation), especially during years 0-7 of their children’s lives, are more likely to raise kids that are emotionally well adjusted and more resilient when it comes to stressful situations.
Why ages 0-7?
Babies and young kids have to learn self-regulation and they do it through a process called co-regulation, which starts at birth. They observe, watch, and tune into the emotions of their caregivers, and learn to self-regulate from how caregivers self-regulate. While there are other factors involved (such as one parent acting as a protective buffer from poor regulation shown by others) – self regulation is foundational to explore and develop in oneself. You can think of this a bit like a tank you have. If you fill that tank up with calm energy – the baby (and others) can borrow from that energy to calm themselves. When a baby or spouse has intense energy, and we don’t have the calm buffer, we borrow from them. You’ve probably noticed this borrowing/sharing of emotion states – and how some people are more and less sensitive /susceptible to it.
While there are numerous sources of stress in the first year for everyone (and sure, let’s add a pandemic), the main issues come from sleep deprivation, combined with drastic changes to routines, some social isolation, and less than optimal stress management. When these get out of control – they can lead to negative thinking which in turn impacts relationship building all the way to marital challenges.
The research is clear though – the ability to manage and regulate how stress impacts us has a direct impact on the baby. One way to look at this new journey is a lot of opportunity to practice in how we respond to stressors. It starts with awareness, then using simple tools to help control the response, followed by building capacity to handle future stressors. Rinse, repeat.
Quick note about crying:
Research shows that babies cry, on average, for up to 2.5 hrs a day for the first several weeks, dropping to around an hour a day by week 10-12. It adds up to around 500 hours of crying in the first year. Some babies (estimated up to 40%) may cry more excessively and for no apparent reason in the first several weeks. This is often called colic and can be one of the more frustrating experiences of new parents. While science is a continuum of understanding and always changing, it is currently known that “colic” is actually a development phase, has no long term impact, and is normal – some babies just cry and that’s normal, and it’s not a reflection of you. It can be incredibly frustrating if you happen to have a “fussy baby”, but it may help to know that it goes away as the child develops. Of course, if stress and frustration is too high, learn that point in yourself and take the short breather (or tap in a less stressed caregiver when that’s a possibility). It’s actually BENEFICIAL for the baby and for you to walk away for a short moment to recenter and lower your stress levels. [YouTube 9min 6sec]
HELPFUL TO KNOW
This section has tidbits from around the web that are typically on Dads minds.
Baby Blues and Postpartum Depression
Postpartum Depression Resources – Significant sadness, anxiety, depression and exhaustion impacts around 1 in 5 women soon after childbirth. Men, if affected, happens later.
National Parent Pipeline
Asking for help is a sign of strength. Being a parent is a critically important job, 24 hours a day. It’s not always easy. Call the National Parent Helpline® to get emotional support from a trained Advocate and become empowered and a stronger parent.
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