135: Stress Less Octoberfest

You are listening to episode 135 of The Autism Mom Coach, Stress Less Octoberfest.

Welcome to The Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candera. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with Autism. In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out. Lets get to it.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad youre here and I hope you are doing well. Its officially October and I am so excited to tell you about the challenge I will be conducting for the next four weeks. For all of October, I am going to focus on giving you tips and strategies to stress less as an Autism mom. I am taking these tips and strategies straight out of the coaching that I do with my one-on-one clients and in my group membership program.

For each week of the challenge, I am going to focus on a stinky habit that many Autism moms have that is creating more stress in their lives. And Im taking all of these examples from my own experience and from the clients that I coach. So, before I get to the details of the challenge, I want to talk to you about why it is important for you to take the time, to take the energy, to take the effort to stress less. This is actually something that you can do. You can actively do things to reduce your stress, not get rid of it, thats not even realistic.

I accept that as Autism parents, we live with a base level of stress, I mean, as human beings, we do. So, the expectation is never that stress will go away, but there are so many things that we do that exacerbate our stress, that makes a little bit a lot, things that we do that are the equivalent of pouring fuel on the fire. These are the things that we can stop. These are the things that we can reduce. And when we do this, it becomes a very easy way to reduce our stress by simply not adding to it.

Thats why for this challenge, I am going to focus on the things that I hear my clients talking about most as the source of their stress. So how this challenge is going to work. Every Sunday starting this Sunday, I am going to send you an email with a topic and some tips about how to reduce your stress. That email will be followed by my podcast on Wednesday, where I dive deeper into the topic and more strategies. And then each Thursday of the month, Im going to have an open coaching call where you can come to the call, ask questions about the topic of the week or get coached by me.

So, in order to participate in this challenge, the only thing you need to do is be on my email list. You can join my email list right now by going to the episode notes. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, there will also be links there for you to get on my email list. If youre not on Instagram, if youre not on Facebook, if youre having any confusion about how to get on my email list, you can DM me, or you can email me at lisa@theautismmomcoach.com.

Now, if youre on the email list, you are going to get the weekly tips, podcast episodes and links to the open coaching calls right in your inbox. So, for week one we are going to talk about social media or what Im going to refer to as the scroll toll. The toll that being on social media takes on our mental health, especially as Autism moms.

I hear about this all the time from my clients and I see it in the different Autism groups that Im in is the impact on us of seeing our neighbors, our friends, our family members living these lives that we expected to live. And noticing how different their lives are from our lives and the things that theyre doing that were not doing. That has a cumulative impact on our mental health and it contributes to our stress. So, for week one, the challenge is going to be centered around reducing the amount of time you spend on social media and being more intentional with it.

For week two, were going to cover Googling Autism or researching Autism. So many of my clients spend a lot of their time researching Autism. And most of the time theyre not even sure what theyre researching. Theyre just making sure that theres nothing out there that they dont know for fear that they might miss something. This contributes to your stress, that ever present fear that theres something out there that you might miss so therefore you have to be researching Autism.

And while youre doing all that research, youre finding things that you havent done, then you start second guessing yourself, or you see some horror stories and you start fearing the future. All of this increases your stress and has a negative impact on your mental health.

For the third week, were going to talk about catastrophizing, the worst case scenario thinking that we all get into. If I dont get everything my child needs on this IEP, they will never read, they will be homeless one day, they will never have friends. Theyre like this now, what will they be like in the future? Catastrophizing is an action that we are taking and we have the ability to stop it in its tracks. And when you do that, you are able to reduce your stress.

And then finally for week four, were going to focus on controlling what you can control. Were going to focus on getting really clear with what youre able to control and what youre not able to control. The concept for this week is really going to be staying in your own lane. And when I say that, I mean staying focused on the things that you can actually control, that are actually yours to control. And that is always you, how you think about things, how you feel about things, how you react to things.

When you do this as an Autism mom, when you get very clear on what is yours to control and whats not, you can divide and conquer. And you can let go of some of the unrealistic expectations that youre putting on yourself to control other people, their emotions, the world. The goal is, by the end of this four weeks, you will have a lot of insight into the causes of your stress, the things that you are doing to increase it, what you can do to decrease it, and some practical strategies.

So now is the time to join my email list. Once youre on my email list you will get all of this in your inbox. We start this Sunday with slow the scroll where I am going to send you an email, talking about the downside of constantly being on social media. And giving you some practical tools and strategies so that you become more aware of the impact of your usage of social media on your mental health and you can take steps to reduce it.

Alright, that is it for this weeks podcast. Im so excited to start this challenge. Again, get on my mailing list because you will get all of these tips in your inbox. And you will be invited to weekly open coaching calls where you can ask me any questions that you have and you can get coached by me on whatever is causing you stress. Alright, thank you so much for listening and have a great day.

Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program. To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com, Work With Me and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with Autism.