How to Reduce Stress as an ASN/SEN Parent

In this blog post, I discuss how mindfulness is an effective practice to reduce stress for parents with a child(ren) with additional support needs.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a practice that guides you to become aware of what is happening in the present moment. You consciously bring your awareness to an activity, object, internal or external surroundings.

Mindfulness can be effective after one single sitting of a meditation practice or informal mindfulness, such as mindful walking. However, when you practise regularly it can become a new way of living by integrating the tools into your daily life.

I believe that mindfulness techniques are particularly beneficial for parent carers to help relieve chronic stress and exhaustion.

Three ways mindfulness can support your mental wellbeing as a SEN parent are:

1) Helps your mind slow down

You will likely have a limited amount of energy within your day and your energy levels will go up and down.

This might be as a result of broken or minimal sleep, if your child has difficulties going to sleep or often wakes during the night. You might be the primary parent/carer who co-regulates to help them sleep.

Or your mind might regularly race with worried thoughts about what might happen in the future.

Whatever your circumstances relating to energy and sleep are, I emphathise with you. Although my son doesn't have additional support needs he does still wake frequently through the night.

Mindfulness can help slow down the thoughts in your mind. When you bring your full awareness to a particular focus point (your anchor) there isn't space in your mind to ruminate about other things. Although your mind will inevitably still wander, you will start to relax and over time your mind will start feeling a little less busy.

Mindfulness isn't a replacement for sleep. Yet when your mind has moments of mental rest you can start reducing stress and feeling more at present with your mind.

2) Develops self-compassion

As a parent carer you will give huge amounts of love, care and attention to your child(ren). Your primary focus each day is likely navigating the best ways to support your child and fighting for their needs in different contexts.

However, when was the last time you treated yourself with kindness and compassion?

I'm guessing that it does feel as easy to do compared to showing actions of kindness to your loved ones.

Mindfulness can help you develop a kinder inner voice through learning to let go of self-critical and judgemental thoughts.

When you bring an awareness to your thoughts you can start noticing any patterns. From this you can begin to reframe your thoughts and meet them with kindness, like how you would speak to your child(ren).

3) Supports your overall health and wellbeing

When you spend the majority of your time supporting your sen child you might see your own needs as not being as important.

While your child's needs are of course important, yours are too. If you don't look after your own health you won't have the energy to fully help support and feel present with your family.

Exploring mindfulness techniques helps you let go of what has happened in the past or what might happen in the future.

When you dwell on the past or worry about the outcome of the future it can cause you to feel overwhelmed and stressed. Not only does this impact your mental health but it also affects your physical health.

When you are mentally stressed you might notice physical tightness and tension in different areas of your body. This could be in your forehead, clenching your jaw, your shoulders feeling tight and close to your ears, or you might unconsciously hold your belly in.

You might notice this more in your body when attending or thinking about any meetings with professionals or during times when your child(ren) is overwhelmed/having a meltdown.

If you notice any of the above as you read this, I encourage you to simply notice how you're feeling then take a few slow deep breaths. Notice if your body feels different afterwards.

Going Forward

Would you like to explore ways to bring mindfulness into your daily life to help reduce stress.

Feel more connected to yourself and take time to take care of yourself in my self-paced online course, The Mindful Reconnect for ASN Parents.

Over 8 weeks you’ll discover new techniques to feel more relaxed while connecting with other additional needs parents in an online community group.

This course was designed especially to provide asn/sen parents with support to reconnect to their wellbeing.

Find out more by visiting here.