“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another-and ourselves.” Jack Kornfield

Busyness. Something I am so familiar with. I’ve been known to multitask like a whirring dervish with multiple hands and a false belief that there are more than 24 hours in the day. You too? Read on…

Busyness can often start when we become a parent, and the juggle struggle begins. As we make up bottles, stir the dinner, check on the baby, fold up washing, worry about a work problem or consider the child care conundrum, how to get back in our jeans, have a meaningful connection with our partner, wonder if the stretch marks will ever fade, and find a moment to get those baby edutainment books out to improve our child’s chances of being a rockstar or a CEO all at once while painting our living room the latest shade of ‘elephant breath’, we can get a strange sense that in the new landscape of parenthood we can only cope when we do it all and we do it NOW. 

When our child’s mental health declines - for many of us in their mid teens - we’re already juggling jobs and chores and aging families and physical changes, relationship challenges and isolation plus a hope that we’ll one day have enough time to read a book without guilt or find our inner zen in a sweaty yoga studio. So add in the uncertainty of this experience, and connection, trust and compassion can become tasks on the check list of life, rather than the tools we use to listen, understand and support our child through this extraordinary time. 

Busyness takes us away from the child we are doing all this for and who we love and hold such hope for. It is a fast track away from our true, happy, connected self and those we care about. Yes, the tasks might get done but they take us further away from the people who matter, and the things that make us happy They bring us closer to being an automaton, ticking boxes and measuring our worth by the crossings out on our to do list. Busyness takes away our softness. It makes every interaction a finite task, leaving no room for connection, curiosity or possibility. Busyness is a sign that we are not in balance and neither is our focus; and it can lead us to overlook the important things and head direct to burnout. 

We can get overbusy for a number of reasons.

Maybe we use it as a way to escape our own thoughts, feelings about ourselves, or situations in our life? Maybe it masks a lack of connection or loneliness? Maybe it’s a response to past trauma where our value equates to our output, or whatever we did it was never enough? Maybe we think it’s (ironically) an antidote to stress? If we’re on top of everything, then the stress will go away. But sadly, it doesn't tend to work like that. As soon as the to do list is done, someone scribbles another obligation on it. Cheers! 

Maybe it’s a status symbol? Have you ever heard someone say they’re ‘super busy’ with a wry smile and sense of satisfaction? I’ve definitely used busyness as a measure of my worth. 

Our preoccupation with productivity means that many of us don’t see ourselves worthy of rest, or as rest as worthy of reward. 

Maybe it’s a pattern you didn’t realise you’d fallen into until you find yourself watching a webinar at midnight, while writing birthday cards, and planning the week’s meals? You should be asleep or resting, but you’re on a treadmill of to dos as a way to manage keeping the sense of normality going and there never seems to be enough time. And when you finally get to bed, the whirring of your mind fights sleep and you wake just as exhausted. 

Why is that? Are busy people just bad schedulers? Over achievers? Or is it something deeper?

We can often find it hard to say no, (hello people pleasers - we’ll be tackling this in another blog!) but busyness tends to be a mask for a range of other reasons. We can see being busy as who we are, as our purpose, our measurement of worth to a world that judges us on what we do or don’t do. It can be because we have watched our parents grind away and in order to match the pattern, we do the same. We can use it as a guard against parts of ourselves or our lives that we don’t want to admit to or confront. We can believe that busy is good because that was the way we got validation as a child or how our parents showed ‘success’. 

What might you be using busyness to run from?

• Does it equal purpose to you?
• Is it a learned behaviour?
• What impact is it having?
• What happens if you set it down? 
• What would fill the void that busyness occupies? 
• Are you still enough if you don’t do stuff? If you - shock horror - slow down? 

“BEWARE THE BARRENNESS OF A BUSY LIFE” - Socrates

Busyness can often lead to isolation from those around us as we spend our lives living in our heads and scheduling interaction with our loved ones. We can lose the sense of possibility that going with the flow, having time for ourselves, or being spontaneous brings. When our child’s mental health changes the vectors of our lives, it’s easy to create calm and certainty from busyness. And as we generate this artificial certainty, we have to work hard to maintain the sense that everything is ok, manageable, doable. We become less connected with people we care about and more connected with the tasks ahead. Routine becomes our religion, and if we can’t pray at its alter, we can find ourselves set adrift emotionally. It’s not healthy for our relationships with others or ourselves. We lose sight of who we intrinsically are, without a to do list, without progress, without change. 

Brené Brown writes about numbing behaviours that we use as armour against vulnerability in her book, Daring Greatly. If you think numbing doesn’t apply to you because you don’t have a addiction recognised as problematic by society, think again. Brené writes “One of the most universal numbing strategies is what I call crazy-busy. I often say that when they start having 12-step meetings for busy-aholics, they’ll need to rent out football stadiums. We are a culture of people who’ve bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won’t catch up with us.” But it will. It catches up with us all at some point.  

So how can we counter the lure of Crazy-Busy and climb down from the tower of ‘always on’?

• Be brave, get quiet and ask why - what is about being busy that satisfies or secures you? It’s ok to hear whatever answer comes up. It’s between you and you! And note that these conversations take time to warm up. Your subconscious wants to keep you safe, so it may be in the quiet of the night that you hear the timid voice that tells you why or where to look for clues. You might tell yourself some stories before you are ready to hear what’s really going on. But it’s the start of a journey of self knowledge that will go on for the rest of your life if you let it. 

• Decide what is important - not everything will get done, and that’s ok. Making choices over what gets done and what doesn’t is in your gift. What’s more important? The dishes or a chat with your child? (I’ll take the chat any day, but maybe you could talk over the sink?) Allow yourself to choose what gets done and what is sacred to you. Ask - will this matter in a week, month, year, decade? Generally the answer is no, so you are left to determine whether this is a choice you want to make and if you have the energy to do it.

• Meditate - if busyness is a way to escape your thoughts, then I can highly recommend meditation as something to bring you to this moment right here, right now. Yes, this one, reading this, with me, not the moment where you’re battling the growing anger that school hasn’t replied to your email again, while trying to work out where you left the library book you think should have been returned a month ago, and answer a text from your friend who hasn’t got a clue what you’re going through and you haven’t got the energy to explain. Oh and I did I mention cleaning the fridge out and planning your retirement with an extra adult to take care of? See what I mean? At any one point, you’ll be juggling a to do list of past, present and future obligations leaving you where? In the ether somewhere? Not present in your body, and certainly not present in your thoughts, interactions with others or in this moment. Finding a way to be present in this moment will calm your nervous system over time. Focussing on your breathing can bring you to the present moment - sit quietly, breathe in deeply and exhale loudly; ask yourself the simplest of questions - what do I need now? What is stopping me from getting what I need? How can I take steps today towards peace? And allow yourself to let the thoughts come, until there are no more. It might take 15 minutes or 3 hours. But keep breathing, keep calm. There is gold in self reflection, but if you’re traumatised, it might actually be hard to focus on your breath. An alternative is to doodle. Allow yourself to draw whatever shapes, images, or words come up for you. No judgement on your artistic prowess please, just a moment to connect into your creativity and allow your brain to stop whirring. When we are creative, our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that problem solves, reasons, and controls impulse and perseverance, goes offline, allowing us to stop being so critical of ourselves and encouraging just ‘being’. Or maybe look out of the window and let the thoughts float through your head - you might start thinking about a pressing issue and then find yourself mesmerised by a bird on a branch or the whoosh of the traffic. Either way, finding a present place of peace for yourself is a gift you can give yourself each day. And yes, you are worth it. 

• Stop multitasking - do one thing at a time. It’s allowed! You are allowed to be intentional and in flow, the state defined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as one where we tune into the activity we’re doing and immerse ourselves completely. Not only does stopping multitasking mean we’ll likely do the job better, it means we’ll slow our racing brain down, reduce our stress levels, and train ourselves to be in the moment. When we are in flow, our prefrontal cortex is quiet and our body begins to flood us with pleasure inducing endorphins, including serotonin, and dopamine. What multitasking does is keep us forever in a future moment, looking ahead to a conveyor belt of obligations. We are in constant fight/flight - until end up in freeze mode, burned out, and overwhelmed. So Stop. Pause. Do one thing. It’s a simple approach that will slow you down physically, and over time, will slow your stress responses too. 

• Be realistic - we all have 168 hours in a week. We can’t magic more time, so let’s get honest. Make a list and chop it in half. And half again. Give yourself 1, 2 or at most 3 priority tasks in a day and schedule in time for yourself too. Work how you work best and stick to that - check out the Pomodoro technique, or google Getting Things Done. Think about when you have the most energy and when you don’t. There are lots of productivity hacks, and if you’re not worried about missing deadlines or chores, you might have the space to allow yourself to succeed and to delight in the things you have done, not the ones you haven’t. And outsource and delegate - give away your tasks where you can, and also your worries. Share them with the Parenting Mental Health community, tell a friend, scream in a field (just me, then?!) If you can remove some of the noise in your head, you might find that actually your busyness is slowing you down, and keeping you from what’s really important.

• Own your spoons - Spoon Theory is an approach devised by Christine Miserandino to explain her chronic illness. Sitting in a cafe trying to explain to a friend how her ability to do tasks is limited, she gathered up a number of spoons to represent her energy. She explained that the factors of our lives - how we’re sleeping, stress, pain, demands, isolation, poverty - determine the measurements of energy - it’s not all equal. As she talked her friend through her day, she took spoons away from her. By the end of the day, there were no spoons to do things. She’d used all her energy up. Recognising the amount of spoons you have can help give you permission to say no too. How many spoons do you have? It will change day to day, depending on what is going on in your life, how you’ve slept, your stress levels, what’s going on - and it’s absolutely not a judgement on you. It’s just a measurement of what you can do based on the factors outside of your control. Own your spoons, my friend. The sooner you do, the more you’ll have. 

• Self care and compassion - when I talk about self care, I don’t mean avocados and bubble baths. Unless they’re your thing! I mean meeting your needs. I mean listening to your body and treating yourself like a child - early to bed, healthy food, nurture and soothing. I mean taking care of you, connecting to things you love, challenging the thoughts about worth and productivity. Schedule time for you in, make time for yourself, allow yourself to get comfortable with doing less of the things that don't directly nurture you. It’s good for you and it’s also good for your family. Be the blueprint.

If busyness has become a way of life for you, why not come and join our PMH Wellbeing group where the space is all about you. Learn how to take care of yourself so you can take care of your child. You’ll be so welcome.

And now, I’m off for a nap!