Knowing a few science-based (+ heart-centred) ways of looking after your mental health and emotions can be life-changing when you're caring for a baby or toddler
If you practice strategies which protect your emotional and mental health now, you'll also be shoring up your resilience, life-long
Knowing how to care for your mind and your emotions can transform your life with a baby or toddler. We might go for days or weeks forgetting about these tools, but what matters is that we have them in our tool kit to lean on when the going's tough.
The lovely thing is that the more we practice them when we are caring for a baby or toddler, the more we lay down new neural pathways which serve us well for the rest of our life (even when our little one has left home, which really will happen one day, believe it or not).
The Possums Sleep Program draws on both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Compassionate Mind Training
In the Caring for you section of The Possums Sleep Program, I draw on and adapt two science-based sets of psychological tools for the perinatal period, which have a great deal of overlap.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT, always pronounced as 'act').
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Compassion-focussed Therapy, which teaches Compassionate Mind Training. You can find out more about the practice of self-compassion in the perinatal period in the collection of pages called Your self-compassion superpowers, starting here.
Why is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy so helpful when you have a baby or toddler?
ACT helps us respond to things we face in the present moment in ways that are consistent with our values, instead of reacting in ways that we mightn't feel good about later because we've been pushed around by so many painful thoughts and feelings. When we act in ways that align with our values, we're able to create rich, meaningful and rewarding lives in the midst of the days' (and nights') many challenges, including while caring for a baby or toddler.
ACT is a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Because our postnatal brain is particularly vulnerable to repetitive negative thinking, I have the view that ACT is more appropriate when you're caring for a baby or toddler than traditional Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which can accidentally turn on 'the struggle switch'.
ACT has been proven to work in many hundreds of research studies across a wide range of mental health challenges, including anxiety and depression and addiction. The evidence-base demonstrating the benefits of ACT in the perinatal period remains small, but is persuasive, and growing. Here are things that make ACT a powerful set of tools to use once you've had a baby. ACT
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Doesn't require diagnoses to offer helpful tools which all parents can use
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Is empowering
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Has been developed from robust theoretical foundations
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Is grounded in our shared humanity and sensitive to power imbalances within health systems. (That is, ACT accepts that my brain works the same way as your brain! We are humans together, even though you might be consulting with me as a doctor or seeking my help, for example.)
Key reference
Hajure M, Seyife AS, Abdu Z. Resilience and mental health among perinatal women: a systematic review. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2024;15:1373083. doi: 1373010.1373389/fpsyt.1372024.1373083.
Recommended resources, acknowledgements, and selected references for the articles in the Caring for you section of The Possums Sleep Program are found here, including selected research evaluations of both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Compassion-focused Therapy in the perinatal period.
