Curious Neuron

How would you score on a well-being test?

• Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. • Season 6 • Episode 31

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode, Cindy discusses the topic of psychological well-being and the importance of nurturing different domains of well-being. She introduces the six domains of psychological well-being according to Dr. Carol Ryff: self-acceptance, positive relationships, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth.

Cindy emphasizes the significance of these domains for parents and encourages listeners to reflect on their own well-being and identify areas that may need attention. She also shares her vision for the Reflective Parent Club membership and upcoming webinars on values and mindfulness.


Takeaways

  • Psychological well-being encompasses different domains, including self-acceptance, positive relationships, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth.
  • Parents should reflect on their own well-being and identify areas that may need attention and nurturing.
  • Nurturing psychological well-being is important for parents to show up for their children and maintain healthy relationships.
  • Cindy introduces the Reflective Parent Club membership and upcoming webinars on values and mindfulness.


Resources and Links:

Schedule a call with me and help me reach 100 conversations with parents:
https://calendly.com/curious_neuron/chat-about-parenting-with-cindy


Get your free "Assess my psychological well-being" workbook:
https://tremendous-hustler-7333.ck.page/553fa4cead

Join the waitlist for the Reflective Parent Club (launching in September):
https://tremendous-hustler-7333.ck.page/5ab8a76664

Join our FREE webinar called Redefining your purpose and discovering your values:

https://tremendous-hustler-7333.ck.page/9cf4e76674

Get your FREE 40-page well-being workbook:
https://tremendous-hustler-7333.ck.page/reflectiveparentstarterkit

Join our membership, The Reflective Parent Club to learn how to manage your emotions and model this for your child. Use code PODCAST 20 to get 20% off any membership and get 2 FREE WEEKS to try it out
https://curiousneuron.com/join-our-club/

Get 1:1 coaching
https://forms.gle/u8ENfn8CLbcMAZT36

Please leave a rating for our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Email me at info@curiousneuron.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/curious_neuron/

Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theemotionallyawareparent/


THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Get some discounts using the links below
Thank you to our main supporters the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute at The Neuro and the McConnell Foundation.

Discounts for our community!

  1. Pok Pok app. Click on the link below to get 50% off an entire year of this amazing open-ended play app for kids! ...
Speaker 1:

Hello, my dear friend, welcome back to another episode of the Curious Neuron Podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. Today we are talking about psychological well-being. This is a topic that I covered in the testing cohort of the Reflective Parent last week and I thought it would be an interesting conversation because of something that happened, or another conversation I had with a parent who was part of the 100 parents that I'm trying to interview this summer. I have about I still have about 65, 70 booked in my calendar and I'm making my way through but if you do want to have a conversation with me about parenting and your parenting journey, I would love to chat with you. So you can click the link in the show notes below. It's my Calendly link and you just book your meeting with me and I look forward to speaking to you.

Speaker 1:

So, that being said, there was an aspect of psychological well-being that came up in a conversation and I thought that we can talk about it today, but before, as always, I do want to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute for supporting the Curious Neuron podcast and the McConnell Foundation. Both of these organizations believe that it is important for science to be put out there in a way that's understandable and applicable for the general public, and that's what I do with Cures Neuron, specifically for parents. I think that you should have access to important science that makes a difference, not just for you and your wellbeing, but for your child's wellbeing as well. And I also, in case you haven't heard the previous episode, I found out that I will be getting the funding to continue the podcast. I know that I had shared this and I got an email, a beautiful email, from Tani, who was, you know, hoping that I can, you know, continue the podcast, and I will, because, one, I got the funding, I got the funding. So that's the important part. But number two, you know, I'm just so happy and I want to continue this because I have had the opportunity to speak to some of you and I've seen the impact that this is having, and I don't want to stop doing this. I'm doing it in my own way, a little bit differently, in the Reflective Parent Club, in the testing group this summer, where it's not it's sort of like a podcast episode, it's an audio. But I want to continue having these conversations with you, because now I know that you're listening to this podcast as you're walking or as you're folding laundry and as you're cleaning around you know cleaning places in your home, and I know that you're doing this to reflect and to think about you know how can you apply this science to your life? And also, many of you are struggling with lots of things in your life right now, and I think it's important to have a voice or a person you know remind you that you are doing the best that you can in this moment, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

So let's move on to today's topic. Oh no, that's a lie. First, if you haven't done so yet, please take a moment to rate the podcast and to leave a review, either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This, does you know, allow me to continue to get the funding. So taking that time to rate or review the podcast makes a big difference. And share it. If you are part of a parenting group, a mom group, have a group of friends that you meet with. Share the podcast with them, because if I can grow the numbers of this podcast, then it's even better for the metrics and the continued support that I get from these organizations. All right, now it's the truth, let's continue.

Speaker 1:

So, psychological well-being. I'm going to share with you the mini sort of digital journal or workbook that we used for the Reflective Parent Club in the show notes, so you can give me, you share your email and you join the mailing list, but at the same time you will get an instant download of this PDF that I had, and what I try to do is bring awareness to you, know these parents using different aspects of science that exist, and one aspect is the psychological well-being and these domains that Dr Carol Reif has shared, and I think they're important for us to know, because we often talk about mental health, and one thing that has been very clear to me in my conversations with parents is many of us are mentally well, we do not have a diagnosis of anxiety or depression and we are fine from that regard, but we are not fully well. There might be an aspect of our psychological well-being that needs a bit of work. It could be relationships, it could be self-awareness, and when those scores are very low, then we might struggle with functioning, we might struggle with supporting our children and their needs, we might struggle with the relationship that we have, and when we struggle with one of these domains, then maybe our happiness is lower, stress levels are higher and that, in turn, can impact your mental health. So it really is important for us to think about our well-being and to notice which domains need a little bit more love.

Speaker 1:

So in this PDF, if you choose to download it, you will see these six domains from Carol Reif's work Self-acceptance, which is recognizing and accepting all aspects of oneself, including strengths and weaknesses, and having a positive attitude toward oneself. That's the self-acceptance domain. Then you have positive relationships with others, and she describes this as maintaining healthy, supportive and trusting relationships with others, characterized by empathy, affection and intimacy. Her third domain is autonomy. She defines this as having a sense of self-determination and independence, making decisions based on personal convictions and resisting social pressures. The fourth domain is environmental mastery. This is the ability to manage and control one's environment effectively, utilize surrounding opportunities and create a context suitable to personal needs and values. Fifth is purpose in life. So this is possessing a sense of direction and goals, finding meaning in life experiences and feeling that life has a purpose. And her sixth domain is personal growth, which is continual development and growth as a person, being open to new experiences and realizing one's potential.

Speaker 1:

So what we did and what you will see in the PDF if you download it is, there are these six domains and you rate it on a score of one to 10. And there isn't an outline. There is a questionnaire out there, but I haven't added the questionnaire. I just want you to give it surface level thought, right, it's easy to kind of look at these domains and say, oh yeah, I think this one is higher than the other one, this one is lower than the other one, and just rate yourself.

Speaker 1:

What was interesting is that when we did this with the Reflective Parent Club testing group, the one that was lowest for most parents was purpose in life, shifting in who they are, or self-discovery. And every time they have a child they feel that they're taking, they're kind of becoming a new version of themselves and they're trying to find out what that is and what that looks like. And I think that's true for many parents. But purpose in life, you know, having direction and a sense of direction and goals, that's important for us to have because that is leads to that happiness, that achievement, and then we reach these goals and we feel good. So there's a really important part of this and it shouldn't go away just because we have kids. If you're listening to this and you start rating yourself and you're like, yeah, that is a lower one. I really do think it is important to start focusing on that and to say what does that look like for me?

Speaker 1:

What I did with the reflective parents, or the parents from this club, is that we then rated ourselves and then moved towards three reflection prompts for each of these domains and the circle or you're going to see this sort of graphic that I have in the PDF has two extra domains that I added physical health and connectedness and I think these are two very important domains because we can also, as parents including myself, in all honesty struggle a lot with physical health and that sleeping pattern, and that leads to my physical health not being what I want it to be. It's very hard to get up early in the morning before the kids if I'm going to bed very late, and it's very hard to find a time during the day when I'm balancing work, meetings, homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, making sure everything's prepared, meetings with people on my team who are waiting to know, like, okay, what's the tasks for this week? What are we working on? I'm creating goals for that. The launch of the membership is coming in September.

Speaker 1:

Finding podcast guests, emailing them, thinking of the next podcast episode, writing out some notes so that I can talk to you the way that I am now. There's a lot and I think that for me I need to figure out ways and I think I'll get there at some point, and I know that it's not my time now, but I'm trying to figure it out. I'm not just letting it or putting it on the back burner. I really am continuously through journaling, bringing it to my awareness and trying to find ways to go through this. So I want you to know that maybe it's not the right season for you for certain things right, if you feel disconnected from many people, but you have a newborn, that might be that season and it doesn't mean that we ignore it. It means we keep questioning what are the baby steps to move towards improving this domain in my life, the psychological well-being domain, because they are important. Um, and another really interesting thing is that there was a particular parent that reached out to me saying, you know what? I hadn't really realized that this autonomy domain would have rated that low in my life, and that brought to this parent's awareness in the most beautiful way and I hope that they are empowered now that they needed to work on their autonomy, and we had a really beautiful conversation where we spoke about autonomy and I mentioned that autonomy is part of self-determination theory.

Speaker 1:

There's a theory called the self-determination theory and it says that we all have three innate psychological needs, and when these needs are met with our friends, our partners, our coworkers, our bosses, the people we work with, the people around us then we feel safe, connected and intrinsically motivated. That's really important, right? So the three parts of this self-determination theory are autonomy, which is ownership, responsibility, even self-actualization. The second one is belongingness having close relationships and interpersonal regard and support. And the third is competence, so feeling capable to bring out desired outcomes and effectively cope with challenges. These three needs are important regardless of your age. You can be two years old or 52 years old.

Speaker 1:

We have these needs, and the autonomy piece that fits within our psychological well-being also comes into play into the self-determination theory, which highlights just how important autonomy is, which is why we see our kids, when they're young, wanting so badly to do things on their own. They want to have responsibilities, they want to own. You give them. I remember with my kids, I had an old purse that I didn't want to use anymore. When you give these things to them, they're like oh, this is mine, I can be like you, I can have my own thing. And then they find a place in their room where they place it down and it's like this is mine, this belongs to me, I'm going to put it on this shelf, it's my responsibility, and they feel like a million bucks and I you know it. It just reminds me how important that autonomy piece is, and if in your relationship, or the relationship with your partner or your parents, you do not have that piece of autonomy, it will impact your wellbeing, which, in turn, will impact how you show up for your child, which is the whole point of everything that I do here at Curious Neuron.

Speaker 1:

If we can figure out ways to nurture ourselves in ways that make sense. I know we don't have time. It's not going to be about journaling 30 minutes every day. If you can, great. If you can't, that's okay too. I want you to just have certain questions and reflections in your awareness so that you can take the time to say this matters to me and I need to do this, or this is not part of what matters to me. I need to put this to the side. So I really do think it's important for us to think about that as parents. If you do download the PDF, you will see that there are reflection prompts for all of these domains. So rate yourself and then take the lowest one or two domains and think about how you can start working on this. But first look at the reflection prompts, think about why it scored that low, what would scoring higher look like for you, and then work on that to print it out and just leave it on your desk and your table, just to remind yourself.

Speaker 1:

These domains matter to my well-being. These domains matter not only for my well-being, but how I show up for my child and if I'm nurturing these domains in a way that makes sense to me and what I mean by that is the time that you have the resources you have it'll look different for everybody. It will not look the same. Somebody might say, hey, this physical health domain is really low, I need to do something about it. I'm going to join the gym Versus. Another person might say I can't do that. I can't join the gym and be there an hour every other day, but I'm going to go for a 20 minute walk. I'm going to speak to my partner and say I need to do this for myself and for my child and for you, for all of us, but mostly for myself. Somebody else might say I'm going to take note of what I'm eating during the day, right? So the way that you kind of work on these domains will look very different, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

I don't want there to be a perfect way. I'm not telling you how to work on these domains, knowing that it'll look different for all of us, but I want you to be aware of the domain so that you could really take the time to think about it and, like one of these parents, if it sheds light on something that is crucial and important, something that you didn't have awareness of before, it's okay to take the time to sit back. You don't need to do the work right away. You don't need to answer the reflection prompts. Sit back and see what that feels like for you, right? So if noticing that your autonomy or another aspect of this right that just stood out maybe it's self-acceptance, maybe it's personal relationships and it's highlighting that your personal relationships are really, really low that might be difficult for you to move past right now. It's okay, sit with it. Sit with it for a couple of days, a couple of weeks, if you have to, to say what happened. Why did I let that go? Why do I struggle with self-acceptance? Or why haven't I developed any relationships, or positive, why don't I have positive relationships? What can I do as baby steps and this is the whole reason why I'm building this Reflective Parent Club membership I just have realized that so many parents, especially coming out of the pandemic, we've been struggling with so many aspects of our well-being and in the end, when I talk to teachers, when I talk to parents, I hear that, yes, children, there has been a shift in their well-being and mental health, but, most importantly, that shift has been much stronger in parents.

Speaker 1:

And if we continue as a society to move forward, ignoring the fact that we are not well, then it won't get any better. That's for sure, that's a guarantee. But we do need to pause as a society and say we've placed a lot of focus on mental health, but now let's start talking about well-being. Not only talking about it, but being proactive about it. I don't want you to wait until your self-acceptance score is a one on 10. I don't want you to wait for that. I want to bring into your awareness that these are all important so you can proactively start working on this, and that is my mission At the core of what I do.

Speaker 1:

I lose sleep on this, literally thinking about how I can make this better. If you know any organization for parents, or you work at a clinic that has parents, or you have an OBGYN or you are and you think that maybe you know having this sort of membership where parents can do the work that we just did right now in the podcast and have support every Tuesday at noon and at 8 pm Eastern time, where they can join and say, okay, I've been working on this and I'm struggling, I don't know where to start with my personal growth. Or I had an argument with my partner and it stuck. We give you the space, the pause, every single Tuesday at 12 and at 8 PM to think about it. I guide you through your reflections and we say what does that look like, how does that feel for you and what are the next steps? Or perhaps what's a different perspective on the struggle that you have?

Speaker 1:

If I would have had that as a new parent, I would have been able to gain a new perspective on all the fears and the worries that I had with my new daughter right, this baby, this newborn in my arms, that I worried about so much. What if you know I leave and I forget something? Or what if she cries and I'm not there for her? All these, what if thoughts consumed me and if I would have had a space to jump on a call or see a post that had the science of all of this, or a parent sharing their perspective or their experience, saying I'm struggling with worries. I would have noticed mine, but I didn't. I didn't and I moved forward and in retrospect I would have needed help, and I don't want that to happen to any other parent. I don't want you to get stuck in anything that will impact your wellbeing, perhaps your mental health, and impact your relationship with your child. And that is the whole point of this membership that I'm building and I want to get it out there so badly, and not just to you, the parents, but to places where parents go, so that you can also access this for free. So if I can gain some partnerships and collaborations with OBGYN clinics, birthing centers, then you can leave that space and they can say to you hey, by the way, we are partners with Curious Neuron and you get access to this membership because we want to make sure that you're okay. That is my dream.

Speaker 1:

I will put the links to everything that you need in the show notes. So if you want to join me in a conversation, click the Calendly link and book an appointment with me. If you want to join the waitlist for the Reflective Parent Club, you can click that link. If you want to download that free PDF that I just mentioned that was part of the work we did last week in the Reflection Parent Club testing group click that link as well. And if you want to email me, email me at info at curiousnonecom.

Speaker 1:

If you want to have a conversation, whatever it is, I am so grateful that you are here and downloading and listening to the podcast. Every single week I noticed or realized something with a parent, with a conversation that I have that I had with a parent, and it was that to me every single episode. I want it to be a hug to you. It's truly what I think about when I'm recording a podcast. I sit here at my desk in my basement, I have a wonderful cup of coffee in this beautiful mug that my best friend, christina, gave me, and I sit here and I think about what kind of support you need as a parent, and then I jump into that conversation and that's my hug to you, that's my warm cup of coffee that I hand off to you, and I hope that this episode has been helpful. I hope that it gives you time to think about these domains and which one you want to work on, and if you need more support, click that link and get the free PDF and I will see you next week. I hope you have a beautiful and wonderful week. See you next week. Bye, oh, no, wait, one more thing.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to have, in two weeks, a free webinar with a coach who's going to talk about her values. So if you would like to join this free webinar, the link will also be in the show notes. Christina is the Christina that I mentioned about the coffee cup, so she is my best friend, but she does amazing work at coaching people and creating these ways for you to reflect on aspects of your life, which fits so beautifully with the work that I do. So we're going to bring her on as a Q&A expert for the Reflective Parent Club, but I want to give you access to the webinar that we're going to have in two weeks and I'll also share in a couple of weeks the upcoming Q&A expert, which will be at the end of August, which will be about mindfulness, and I think that will be another really important one. So click the link in the show notes if you want to register for that webinar and get the zoom link for that.

Speaker 1:

It's going to be an amazing webinar where we talk about the purpose in life, which fits with today's topic. Right, if you see that purpose in life is low for you, then register for that webinar. It will be live. The replay will only be in the reflective parent club, but if you join it later on in september, you will gain access to it. It's really important for us to kind of at least step back and think about what we need to work on, and we'll be working on purpose in life, direction and goals and thinking about what our values are, so that we can shift towards what our values are and the activities that are not aligned or the people that are not aligned with our values. We can say, hey, I need to set a boundary there. I think it's so important to do that and to assess and reevaluate as often as we can, our values, to make sure that everything aligns with that. So, okay, now I'm really done. The link will be in the show notes. Have a beautiful week, everyone. I'll see you next Monday. Bye.