Is Anxiety Killing Your Parenting Journey?
You wake up one morning, and bam…it’s all gone!
All the me-time you ever had — late nights with friends, complete focus on work, time for TV…
Heck, just about any time alone!
Because, now your schedule revolves around the schedule of your young child.
Raising your child can be a fulfilling experience, and still a daunting one for any parent.
And it only gets more challenging when you’re doing it alone.
Single parenting comes with immense anxiety coupled with feelings of guilt, and pangs of separation from parting with your loved one.
For dads particularly, who have thus far only been financial providers and remote caretakers through the day, the role of being a nurturer takes a while to get used to.
When you’re hit with the job of taking care of your child on a daily basis, you realise (and appreciate) how much a mother takes care of the minute details of a child’s life.
After separating from my wife, I had to take on the role of a mother and father for my child.
I had to put her to bed, tell her bedtime stories, wake her up in the morning, get her ready for school, and also help with her homework.
Initially, all this was strange to me, as I wasn’t used to being a hands-on father.
My daughter was four-years-old when I was entrusted with the ginormous responsibility of both taking care of her, and healing my broken heart.
Add to that, you’ve lost all your precious me-time — time with your friends, time to watch TV, exercise, and any hope of going out to party on the weekend…
You can’t even go to your office without worrying about your child!
(That’s also when you begin to appreciate what your ex-spouse used to take care of!)
The anxiety of single parenting soon begins to show on you physically… Sometimes you let go and put on weight, sometimes you don’t take care of your physical experience.
Friends notice and offer help… But no one really understands your situation.
The stress only increases when you don’t have enough help with your daily chores.
You have to look for full-time help, maybe a nanny/ayah to be at home with your child while you’re away in the office.
And then the hunt begins, you interview one nanny after another… Without knowing it, two years have passed, before you have found someone stable and reliable.
Needless to say, those first two years are full of anxiety and sleepless nights… You try to cope with your own life, the separation, and your child’s needs.
I remember my most tormenting moments with my child were when she had to get ready for school…
She would just not sit still and let me get her dressed… It was totally exasperating!
Then sometimes the school would call, and talk about my child having some behavioural issue, and they would suggest I see a child psychologist for it… Another anxious experience for any parent!
Even holidays seemed cumbersome at the start…
You take off to a distant location, knowing that you have to do everything yourself: bathe the child, feed her, and put her to sleep.
All these experiences can make you pull out your hair, unless you find a solid rock to hold on to.
Very often, that solid rock is you.
Hence, the need to seek a spiritual path, and take refuge in its calm.
It also becomes essential to make sense of your life before it drives you insane.
To get a grip on your mind, nothing can beat yoga and meditation. Both help you put your life in perspective, and reduce anxiety levels.
As a single dad, anxiety levels can also lead to excessive intake of alcohol with the hope of killing the pain (which in retrospect you realize is an ignorant act).
To wake up the next day to terrible hangovers, only increases your anger and frustration levels.
This may also result in you lashing out on your child with a harsh tone…all of which inadvertently affects your child’s emotional health.
Sometimes, lost in your own emotional loss, you may also neglect your child, or consider her ‘a burden’, someone you have to now take care of alone.
An absent mother impacts the child in a big way too. You sense the pain in her, and there’s little you can do to ease it. It’s difficult enough for adults to understand separation, so how do you explain it to a child?
The fact is you cannot fix something if you are broken yourself.
Fixing the outside first, and neglecting yourself, only leads to more anxiety and pain. Therefore, engage in activities that lead to a path of fixing yourself before you take on anything more.
In the meanwhile, don’t isolate yourself from the world…
Surround yourself with people who care for you, and have an understanding of what you are going through.
Don’t share your story till you’re ready…but keep introspecting. This leads to revelations about yourself and the situation at hand. It helps clear your thoughts and soon things fall into place.
In the end, it all comes down to sensible living.
Just like you, the child too is on an emotional roller coaster of his/her own, and your anxiety levels don’t help. Thus, be extra sensitive to the child, because on their own they are unable to comprehend situations.
As a parent, you need to feel and show stability, so that those feelings of stability and security translate to the child too.
Suppressing the pain or avoiding the issue by eating excessively, drinking or neglecting the child only leads to more anxiety.
Anxious living is very unhealthy to you and the child. It is therefore necessary to face the situation head-on, fix yourself and your environment for both your child’s sake and yours.
As a single parent, your child needs you more than ever… So pick yourself up, and put your life together!
7 Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety as a Single Parent:
1. Self-reflect constantly
2. Reduce, or completely stop, the consumption of alcohol
3. Build a great support system in friends and family
4. Deal with your feelings, don’t avoid them
5. Take refuge in spirituality
6. Appreciate your child often
7. Accept the responsibility to nurture your child wholeheartedly
How have you dealt with anxiety in your parenting journey? Share with our readers your stories by writing your comments below.
If you’ve liked the story, feel free to applaud it, and share it with your network.
To contribute a post, write in to souldads@souldads.com
