Hey , hey , mamas , Welcome back to Conquering Chaos A Mom's Guide to Self-Care and Sanity . I'm your host , Sydney Crow , and today we have Crystal Nelson from Atlanta , Georgia . Crystal is a psychiatrist . She has been practicing for 17 years . She is a mom of three and is a blended family . She's gone through loss and was a widow from her first marriage . She's now raising a blended family and she loves to talk about all things in terms of mental wellness , balance for motherhood . She also has a book called the Better Blueprint to Mental Health , so we're going to touch on that . Welcome , Crystal .
Speaker 2Thank you . Thank you so much , Sydney , for having me on your show .
Speaker 1Thank you for being here . I'm super excited to dive into this . Mental wellness and mental health , especially for mothers , is something I'm extremely passionate about , so why don't you just tell the listeners who you are and what you're all about ?
Speaker 2So my name is Dr Crystal Nelson . I'm a psychiatrist , like Sydney said , in Atlanta , Georgia . I've been a psychiatrist for almost 17 years Doesn't seem like that long , but has been . I have three kids , so I have two biological children and one bonus son . As Sydney stated , I was married and my first spouse passed away from cancer . So I became a single mom unexpectedly Well , I would say sooner than I would have liked and so I became a single mom and then I remarried and then got a bonus son and then had another child . And so in that whole process of all of the changes , I've balanced being a mom , also starting my own company , going out on my own and and all of the chaos and craziness that comes with trying to do the world's most important things all at one time .
Speaker 1Yes , yeah , I mean . Being a mother , especially when you're raising multiple kids , is a tough enough balancing act on its own , let alone , you know , starting your own practice and building that up for the last 17 years , which is incredible . So how do you manage it all ? What are , what are your go-to tips and tricks for moms out there that are , you know , starting their own business and or raising kids ? From a psychiatrist perspective and from your personal experience , what do you feel like is the most important things that have helped you along the way ?
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 2One of my mentors early on . I had my daughter in the middle of medical school and so I was set to go forward to become an OBGYN . That was my dream . I was going to be an OBGYN , and one of my mentors at the time she said to me well , if you're not going to be comfortable with , you know , having a nanny and some resources , that you're not going to really be able to pull this off . And so I had to really think about that and one of the pieces of advice that she gave me .
Speaker 2She says you can have it all , you can do everything , all these things that you want to do , but not at the same time .
Speaker 2And I shared that with so so many women over the years . Because I tell everybody there are some days I'm an amazing doctor , fantastic , wonderful , and I'm not the greatest mom that day or the greatest wife that day , because it required all of my time . And then there are days , like yesterday , when I literally built a fort with my kids and we're in a fort and me , my kids , the dog , we're having a great time . But I was not a doctor yesterday . I was not really spending time being a wife that much during that time . I was not really , you know , spending time being a wife that much during that time . So just being in the box and staying in the box and being okay with that as you go through instead of I find that women women want to be 1000% on everything at all times , at the same time , and it brings more distress than we can manage . Absolutely Versus . Okay , right now I'm being a great mom and the rest has to wait .
Speaker 1Oh , I love that advice so much and it's , you know , hitting home . I have a very , very busy month ahead of me and probably a little busier than I'm used to , and that just really hit home today . So there was a reason we got connected and we're're doing this interview today , because it was a very gentle reminder that I needed , and I'm sure there's other moms out there that need that today too . So when you're looking at that and you're having to balance right , it comes down to a lot of scheduling , I'm sure . Do you have specific time management tips that you can share with the listeners that work well for you , or is it just a ? This is the box I'm in in this moment and I'm not going to let anything else distract me from that .
Speaker 2Well , definitely scheduling things . I , you know , hats off to any mom or anybody doing anything major that doesn't have a schedule . I mean , you have to have everything scheduled , in my opinion , to pull all of it off , but you also have to schedule the fun stuff . I find that you know , people will be really great at scheduling their business stuff , but you have to schedule a play , like when . I I'll use another example my daughter , when I was in med school , on Thursday nights it was mommy daughter date night and she knew that it was mommy daughter date night because I literally at times would be working , you know , 80 hours , 110 hours , and she would have so much . She wanted to tell me every single day and I would say , unless it's an emergency , can we save it for mommy daughter date night ? And on mommy daughter date night I mean she'd unload , you know she was here she was here , everything you know that she wanted to talk about throughout the week .
Speaker 2But I put it on my schedule so and so when I am in that box , just like when I'm talking to my patients , if I'm in the room with that patient , that's all that's happening . So they feel like they're my only patient , I'm their doc , they're getting my undivided attention . So , same with my spouse , same with my kids , making sure that I put them on my schedule Because otherwise , I mean for most of us work could take up all of it .
Speaker 1It really could . All day , every night . Our work could take up all of it . It really could .
Speaker 2I mean all day , every day , Our kids could take up all of it and we wouldn't have to pay for work or our spouse or significant others . So it's really being scheduled , and then I would say being flexible enough when the schedule doesn't go quite how we plan . A sick kid pops up , I mean your schedule kind of goes out the window . Yeah , so you know being flexible , but planning for the most part all those things we want to accomplish .
Speaker 1I love that . It's very much so when you're looking at your practice and you know , as a doctor and mental wellness , what would you say are the key things that you're seeing , especially in today , because the world is a little bit different after the last three years . So what are you seeing that you would say is the most important for either new moms or seasoned moms to really help make their mental wellness a priority for themselves .
Speaker 2So what I am seeing a lot of post-pandemic even before , but I think the pandemic just put some gas on the fire is anxiety . The amount of anxiety that women are presenting to me with is just . I don't even know if there's a word to describe the amount of anxiety and the amount of women that are dealing with this , and I think it comes back to what we're talking about . They have so many things on their plate . There's so many more decisions and so many more options that we have in this society than ever before , and so decisions bring about fatigue and anxiety . You know we don't have an unlimited supply of wanting to make decisions every single day . I mean some mothers , you know we're we're making 10,000 decisions before 12 noon you know , and that weighs heavy right that that gets to be too much .
Speaker 2So I think one of the ways to kind of cut down on that is to decrease the amount of decisions . Some of the things that we're stressing about or that are adding to that decision fatigue are unnecessary .
So I try to focus in on what are your top three ? What are your top three things that you want to accomplish today ? When I ask women you know , moms what do you want to accomplish today ? The list is unrealistic . I mean , it is a ridiculous amount of things that is almost humanly impossible . But the problem with that is at the end of the day if that was your list in the morning and at the end of the day you don't accomplish that , you're stressed , you're beating yourself up , you're having anxiety about the next day because now you have even more to come up with when it wasn't realistic from the start .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2So just narrowing down those things that are the priority , so you can feel accomplished . So you can feel like , okay , I'm moving forward , I'm making progress , I'm happy . So that that is my tip for ladies Take some of these things off of this to-do list .
Speaker 1It's not realistic . Yeah , yeah , I mean , I had somebody that said it was the three D's delegate delete or defer .
Speaker 2I like that . I like that . I love that because delegate is a big one that I've had to learn . My goodness , that was a hard one for me , because I felt like I had to be the person to do it all and if I wasn't , then it wasn't gonna be done , right ? That's a control issue , which also brings about anxiety , and there's so much that you don't have to do you can easily delegate , and some of it that whoever you may be delegating it to would enjoy . Some of these things that we are doing , we don't enjoy doing them , and so we need to pass the buck to someone who that's their thing and they're in their happy space doing that for me or for you , for sure .
Speaker 1Also . I mean , for me one of the things that I had to delegate was my kids laundry . You know , I still help them start the wash machine , maybe help them put it in the dryer , but for the most part they have to bring it down , they have to get it started , they have to fold their own clothes , but then I would open up their dressers and it would just be mayhem and I was like , oh , that was a hard one , because you know you want their clothes to look nice and like . For me it was like presentable and I was like I just have to let this go oh yeah exactly .
Speaker 1No , it's , it's their clothes and if they like , I've showed them a few times how to fold their shirts and if they can't get it , they will eventually . This isn't , uh , like hill I need to go and die on . And yeah , I mean that it was such a huge release . Right , it took me a little while , but it definitely makes such a huge difference in my week because it's one less thing that I have to worry about .
Speaker 2Yeah , and that's so true . What you said is just to let some of it go , because , again , some of those things they just in the end won't matter that much . I remember my son my bonus son , I mean , he's 23 now and you know worrying about if the room was clean , worrying about if the room was clean . And then I remember when he moved out . When he moved out , the room was clean and I thought , oh , rooms that people don't live in are clean , right yeah . So I was stressing about him keeping this room clean and , at the end of the day , how he keeps his room in his home or how he keeps his home is still going to be his business . It is not going to affect me in the long run and we might not ever match up on how we like things to be neat and tidy and it doesn't really matter . So , like you said , if the drawer is mayhem , at the end of the day , who cares ? The clothes are clean .
Speaker 1Yeah , absolutely , Absolutely . You know , and there is that like age old saying whereas if it's not going to matter in five minutes , is it really going to matter in five years , Right ?
Speaker 2right and that's a lot . I think that's a lot of stress again . And talking to ladies I hear so much stress about , I mean , every little detail of their kids' lives . They're stressed about , you know , their child is , you know , 10 . And they're stressed about if the activities that their 10-year-old are doing , that it's going to get them into college Like they're 10 .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2I think that's part of society . Right .
Speaker 1I feel like , especially now , with everything at our fingertips , with social media , there's this huge comparison game , and even if we don't want to play it , our mind still brings us there Right . And so it is this like give and take of , like learning how to go with the ebbs and flows that life is , giving you focus on the things that are really truly important right now , but also knowing that there are things that we do need to set them up for in the future . But is that really the priority today ?
Speaker 2Right right . And coming back to that question you just said is it the priority today ? And it's not . And there is a more important thing that we need to shift our attention to that , and you're right , it is . We are in a society , especially with social media , where , even if you don't want to compare , I mean you're seeing what everybody and their neighbor is doing , what they're eating , what their kids have on . You know all of those details .
Speaker 2So that's another thing often we'll suggest to people is to disconnect from that you know , regular disconnect time from social media for you and for your kids , because it can really really zap your own creativity , your own desires , because some of that . Again , it's much easier for me to if I pull back from some of the comparison , for me to say who cares if my kids drawers are mayhem . But if I'm on social media and I see in my neighbor's children they look perfect , their clothes are perfect , her house looks so clean , you know , then that's going to likely cause me to feel bad when she might've just taken the picture and she's crying in the bathroom later , like you know , that's reality , that's reality .
Speaker 1Well , and you'll see , like these , like I , like these comparison . There's some sort of social media accounts now where they're like this is the Instagram picture and the kitchen is spotless . Right , they're there , their hair is done , they look great in their kitchen , and then they do the behind the scenes and the rest of the house is just an utter disarray . And you're like this is reality .
Speaker 2Yeah , this is I had . This was years back . I had two patients I was seeing and they were neighbors and they didn't know that they were both seeing me and both of them would come in basically feeling bad about the other one because they thought that the other one , you know , had it all together . They would talk about how , in church , you know , this one looks so great . And then I can't get my daughter to be motivated , not knowing that they're competing with each other in this way and both of them are falling apart , seeing a psychiatrist and just thought , man , you guys could commiserate with each other , support one another .
Speaker 2And you know , not have this anxiety instead of competing with one another about an unrealistic picture of your life .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , and I had a therapist one time tell me that unsaid expectations will unravel everything . And so it was one thing that , like now , my husband and I will really like dive in and communicate . Because once you start communicating those expectations , or once you start having those like real conversations with your neighbor and just being like man , like you got it all together today , like how did you manage that ? And she'll be like , oh well , you had it all together yesterday , right , like it's . And then you just can kind of sit down and have like a real laugh about it Because really you're having this , they were having this unsaid expectation of one another . That's nobody has it all together .
Speaker 2I mean zero , have it all together . It does not matter who you're following , who do you think ? Not me , not you ? I mean don't . Some days you know that house might be running like a well-oiled machine and you're like check , check , check , got it all done . And some days nothing is running like a well-oiled machine . It's a day where you're like let me get through the next couple hours and I'm going to take a nap and try to start this all over again and we hit the reset .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's just chaotic some days , but I mean , that's life . We're all human beings in this human experience . There's no magical way in or out .
Speaker 1I love that straight from the mouth of a psychiatrist for 17 years . You guys , this is nobody has it all together and we all are going to have days with that superhero cape and days where we are crumbling behind the front door .
Speaker 2Absolutely , absolutely . I think that is again . It's always shocking . I was telling a story . I was telling this story actually on Instagram I think I was on Instagram or Facebook , I don't remember and I was saying how I saw a patient of mine in the library and I said , oh hey , how are you ? And she like froze , and she didn't even know what to say . And she says , oh , this is so strange . It's like you're a real person . And I thought , yeah , I don't live behind my desk at my office . Yes , I'm a real person . But it made me think and I posted that video to say the same thing . I'm saying we're all having a human experience . It doesn't matter what position you may view someone in , whether they're an influencer , celebrity your physician .
Speaker 2I mean , we're all having the same human experiences . My kids get on my nerves , just like yours . My stuff bothers me just like yours . I have disagreements with you , know it's the same . I might have more tools to get through those things , those moments , faster . But that's it . That is absolutely it . There's nothing else that makes me separate .
Speaker 1I love that . Yeah , that's great . Well , why don't you tell the listeners a little bit more about your book ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so a better blueprint to mental health I created . It's just a workbook , so I created this guidebook . In my practice we do what we call interventional psychiatry , where we do a treatment that uses magnets for the treatment of depression , where people have failed multiple medications and they're looking for something else other than medications . So the patients are with us for about six weeks , and so one of the questions that they would ask is well , what do I do every day ? They wanted something to use every single day to kind of give them something really practical to do while they were doing treatment .
Speaker 2So I created it , so it is just a daily prompt , so it will talk about some daily , basically a coping skill , give them some context around it , and then at night there are three other prompts to have them focus on three things . So , like I said , my top three things . So there's a morning and a night , morning and a night , and it was 40 days and 40 nights , and when I kind of thought about that I thought , okay , wow , so they're with us almost 40 days , 40 nights , and they're kind of in the wilderness , they're lost and confused , and so it gave them something in the morning and in the evening for them to do and I have them go through it and then kind of land upon a handful of things . If they come out in those 40 days , 40 nights with a handful of things that really work , that's your toolbox , those are your coping skills because , every coping skill doesn't work for every person .
Speaker 2You know some people deep breathing is not going to work . It might be they have to sprint , you know . So they come up with their set of coping skills and then they continue to hopefully build upon that after they finished the treatment and they're going back to their normal life .
I love that and I really liked that you were able to , you know , highlight that not everything works for every single person . I have been saying this for so long , Like I feel like a lot of times people want you to fit into the mold right , Like there's like a shoe box or something where they're just like this is how it is and it doesn't work for everybody , and so I really appreciate your take on that and the way that you've been able to design this workbook so that people are able to figure out what works best for them . I think that's so helpful to work through . Yeah .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , I think that's that again as to that level of stress that people experience because we're trying to have everybody fit in these boxes and and we just don't . I mean even in diagnoses . Yes , we have general boxes to diagnose a patient , but everybody who is my client knows I hate , I hate labels , I hate the diagnoses because they're just not creative enough to describe a human being you know , I'd rather we say , oh , this Sydney , and Sydney has these symptoms she's dealing with , she wants to improve , that's it .
Speaker 2So we're figuring out how to improve those symptoms that Sydney doesn't like so she can manage her superpower , that's it . I love that . Instead of you know I , I will get so frustrated with patients as it's , I am depressed , I am bipolar . And here's the . They come in with their symptoms , I've got to be on meds or I've got to have this and I've got to have that . Oh , what if it doesn't work ?
Speaker 2Yeah , you know , we have to figure out what works for you , and I think when people approach it from that standpoint , you'll find your solution . You will always find a solution if you're open to finding what works for you . So that may mean some trial and error , but okay , there's not another . You , yeah , or figuring out , and that's why it's a blueprint , that's why the name of my practice is blueprint , because the blueprint is something that is very , very unique , and so we're trying to design and learn your blueprint . And I don't know what that is , and even you might not know what that is . So we're trying to figure that out and write the right blueprint . So we're getting the right foundation , the right outcome , the whole thing .
Speaker 1I just have to say that your take on your practice is such a breath of fresh air , especially in the mental wellness space , because , yeah , I mean , everybody deserves to find out what works best for them and , like you said , I mean sometimes that is going to be a little bit of like testing things out , but at the end of the day , if you get that custom blueprint that's going to be specific to what you need and how you can improve the areas that you need to improve or hoping to improve , then who cares if it takes a while , right , I mean , I think that's just the way that it's going to go .
Speaker 2And you're not on a time crunch in that way .
Speaker 2So you're not thinking about it as a time crunch , because this whole thing is your life , it's your journey . There's no rush . I mean none of us are trying to rush . If you get to the end , it's pretty much that's the end . So you're on this journey to figure out yourself and what works for you . So that is going to be some trial and error . We try to reduce that as much as possible with some of the tools we use in our clinic and so on and so forth , but just trying to move people away from those labels that make them feel bad , these ideas that this is the way that it goes , and mental health , and mental health has gotten a bad rap . I mean , it's gotten a bad rap . People felt like guinea pigs and you know it was just about let me throw a med at you , and that is not always the answer , nor is always the answer . Just , you know , sometimes therapeutic things like talking it out alone , that doesn't work for everybody . Some people get better with just talk . Yeah , do some other things 100% .
Speaker 1Well , that's yeah . It is such a breath of fresh air to hear you say that that's how you run your practice . So we will make sure that we have the link for your blueprint book under here so you guys will be able to find Crystal Crystal before we sign off . Is there one last piece of advice that you'd love for the moms to know out there ? Let's see .
Speaker 2Just I've been kind of reiterating what I said . Moms , you know , make sure you're prioritizing things in the right order again , and I didn't . I didn't say this , but in my opinion , when you get overwhelmed , you can always come back to order .
Speaker 2What is the order in which life goes .
So the way that I look at that is order starts with relationships . So first is you and your creator , whatever you call that to be . Where's that relationship ? Do I need to put some time into that ? Then it's me and me . So the relationship I have with myself . So , moms , we can't do much for other people if we are neglecting ourselves . So then it's me and me . Then it may be you and your significant other , your spouse , particularly if that's your parents , I mean your child's parent . That relationship , I stress that , will be the most important thing you will ever teach your children , that relationship that you have with their , their parent . Then it's you and your kids . Then it's you and the rest of the world . So if you stay in order , sometimes it won't be so overwhelming because you can always do a little spot check and say , okay , today feels overwhelming , where do I need to start ? Let me start with that first relationship and work myself all the way through five .
Speaker 1Yeah , okay . Well , that's wonderful . Thank you for being here , crystal , and thank you guys for tuning in to today's episode , where we help you conquer the chaos , one day at a time .