Quiet Confessions, Episode 35: Q&A Post-Traumatic Self-Care

In this week’s Quiet Confession, Chelsea opens up the floor for some Q&A and explores the complex intersection of self-care and trauma recovery for parents.

While traditional self-care often fails for those with postpartum PTSD or medical trauma, Chelsea shares their personal evolution from identifying "maladaptive" coping habits to discovering "glimmers" that actually reset the nervous system.

They discuss why former "comforts" can become triggers and how to build a realistic support system after life-altering health crises. 

Tune in for a guide on reclaiming joy while navigating chronic illness and psychiatric recovery.

Key Takeaways

• The Post-Trauma Pivot: Chelsea explains that self-care practices used before a health crisis (such as certain TV shows) can unintentionally trigger flashbacks or anxiety post-trauma.
• Glimmers Over Triggers: While triggers induce panic, "glimmers" are micro-moments—like a specific tea ritual or fresh air—that help reset and regulate the nervous system.
• Communication is Critical: Reclaiming time for yourself requires looking inward to understand your specific needs and then clearly communicating them to your partner or village.
• Building the Village: Chelsea highlights that since support isn't always automatic, parents must be intentional about asking for help to carve out even 15-minute windows for rest.
• Protecting Mental Energy: Shifting from heavy content to light, easy-to-digest media is a strategic way to protect mental energy during chronic illness flares.

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

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Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:54)
Hey, welcome back to another Quiet Confession, a little mini episode every Thursday to check in with you and just kind of hold space together. I am once again coming to you from my phone, so I know it's not our typical audio quality, but I do what I can. I feel like Quiet Confessions has started living on my phone, and if that's the way it has to be,

then that's the way it has to be. But anyway, this week I opened up my Instagram stories to followers to ask some questions, do some Q &A. And I got some really, really interesting ones and some that definitely sparked interest in digging into a little more. I'm...

I think I'm gonna focus on one at a time. gonna save one for next week and then I might take a little break.

So the one I want to focus on this week comes from Becca and she asked me...

How do you find ways to add self-care as a mom and also deal with trauma? And that one definitely stuck out to me because self-care for me is not only something that has become incredibly important, if you listen to last week's episode, it's something that I'm focusing a lot of my energy on, but it has evolved in...

lots of ways over the last three and a half years since my youngest was born.

A lot of the things that I considered self-care before having my youngest are things that I either don't do at all anymore or just things that don't serve me. And a lot of that does have to do with trauma. So there are kind of some layers to this that I'm interpreting myself.

Part of it being my self-care practices are impacted by the trauma that I went through postpartum and as well as when I had my brain tumor and brain hemorrhage, which again was related to having my youngest.

But then there's also the layer of like, how do you incorporate self care as a mom? Like, how do you, how do you just find time for that? And I did kind of touch on that last week a little bit, but we'll dive into it a little bit more. I do want to say, and I should have said it at the top, but I am going to do my best to avoid triggering anyone as, as much as I can. I'm going to mention trauma and I may mention.

situations or environments that may be associated with my personal trauma, but I'm not gonna go deep into it. Not that I shy away from it, but I will give you a much clearer warning before doing an episode about trauma. But in terms of trauma and self-care,

For a little bit of background, if this is your very first episode, I suffered a postpartum hemorrhage at home after having my youngest three years ago. I also experienced severe perinatal mental health disorders. And I was hospitalized in psychiatric care three times and also did outpatient therapy. So for the first...

six to seven months of my daughter's life, I was in some sort of medical emergency or psychiatric emergency or care. And when I came home from all of that, when I finally like came home and stayed home, I was still coping. A lot of...

A lot of the anxiety was still there. A lot of my triggers were still there. And I had to learn how to navigate through them. And at first, I relied on very, very basic coping mechanisms that I had picked up while being hospitalized. And I tried to replicate them at home as self-care. So for example, when I was

Hospitalized every night. I at least for one of the hospitalizations or two I would try to watch Game shows so we'd watch Jeopardy and then we would watch Another game show. I can't I honestly can't remember which one it was but we would watch the game shows and then we would know it was time to settle down and Get ready for bed

And when I came home, I tried to do the same thing. We don't have cable, but we got a little like antenna thing that you stick on your wall just so that we could get local channels, just so that I could have that time each evening to try to watch those game shows and try to like self-regulate. And I found very quickly that

In fact, those things were not helpful. They actually triggered flashbacks and would send me panicking and like physically feeling all the feelings like being back at the hospital. time that I set aside for myself that I had talked to my partner about that we had set up intentionally to like take care of me, it backfired.

⁓ and that's not what this whole episode is going to be about. I am going to talk about the things that failed before I talk about the things that were successful, that was one that just, yeah, it had the opposite effect.

so when we're talking about self care, it's like setting time aside for yourself to sort of reset and regulate. And for me, always, having a comfort show on has been a form of self care. So when I was...

Initially ill, especially after my postpartum hemorrhage, I watched Friends. I watched the whole season over and over and over and that, I think, had a lot to do with my OCD. I just watched it as a ritual. I just kept watching the whole series over and over.

So continuing that was also maladaptive ⁓ and made me experience PTSD symptoms. So there are several shows that were comfort shows for me. And when I tried to reincorporate them back into my self-care routine, like setting aside time to watch those shows, they were no longer helpful. Another one that was really tricky for me was

taking time alone in my bedroom. I have always really liked, I used to call them mom breaks. I liked just the quiet and being in my room and being cozy and maybe reading a book or playing a game on my iPad. But because a lot of my trauma was tied to not being able to leave my room.

postpartum because I was so ill at first from the C-section recovery, then from the hemorrhage recovery, and then from how ill the perinatal mental health disorders made me. When I came home, I avoided my bedroom at all There was even a point a year later when I had, it was either a year or two later and I got COVID and I had to stay isolated in my room and that was so hard. The PTSD.

was killing me. Having to be in my room sent me into a panic. Now I say all of those things to let you know that just because something worked for you in the past and brought you comfort in the past and helped you regulate it in the past doesn't mean it's necessarily going to work for you post trauma. But actually, and I'm trying to avoid but and

That doesn't mean that you're not gonna find ways to incorporate self care. And it also doesn't mean that things aren't gonna evolve and that you may be able to bring back some of those self care practices. Because here I am three and a half years later, and yes, I have new self care activities that I do, but also some of my old self care is coming back. Like I am currently sitting on my bed recording in my bedroom.

I have, I still get a little bit anxious if I'm really sick. I am chronically ill. So like if I have to isolate in my room, it brings about a little bit of anxiety, but I don't avoid my bedroom at all costs anymore. Watching shows is still helpful, but I am very selective about the types of shows I watch.

It actually took me years to be able to watch documentaries again, and I am obsessed with documentaries, but I needed things that were light and easy and didn't have to think. Shout out to Animal Control, actually, which I have just stumbled upon. It's on Netflix, but that is something that I'm watching right now that is a very easy and funny watch.

And that is an intentional self-care thing that I do. My husband and I, after the kids go to bed, we set aside the 30 minutes to sit with each other and watch an episode. And if it's not animal control, we pick a different show, but something that's easy and something that's light. And that's intentional time that we spend together after the kids go to bed. Other types of self-care, you guys listened early on or followed along on social media,

a mug of tea every night. I explored different kinds of tea and I really made like an event of the whole thing, like of brewing my tea and and of what I was going to like I would read while I was drinking my tea and I had my cozy spot and my blanket and that was my tea time. Again, most of this stuff happening

after my kids go to bed. When you have a really, really, really little one, especially a newborn, that's tricky and that's where you've got to communicate with your partner, which I still do. On rough nights or on rough days, I communicate and I'm like, I need 15 minutes. So that's that part that comes in, like, how do you incorporate self care as a mom? As a single parent, I think I would have to imagine that it's

much, much, much harder. And I'm not going to pretend to know that I have the solutions, but I say this on the podcast all the time, like the village we were promised, no one told us we had to build it ourselves. And I know that that's disheartening and that's really hard, but building that village and leaning on that village so that you can in those, in those like harder moments have someone to fall back onto so that you can take care of you. And,

reset your nervous system. For me, that's my partner or my mom or my in-laws or my stepdad. if, yeah, I just having someone there. So even if it's an hour, my sister, my amazing sister who I am 15 years older than, but I have the closest relationship with. We have had a heck of a couple of weeks with basically everything going wrong.

And she said, what can I do? How can I help? And I said, honestly, if you could just take the kids for like an hour, that would be so helpful. And she took the kids for lunch and a movie. And did I work most of that time? Yes, I did. But to have the house quiet and to be able to reset, it was beyond helpful. And that's a form of self-care. So without getting too rambly,

I guess the answer to your question, Becca, is I communicate my needs. To do that, I have to understand my needs. So I had to really, really look inward and figure out what was working for me in terms of what I considered self-care. If you go back to my last episode, it's investing my energy in the places that I feel it's most productive.

and carving out little moments for just me. Sometimes it involves my partner, sometimes it involves a friend, but most of the time it's just me. And recognizing that trauma is gonna be there. And it's not something that you're going to have to like live in fear of forever. I'm still navigating it. It doesn't go away, but I'm coping.

so much better. It doesn't have control over me in the same way that it did even six months ago. can sneak up on me. all you need is 10, 15 minutes sometimes to reset your nervous system. And it can be having a cup of tea. It can be watching a comfort show. It can be

Reading. I'm so, so, so into reading right now. If you have book suggestions, please pass them along. I'm really into Romantacy but I also love historical fiction and pretty much everything. Those are kind of like your like cheesy go-to self-care things, but going beyond that like

get outside for a little while. I know that that sounds really simple, but I learned the hard way that just getting in the fresh air really helps reset your nervous system. And I'm not talking going on a hike, you're not going to catch me on a hike, but step outside and just listen. Or, I mean, not right now. I don't know where you guys are, but it's absolutely frigid here in Vermont. ⁓ We've got wind chills down to negative 30. So don't go outside right now.

But yeah, end of the day, self-care means whatever it needs to mean for you and communicating your needs to whoever it needs to be communicated to and finding things that bring you those little glimmers. Glimmers are the opposite of triggers. So things that bring you comfort, things that bring you joy doesn't have to be an all-day event.

Especially if your kids are a little bit older and going to bed at a certain time every night Just taking a little bit of time just a little bit and doing something for you like I said that trauma is not gonna live in the forefront of your mind forever it will impact things It'll impact decisions. It'll impact Different situations, but it won't always live in the front of your brain

So Becca, I hope that answers your question and I hope that wasn't too rambly. But yeah, that is my interpretation of your question. And I had fun thinking about it because I don't know, I've gone through a lot of evolutions and I'm still going through a lot of evolutions and self-care and where I invest my energy is literally one of the most important things.

that I'm focusing on right now in my journey. So thank you for asking that question. You guys know the drill. I need to go refill my water bottle because it is empty and that's just not right. Do something kind for yourself today and maybe, I don't know, pick something new that you haven't tried yet and carve out 15 minutes just for yourself today. And I will catch you back here next week.