 we take steps to regularly offload our worries so that we're controlling them rather than them controlling us. That's the topic for today's podcast so let's dive straight in. When we don't offload our worries they tend to toxify and they will decide their own moment to surface and so regular intentional offloading can help to kind of keep this at bay so we're gonna just every now and then try and remove some of these worries from that boiling cauldron inside us so that they don't erupt like a volcano at some point when we don't wish. It's a really good practice to get into but it can be a bit difficult to know exactly how to offload your worries if it's not something you are used to doing but most of us will benefit from it and particularly those of us who work with or care for children and carry quite a lot of emotional concerns with us as we take on those loving caring roles. So in today's podcast I'm going to share a few ideas for you and how you can think about offloading your worries and it's not about doing all of these as always it's about having a think about whether any of these resonate for you whether any of these feel like something that you might like to give a go and of course make each of these ideas your own. So the first idea is wash your hands of worries and the idea of this is that it doesn't have to necessarily be washing your hands but you pick an activity that you do regularly that can kind of feel almost symbolic so it might be washing your hands and watching the water go down the plug hole or for me it's often in the summer in particular watering my plants in the evening and thinking of the water as it leaves the hose or the watering can and it's about imagining your worries actually leaving pouring away going down the plug hole and actually thinking of it in that way as we get to the end of the day just allowing them to drain away. So water going down the sink is a really powerful one water coming out of a hose but you might have other ideas that you could use there it's just about allowing them to wash away picking a symbolic activity that you can use to watch those worries just go away clean them away allow them to be let go. The next idea is to journal so you can journal in lots of different ways traditional pen and paper is one that many people are a real fan of if that's not something that you would enjoy or something you found difficult to keep up with then other methods might include making voice recordings, creating a vlog you might make it a private one, video recordings equally are good you can get sort of directed journals where you answer questions rather than having to free write or you could do really simple journaling where at the end of the day you just answer similar questions that you give yourself each day you might just give it a ranking from one to ten or keep it super simple so different ways of doing it but essentially having a means that you regularly engage with at the beginning or the end of the day where you can work out any worries that you have and have the opportunity just to create something that's really just for yourself. There is lots of evidence about the powerful benefits of journaling the difficult thing is to create a habit of it so some people absolutely swear by it others find it really hard to get into as with any habit it's hard to break once we have it so it can be worth persevering with trying to create that habit and steps to try to create that can include trying to couple it with something else that you're already doing so having a prompt in your normal day so it might be when I brush my teeth I will journal straight afterwards for example and also we can do what we call temptation bundling which is to make this a really pleasant activity for yourself so you might not necessarily enjoy the process of journaling in its own right right away but perhaps this is a time where you carve out a little bit of time and space for yourself when you listen to your favorite music or you enjoy a favorite snack at the same time so we give ourselves a treat a reward essentially for engaging in that activity. Next you can try talking to someone talk to a partner talk to a friend talk to a colleague talk to a pet so Mark here is fantastic if if I've got worries that I don't particularly want to share with with a colleague or with my husband or with another person who might respond really Mark's very very good listener she doesn't tend to give me advice she doesn't tell me what to do she doesn't have an opinion on it she just listens which is great and so actually sometimes we don't need a response sometimes it's just about the act of sort of talking to someone or something so a pet can be absolutely fantastic for that but if you'd like more of a two-way conversation then identifying people that you know that you can trust whether that's in your workplace or at home and carving out the time to have the conversation can be super super helpful. One thing just to remember here is sometimes we can feel like it's not okay to burden others with our worries or our concerns but actually what would you feel like if a friend said to you I'm really struggling at the moment would you mind if we had had a chat want to sort of talk some things through actually probably be really really up for it and really want to help them and we need to be aware when we have these kinds of conversations that the person we're talking to or if we're doing the listening we can't necessarily change anything sometimes it's just literally about someone having the opportunity to air something and you might actually want to tell the person that you're offloading to that you're not looking for them to fix this you just really really need to talk about it and being explicit in that can be helpful because it can sometimes be a little frustrating when someone tries to give you quick fixes when perhaps there aren't really any and you just need the chance to kind of say this stuff out loud whether we're talking to another person or whether we're talking to a pet or whether we're talking to a journal just the opportunity to get this stuff out of our head and begin to untangle it a little bit can sometimes mean that new ways forwards begin to present themselves when we start to do some problem solving they might not come right away but actually over time just giving ourselves the time and space to think about this away from the problem and when we're perhaps in a slightly calmer state so more access to our thinking speaking problem solving skills can mean that we're more able to move forwards with issues that might have seemed intractable previously the next idea four or five is forgive and let it go so this is about the fact that some days will be really hard but particularly when we're working with or caring for children it's really important that every day is a fresh start and we allow them and us to start again and to create a new story and for this to have the potential to be a good one if we hold on to all of the anger angst sadness any other tricky challenging things that might have happened in a day from day to day today then this is cumulative and it's nobles and nobody ever stands a chance really of having a good day at all and so a good practice can be at the end of the day just practicing forgiveness just letting things go and this could couple with some of the other things so that idea of like washing the worries away we can be going okay it's okay we're going to let it go we're going to forgive but the act of actually proactively forgiving and we might do that out loud we might do that in writing we might communicate it with the person we're forgiving or we just might mentally do this for ourselves and say right I'm going to forgive that child for what's happened today or I'm going to forgive myself perhaps we acted in a way that wasn't quite optimal wasn't quite our best selves and we're beating ourselves up about it we also need to forgive ourselves tomorrow is a new day let's focus our energies on having a really good positive proactive day tomorrow rather than expending those energies and constantly looking back on what went wrong today so forgiving others forgiving ourselves and letting it go imagine it like those balloons or the seeds on a dandy line clock just dispersing to allow those things to go let them go and tomorrow we start again idea five is work out to work it out see what we did there and this is taking the idea that sometimes we can get really sort of worked up and wound up with lots and lots of kind of anxious or angry energy with the stuff that's built up inside us over the course of a day and we really need to kind of physically offload that in order that we can get to a point of rest and respite so my options here would normally be to go for a walk or to go for a climb and to actually physically work that out might also go for a run something that just kind of gets out but it's about what works for you but something physical essentially that might get your heart rate going a little bit ideally something that you quite enjoy doing but really anything where you are physically active where you're kind of physically engaged get get a bit of a sweat going and just allow that anxious energy to kind of work out and kind of relieving that physical tension can make a big big difference to our ability to sort of mentally move on and deal with what has happened that day and then the final idea is if you can to engage with reflective practice or supervision and so this is the idea of actually working with colleagues or with an appointed professional to work through and offload your worries and there's lots of different ways that this might work and it depends on what you have access to in your workplace or if you are coming to this as a private individual individual you might make use of things like talking therapies but the opportunity essentially to work through in a more structured environment what's going on to share those concerns and another option if you are a parent or carer is to do things like engage with local groups of parents and carers who are facing similar challenges so for me in East Sussex there are groups where parents of children with special needs will meet and have a coffee and work through their issues together and they'll share fun stuff and ideas but also if people have got concerns that are particularly challenging then this is a really good safe space to air them so it's identifying safe spaces where we can begin to air those issues again when it comes to things like supervision and reflective practice which is when we we talk about a case and we begin to explore it we're not necessarily expecting to find answers here it's more about working through the problem and ideas may evolve our problem solving skills might kick in somebody else might share something but it's not necessary about fixing it it's about reflecting it and really understanding the problem rather than necessarily getting to that stage of knowing what the answer is there isn't always a really good and clear cut one but yeah identifying sort of slightly more formal opportunities where we can share we can reflect we can offload we need to feel safe in those situations in order for us to be able to engage with them fully but actually making use of those situations as and when they arise can be really helpful and you don't have something like this in place already it doesn't necessarily have to be done in a like hyper professional way it may be that you identify a colleague perhaps you have a line manager or someone who does a similar role to you either within your setting or from another setting and that you're able to listen to each other you can think about what your ground rules are there in terms of things like confidentiality and what your expectations are of this interaction but actually you can do a lot to help one another in these situations and it really is a very much reciprocal thing so identifying someone who gets it who gets you who you can share those issues with and again if you are a parent or carer similarly finding someone else who's in a similar role who gets it who gets you who you might be able to have these sorts of chats with every now and then can be super super helpful so hopefully some ideas there and a bit of encouragement that offloading really is important and if we do not take control of our worries and the things that we're carrying around every day they will weigh us down and weigh us down and eventually we're going to drop them all just when we least expected or wanted it so taking a bit of control by thinking how we can regularly offload can make a really big difference good luck using some of those ideas if you would like to support my work the easiest way to do it the best way to do it is to share what I'm doing please share links on your social media or on your email or by word 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