Yesterday, my 3-year-old son bodychecked my 16-month-old daughter. From the back. Unprovoked. While laughing.
He thought it was a game. (Not sure there are any that allow blindside hits.) He doesn’t understand physics. (Still learning his letters.) My daughter cried, regardless of the factors.
Sure, it doesn’t in one sense matter the contributing factors leading up to this moment – it still happened. But, when I don’t stop to name them, I allow hidden stressors to harbor.
In August 2024, the United States Surgeon General posted an advisory where he stated that parents and caregivers are twice as likely to exhibit stress compared to adults who do not have parenting or caregiving responsibilities.
In a separate opinion piece with the New York Times, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy reflected on being a parent himself and how it is part of a web of hidden stressors:
When was the last time you named what was stressing you out? When was the last time you were honored with the permission to feel what you were experiencing and not just “push through”?
Life is complicated: parenting, community, work, navigating our interconnected, artificial-intelligence-supported world – these top 4 hidden stressors are real and easy to overlook or justify.
Think back to my previous evening. What are all the contributing factors and possible resources needed to address the well-being of my children, post-bodycheck?
This list is in no way exhaustive, but it illustrates my point. There is more here than just a poor choice of behavior. It requires more than simply telling our son that he cannot do blindside tackles.
I as a parent need the resources of attunement, empathy, healthy relationships to technology, collaboration with my spouse, and ways I model how I inhabit a physical space as much as I then need the discernment on how to help parent and mentor my son toward cultivating these same skills and competencies in his own life.
It illustrates the importance of what our team defines as a relational force-field, an interplay of positive and negative influences that impact a situation. Every resource is a positive contribution to health and wellness. Every absent or misapplied skill, unknown approach, and bias act as negative contributions to connection and relational thriving.
It is interesting to note that Dr. Murthy named these top 4 hidden stressors that can go overlooked by a community, and are present in every household:
Loneliness
Work
Technology
Care
None of these is limited to the experience of a parent, but it is worth noting the multiplying effect of these stressors when combined within households.
Loneliness
The irony of loneliness, this sense of feeling utterly alone, is that it is a common experience in our hyperconnected world. Despite what your social media feed might say, 55 percent of adults feel lonely, with that number jumping up to 65 percent and 77 percent for parents and single parents, respectively.
In my experience, this loneliness is exacerbated by the lack of honestly naming its presence. Smiling, candid photos and trite memes to soak-up their childhood are ineffective when my toddler has stalled bedtime for 3 hours (true story). Loneliness takes on a different meaning when you are rocking your crying newborn in the dark, finding no ounce of relief from milk, pacifier, lullabies, rocking, or hand-offs to your partner (also true story).
What also never helps me is responding to “How are you?” with “Good but busy.” That’s a smokescreen and denial of all those experiences I just named. Yet again a very true story of my life.
Work
Work is fundamental to our sense of self. Being a steward of what is in our lives and making them flourish is a beautiful design in human nature. The slippery slope is when what is meant to be just a part of what we steward – your job or occupation – becomes the defining trait of what is deemed worthwhile work. American culture in particular can easily ascribe a sense of total worth based on a title.
Take being a doctor. Instead of the occupation of doctor being part of a larger identity of caring for people’s well-being – an identity in which loving your partner, caring for your children, empowering people experiencing homelessness, supporting your aging parents can be included – it becomes sole proprietor of time deemed worthy and everything else becomes a distraction or detractor from what is “meaningful.”
Follow the money and you will know this to be the case. Although the percentage of men taking paternity leave has risen from 7.5 percent in the 1970s to 66.5 percent in the 2010s, over one third of those men needed to use vacation time. Another 16.5 percent opted for unpaid leave. Fifty percent of men did not have companies or jobs in place that would allow them to steward an incredibly life-altering season: welcoming and raising a child.
This is just regarding men. When considering the distribution of responsibility for men and women, 66 percent of working parents experience burnout, with 68 percent of women noting burnout in comparison to 42 percent of men. This stat reflects the growing cultural expectation that women more so than men feel the need to “do it all”: mother, full-time career, and homemaker.
Technology
Don’t worry – AI did not generate this article. AI though reflects the side effect of technology: It develops faster than we can understand its impact and create expectations around it.
When considering households, 70 percent of parents say that there is more stress involved around parenting because of screen time and social media as the top two contributing factors.
I can attest to these impacts not just when considering my toddlers and how technology shapes their perceptions of reality; I feel the sway and impact of glowing screens and feeds.
I can be sucked into doomscrolling. I can unintentionally watch more videos than I anticipated before bed. Both of which can impede sleep, let alone other facets of functioning well.
For my children, I see the impact of streaming services to affect how my son thinks groceries or food options can arrive: instantly. I still have the future discussions around how to relate to video games and phone usage to look forward to.
Care
All of these stats are rooted in very real and very good goals: caring for the well-being of others. It is just that with every good relationship in your life, you also feel the very normal apprehension of what lies ahead: anxiety. For parents, that stat of stress is 33 percent versus 20 percent for other adults.
Who do you care about? What do you worry about regarding their future? Your future with them?
Naming reality eases the heaviness of it. So, how do we be honest with ourselves and our experiences to these everyday stressors? I just shared the first.
1. Map what you feel
Take five minutes at the start of the day, if possible, and sit somewhere comfortable and quiet. Again, if possible.
Do not grab your phone. Do not open any notifications. Just sit in the stillness.
When the thoughts or feelings or sensations arise that you stuffed down with last night’s doomscroll, let them rise.
I find it helpful to picture these thoughts and emotions like shadows. From a distance, they seem massive, but the longer you focus on them, you find the shadow start to shrink and begin to have definition to what is there.
Can't find the words? Not a problem. Emotional literacy is difficult for some. I can be much faster to name what I think or what I am feeling in my body. Giving definition to the feeling is harder for me.
So, I look to resources like emotion wheels.
For those of you who have a relationship to God or are spiritually open, I would suggest you name that feeling or thought and model the example of Jesus: name it, name what you desire in place of it, and entrust it to the Lord.
But don’t stop there.
2. Mean what you say
Sometimes we settle with “giving it to the Lord,” but, as I have written previously, this can actually serve as spiritually bypassing emotions rather than actually taking what we are experiencing into community.
The next time someone in your inner circle of closer friendships or relationships asks you, “How are you?” – if you feel that saying “Good” or “Fine” is disingenuous – ask them if you can grab a coffee or jump on a call.
Even better, establish some rhythms of protected time where some of these inventorying questions of “How are you” or “What’s new” have the space to allow healthy responses to breathe.
This weekend, for me and my wife, it was the safe space to answer that question with, “Bedtimes have been a lot. My toddler’s stalling puts filibusters to shame.”
You know what I found on the other side of that honest naming? Empathy. True, honest nods and body language that spoke, “You are not alone.”
Then they shared how they found hope on the other side.
3. Make coping strategies together
In Disney’s films Inside Out and Inside Out 2, viewers follow the life of Riley as she enters her elementary and teenage years, with the personified emotions of Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger acting as a sounding board to her experiences. There’s this powerful moment in Inside Out 2 – spoiler if you have not seen it, so jump ahead beyond Anxiety’s face to read a final suggestion to remain unspoiled.
Anxiety has wreaked havoc to relationships in Riley’s life. Not to mention put on literal lockdown some of her other emotional guides. There’s this moment where all of Anxiety’s good designs to predict the outcomes of Riley’s choices backfire and become an uncontrollable whirlwind of relational damage. Joy sees Anxiety and presses into the hurricane of self-induced stress and tells Anxiety,
“You can let go.”
You might not have a community to physically reflect back to you that they see you and understand your experience. You might not even know what it looks like to take steps beyond what you feel. Hopefully this article can be a start.
Our team at the Resilient Communities Center understand that we all stress out. What stresses us out might be unique to our story and place, but it’s a common human experience. It is why we believe naming your problems is the first step to actually reclaiming your potential. So, we created We/ve, a community group for those stressed out in your hyperconnected lives.
We believe in making community-made potential so that you can
Develop solutions to purpose, relationships, and work with others like you.
Draw out resilience around dinner tables, conference calls, and community boards.
Discover what’s possible with those who share your space, block, or zip code.
Check out one of our community groups in Atlanta every second Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Grace Village in Clarkston, Georgia.
Interested in running your own group for community-made potential? Reach out to one of our coaches to learn more about how you can be an ambassador for the change you want to see around what stresses you out in life and relationships.
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