Welcome everybody to today's episode of the Christy Faith Show. Did you know that one in four women in The US experience symptoms of anxiety and depression? In fact, women are significantly more likely than men to face these challenges with over twenty three percent of women reporting anxiety disorders just in the past year. In Thrive homeschool community where vulnerability and honesty are celebrated, it's not uncommon for moms to share in office hours that they are struggling with anxiety and depression. It comes up a lot.

So much that I decided we need to do an episode on this. And I have some big questions today. Should we avoid homeschooling if we're dealing with anxiety or depression? Is it a disqualifier? Or could it be something that we can navigate with beauty and grace with the right tools and support?

I have the perfect guest to help us today with all of those questions. I've invited Stephanie Combs today, a licensed professional counselor and homeschool mom herself to help us unpack these questions and explore what it really means to homeschool while managing mental health challenges. Alright. Let's dive into today's show. Thank you, Stephanie, so much for joining us today.

Would you start by introducing yourself and sharing a bit about your background?

Absolutely. I am a licensed counselor. I have been in the field for eighteen years. I do a lot of work with people dealing with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief loss, couples counseling, kinda do a little bit of it all.

Awesome. And I think you're being a little bit modest because when you sent your bio over, I was like, woah. This woman has done a lot. You're a board certified telehealth therapist trained in trauma focused CBT. That's so fascinating, by the way.

Functional family therapy, Gottman method, couples therapy. I've heard of that. And what's this polyvagal theory? What is that?

It's the study of the nervous system and understanding how people feel safe with other people or not safe.

Oh, that's incredible. Does that have to deal with, like, dysregulation? Totally. For ourselves? That's so big.

I've learned so much about that just in my own parenting, how important it is to regulate myself Yeah. So that I can co regulate with my kiddos. Oh, that's so fun. That's a whole another episode, girl. And by the way, full disclosure, Stephanie and I have known each other for years.

When I first moved to Colorado, you were in that co op. I was. Do you remember did you join after me, or were you already there when I joined?

I believe so because we kinda overlapped very shortly.

Yeah. Yeah. And I remember thinking, this girl is awesome. And then I found out she was a therapist, and I was like, of course, she's awesome. So I knew exactly who to call today.

So I wanna ask you, a lot of moms might be tuning in today because they already know that they struggle with anxiety and depression. Maybe they're homeschooling, maybe they're not, maybe, which I get this a lot, they're worried about commencing homeschooling because this is a problem in their lives. For those who aren't sure, but their days seem overwhelming and hard, what might be the experience of a homeschool mom who is struggling with anxiety and or depression?

Right. Like, some tangible examples of what that might look like would be things like if if she notices or he, because there's dads that are homeschooling too.

Yeah.

Yeah. There could be, like, changes in sleep patterns, changes in their appetite, if they notice that they're not interested in things that they used to be interested in. Those kinds of things would be some different experiences. If they notice that they're doom scrolling, just kind of distracted easily by things, those would be some different experiences that might indicate that they're having some anxiety and depression that they've maybe been avoiding.

Now I know that homeschooling can sometimes bring up emotions like feeling isolated or not good enough or even scared of failing, how can parents acknowledge and work through those feelings? Because I guess my question here is, I think the territory of homeschooling does come with some natural anxieties because we're so against the grain with society. We're already out of the box. Society truthfully not only discredits but distrusts homeschooling parents. And not only are we living in that culture, but it's all on us now.

Like, Parkinson's get a solid education, all the fingers can point back at us. Yeah. So how can we work through those feelings that we have of, oh, boy. Let me tell you, so many women join Thrive because they're worried that they're not doing enough or they're worried they're doing too much or they're not sure how they're doing on each end and they need a third party to tell them. Let's talk about that anxiety that we feel and what we can do with it.

What I tell my clients a lot is that anxiety tends to be something that happens whenever we're thinking about things that happened in the past. So, like, did I do that good enough? Or, like, what if he doesn't know how to read, you know, like, what if I didn't teach him the right ways? That sort of thing. Or if they're focused on worry about future situations.

So it's it tends to be either the past or the future, but it doesn't as often live when we're present with ourselves. If we can help become focused on being present in our experiences and slowing yourself down and breathing because a lot of times that's a good first step in being able to say, what pressure am I putting on myself right now? What thoughts might be causing me to feel anxious right now? I wanna get into that in a minute, but the first step in that I feel like is slowing down in order to have your mind and body be in the same place because it's really hard to become anxious when those two things are together. Interesting.

I know therapists always talk about being present.

Yes. I know that's

my Why is that so important? You talked about it's because we're kinda living in the past or the future. Why is why all this, you know, and you these new age philosophers have you in the past, they're like the now, living in the now, and then, you know, this is kind of what meditation is. And I know you're a Christian therapist. So how can Christians filter through this what could very easily sound like talk that doesn't align with their biblical worldview?

Why is this important for someone struggling with this to live? I know, at least for me, when I think of the past, it stirs up mistakes that I've made and shame. Right? The future is worrying about something. It's borrowing tomorrow's troubles.

It hasn't even happened. Right? It's like a fabrication of my of a reality that doesn't exist yet. So that makes sense. But And how

many times does it actually turn out the way that you think that it's going to? Whenever you do focus on that. Right? You're asking how do you be present? How do you practice that skill?

Yeah. And why is that such an important thing? Because you

hear it so much. It's important because our emotions are something that we experience physically, and our thoughts are in our head. We do a lot of thinking about our feelings, but we don't actually feel our feelings very often. And it's hard to feel our feelings if we're not present. We have to be able to physically experience our emotions, and we can't do that if we're thinking about 10 steps ahead of what might or might not happen down the road.

Nor can you deal with what you're currently dealing with in your life. I still I'm on this journey of that connecting the physical with the thought life. Right? So and I know that our thoughts can lead to feelings. Right?

Yes. Our thoughts can lead to our feelings, and our feelings lead to what we do with us. It's subconscious. We will have a thought, and then it turns into a belief.

Yes. And when we have

a belief about ourself, that can trigger the anxiety or depression. There's bound

to be days when parents feel completely depleted and struggling to keep up, maybe even not get out of bed in the morning. I have heard this so many times. What suggestions do you have for navigating those tough moments while we are supporting our kids learning?

This one, I feel like is quite a balancing act because as a homeschool mom, I can understand the pressure of, like, we want and need to be educating our children. And we are guarded and want to make sure that, you know, we're following the laws of the land and getting the hours in that we're required to do. And what does it look like to show grace to yourself as a mama acknowledging that you might have some stress and anxiety in your life? A concept that has come up in previous sessions with people before that I have really liked and kind of taken and used with other clients is the idea of being a friend to yourself. And what would you say to a friend if she were having a hard day where she was feeling extra anxious, extra emotional about a situation?

You might say, take a deep breath. Don't put that much pressure on yourself. It's okay to take a break. Like, ground yourself for a minute so that you can be fully present with your kids, and then you can try again tomorrow. The challenge is if that happens day after day after day, but that I think goes on to the question that you're asking earlier.

When is there a line there?

Yeah. And we can go there now. I mean, do you and this is maybe is a hot seat question, but do you think there is a point where and I wanna have an honest conversation here because I even say in my very first chapter of homeschool rising that not everyone can homeschool. We know this. Right?

There are lots of situations in which people cannot homeschool. We don't have control over that. But I also believe that there are people who shouldn't homeschool. Do you think that there could be a point and what might that look like? Right?

You know, this we gotta keep in mind, Stephanie is a therapist. She's not your therapist today. Okay? So and I don't want Stephanie to feel the pressure of of, you know, well, Stephanie said this. Right?

What are your thoughts on that? I just wanna have an honest conversation. Like, do you think there's a point where, you know, maybe not even permanently but temporarily to place your kid? What would you say to that?

I mean, my brain first immediately goes to safety.

Like Mhmm.

If you're concerned that you as the the parent can't keep yourself or your children safe, and as a therapist with that verbiage that I mean is like, are we like I don't mean to sound dramatic, but, like, is there homicidal tendencies or suicidal tendencies that we need to hone in on and check for that? Or are your kids not able to stay safe around each other? So safety to me is is the first thing that comes to mind that would say, yeah. That's that's not working. You can probably speak to, like, if test scores never show improvement or growth, if there's major severe learning disabilities, that could be if you don't feel like you have enough support.

But I also really appreciate what you said earlier, which is I believe that anxiety and depression are emotions that everyone experiences at different times. And it seems like there's a movement in my field for people and therapists even recognizing that it's it's I'm not trying to discount. I'm not saying that diagnoses aren't important.

Mhmm.

But I also want to normalize that everyone experiences anxiety and depression. And ultimately, if we can create community, if we can create ways to navigate what happens when we become aware of those emotions surfacing for us and utilize some helpful tools to regulate our emotions and to talk more openly about them with our support system, then I think that we should be able to, you know, navigate homeschooling more successfully.

And I love that you said support system because I have advised moms for all different reasons, like caring for an aging parent so they don't have the time to invest that they normally would. I'm remembering a Zoom call even last year about this where a woman had to fly to take care of her dying mother, but she didn't want to put her kids in school. So we our whole consultation was coming up with a plan Mhmm. Where she would have a support system together so that she could have this season, albeit temporary, where we could figure out a way to do it. What is so common for homeschool moms to hear in particular when she's having a hard time is just put them in school.

You're having a hard time right now. What's the big deal? It'd be so much easier if you put them in school. From talking to the moms in Thrive, that really hurts their feelings because they feel like their convictions are being bulldozed in a way that they wanna figure out they wish they had the support of navigating the homeschooling, you know, with, yes, getting the help they need and all of that. I wanna hear your thoughts on that.

And also, I think that we live in a day and age where our homeschool resources are so phenomenal Mhmm. That we actually can. I had a friend with cancer, and she actually put her kids on like, enrolled them in an online program for a year. Yeah. And she's like, I did not wanna send them to school.

I knew that was gonna be the worst thing for them, so I did it in a way where I actually didn't have to do anything for a while. Anyway, what are your thoughts on all that? As a homeschool mom who values a family together approach and leans towards the classical and Charlotte Mason styles, I often struggle to bring my educational vision to life with my kids' diverse ages and learning needs. With all our interests and super packed schedule, bridging that gap between the dreamy homeschool I want and reality, I gotta be honest. It's a challenge.

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That's cltexam.com. Use code Christy 25 for 25% off your assessment. Honestly, like the devil's advocate in me makes me curious

to know this doesn't really answer your question, but it just makes me curious to know if a parent is in public school and they're dealing with a stressful situation, are their friends encouraging them to homeschool? Mhmm. Like, that's kind of the flip side of it. And so I could understand why that would be really disheartening for these homeschool mamas for that to be the number one kind of go to suggestion.

Mhmm.

I might encourage them to something that a lot of my clients know that, like, I shout from the rooftops is the concept of boundary setting. And to me, that might be an appropriate boundary if you feel like if you start to really push yourself to be more present and to notice your own nervous system and what emotions you have surfacing in yourself. If you're having a conversation with someone who you notice doesn't help you necessarily feel supported whenever you're dealing with stress or trying to just process through your emotions related to homeschooling, then you might need to have a mental note and shift your posture towards that person and consider maybe they're not in your corner, and they might not be the person that you want to be vulnerable with if you don't want to be discouraged and told to to go to public school just because you're stressing out for a season. Does that answer your question?

Oh, yeah. No. I think it does because and I think that it really depends because everyone's lives are really different. What I'm hoping the listeners get from today is wisdom and insight. And okay, how can this maybe apply to me if this is something that they're struggling with?

Yeah. Because, you know, we're this isn't a counseling session for an individual person per se, but I do think it is a it's a significant problem. And the other thing too is I do believe educational neglect is a thing. Mhmm. So if there is a mom who for weeks and months on end can't get out of bed Yeah.

And homeschool her children, we need to start finding other alternatives, options, support systems, all sorts of things to change that both for her and for her kids. Right? Because her kids need her. Yes. Our kids need us too.

And so we want health. What are your thoughts on that?

I just am thinking about families that I've heard of through the years as a homeschool mom where, you know, kids weren't able to write their name or spell their name by the age of 11 or 12, and that is educational neglect. And so I think there's there's never black and white in my opinion. There's always there's gray that has to be considered in these situations for sure. And so I agree with you.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I I'm remembering a situation when we had our learning center because we ran a homeschool pod. We didn't call them pods because I'm that old.

Pods didn't I think pods didn't exist till COVID. I don't even know. But it would be called a pod. We had kids that were actors. We had pre pro athletes.

We had a professional surfer. We had a professional ice skater. And I remember we got a call one day, and it was to homeschool a young boy because his dad was dying. And they just didn't want him gone seven hours a day. The time was very limited.

And so they sent him to us for an hour and a half, and he was little. And we got the basics done, and they are never gonna regret that time. And so I think just in terms of everyone having an individual situation, but that goes back to would someone tell a mom in public school, you know, maybe now it's time to homeschool your kid. It is such a double standard that we face. Mhmm.

I wanna ask you this next question. Managing our own mental health can feel exhausting even if you're in this realm of what one would consider fairly healthy mentally. But we still struggle. Right? This is our our journey too.

Tomorrow is our first tomorrow just like it's our kids' first tomorrow. We're navigating this life for the first time too. It's really hard to manage our kids' big emotions when we are struggling with our own. Have you ever felt have you ever been in a situation, Stephanie, just personally where it's like, maybe you're exhausted. Like, I'm thinking of times where we've been out all day on hikes and this and that, and we come home and then the kids start fighting.

I'm like Yeah. I don't have it in me children. Right? How can we find balance? Because I think that everyone is on a different spectrum as to what they can handle emotionally from their kids.

What do you have any tips for us to find balance when the emotional load of parenting our kids feels too heavy?

I was thinking about this a lot. And what I noticed in my office, and so I'm assuming this translates in even the community that you work with, but I don't know that we, maybe we as mamas, do the greatest job of letting people know like, of being fully transparent of what we are experiencing emotionally. And so I think that to me goes back to the value in being present with yourself is that you're able to start observing your body and what's going on in your body. And once you do that, you can speak to it out loud. I've even started practicing that myself with my children and saying, you know what?

I'm I'm noticing that my stomach's growling really loudly, and so mama's pretty hungry. I want to be able to fully hear what's on your mind, but I need to eat first. Can I do that? And then we'll come back and talk. It's like starting to recognize what are my body's basic needs that I have been denying because I've been busy with clients or I've been busy with trying to get you to sit down and do your English.

And I want to set a better example to my kids to slow down and go back to those basics.

Well, and to me, Stephanie, that's so beautiful because aren't you actually teaching emotional regulation when you're doing that? Right? Because the best teacher is through modeling. So this morning this happened to me this morning. This is crazy.

As you were saying that, was like, oh my goodness. I did this this morning. So visual clutter really gets to me. It's very dysregulating for me. And one thing in addition to visual clutter is sticky counters.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Okay, girl. Alright.

So I'm eating breakfast, and I put my elbows on the table, and it's like stick, stick. And my initial one was, who was kitchen last? Right? Who you know, what child failed? Right?

It's what I'm thinking. What I'm thinking. And I noticed and then I look around, and I was already a little bit agitated because there were just there was visual clutter. So not only was there the visual clutter, it was like my perfect storm. Mhmm.

Visual clutter and sticky table. And I I gotta be honest. I really started to escalate. I really started to escalate, but something in me just I've been because I've been working on this so hard and people don't listeners don't think that, like, I have it all together. I don't.

I'm just sharing a particular situation that happened today. And I told the kiddos, I said, I am feeling incredibly dysregulated right now Yep. And I don't want to yell. So what I'm going to do and I need to take a shower anyway. And I think that the water and the hot water and all that will feel very regulating to me and the no the white noise of it.

So I'm gonna go up, I'm gonna take my shower. Mhmm. But I did say, but when I come out of my shower, I do expect

You kinda tag that on at the end.

Yeah. Clearly, the parenting experts are like, uh-oh, Christy really messed up. But anyway No. I don't expect perfection, but I also don't like to live in squalor. Yeah.

So anyway but I came down and sure enough, the kids, they really made efforts to make it right. They apologized to me, and then I shared with them. I said, you know what? I make a lot of this is actually what I told them. I said, I make a lot of mistakes, and I always try to apologize to you when I do.

And I do wanna say this. So I practiced intentionally, I practiced kindness to myself because I want my kiddos to practice this. I said, I'm really proud of myself Mhmm. For stopping and regulating myself and giving myself a break before coming back down because I didn't yell at you guys. And they're like, mom, that was so good.

Like that. Right?

I love that. And so

and so I think that it's really important and we have a parenting coach in Thrive Homeschool Community. She's on all of the office hours and she is always talking about what's going on in me first. How do I regulate? I can't really help my kids and help regulate my kids if I'm not regulated myself.

Not to sound like a broken record, but you can't regulate yourself if you're always focused on what you should have been doing or what you are worried about happening in the future. You just can't Yes. That's the circle back.

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Yes. Oh, yeah. That's really powerful. That's phenomenal. And so I think that basically the answer, we did a long roundabout to answer question number five that I had for you, like, what can we do to find the balance?

But I think it's what you said is we have to take care of ourselves first, basically Absolutely. In order to have the bandwidth, like what you did with your with your kids. I think that's so important. And I think if someone struggles with anxiety and depression, that might come sooner than maybe someone else.

What might come sooner?

Like, the dis I know that when I've had hard times

Oh, we call that your window of tolerance. So

you're you. Look. There's a professional word for it.

So with your window of tolerance, like, that can change, like, depending on right? Like, depending on the day. So some days you can tolerate a whole lot if you are well rested and well digested and you have done all the things to care for yourself. But if there are things contributing, you know, like if it's end of year if you're in a co op and it's end of year, all the crazy that you're doing or whatever, your window of tolerance might be a lot smaller. And so if that window of tolerance is smaller, you need to be aware of that so you can maybe even use that verbiage.

I've started using that. Again, I'm not perfect in my parenting either. But to be able to say, hey, kiddos, just so you know, mama's window of tolerance is a little bit smaller today.

Mhmm.

And so how about we just try to play on our own for a little bit, and then we'll kind of come back together and reconvene.

Yes. That's powerful. Okay. So this brings up something else too. I forget who it was.

It probably was at one of the conferences I was at because I cannot put a face to this, but it's something that I've heard before where this woman was explaining that she grew up feeling responsible for her mother's feelings. Yeah. How can we not do that to our kids? Right? Because we what we're taught what we just talked about was making sure that we're having these emotional awareness conversations with our kiddos.

But I don't want my kiddos to ever feel like they are responsible for regulating me. That's my responsibility. So how can we make sure we don't do that?

I mean, there's a couple of things that come to mind. One is I think that you need to be as as the parent, we need to be mindful of the words that we're using. If I say, you're making me angry right now, that's implying that that the kid is responsible for your emotions and they are not. For you to focus on, as cheesy as it sounds, I statements, I feel statements, I'm feeling really frustrated right now or I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed right now. Sometimes if I'm if I'm in a healthy headspace, sometimes I'll say, are you guys noticing mama's breathing?

Can you tell that I might be, like, looking a little bit more frustrated? Yeah. Okay. I think that means that I need to do something to take care of my body for a minute. So using that kind of language, I think it's also really important for us to remember not to go way back and to deal with trauma ourselves, but I think that we do need to address that ourselves as the parents and to recognize that just because we assumed that we were responsible for our own parents' emotions when we were kids, that's not accurate.

And that's a that's a belief that we need to work to start to unpack so that we don't pass that on to the next generation. Because really at the end of the day, I don't know if you might want to include this or not, but the thought came to my mind the other day that, like, if if you have to go pee, I can't do that for you. Right? And so if you're experiencing an emotion, I can't go and experience that emotion for you, and it's not my job to fix it or change it. Emotions are simply our body's way of saying there's something going on here.

It's like our body's way of waving a red flag. And I really think that there's a shift that people in the psychology world, but even just people in everyday life are starting to recognize there's a shift in how we address things like anxiety and depression. It doesn't have to be our identity. It's just something that we experience like a wave in the ocean that comes and goes.

I love that. You know, it's interesting because there's also a shift in the conversation regarding learning disabilities too.

Really?

Which is, are they a social construct? We all have different brains. There's no doubt about it. Right? There is an ADHD brain, but why is that considered a disability?

Why exactly? Well, maybe it's not. Maybe this is a social construct because these particular kids couldn't thrive in the industrialized schooling classroom, So they were deemed as a problem or something was wrong with them. But anyway, that's really interesting that we're seeing that a little bit in psychology too. I think that at least it's crossed my mind in the past when I've gone through hard times, it's like, wait a minute, is this depression?

Like, is there like a time limit? How long do I have to be feeling this bad for it to be like clinical? Right? Like, I worry right. I worry about that.

And I think that's really freeing to say, we all feel these things. They come and go and maybe we even have seasons where life is hard.

Mhmm.

We have hard seasons where the smiles aren't as often as the frowns.

And I also wanna be clear that there are some people who definitely have some chemical imbalances Mhmm. Who do need medication to help them. I mean, I obviously see that in my office a lot, but I see the flip side of it where it's maybe not the accurate situation for that person either.

Or maybe and what I hear you saying, and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, what I hear you saying is sometimes putting that label on yourself is unhelpful. Is that what I Yeah. Or is that what you were communicating? I think it

can be unhelpful for a lot of different reasons.

For parents who do struggle with anxiety or depression and or depression, there's often pressures to see these struggles as purely negative. Is there a silver lining to this? Is there a way to reframe our challenges as maybe opportunities to teach resilience or adaptability even when it doesn't feel like it, when it just feels like this is a cloud that hangs over my life? Is there a different way to look at this?

I think it's actually what we just said. I think that it the reframe is looking at anxiety or depression when you're experiencing what we might normally consider negative emotions. When we start to notice like, oh, my stomach, I'm starting to feel butterflies in my stomach. Instead of looking at that as if it is like a curse, let's look at it as a gift. Our body is giving us a gift by communicating with us that something is changing and something's going on that's causing us to experience that emotion.

Mhmm.

If you can identify what emotion it is that you're experiencing, because I believe that thoughts lead to feelings and feelings lead to actions, if we're able to identify what feeling we're experiencing, then we can work backwards and identify what kind of thought or belief have I been having that might be contributing to this emotion that I'm experiencing right now.

That's powerful. At conferences, I give a talk called the special needs blueprint. And I also give a talk on self doubt. I start out with, hey. I'm not a therapist.

Right? But Yeah. I've had therapy. No. I'm not a therapist.

And if you need help, you need help. But one of the things I mentioned in that particular workshop with kids who are really struggling and the parent feels lost is I say, look, I can't change your kid right now. Mhmm. I can't change their particular situation, what they're facing, the challenges that you have. But what I hope I can do today is change how you feel about it.

Mhmm. And then I go, and we kinda look at mindset shifting, things like that. Yeah. And I think that's what you're saying too.

I think it is about shifting perspective is key in I mean, that's biblical. We're taking our thoughts captive again, like you said.

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, what's also for those of you Christians who are listening, because I've done so many deep dives with parenting, just on my own parenting journey and a lot of mistakes that Scott and I made in the beginning. Okay.

What does the bible say about it? It's really encouraging is the bible also says a lot about emotional regulation. Right? It sounds like pop psychology, like, oh, everyone's talking about emotional regulation, but what are the fruits of the spirit, people? It's literally emotional regulation.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I also think when we think about how Jesus carried himself and the different stories that we study for those couple of years that he was ministering on Earth, that he set such a great example of being present. How he responded, like, who touched my robe?

I think of him being really methodical as he walked around and ministered to people. And to me, that's practicing being present.

Stephanie, if there's one thing you want a homeschool mom or dad to hear today who is struggling right now, what would that be?

I would say slow down. I would say that something I tell people a lot to start practicing is a couple times a day, thirty seconds each time, maybe three times a day when you're taking a break for a meal, slow down, take a deep breath, and do something to try to ground yourself. Yourself. Check-in with your body and say, what is my body? What do I need to do?

I I feel like as adults when we're running from thing to thing, we don't even pay attention to our bodies close enough to recognize when we have to use the bathroom or when we're hungry or when we need some water. And in especially those of us who are homeschooling I know well, and public school too, most parents. They want what's best for their kids. They want their kids to know how to care for themselves and they're not going to do that if we don't set that example like you said. And so slowing down to be present, recognizing what's going on for you physically which is also emotionally so that you can then be transparent and speak that out so that you can have the support that you need from whoever is safe in your life.

Those are beautiful words. The perfect way to end the episode today. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with the listeners, Stephanie.

Absolutely. Bye.