October 16, 2020
You may have noticed there was no newsletter last week…so many of us are just trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the midst of this ongoing pandemic and societal mayhem.
In addition to all of that and an October 16th snowfall, I was creating a way to celebrate our wedding anniversary in the time of Covid-19. Self care needed to be amped up in such a huge way. For me that was letting go of my weekly writing, sitting when I needed to sit, organizing to give me some sense of order and watching movies to escape reality.
Many of you may be finding it takes a conscious effort to not fall into a pit of despair. Sometimes it’s moment to moment. We all need to be very cognizant of practicing our self care.
Learning to trust ourselves as parents or other family caregivers of those with eating disorders as well as our loved one fighting to recover can be a piece of this self care.
The past two Wednesdays in our weekly group support call we’ve been discussing trust.
Caregiving involves trusting; your child, yourself, providers and the process.
How can we learn to trust in the face of so much truly not being okay? What are some concrete ways we can practice trusting our child (not ed…), ourselves, the process, the providers?
- Simply notice – is this my ‘Sabetour’ or negative self talk which takes away our ability trust.
- Trusting our gut which takes removing fear and being grounded.
- Parenting Skills have to be a higher level including allowing our child to sit with their discomfort.
- Growing our confidence to trust ourselves and others to do the right thing.
- Trusting ourselves takes the confidence to not rescue our loved ones.
- Nurturing our confidence through practice experiences and validation that things work out.
- Doing our parallel process and making our own changes. Trust what you CAN do.
- Asking ourself: What do I know to be true?
And here is one fun last concrete way we can increase trust in so many ways when there is truly nothing we can do about a 
non life threatening situation and it’s not helping to jump in the well or onto the rollercoaster with your loved one.
My friend, Merete in Denmark told me about the Danish concept of ‘pyt’ pronounced something like ‘put’ with a Danish accent and some positive energy. Can you do anything about it? Go hit the PYT button! Can’t do anything about it, just let go. GET IT OUT OF YOUR BODY. This is a kinesthetic experience of letting it go.
From Karen Rosinger’s BBC travel article in February 2019, “Just like the Danish concept of ‘hygge’, ‘pyt’ does not have a direct English translation. Some interpretations include ‘never mind’, ‘don’t worry’ or ‘forget about it’ – but these expressions don’t convey the positive aspect of the word. ‘Pyt’ is used to express that you accept a situation is out of your control, and even though you might be annoyed or frustrated, you decide not to waste unnecessary energy on thinking more about it. You accept it and move on. ‘Pyt’ is also used to comfort other people and diffuse unfortunate situations.” Read more about ‘pyt’ here.
Thank you dear readers for your patience and continued trust in me. Now I’m off to say ‘PYT’ about the snowy December weather we are having in October (3 snowstorms so far and it’s still Oct) and will increase the hygge and get cozy and make the best of this. 😉
