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99: Learning How To TWIRL Through Stress and Anxious Thoughts (Part 1)
94 Plays5 months ago
When we are stressed and anxious, our tendency is to retreat within ourselves and isolate. This is the exact opposite of what we need to do! Developed by Dr. Laura Fleetwood as a doctoral research project, TWIRL is a 4-hour, in-person workshop that tween girls attend with their mom or primary female caregiver. Using the TWIRL imagery and acronym, Laura shares Messy Miracle stories from her own tween & teen years and provides tangible steps for young girls to come out of hiding and TWIRL their way through life.
On this week’s episode, Jill Devine sat down with Missy Wohldmann and her two daughters, Alix and Morgan. Alix will be entering 6th grade this coming school year and Morgan will be entering 5th grade. Missy and her daughters attended the TWIRL workshop and shared their experience with Jill and Laura.
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Normal Goes A Long Way is brought to you by Messiah St. Charles: https://messiahstcharles.org/
Seeking The Still: https://seekingthestill.com/
Two Kids and A Career: https://www.jilldevine.com/podcast
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Goals
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible. Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The normal goes a long way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Insights on Stress and Parenting
00:00:39
Speaker
This is kind of a very new dynamic, Laura, what we have going on today in this episode. I'm Jill Devine along with Laura Fleetwood and we have three special guests. But before I introduce them, I want to explain why they're here with us today. So in our last episode, we had a conversation with Dr. David McDonald and we talked about the men's conference and we talked about how it is for guys, how it is for boys. Like what is their stress indicators or how did they deal with these sorts of things going in their lives? Because we have husbands, but we don't really necessarily know because we don't have sons. Right. We only know what it's like to be
00:01:26
Speaker
parents to girls. So Laura has talked a little bit about what she has been doing for the past few years. And let's do a little brief synopsis on that, what you've been doing for your doctoral. Sure. So throughout the last three years of getting my doctorate, I had to choose a ah project or something that I wanted to focus my research on. And because battling anxiety and stress is such a personal issue to me. And because I have two young girls, I decided that I wanted to focus on how to proactively help young girls deal with stress in their life. So I spent three years talking to girls and moms and
00:02:11
Speaker
counselors and psychiatrists and all the people who kind of deal in that world and doing a lot of research um on how stress impacts us and what can lead to resilience from stress. And my project over those three years ended up being developing a stress resilience workshop. that tweens, so girls 8 to 12 would attend with their mom or their primary female caregiver. And then we actually got to launch it for the first time this past week at
Introducing the Twirl Workshop
00:02:41
Speaker
Messiah. Messiah was the first host.
00:02:43
Speaker
And um yeah, our guests today were there. So we're going to actually talk to people who participated and and find out um how it went and what they learned. and So let me introduce our guests. First, we have Mama. We have Missy. How are you, Missy? Good. Thank you. You're welcome. And then we have sisters, Alex and Morgan. Hello. Hi. ah Alex is getting ready to go into sixth grade. And then Morgan is getting ready to go into fifth grade. And they were at the workshop. I was not. And the reason why I have littles, so they are five and seven. And I told Laura that I did not want to attend this workshop as a friend, which sounds rude. That's not it as a friend or a coworker because I want to attend it as a mother. Even though you all are gonna let me know some of the things you experience, I want to get that first experience with my daughters. So I have a lot of questions because one of the things that people like to to make fun of me about is i i I try to get every single tool in my tool belt and sometimes it's a lot.
00:03:56
Speaker
but I want to be the best mom and the best role model that I can for my girls. I want to communicate. I want to know what's going on. And so this seems perfect. And the other thing is when you are a parent and Missy, you also have a little boy. So I don't know if you've experienced this as well, but when you're a girl mom, you always hear just wait. Just wait. Just wait till middle school. Just wait until they hit their teenage years. Just wait. What you're experiencing now, Jill, that's nothing compared to what's going to happen. And then you hear about the mean girls and you hear about the friends. And it just, it really concerns me. And so this workshop that you had,
00:04:42
Speaker
Laura it was it's called twirl and so I want to let's first start missy with why you said yes like why I mean obviously because of the ages you meet the criteria even though you meet the criteria that doesn't mean you're always like what prompted you to say okay this is what I'm gonna do Yeah, um so the reason why I always just like to say yes, he has the fact that we that we fell into the age range of of kind of the participants that we're joining. um I always I always enjoy the community of anything that we do that we do here. However, the reason that I really said yes to this in particular is because I think as
00:05:21
Speaker
moms, we can be very, I'll speak personally, we can be reactive when it comes to some of these issues. And so when you're talking about things like anxiety or stress or whatever it might be, and i want I want to be more intentional about getting ahead of it, um instead of them all of a sudden experiencing what's going on in their lives. And then I'm like, oh, now we should talk about it. um Instead, we can talk about it so that when it starts to occur, We already have some tools in our toolbox. Did you feel like you needed to find the right words though? Were you like, I want to go into this because I need to know how to communicate these things too. Cause like, I don't know exactly how you do talk about that stuff.
00:06:05
Speaker
So no, I think when I chose to sign up, i I really kind of went into without expectation, because it's an area that I don't know. you know I don't know what I don't know. I don't know the good ways to um bring up these. you know It's not like we're always sitting around and just like, so? well that's what What's your stress level? And so I, again, yeah I just wanted to get ahead of it. I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to just, in and allow for conversation between the three of us, um you know, cause I don't have all the answers and I won't have all the answers, but if we can learn to communicate it together and kind of walk through that journey together, um then I thought that that was a great opportunity. Alex and Morgan, I am guessing that you have a pretty good relationship with your mom.
Social Media and Stress Discussion
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah. That you're here. Yes. So when she approached you about this, what were you thinking? Because obviously, well, did you ask them or tell them they were coming? No,
00:07:12
Speaker
I think, well, because we, well, we saw it advertised and I remember I looked over at Morgan um and I said, Do you feel stressed? And she looked at me like, I don't know. But we were just, we were interested interested. So yeah, we, we had the conversation and they were interested. I won't speak for you. Maybe you weren't, but we're interested in signing up. And we knew that we wanted to attend when we started seeing an advertised. Okay. So you know that you're signed up. Mom signed you both up. What are you thinking going into it? I just, we're going to have some time with mom. We're going to learn about hard things. I mean, what do you, what are you expecting?
00:07:47
Speaker
I was thinking that we were just going to talk for four hours about stress, which got me a little bit overwhelmed because that was a long time. But I'm glad that it wasn't like just talking and that we had like breaks and activities to go on. Okay, what about you, Morgan? I overwhelmed because I didn't know what was going to happen. Okay. Did you think it was going to be like class? Like you were going to sit there and just have to listen to a teacher for four hours? Oh my gosh. Yeah, that would be a little overwhelming. All right. Okay, so no did you have friends that also attended? yeah Yes, I had my friend at
00:08:32
Speaker
Okay, ok before we get into the workshop, what's school like for you? Is it hard being a girl and your age? i'm so just it depends on This is not a right or a wrong answer. Is social media involved in your lives? Like, do you both have social media? Like TikTok or Instagram? Or phones? No, I don't have TikTok or for Instagram. I have YouTube, but that's it. Do you find that you have a lot of friends that do have phones and social media? Yes. Do you feel pressured by that? That you don't? No.
00:09:14
Speaker
Tell me why. just i that it's really addicting and i dont wanna just spend my time i am sitting on the couch just s scrollrring through tiktok oh
00:09:29
Speaker
Oh, really? They're really okay. They do have a messenger. So they have a way to communicate, Facebook Messenger, to communicate with their friends who also have that. So they have a communication aspect, but not really social media outside. Because I hear that that is a barrier sometimes in middle school and, you know, even leading up to middle school. And so, It scares me because I know I used to be on Facebook and I got off of it because it was not helping me mentally. I realized like this is not great for me. So I got to take this off. And I just had a conversation with a couple of people about this recently. and We miss being able to see
00:10:14
Speaker
People's kids and what these big celebrations are but that does not outweigh What it does to us mentally and so I'm on Instagram and for some reason Instagram is not ah a trigger for me And I think it's because I don't necessarily see a lot of personal stuff from other people. I'm mostly looking up like Recipes that involve pickles because I love pickles or mom hacks, you know, so I I have through some research have heard how damaging social media is and we're going to start learning how how much it's affected these kids from five to even 10 years ago and where they end up. Is this a conversation that you have had in the home Missy with your husband and with the girls? Like I know that there are girls that have phones and that are their age and they're on these crazy platforms.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah. So we um I don't know that we formally had the conversation. I know that they saw me a couple of years ago um get off all of social media just as a kind of a refresh and I never went back to it. for the same way that you were just saying, and I never went back because it was just freeing. And then I really had to think about my why, you know, why, why am I posting it? Is it because, you know, is it why, you know, is it because it's just, Oh, I want my family to see it because I can send them pictures. I can send my family pictures, you know? um And so what, what really was that fulfilling in me?
00:11:44
Speaker
And then with them, you know, i I don't know that we'll say, no, they haven't really approached it yet with the desire. And I certainly wasn't going to lead the charge, so. Right, right. What are some other stressors in your life? I mean, I i threw out social media that seems to not be one that is too much of a a big deal for you. What are some other things that bother you or you're trying to figure out, oh, wait, why why do I feel this way about this? Friends most of the time get me really stressed out because they like make up like little arguments over the silliest things. Can you give me an example? Like when somebody didn't like what somebody said then they're just like really upset and then like then them to just like fall apart. Yeah it's hard to see friends arguing and then sometimes we feel like oh which one should I
00:12:42
Speaker
Do I need to take a side or, yeah, that's hard. What about you, Morgan? For me, it can sometimes be stressful if I have like heavy schedules. So do you have a lot of, is it just heavy schedules in school or outside of school too? Is that what you mean? Okay. So then let's think about those that have a, they feel like they have a heavy workload at school and then they're doing extracurricular activities. That has to be crazy in itself.
Stressors for Tweens and Workshop Activities
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, what the girls are saying is exactly what I found in my research is that the biggest stress stressors for tweens are friends and schoolwork, like schedules and and extracurriculars and then the stress of just living in a family, right? With with two parents who may not always, you know, get along and um siblings and, you know, it's living with people is challenging. Yeah, we definitely saw it. going into their grades now, fourth and fifth, where it's just, because they don't want to give up time. They're extracurricular time. They love the sports that they play. They like the extra stuff that they do, but there's more homework. And so then you're going from, you know, school and, you know, luckily a bit of a flexible schedule, but some days it could be, you know, it's school and then maybe it's after school care. And then we're going to, you know, this practice, but we still have a book report to do. And so, you know, then we're all up until, you know, and then let's squeeze in,
00:14:10
Speaker
some dinner that's not somewhat healthy. for yeah and get it all in so yeah and then yeah you know and then go to sleep and repeat. um Well and then that affects them because as the parents we're stressed which I'm sure they can feel and take on and then it's just this cycle this vicious cycle that keeps on happening and that's hard in itself. All right so let's get into the workshop so you think you're gonna come to class a four-hour class
00:14:41
Speaker
ah And to be fair, I let them out early. It was only like three three hours and something. Oh, that's always a positive. Okay, so you come in and what happens first? You guys sit down. We know all that, but Laura, you come out and you just start talking. What do you do? Well, first of all, I wanted the space to represent like what a special night this was going to be. I mean, if you think about it, how many times do you just get to spend time with your girls? Like, and talk like it's not a lot. Like we always are busy, right? We said that. So, um, we had this space set up with just, um, you know, looking very aesthetically pleasing and a little table claws and each mom or grandma had their own small table that they sat at with their with their girl. So it was like a little private space and lots of fun things on the tables and snacks. And so we just wanted it to be kind of a fun surprise so that when you walked in, you're like, oh, wait a minute. This this is something special. This is something that's going to be memorable. And it was for sure. I mean, the experience started.
00:15:53
Speaker
Not just when, you know, Laura came out and, you know, but it was as soon as you walked in, you see just familiar faces, you see some friends, you're starting to chat. Um, and it was very welcoming. All the, just even just like the colors and everything was a very like calming presence. We all had our own little tables with our table numbers with some snacks and like, even some of the girls were just like free snacks. Yeah. There better be snacks. Right. Um, and so, and then, and then you just knew right away that we all had our independent table so that we could speak freely with one another. so Okay. a parent right When we came in, which was really nice. So then they're cozy, they're sitting down. And how do you walk them through what's about to happen? Because nobody knows. Right. So well, we started at the beginning, right? We talked about what is stress, like defining it and what does it do to our bodies? And um how does it make our bodies feel? And what are some of the common things that stress us out? And then
00:16:49
Speaker
She had lots of conversation at the table so that the girls and the moms could share. and I specifically wanted the moms to share their stress, too. How often do you talk about your to your mom about what stresses her out? Do you ever ask her that? No, so that's kind of eye opening for the girls as well. And it also helps them know I hey, I'm not alone. Like when I feel this stress, my mom knows she understands. So um we did that. Yeah, we started at the beginning. And then I introduced twirl, which is an acronym
00:17:21
Speaker
five steps for how to not stay stuck in your stress. But lots of activities, like um we they would bounce a ball. We talked about how resilience is like a ball bouncing back up. And then so every time they bounce the ball to each other, they had to share something that was stressful in their lives. That's one example. We got him up from the table a lot. Oh, that would definitely help. Yeah, then that is definitely not sitting in a classroom for three hours. We did a lot of moving. Yeah, that was fun. Oh, yes. Okay. I just thought of when you said what it's like to have mom explain her stress, what did you say to them? What was a stress for you?
00:18:02
Speaker
Uh, I said schedules. I do remember saying that, or if we're running late, you know, so just kind of coming back to, you know, if we need to be somewhere on time and everybody's getting ready and you know, dressed and all of that. So I might, I will have anxiety peaks for, if we're starting to run late, so I'm trying to be more gentle on myself and the family right um when that happens. And then I said, I said, when, uh, the little one Brady, if he, if he has a meltdown in public, Oh yeah. that will That will cause my stress to rise. Were you surprised, ladies, on what your mom told you? No, not really. Not really? Okay. Reasonable. I think that's fair, mom. I think they can see it. yeah We're going to walk away.
00:18:50
Speaker
i wish i hitd my stress a little i know we yeah i know you are stressed up you What I think is something else that came to mind when you said having them name what their stressor is is I think sometimes When I think about it with my girls naming that and acknowledging that it's normal. Like I think maybe my parents, if I said, oh, I'm stressed out because my friend didn't play with me. They were like, oh my gosh, you want to talk about stress. Let's talk about what really is stressful. Well, no, this is what's stressful right now in your life. And so I always try to help with my husband saying,
00:19:32
Speaker
if one of the girls they're crying or they're upset and while we both and I do it too while we both at first say you're gonna be okay instead of saying that more of a all right tell me how you feel how is this making you feel you can you can be sad about this you can definitely be sad but let's try to figure out a way to make it better I think we can make a huge impact with these kiddos by saying the feelings you're feeling are legit. Like you're not less than because this is how you're feeling. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We talked a lot about what it means to be a good listener, right? And to practice um listening skills. So they did a little activity with that where they had to learn about
00:20:21
Speaker
um an event that one of them was at but the other one wasn't and they had to ask open-ended questions and to learn as many details as they could about the event. So that was huge. Just learning to verbalize what is stressful is is is a big deal and to feel safe and know who's on your team that you can, you know, who's trustworthy that you can share with. All right. Now's a good time to hit pause, come back in two weeks. In our next episode, we're going to talk a little bit more in detail with Missy and the girls about some of the techniques that they learned at the twirl workshop and some last minute advice. You can get more details right now at normal goes a long way dot.com about the twirl workshop. And thanks for listening.