• Patri Psychologist: "The best advice to live with serenity is to stop running everywhere"
  • Wellness How to manage anxiety so that it does not dominate you

For as long as she can remember, Míriam Tirado (Manresa, Catalonia, November 20, 1976) remembers her mother accompanying other women in complicated moments that nobody explains to you. The pregnancy, the delivery, breastfeeding, the difficult fit after returning home ... Her stepfather, a psychologist, also contributed to her increased awareness of the transformation that motherhood causes. "I was barely a teenager when my siblings were born on both sides, because my parents were separated," she recalls.

In the same year two were born on his father's side and one on his mother's side. "This means that I grew up surrounded by babies and, although I did not plan to dedicate myself to parenting and studied Journalism, I realized from a very young age how important the stage of childhood was," she says.

At 23 he wrote a book with his mother: Links. Conscious gestation, childbirth and parenting. "He asked me to conduct 14 interviews with parents and that's where my journey begins." From hobby to profession, because then I was in the news. "I trained as a Conscious Parenting Coach with the method of the Conscious Institute of Dr. Shefali Tsabary, a clinical psychologist based in the United States, who for me is one of the greats in conscious parenting. And I realized that a better world starts at home." He reflects on this in his latest book: Sentir (Ed. Grijalbo).

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Why are there so many people with their children, partner, a house, work... and all that which is supposed to be socially necessary and yet feels sad and misunderstood? We tend to judge the emotions that stir us. Whether they happen to ourselves, thinking that we have no right to feel that way, or to others, because we see ourselves in them as a mirror. And we say, "But if he has everything, why is he like this?" Everything that makes us uncomfortable we tend to reject it, it is a natural tendency of the human being and that we learn as children. Childhood is joy and in that period a cry is not accepted, it tends to be repressed. So since childhood they tell us that it is bullshit to cry about that and the incomprehension makes adults not accept their emotions. We pay the consequences of a very important emotional illiteracy. But little by little we are seeing that we have to learn to accompany others. When someone is sad, they tend to downplay things, reject what they are feeling, judge them or give them solutions that they have not asked for. He writes that many people do not know how to describe what happens to them. Do we have a hard time naming emotions? There has been a disconnection from our inner world. We have been taught more about the outside than about what happens inside. Now a child is told, "You are jealous of your brother." Or, "What happens to you is that you have a tantrum." But before it was not named. It's something new. That's why as adults we have to relearn to listen to ourselves. Build a bridge to oneself and ask ourselves about what happens in our body: "I have anxiety, I'm going to breathe." Sometimes doing that breathing exercise or 'consultation with the pillow' we react better than in hot. However, on the street, in the store, in the office or at home it seems that we are more upset than ever... Why do we bite or be bitten? We lack assertiveness. If a child is not taught to add and subtract, he will not know what change they have to give him because he has not learned mathematics. The same goes for the practice of daily life. Reacting unconsciously is what we have seen done because there are no spaces for calm. We endure and endure and endure until we explode for anything. Sometimes you have to stop to self-regulate emotionally. See how you are and what you need to be able to live from a conscious place and what comes out is the automatic from the reference we have. If our parents have lost the papers, our jump will always be the same when we are tired or stressed. We have to see what our history has been so that our children do not have to suffer the same problems we have as adults. Covering it up, it will not disappear and it will find a way to manifest itself. The more we ignore it, the louder it will scream. Maybe not now, maybe in a few years. That's why it's so important that we don't reject the tantrum with a punishment or by shouting, "Stop now." Better emotional management provides a fuller and happier life. But if we repress ourselves, we cause ourselves discomfort. You can reject the emotion but the runrún will stay. What do emotions teach us? They are for a reason. They have a function. They need to be seen and cared for. The longer you don't hear an emotion, the greater your risk of anxiety and depression. However, even if we have tools such as a walk, breathing, exercise ... On the other hand, technology does not give us space to get bored or develop creativity. The mobile phone is already an appendage of our hand and recent studies on the concentration or future of these children between screens are frightening. It's a problem because technology is being used as a mode of evasion. Computer games, other people's lives on social networks... to get out of me. My call is not to wait for a setback in life to make you attend to yourself. Do not wait for an illness and, from humility, get to it. Taking care of yourself is an act of self-love. Emotional well-being is very important. If I'm not well emotionally that will affect all areas of life, from the relationship with our children to the couple. But technology leads us to the opposite direction, to immediacy. Everything seems urgent, for yesterday. As if we operated with an open heart. What do those people who already recognize anxiety do in punctures in the chest, palpitations in the eye, hair loss, pimples or herpes? The first thing is that they realize that they need to stop. The body is already telling them that they need to go down two gears. That discomfort must be identified. Is it a labor issue? Emotional? Put the focus on what is activated inside and that the tracks come out to advance. Maybe we can't do it alone and we need a psychologist to guide us or sign up for an activity that makes us stop. I always say that the most effective and scientifically proven tool that is with us 24 hours is good breath management. It may be that by not being accustomed to the beginning we feel more anguish. But little by little it dissipates. The first step to changing something is to be aware of it. I have to put myself as an observer. But perhaps the one who has anxiety wants it to stop now. Right now. Of course, we are used to immediacy, but that anxiety can come from far away. We have to see when it appears and how it affects us in order to change the pattern. In the face of pain, he calls suffering a choice, like many philosophers. There will be loss of loved ones, frustration... It is inevitable in this earthly and human life. But what I put around that is suffering. "What are others going to think?" "Why is this happening to me?" They are the kind of mental constructs and labels in situations of pain. A lot of noise that prevents us from going through an uncomfortable pain before which there is no other. If we realize that we do it, maybe we can stop it.Why are we better counselors with others than with ourselves? The two most common mistakes are: making the emotion of another our own. For example, if our child is angry and we are more angry than he is, we blend in and lose the ability to accompany him. And the second is to judge what the other feels. We created a film of how the other should live. Sometimes a person just wants you to listen to their feelings because they trust us. And we are already telling him what he should do. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the other without making them mine. This means that I recognize your pain or sadness and validate it. Both a child and an adult must be understood. Connection cannot occur without being in the present. If my partner tells me about a problem at work and I am thinking about other things, it is impossible for there to be a connection. Only in the now and here do we approach emotion and can accompany the other.

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