Why Did No One Tell Me?: How to Protect Heal and Nurture Your Body Through Motherhood

Product Information

Pregnancy and childbirth are full of big questions — what if my baby is enormous? Will my water break naturally? What even goes into a ‘birth plan’? How on earth am I going to keep this child alive once it’s here? And where do I turn for advice that will really work for me and my life?

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Six things I learned from Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

Social media is often blamed for young people’s mental health problems, especially self-esteem and anxiety …

3. Gratitude isn’t just for the #blessed

The power of any thought is in how much we buy into it and how much we believe it to be true and meaningful. Thoughts aren't facts, they're judgements, theories, memories, predictions, and interpretations about the future. The brain's job is to save us as much time and energy as possible and this means it takes short-cuts and makes guesses / predictions all the time but with limited information. Positive thoughts are great, they’re not bad. But there is this sort of movement online around only positive vibes; don’t allow the negative thoughts to be there. If you have that standard for yourself, as soon as negative thoughts start to appear that you can’t control, you start to feel like you’re failing or that you’re not positive enough. That you’re not enough in general. It sets you up to feel worse. When we understand a little about how our minds work and we have some guideposts on how to deal with our emotions in a healthy way, we not only build resilience, but we can thrive and, over time, find a sense of growth. Pregnancy and childbirth are full of big questions -- what if my baby is enormous? Will my water break naturally? What even goes into a 'birth plan'? How on earth am I going to keep this child alive once it's here? And where do I turn for advice that will really work for me and my life? It’s not something I would engage with at all. Mental health is, for me, no different to physical health. No one is immune. If you take anyone and you start messing around with their core defences, things such as sleep, routine, social connection, nutrition and exercise, then that person will become vulnerable to both physical and mental health problems.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? - Goodreads Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? - Goodreads

I really wanted to love this after following Dr Julie on social media for quite some time now, but I just didn’t. It was quite bland and I felt often like she only scratched the surface. I was expecting more science, more depth. But it just felt a bit like there were too many things covered in not enough depth.Ultimately, wellbeing comes from inward. We have much more power over our own emotions and thoughts than we think, therefore taking responsibility for our own wellbeing allows us to construct new emotional experiences and responses.

Why Did No One Tell Me? - ParentFolk Why Did No One Tell Me? - ParentFolk

The book sometimes only scratch the surface of important topics but I kind of understand that given that it is directed to the general population and it is not an academic book. Some of the chapters were very short, they felt like a summary of something larger and yet they had the bullet points summary at the end because that’s just the way the book is formatted. I think it could have been better if the summaries were at the end of each part rather than chapter with the most important things included. It’s good, basic, helpful advice. Probably every reader will find several things that make a difference. I was impressed how often her discussions on each kind of life challenge involved some aspect of mindfulness. She talks very practically about mindfulness during real-time living, and has an impressively simple, basic way of describing what it is. I’m gonna go ahead and just quote her on mindfulness about thoughts:So therapy is often about accepting thoughts as they arrive and then making choices about what you do with them. If I spend time with these thoughts, is that going to help me move forward where I want to go? Or if I spend time with these, what impact is that having that’s different? It’s allowing your brain to come up with whatever it comes up with and then choosing what to do next. This book is like a mental health toolbox for anyone who concerns about mental health and well-being. Smith provides an array of significantly beneficial techniques in understanding, regulating and observing our emotions as opposed to immediately reacting in negative ways, such as: I don’t have a TikTok account and although this may be a weird way to start a review, I am saying it because apparently the author is a TikTok star with many followers. I stumbled upon this when I was browsing through Edelweiss for ARCs and the title caught my attention so I saved it as future reads and got it when it was published. This was my February’s Non-Fiction book of the month. You can't control the thoughts that arrive in your mind. The part you can control is what you do once they appear'.