During this Yom Tov season, many women can feel a mounting level of stress and anxiety as they reflect upon past Yom Tov experiences. For them, Yom Tov is all about being overwhelmed, disorganized and running against the clock. What they envision as a beautiful, positive, family experience at best can become quite stressful and at worst can turn into a nightmare.
As Yom Kippur comes to a close they once again commit themselves to “trying harder” this year. They make all sorts of calculations as to how to do it better. They say, “I will start Yom Tov preparations earlier’” or “I will wake up at 6:30 every morning’”. They embark on Yom Tov preparation with renewed vigor. And they really mean it, and they really do try harder. But no matter how hard they try, they continue to find themselves in a similar situation, year after year. This can create feelings of shame and inadequacy.
If you find yourself in this situation, you likely are struggling with your Executive Functioning Skills. The reason why “trying harder” doesn’t work for you, is because you don’t have an understanding of the workings of your brain and how to make accommodations for success.
Our Executive Functions are housed in the frontal lobe of our brain. They help ensure that our actions match up to achieve our goals. When you struggle with your Executive Functions, you likely can envision what you want to achieve; an organized home, hot fresh challahs in the oven, clean sparkling children in their Yom Tov best. etc. However, you don’t really know which steps to take to make these ideas become reality. You find yourself in a state of exasperation because you keep making choices that take you farther away from achieving your goals.
If you can relate to this, the first step is to educate yourself about your Executive Functions. They include Emotional Regulation, Attention Regulation, Working Memory, Time Management, Organization and Planning. Doing this will help you understand why you make the choices that you do and why you repeat old behavior patterns.
Once you have a better understanding of your Executive Functions, you can then learn strategies that work for your brain. Here are a couple of examples of how this works.
If you struggle with regulating your emotions, you likely find yourself on the extreme ends of the continuum of emotions intensity. You either have difficulty getting yourself motivated to start things, or you are so completely consumed with an activity of interest, that important things fall by the wayside. Once you identify this as a deficiency of your Executive Functions you can remove the shame and judgment and learn motivational strategies to get you moving or how to manage when you are in a state of hyper-focus.
Here’s another example. If you find yourself always running late, you can take some time to learn about Time Management Skills. People who struggle with their Executive Functions often don’t notice the passage of time and don’t have an accurate understanding of how long things take to complete. Instead of beating yourself up, you can learn to time activities in advance so you can better estimate how much time to leave in your schedule.
When you struggle with your Executive Functions, the key is to learn about your brain and to incorporate strategies that really work. During this Zman Simchaseinu, instead of trying harder, start to educate yourself about your Executive Functions. You can then empower yourself to shed old beliefs and learn how to work with your brain.
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Hadassah Eventsur, MS, OTR/L is an Occupational Therapist and a Life Coach. She is the Founder of MindfullyYou, a program that supports Frum women with Executive Functioning challenges. Visit MindfullyYou.Org for more information. Registration is now open for the next cohort.
