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The Happy Single Mum podcast focuses on various topics related to single motherhood, such as self-doubt, business, baby father drama, sex, and loneliness. The host, Khalifa, interviews Dr. Effie, a clinical psychologist from Australia, who specializes in helping stressed single mothers rediscover themselves. Dr. Effie explains that her own experience as a single mother led her to create a course called the Revitalise Mum Program, which teaches strategies for managing stress and finding happiness. The course follows a four-step process: remove toxic elements from your life, rediscover your interests and values, release stress through relaxation techniques and positive thinking, and refine your life by making necessary changes. Hello guys and welcome to Happy Single Mums, a podcast surrounding real single mummy life talking about subjects from self-doubt, to business, to baby father drama, sex and loneliness. I want to ask real questions to my guests about real single mummy life. Can you really be happy and can you be happy as a mum in general? Every episode will deliver the best hard-hitting topics surrounding mummy life and the innate goal to try and find real happiness. So here's your host, me, Khalifa. Hey guys and welcome to the Happy Single Mum podcast. I am your host, Khalifa. Hey guys, we have a lady from down under. Don't cringe for us, I say that. She's from Australia. Her name is Dr. Effie. She's a clinical psychologist and yes, she is a magnificent lady because we have been liaising on social media for a while now and because I had life going on and she was wonderfully gracious and I'm so happy that she's here because she actually serves our community. On her page, it says, I teach stressed single mums strategies to rediscover their true selves and boy, oh boy, do we need that right now, especially with the pure fact that we are in December and a lot of people are doing their vision boards, they're doing their New Year, New Me and all of this magnificent manifestation stuff and studies actually show that by the end of January, that gym membership you haven't gone to, that vision that you wrote down, you haven't done yet. So I think that oftentimes, we have wonderful goals but we do not have strategies. So when I see someone that can help with strategies, I just want to hug them, even down to healing emotionally or any past traumas where like, okay, I'm going to relieve this trauma of mine but we don't actually have set strategies as to how we're going to do it and then we wonder why we revert back to certain things. So Dr Effie, please let the audience know a bit about yourself and thank you so much for serving our community. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited and I love it like we said before, we're in different parts of the globe and we're connected because we've got a shared mission. We both want to be happy single mums. So yes, I'm a clinical psychologist in Melbourne, Australia. I've been a psychologist for about 18 years and five years ago, I became a solo mum. So I've got three girls that I raised on my own and that's after leaving quite an emotionally abusive marriage and my three girls are 15, 13 and 8. So quite a handful but we're a little girl squad I call it and I really noticed as time went on that as a psychologist, no psychology training prepared me for this. It just became irrelevant because I was going through the turmoil and stress that everybody else would be going through, every other woman would go through in this time and I really had to discover for myself what was going to work for me. I tried to seek help and I couldn't really find the right for me when I was looking for it and as I discovered different things that helped me and I made little breakthroughs and started feeling more like myself, I thought, oh my god, I've got to teach other women how to do this. And then gradually as I started really reflecting on what's helped me and I feel so much better now and really feel like I've got my life a lot more together, I thought I've got to put this together and teach other single mums how to do it and also put together the experience I've got from working with so many people and so I created like a course for single mums where I teach them exactly what you've just read before, you know, how to manage stress, how to be themselves more because I feel like we kind of get lost a little bit and lose ourselves. Oh, that's brilliant and yes, I was going to touch upon the course. The course is called Revitalise Mum Program, isn't it? It is, yes. Why did you name it that? You know, it took me a while to find the right name and the reason I ended up calling it that is because I feel like, you know, we need to look like breathing like new vitality into our lives, you know, that I feel like a lot of women, you know, when they come out of a relationship perhaps that was also emotionally abusive or just toxic in some way, they sort of lose themselves, they just go on autopilot in survival mode and I feel like we need to, you know, rediscover ourselves and become almost like a new person or rediscover who we always have been but kind of forgot about. I love that. I love that and I do think that we need to also look at the animal kingdom because some animals shed their skin, you know, some birds pluck their feathers off and I am a strong believer that at any given time in life you can pivot and you can reinvent yourself. If you are the shouty, angry mum, you could be the calm, collective mum, you know, so we can actually, and it's a choice, it's a choice, it's like a light switch. We can actually choose what we want and I've shared it on the podcast before that there was for a long period of time after I became a single mum, I chose to be angry, I chose to be depressed and I chose to have that kind of badge, that kind of, you know, look at my hurt, you know, and it took me a very long time to kind of shed that skin and realize that you can actually be a happy single mum instead of being sad or depressed or angry. It is a choice. Obviously, they are emotional states, like we have different seasons and we need to ride through that but then we have to know that our natural state can be happiness, our natural state can be joy and I don't want my son growing up seeing his mum sad. Programs like that, like yours, are very, very much needed. So what I want to ask you are, what are like some strategies that you implemented to teach yourself how to de-stress, if that's a word, yeah, how to de-stress because I do think that mums, especially with a pandemic that we've just survived kind of and now the cost of living, stress is something that I'm hearing ever so much and yeah, how can you teach mums, especially being a clinical psychologist, how can you teach them how to not be so stressed out? Yes, so what I've done is, like when I've put this course together, I've come up with like a four-step kind of process for you, not just to manage the stress but actually in that process rediscover who you are. So I call it the four-R method, so I'll go over it with you and it just makes it a really simple framework to just keep in your mind and the first is remove, so that's actually about removing anything that's toxic in your life, that's getting in the way of living your life. So for example, a lot of times we just go on autopilot and we don't really take the time to think, do I like my job, are the friends that I'm hanging out with actually uplifting me or are they draining me, do I like where I'm living? So we often just keep going to survival mode and we don't really take that time. So the first step is actually to look at what in my life is helping me and good for me and what isn't and to look at how you can remove it. Sometimes it's not possible to but certainly some of the things that I've done is look at that, do I like where I'm working, do I want to change and I ended up actually changing the place that I was working at, started working with a different group of people and that made a huge difference for me. I also looked at the people I was hanging out with and sometimes I'm just hanging out with the same people by default, so I looked at who are the people that I really do enjoy spending time with. The second is the part about rediscovering, so just taking the time to actually think, what are the things I used to enjoy once upon a time that I'm just not doing anymore and make a list of them and start actually thinking, okay, well these are the things I enjoy, how can I put them into practice? You need to make a plan. It's all good and well to come up with lots of amazing ideas but if you don't make a really specific plan like, okay, I really want to go dancing, when am I going to go dancing, who will I go dancing with and actually put it in place. So that was one thing for me again. So I forgot how much I like dancing and I didn't get to do it when I was married. So I just felt alive doing that again. So that's that part about rediscovering, actually taking the time to think, what are the things I enjoy that I haven't done in a long time, what are my values, what really matters to me and start to think, okay, well if this is what matters to me, how can I do more of that? So self-care as well is part of that. Then the next part, the part that really is about the stress management, that's release. So that's like, see if you can release that stress, those emotions that are getting in the way. And for that, there's two main parts. One is our body because our body can get really wound up and stressed. We need to learn ways to do other mindfulness. So that's about being more present and slowing down your breathing and so different relaxation techniques like that. So I teach that in the course. I actually guide women through these relaxation techniques and then the other part of it is your thoughts. If you're going to think in a negative way, if you're going to catastrophize and anticipate the worst about everything, you're going to feel stressed. So we need to really look at facts and truth and base your thoughts on that, not on speculation and jumping to conclusions. So it's really easy to think the worst and I think that's what gets most of us stressed. We look into the future a lot and look at what's happening right here, right now that I have to deal with and what's the worst that can happen. So you need to challenge those thoughts. And then the final R is I call it refine. So this is after you've started getting rid of anything that's toxic, that's getting in the way, you've rediscovered who you are again by doing things that you enjoy and you release all those emotions, you need to really refine your life a bit like a life audit. Kind of look at, okay, I've done all this. What else doesn't serve any useful purpose in my life? One of the other things that I discovered for me was I was sending my kids to so many activities that I was running around like a headless dog everywhere and why do they need to do so many activities, extracurricular activities. I just had no time for myself. I was just burning myself out and we had to chat and decide, okay, what do you enjoy the most? They don't have to be the best pianist and performer and gymnast and dancer. So just being practical about it. But I think part of me probably was because I'm raising them on my own, I just want to get possible, I can't give them everything and is it too much sour or anything? And you know what? They're going to be absolutely fine. They don't have to have all that as I've listened in your own podcast, you just need one healthy good parent to really give them what they need. And often it's really just the love really, you know, it's clear and it's a challenge. Yeah, everything you said is just absolutely amazing. And you've actually answered some of the questions I was going to ask going forward. But I do think that we do overcompensate as single moms and then we end up burning ourselves out and then we end up resenting our kids as well, especially down to sometimes, I've spoken to a lot of single moms that are in jobs that they hate, but because they have to pay bills, you know, they stay there and not realizing that you can actually find another job that you enjoy that pays the same or you know, that's flexible, but it's about taking that risk. And I think that oftentimes what we fail to realize is that when you are flying, it forces the kids as well to see, okay, mom's jumped out of the nest, quote unquote, and then they want to jump as well. So kids are like our mirrors as well. So if they see you fearful and see you upset and see you in a job that they hate, that you hate, apologies, they are more likely to do that. But if they see mom waking up and going to the gym, even when she doesn't want to do it and when she's tired, but she's putting herself first, if they see mom killing it in her career and is happy to serve her community, they're more likely to do it. So putting yourself first and you're, you know, putting yourself first is the best thing you can do. And not doing things also for the outside gaze, because I think that we do get in that trap, like you said, and I was in that trap as well, joining the PTA, putting him in boxing club, drumming club, this club and that club because of the outside gaze. And because I wanted people to see that, yes, I'm a single mom, yes, I can do it. Yes, I'm badass. And that's the fact. I was tired and I was at home and I was drinking every single night because I just needed another form of relief. I needed something for myself. So you have to kind of, like you mentioned, just audit your life and be like, is this really needed? Is that really needed? Is, you know, and why am I doing this? Alongside auditing our lives, we have to figure out why am I doing this? Who is this for? Who is this for? Yeah. And my kids actually happy doing it. And they are sometimes worried by this. In my house, we have family meetings, even though it's just us two, but they are non-negotiables. All right, you will do the tutoring, you know, that one I would not negotiate on. But OK, if you want to drop drumming that I've paid for, for the year, if it's making you upset, fine, we'll drop that. Yeah. So we can actually speak, they're little human beings as well. So we can actually hold meetings and be like, where are we now? What's our projection? What can we work on? As a parent, what am I not doing right? And our kids can, they can see our blind spots as well. Even that's, I say to a lot of mums that, especially when it comes to dating, they are going to be times whereby your kids might not like the person that you're seeing. But there's something innate in kids that can just tell you, mum, I don't like this person. And you can choose to believe it and know they're just jealous, it's this, it's that, or you can actually hear that voice in them that can see something that you cannot see. So let's not dismiss the voices of our kids, because sometimes they're right, mum, you're always busy. Mum, you're always on your phone. Mum, you never spend time with me, listen, because if you don't listen now, they're going to be telling the therapist, 10 years later, it's a great voice. Yeah. So can I ask the question, how did you put yourself first, because you said it's just been five years. So what, what, what pushed you to make that decision for yourself, for your girls? And so number one, how did you do it? And number two, have you faced any stigma, being a single mum? Okay. Excellent questions. I love this. So the way I started doing things for myself was, you know, I realised that in my marriage, that was getting in the way of me doing things for myself. I felt a little bit, I felt like a single mum while I was married, because, you know, my ex-husband would, you know, go to work before the kids woke up and back after they were asleep. So I never had that time for myself, even though, you know, you think when there's a partner, you can go out and do things. So once, once that was out of the picture, I all of a sudden didn't have this kind of toxicity in my life. And I already felt it was obviously a stressful time, but at the same time, I felt very relieved and very free. And, you know, I started reaching out to, to my friends and, you know, and planning to see them. Now, it took a bit of organisation to do that, because it meant that I had to organise baby sitting, right, to do that. And, you know, over time, I then found a regular girl that I was going to use for a babysitter, and I had to budget for that. But it was like the best money I ever spent. The best money I ever spent. And I would, so I would, I was like obsessed with it. I was like, I'm going to catch up with this friend this week, this friend next week. And that's when I started going out dancing, like I said, I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing how I've not done this. And then I also got into exercising as well, like you've mentioned that, and my kids seeing me for the first time ever, getting fit and strong. And even that started when I just caught up with a friend one day. And we decided that we'll catch up for a walk. So I had the babysitter come, I go and met her, I met her for a walk, went for a beautiful walk on the beach. And when the walk was over, you know, my friend left and I was there and I drove back home. And I thought, Oh my God, this felt so good. I don't want to go back inside the house. I feel like I want to keep walking. So I just left my car outside the house, and I just continued walking just in my neighborhood. And I was walking and walking, it was like Forrest Gump, I couldn't stop. I was like loving life, enjoying it, and I thought, Oh my God, this is a genius idea. I have got to get the babysitter to come, just so I can go for a walk, as crazy as that may sound. So I said, I'm booking this babysitter to come so I can go for a walk, and the walk became a run. And I was doing it regularly, and I've never felt so good or alive. Then the weather got bad, and I thought, well, I will have to join the gym, so I can go on a treadmill for a walk or a run. But when I joined the gym, my eyes popped out of my skull when I saw all the equipment and all the things I could do there, and I thought, I want to be strong now. I'm already so much stronger mentally, now I want to be strong physically. There was just something switched in my mind about that, and I started doing that. And that became even more extreme, because I'm now competing bodybuilding. Wow, and your body is amazing. I was looking at your face thinking, wow, Charles, you're such a fabulous girl. Thank you. It's become something where I just wanted to challenge myself. I was a shell of a person. I feel like in my marriage, and even though I help a lot of people, I wasn't really giving much to myself. I gave all my energy to my kids and my work, and I always thought, what is the most extreme thing I could do to really take myself out of my comfort zone and challenge myself? I'm going to stand on a stage in a bikini, and I'm going to do a bodybuilding thing, and something I would never do in a million years. And so I gave that a go. That's the journey of how I started doing things for myself. When you feel so good, it becomes contagious, and you find a way to do it. That's awesome. Oh, that's brilliant. And I think that's so refreshing to hear. And I do think that as moms, we need to have our own set goals, set challenges, so we don't end up being those nagging parents that live their life vicariously through their children. I think that if you don't carve out your own life, you just be on your deathbed with so many regrets. And I do see on social media, this is a new phase where a bunch of people just go and ask strangers things like, oh, give me your life experience, or what would you say to your younger self? And some of the things I hear oftentimes being echoed is, I wish I wasn't so fearful. I wish I had lived more. I wish I had traveled. And we have no greater time than now. And the pure fact that you took a chance on yourself, number one, by leaving a relationship and not knowing where the path is and still taking a step and putting the picture together, not knowing where all the pieces will be for the jigsaw puzzle. So you did that, and then you had enough courageousness to book a babysitter. I think even as moms, the fear of like, oh, can someone else look after my kids like I can, calling them up a day fine, checking them afterwards. So even that leap of faith. And then the bodybuilding stuff. But I think that once you take one step and you take another step, you see yourself running and you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm actively running. And I think that that is why spaces like this and people like you are just needed in society because we need to put ourselves first and just run this race of life and win and win as well. And it's you against you. That's one thing I would like moms to realize, that in this race of life, it's you against you. So you're running that race. Yeah. That's my test out. I love that. So one question I do have is, right now, a mom that's listening, saying, OK, yes, I know the tools I need to implement. Yes, I've got my list of what the goals I would like to achieve. Yes, I know I need to put myself first, but I cannot make that first step. What advice would you give to the mom wanting to make that first step? So the first thing is to look at what's getting in the way of making that first step. We need to figure that out first. Is it fear? Is it time? Is it money? What is it? Because once you figure out what's actually getting in the way, then you can solve that problem. If, for example, going out with friends, what's getting in the way of that is money because you need money for a babysitter, then OK, looking at, well, how can we problem solve that? Is there somebody from the family you can ask to help you out? Can maybe a friend come over for a cup of, when your kids are asleep? There's different ways. I think it's just sometimes we think so much in black and white. It has to be this way, and if it can't be this way, then I can't do it at all. I can only exercise if I go to the gym, and until the day I can go to the gym, I can't exercise. Well, there's lots of ways to exercise. In the pandemic, I think a lot of us had to find ways at home to do it and things like that. So I think that's a thing. And then the other thing is that you're making that first step too big. Is it too big and overwhelming that you just feel like, well, when I've got the energy, then I'll do it. When I've got the motivation, I'll do it. Well, you're not going to get the motivation by waiting. It's not going to come and knock on the door one day and say, OK, I'm here. You can go do all the things you've waited to do. So it's breaking it down, thinking, what's one small, tiny thing I could do? And then one step builds on to the next and the next. That's awesome. That's awesome. OK, cool. So what other helpful tools could you give to a mum that wants to start their own business? Because obviously, you've got your own course. First of all, you need to find what your interests are and what really sets your soul on fire, what gets you excited. And once you've figured that part out, then you've got to really brainstorm. How can I make this happen? Are there people I need to talk to or do I need to research this more? Because I think, again, we can have an idea, but if you don't make a plan and break it down into small steps, it would never happen. So for me, again, I was by default, I was working in a clinic that was with doctors and I just kept doing that. And after some time, I thought, I'm not feeling like this is the right environment for me. And everything worked very well, but it was just a feeling I felt like I needed to change. So I think a lot of women are fearful of making that change. You said yourself, sometimes you can find another job or a different career, earning that money, but you've got to research that. I think really the biggest thing is you've got to be open to going out of your comfort zone in order to start a business or go to a different job. Both men and women that I've worked with, one-on-one, the biggest thing is I'd rather just stay in what I'm comfortable with than go out of my comfort zone and do something totally different. And I do think that as a single mum, if you've made the choice to do it alone or whatever circumstances that made you become a single mum, that's the baddest thing. You are badass. You can't do that in the face of society, stigma, family. What else can't you do? That same person chose themselves. I often liken mums sometimes like Superman. Superman would have on a normal suit and then he'll just rip his top open and then he would have the suit underneath. And I do think that we innately have that as mums. If anything happens to our kids, like I saw a particular lady whereby there was a storm and her child was in the car and the car was at a jam or something like that. She said she didn't know where she got the strength from, but she managed to just yank the whole door open. That is something that as a mum, that we had that innate, God has put that in us. Maybe it might be fight or flight, I don't know, but we innately have the fire, the tenacity to protect our kids. Why can't you protect you? Oftentimes I tell mums, and I say it to myself, but alongside parents and my son, you need to parent yourself. You need to step out of yourself and parent yourself and be like, all right, cool. We are in December now. You're listening to this podcast. You've heard Effie. So there are certain things there, there are certain tools that you can use. Are you going to parent yourself and say, look, listen to what these people are saying. Take a leap, take an opportunity, put yourself first and parent yourself and just say, okay, okay, mum, I'm going to do it. This is the opportunity. Yes, I totally agree. I think also, I just realised I didn't answer your question also about how you deal with the stigma of being a single mum. Like you were saying, you've got to take a leap on yourself and all that. It's funny because before my marriage ended, that's when I was feeling the stigma of being a single mum, being a divorced woman. I remember thinking, how am I going to end this? I was actually quite fearful and I thought, I'm going to be a divorced woman, I'm going to be a single mum, that is so embarrassing. That's actually what I was thinking in my head. And then when I finally realised enough is enough, I have to end this, the relief that I felt from just not having to deal with that, it took so much courage for me to end that marriage because I really was quite fearful. How am I going to cope? How will he react? Will I have enough support? And because it was such a courageous move for me, once I did it, being a single mum and a divorced woman was the proudest thing I have ever felt. And I say it perfectly now, that I'm a single mum, I'm divorced because I know that for me to become that took the most courage out of anything. So for me, it means I took a chance on myself and I did something to better myself, to actually better my children as well and it totally reframed it in my mind. So I think that's the important thing, to realise, be proud of it because you're doing this, you're raising your children, you're doing your best, you're doing so much and that's something to be proud of, not ashamed of. Brilliant. So where can people find you on social media? Where can they take the course? So, thanks for asking. So they can find me on Instagram, it's the easiest and there's a link there to my course as well. And so that's underscore DrZakti, R dot F E E F I and yeah, there's a link in my bio there to the course and you can join anytime, it's a course that's there kind of all the time now that I've launched it. So you can start anytime and yeah, get your life going in the right direction. Awesome. Dr Epi, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your wonderful knowledge and putting yourself first and being a badass bodybuilder and just loving on your daughters and giving helpful tools and strategies to overcoming, putting ourselves first and just pouring out your soul into this course because it is needed and there was a gap in the market and you filled it. So thank you so, so much. And yeah, do you have any big plans for 2024? Do you want to share anything with us? Well, I think I really want to actually get this course more out there to as many women as possible. So that's really the main aim, I only just launched it recently. So yeah, I just want to get that out there and help as many women as I can. I don't want any other single one to suffer. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much and have a magnificent day. Thank you. Thanks for having me.