Mandy Teefey is probably best known for being the mother of actor and singer Selena Gomez. But she’s also a mental health advocate with a mission to provide education and information to improve people’s mental health. She’s an advocate for mental fitness and finding tools to improve your mind by building resilience and managing stress. And in 2022, she launched the mental fitness media startup Wondermind with her famous daughter, who is the company’s chief impact officer.
Teefey, who has ADHD, and Gomez, who has bipolar disorder, have both been open about their experiences with mental health conditions. Gomez shared on Instagram that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2020, and further documented her experience in the 2022 documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me.
“I’m grateful to be alive,” she said in the documentary. And Teefey shared his experiences with ADHD and anxiety to numerous news outlets.
Teefey said they are often asked in public how they are coping with their mental health issues as a parent and child.
“As we’re talking, it’s like, wow, I really don’t have anywhere to go,” Teefey told Fortune, adding that it’s part of Wondermind, which she describes as an “ecosystem” of mental health care. He added that he promoted its establishment. “How are you coping with (mental health) as a family?”
And now Teefey recognizes the pressures on parents today and has guidance on how to support children who may be experiencing symptoms of mental health conditions. Masu.
education is key
Whether your child is scared, nervous, or already suffering from a mental health condition, the best course of action is to learn everything you can to cope with fear, Teefey says.
“When (Gomez) was younger, she was very scared of tornadoes,” Teefey said. “So I sat her down and made her learn everything there was to know about tornadoes.”
As parents educate themselves, Teefey says, they learn how to help their children overcome a potential diagnosis, much like they would deal with the flu.
“When you’re not well-educated about something, it becomes scarier and more intimidating,” she says. “I’ve read all kinds of books about bipolar disorder and done all kinds of research to understand how to have a conversation or how to mediate and not treat her the way I want her to. I figured out how to actually guide her to the way she needed to parent.”
model of caring for yourself
Teefey wants to normalize emotional processing and practice self-care on a daily basis. Since launching Wondermind, she has focused on modeling a health routine that works for her.
She wakes up at 4am for a slow and peaceful morning. “I wake up, do everything at a very slow pace, and just enjoy my time,” she says. “I don’t know if waking up early is the key or if alone time really helps me, but it keeps me very focused and grounded for the rest of the day. ”
To relieve anxiety and manage her ADHD, she meditates for 15 minutes, reads something new and engaging, and writes what comes to mind on a notepad. I call this a daily “brain dump.”
“Ruminative thoughts go 90 miles an hour, so I feel like that’s exactly why you have to keep a diary, a calendar, a schedule, all kinds of things,” she says. “Reading and writing helped me separate myself from the chaos of whatever was going on.”
She also doesn’t look at her phone until around 10 or 10:30 a.m.
“There’s something really relaxing about disconnecting yourself from all the information that comes in when you wake up in the morning,” she says. “I really try to stop and just breathe and remind myself that no matter what’s going on in my mind right now, the end of the world isn’t going to happen.”
The adage “put on your own oxygen mask first” is true. For parents struggling to manage their children’s realities today on top of work and other obligations, practicing mental health and making time for habits and routines that benefit their children can be helpful. It’s important.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s 15 or 20 minutes,” Teefey says. “Everything will be there when you come back.”
For more information on mental fitness, please see below.
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