“I love my kids, but I just need a break.”  This is the refrain I hear from dedicated, loving parents over and over again this past year.  It’s often said with a hint of shame for feeling so frustrated and fed up with the constant demands of parenting.  We live in a society that says we should love our kids unconditionally, and if we’re frustrated or annoyed by them, then we’re bad parents.  Yet it’s amazing how much parents can simultaneously love their children wholeheartedly while also desperately needing a break from the role of parenting. 

Parents are experiencing high levels of stress these days with inadequate resources to cope with it, according to a review by the American Psychological Association. The previous blog post in this series highlights some of the many reasons parents are grappling with sustained stress over the past 18 months. 

Stages of burnout

Psychologists have identified three stages of burnout.  First there is the sense of overwhelming exhaustion.  Exhaustion comes in many forms.  Parents of younger children tend to describe the physical fatigue resulting from endless caretaking and lack of sleep.  Parents of older children describe the emotional fatigue of managing the conflicts and worries of the adolescent world. 

The next phase is characterized by a drive to disengage.  Parents want to distance themselves from their kids to preserve their energy, often fantasizing about escape.  They feel so overwhelmed and incapable of meeting the needs of the family that parents find themselves emotionally protecting themselves. 

This leads to the final stage which is a lack of fulfillment.  Parents no longer find joy in parenting.  They go through the motions of keeping the family going while feeling empty inside.  They often describe feeling distressed, shame, and guilt about not being the engaged, enthusiastic parents they wish to be. 

No matter which stage of parental burnout you may be experiencing right now, it’s possible to take steps to manage the stress and exhaustion of parenting.  Each effort we make to care for ourselves will benefit the family system.

Strategies to Manage Burnout

Acknowledge the Suffering.  Managing a painful situation always begins by honoring the experience.  We must first own the fact that we are in a burnout state and recognize the full range of consequences we’re experiencing.  We need to identify the feelings of frustration, overwhelm, exhaustion, hopelessness.  Naming the feeling helps us find compassion for ourselves.  Take time to sit with these feelings when they arise rather than judging or denying them.  This may result in tears or a sense of heaviness.  Know that this is not permanent.  Emotions pass more quickly when we allow them to flow through us rather than avoiding, minimizing, or denying them.  Be gentle with yourself.  The link below has more on sitting with difficult feelings.

Reach Out for Support.  Loneliness and shame only increase the suffering of burnout.  It’s important to talk with people about your experience and ask for help when possible.  Don’t wait until you’re already at your wit’s end.  Try to connect with a network of understanding, compassionate friends to lift one another up and navigate the challenges together. Ask for practical help to share the burdens of parenting.  This may mean coordinating carpools and childcare swapping in ways that still feel safe with COVID-19 risks.  Often parents can help one another out in ways that benefit each family. 

Many people struggle to feel safe enough to ask friends or family for help, particularly those who have felt abandoned or let down in the past.  It can feel vulnerable to ask for help.  This is when it may be wise to seek professional help from a licensed therapist who can personalize a plan for you to manage your stress and process your feelings.

Take Micro Breaks.  Parents must prioritize creating time for meaningful breaks from the labor of parenting.  While your fantasy of a month-long beach vacation may not be realistic, this does not mean you should continue plowing through your days with no respite.  Every job requires breaks because it improves our performance.  This often means doing less of the many responsibilities and chores of parenting in order to offer more to yourself.  Imagine creating a steady practice of arranging your daily life to include time reserved to replenish yourself.

What this looks like will be different for each of us.  Think about how you renew your energy.  This could look like taking a walk outside, reading a few chapters of a book, catching up with a friend, working up a sweat, mediating, baking, dancing to fun music.  The options are endless, and your choice may vary from day to day.  The point is that we cannot pour from an empty cup.  And parents must refill their emotional, mental, and physical cups on a regular basis.  Trust that children benefit from the modeling of parents who practice good self-care.

Repair Your Relationships.  Burnout often results in parents either lashing out at the people we love or neglecting our relationships from sheer exhaustion.  Be compassionate and forgiving with yourself when this happens.  It does not mean you’re a bad person or a bad parent or a bad spouse.  You’re simply responding from a place of depletion and helplessness.  Beating yourself up for these mistakes is not only harmful to your well-being but also prevents the opportunity for repair. 

Know that the work of repairing these relationships is meaningful.  It makes relationships stronger, closer.  Take responsibility for your actions that feel inconsistent with your values.  You may need to apologize for something you said or how you raised your voice.  Maybe you overinflated a small moment and threw a big fit.  Own it.  Then make amends.  Do the work of reconnecting and finding common ground again.  Focus on being fully present with your loved ones without distractions, even for just 10 minutes each day.  This effort will build a sense of connection and safety.

Let Go of Perfectionist Goals.  Much of parental stress comes from all the “shoulds” in our minds…all the messages from our culture and media about how parents should act and feel.  We hold ourselves up to unrealistic standards to be perfectly nurturing, present, encouraging, and positive.  In the end, our inner critic tells us we always come up short.  We feel like failures.  And this only compounds burnout. 

Reframing how we speak to ourselves in our minds can help us have more compassion for ourselves so we can more effectively utilize the resources we still have.  One way to do this involves swapping out the “should” in our minds.  Rather than saying “I should be playing with my kids more,” while feeling exhausted and wracked with guilt, try swapping out the language and saying, “It would be great to have more energy to play with my kids.”  This language allows us to acknowledge our current situation without shame so we can focus our attention on our good intentions. 

Allow yourself to let go of expectations that involve meeting others’ approval or keeping up appearances. You don’t need to parent the way anyone else does. You don’t need to do it all, all the time.  You can make choices that prioritize your wellness as a way of caring deeply for your family.  This often means cutting back and saying no.  This means giving yourself grace to be messy and authentic.  Eventually, it means loving our imperfect selves.  And this is a beautiful message for children to learn.

Find Meaning Through Gratitude.  In the daily grind of life, we can lose track of what we most love about being a parent.  We often ruminate on the tough moments, playing out in our minds how things went sideways over and over again.  We beat ourselves up and feel even more exhausted and disappointed.  But we can refocus our minds.  We can make a conscious effort to spend time thinking about the highlights in each day.  Notice the moments when your children are kind, funny, sweet, helpful.  Notice what you love about them.  Notice the moments when you are connecting with them, reminding them they are loved, safe, and understood.  Notice when you have fun.  Notice the moments when others are there to support you.  Notice when you make a choice to take care of yourself.

Finding one moment a day that fills your heart with gratitude will help reconnect you with the joy of parenting again.  The more we recognize and spend energy on what is going well in our families, the better we feel about ourselves and our lives. 

Written by Suzanne J. Smith, Ph.D. for Lakefront Psychology Blog. If you are interested in more original articles about mental health, wellness, perinatal mood, relationships, or parenting, please subscribe to the blog using the button below.  If you are interested in scheduling a consultation for an appointment with Dr. Smith, please email ssmith@lakefrontpsychology.com or use the contact form. 

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Mother’s Day is a holiday meant to honor and celebrate motherhood.  It’s supposed to be an opportunity to shower moms with signs of appreciation and love.  Yet many mothers find ourselves working as hard as ever on this holiday, hosting events and accommodating everyone else’s schedules and needs.  We expect moms to do it all, all the time, for everyone else without having needs of our own.  It should be no wonder that moms end up burned out and exhausted. 

This Mother’s Day let’s celebrate with a call for moms to do what it takes to feel deeply nourished and for a support system that encourages this self-care.

The Demands

Let’s be real.  Moms can love our children fiercely and still acknowledge that mothering is a ton of hard work.  It’s a 24-hour, demanding job that requires an enormous amount of time, energy, attention, and patience.  It’s emotionally and mentally taxing.  Moms tend to the tears of bumped knees and broken hearts.  We try to diagnose and find care for kids with everything from stomach pains to anxiety and depression.  We are constantly trying to figure out how to best support and guide our kids through the challenges of this world.  Most of the time we’re guessing and hoping it works out okay. 

Even when moms aren’t with our children, we think about them, worry about them, plan for them.  We talk about our kids with our friends, family, therapists, trying so hard to give them what they need.  Moms often push past the aches and pains of our bodies to lift kids into car seats, drive to another game in the rain, stay up late helping with homework or friendship woes.  We feel ourselves edge toward an emotional breaking point at times, overwhelmed and digging even deeper into our own inner resources.

Sometimes every wonderful mom will just lose it.  We cry.  We yell.  We lock ourselves in the bathroom.  We have internalized the unrealistic standards that have been set for moms in our culture.   We push ourselves into burnout trying to do it all for everyone else while surviving on small sips of self-care when we’re utterly parched.  So we lose it sometimes.  Afterwards, we feel guilty and ashamed, pushing ourselves to give more and repeat the cycle.  We fear that self-care as a mom will seem selfish.  And no mother ever wants to be viewed as selfish.  It’s the very antithesis of our ideals of motherhood.

The Call for Self-Nurturing

What moms need more than anything is to feel replenished in deep, nurturing ways.  A healthy, nourished mom is the greatest gift a child or family can have.  We need to stop treating this as a luxury but instead as a basic necessity.  Moms need this type of care far more than flowers, breakfast in bed, or a coupon book for free hugs (although the handmade cards are still pretty adorable). 

Moms can reclaim Mother’s Day by creating a new tradition of self-nurturing.  Rather than trying to make anyone else happy or impress family and friends with cute, Mother’s Day pics, this holiday can be about moms giving ourselves the thoughtful care we so desperately need.  We must give ourselves permission to prioritize our wellness.

To accomplish this, moms and our support systems must value self-care. We need to set aside time for moms to do whatever it takes and ask for whatever is required to be the best version of ourselves. We all know that we have more to give others when we fill our own cups first. The following steps are designed to help moms identify their self-nurturing needs, ask for support, and create a practice that sustains this energy.

Mother’s Day Self-Nurturing Steps:

1. Identify what it takes to replenish yourself.  This is often the toughest part for moms.  Dedicated caretakers are so accustomed to being tuned into everyone else’s needs that they can lose touch with their own needs.  It takes a focused practice to look inward and ask yourself a what it would take to feel nurtured.  Begin by imagining one full day in service of your own wellness.  Imagine what you would do, where you would be during that day to feel rested, replenished, whole. Focus on how you could map your day based on factors that are in your control right now.  We cannot set expectations based on uncontrollable factors, like the children all getting along or keeping the house perfectly clean or perfectly sunny weather.  Instead, we can focus on making realistic choices to deeply care for ourselves.  Here are a few questions to get you started:

• How does my body, mind, and heart feel right now?
• What helps my body feel relaxed?
• What can I do to fuel my energy needs?
• How do I like to be shown love and appreciation?
• Do I want to be alone or with others to feel replenished?
• Who would I want to spend time with?
• What helps me feel my best?
• When do I feel most at ease?
• Where do I feel most myself?
• How much time do I need to feel really rested?
• What do I need from the people in my life to support this?
• What could I do less of so I can feel more energized?
• What would I tell someone I love to do in order to feel well?

2. Communicate to your family how you want to celebrate a nurturing Mother’s Day.  Every mom needs a community of support. Speaking your needs can feel both unfamiliar and uncomfortable.  It feels vulnerable to ask others to step up for us, especially to support our self-care.   We risk hearing that others can’t or won’t accommodate us.  This is why it’s important to focus your self-care needs on the factors you can control right now.  The act of asking for support is part of meaningful self-care. It’s a sign that we value and prioritize our own wellness as well as the wellness of everyone else in the family. It’s beneficial for children to grow up knowing that moms have needs and see examples of asking for support. It’s healthy for children to practice caring for mom too. Don’t wait for your partner or children to just know what you want.  No one will read your mind effectively. Take the time to speak your needs so your family has an opportunity to understand and care for you.   

3. Celebrate at a time that works for you.  Mother’s Day itself may already be full of kid activities or family parties that don’t meet your self-nurturing needs.  Or maybe the people you want to celebrate with aren’t available that day.  If you aren’t able to fulfill your needs for celebrating and nourishing yourself on Mother’s Day itself, then choose a separate date for your own events.  Knowing that you have a special day protected for your own self-care time will reduce the pressure on Mother’s Day itself to fulfill all these needs.

4. Repeat regularly.  A well nurtured mother requires regular practice of this type of self-care.  Plan how you will refill your cup regularly.  Create time for yourself like this each season, each month, each week, each day.  We don’t have to accept the small sips of self-care that leave us feeling burned out, parched.  Plan how you will continue to drink deeply from a well of self-nurturing.  You deserve this for your own health and wellness as well as the health of your children and family. 

Written by Suzanne J. Smith, Ph.D. for Lakefront Psychology Blog.  If you are interested in more original articles about mental health, wellness, perinatal mood, relationships, or parenting, please subscribe to the blog using the button below.  If you are interested in scheduling a consultation for an appointment with Dr. Smith, please email ssmith@lakefrontpsychology.com.

The post A Mother’s Day Call for Moms to Create a Self-Nurturing Practice appeared first on Lakefront Psychology.

The pressures on moms these days are greater than ever. Moms are expected to give all of themselves to their families all of the time. There are powerful messages in our culture telling moms just what they should do to be successful. They are expected to breastfeed for a year; choose organic foods and fabrics; plan, prepare, and clean up three healthy meals and three nutritious snacks per day; keep your child intellectually, emotionally, and physically stimulated around the clock; be positive; guide their social development; create exciting crafts and science projects with your children; and always, always be emotionally available and present.

This is an impossible expectation in the best of situations, when a woman is healthy and well resourced with financial means, education, and social support. And for most moms, the expectations don’t end there. They have other responsibilities beyond mothering that require attention, time, and energy. They may have to manage chronic health conditions in themselves, their children, their partners, or their parents. They juggle friendships, jobs, and volunteer work not to mention endless household chores. There is little left for the self.

Moms are often left feeling utterly depleted. And when this state of exhaustion goes on without recovery, moms experience burnout.  See if any of these symptoms sound familiar.

Symptoms of Mom Burnout

Fatigue
Irritability
Sleep problems
Yelling
Lack of pleasure
Zoning out
Headaches & body aches
Unhealthy coping behaviors
Lack of motivation

As the saying goes, you cannot pour from an empty cup. No one benefits when moms give so much of themselves that they have nothing left. It’s important to challenge these unrealistic expectations and create a practice of quality self-care.

Steps to Recover from Mom Burnout

1.Identify what zaps your energy. Understanding why you’re so exhausted all the time is the first step to making healthier changes. Think about all the activities in your day that require an output of energy. Make certain to include the physical demands, mental load, and emotional work of managing everyone and everything all the time. Think about the energy it takes to wrestle toddlers into carseats, navigate the grocery store with kids, remember gifts for upcoming birthdays, plan for school year challenges, juggle schedules, etc.  Sometimes it’s validating to create a list of all you think about and do in a day to recognize why you feel so worn out.

2. Begin letting go of burdens. After you see the list of all the energetic drains, see if you can identify just one responsibility you might give up today. Perhaps there’s a duty you could delegate to someone else. Or maybe there are social pressures you could let go of. Start with something that feels relatively easy to take off your to-do list and notice how you feel without that responsibility. Remember that you can let go of a mental task or emotional demand as well. Try saying no to requests for your time and energy that feel like burdens. And maybe you could let go of worrying about whether someone else is upset when you set a boundary.

3. Renew your energy. Identify what helps you feel renewed and refreshed. Maybe you crave physical activity or time in nature. Maybe you need alone time to recharge. Maybe you have a favorite hobby or passion that has taken the backseat to mothering for awhile. Figure out what helps you get energy back in again and make it a priority to build that into your life. This is not optional. It cannot be the last thing on the list each day. Carve out dedicated space for your self-care and teach the people in your life to respect this. It is a wonderful way to teach your children about wellness and balance.

4. Focus on what really matters. So often we burden ourselves with expectations that don’t accurately represent our values. We may find ourselves swept up by social pressures to maintain a public image, pushing ourselves, our kids, our homes to always appear perfect. It can feel overwhelming and unfulfilling. Take a moment to reflect on what values matter most to you and your family. How do you really measure your success as a mother, wife, friend, daughter, person? When you focus on what really gives you a sense of meaning, it can become easier to release yourself from the excessive expectations.

5. Create a supportive culture. Surround yourself with people who value and support you, including your mission to have a balanced life. Distance yourself from people who seem to drain you all the time or reinforce negative messages about yourself and what you should be doing. As you become more comfortable pacing yourself by balancing the energy in with the energy out, you will find that you enjoy the company of authentic friends more. Your example of balance can help shift the culture of the people you are closest to.  Cheer on friends who take care of themselves too.

If you find yourself struggling to recover from burnout, it may be helpful to seek professional guidance.  We often get messages early in life about sacrifice, motherhood, and pushing ourselves to the limit.  Many women struggle with feeling like failures if they need to take a break to honor their own limits.  And a skilled therapist can help you unpack these unhelpful old messages in order to choose the ones that best serve you and your life now.

Written by Suzanne Smith, Ph.D. for the Lakefront Psychology Blog. If you are interested in more original articles about mental health, postpartum issues, wellness, relationships, and parenting, please subscribe to the blog using the button below. If you are interested in scheduling an appointment with Dr. Smith, please contact Lakefront Psychology at 216-870-9816.

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