Mommy Burnout

How to Reclaim Your Life and Raise Healthier Children in the Process

Dr. Sheryl G. Ziegler, Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler

• Publisher: Dey Street Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780062683694
• eBook ISBN: 9780062683700
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Marriage & Family Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The ultimate must-read handbook for the modern mother: a practical, and positive tool to help free women from the debilitating notion of being the "perfect mom," filled with funny and all too relatable true-life stories and realistic suggestions to stop the burnout cycle, and protect our kids from the damage burnout can cause.

Moms, do you feel tired? Overwhelmed? Have you continually put off the things you need to do for you? Do you feel like it’s all worth it because your kids are happy? Are you "over" being a mother? If you answered yes to these questions, you’re not alone. Parents today want to create the ideal childhood for their children. Women strive to be the picture-perfect Pinterest mother that looks amazing, hosts the best birthday parties in town, posts the most "liked" photos, and serves delicious, nutritious home-cooked meals in her neat, organized home after ferrying the kids to school and a host of extracurricular activities on time.

This drive, while noble, can also be destructive, causing stress and anxiety that leads to "mommy burnout." Psychologist and family counselor Dr. Sheryl Ziegler is well-versed in the stress that moms face, and the burden of guilt they carry because they often feel like they aren’t doing enough for their kids’ happiness. A mother of three herself, Dr. Z—as she’s affectionately known by her many patients—recognizes and understands that modern moms are all too often plagued by exhaustion, failure, isolation, self-doubt, and a general lack of self-love, and their families are also feeling the effects, too.

Over the last nineteen years working with families and children, Dr. Z has devised a prescriptive program for addressing "mommy burnout"—teaching moms that they can learn to re-energize themselves and still feel good about their families and their lives. In this warm and empathetic guide, she examines this modern epidemic among mothers who put their children’s happiness above their own, and offers empowering, proven solutions for alleviating this condition, saving marriages and keeping kids happy in the process.

Chapter 1

Why Am I So Overwhelmed?

What Mommy Burnout Looks Like

Sound Familiar?

• You have trouble falling asleep, or staying asleep.
• You lack energy throughout the day.
• You beat yourself up for parenting decisions and choices that you make.
• You reach for junk food too often, or go whole days without eating a real meal because you are just too busy.
• You wonder if you look forward to your glass or two of wine at night just a little too much.
• You pop painkillers daily because your head is pounding, your back aches, or your neck is in spasm.
• You get sick whenever the kids get sick, but for longer, and more severely.
• You have little to no interest in sex.
• You dodge your friends’ phone calls, and just text instead because you don’t have the energy for a conversation.
• You can’t remember the last time you did something just for yourself.
• You feel like you’re in a bad mood, or snap at your kids often.
• You double book, forget appointments, and overschedule yourself and your kids.
• Once in a while, you just sit alone and cry because you feel overwhelmed.
• You are tired ALL THE TIME.

If this looks like your life, this book was written for you. You are most likely suffering from mommy burnout.

Stacy was forty-four years old and married with three-year-old twin daughters when we started working together. She had struggled with fertility issues and finally gave birth to her girls when she was forty-one years old. When we met, Stacy had been married to her husband for seven years. Stacy had a college degree and had a successful career in graphic design before she resigned to raise her children full-time. Her husband worked and traveled often as a software salesperson.

Stacy initially called me to get “tips and strategies for raising toddler twins.” It didn’t take long for me to realize that something else was going on with her. Stacy was one of the first moms who came to see me for mommy burnout, although, at that time, I hadn’t yet uncovered this condition. As I learned more and more about Stacy’s day-to-day struggles—mainly, persistent feelings of being overwhelmed, exhaustion regardless of how much she slept, moodiness that made her feel out of control and guilty, and resentment toward her kids and husband—I realized that Stacy’s mothering experience was far from unique. I was hearing similar stories from other clients as well.

From Stacy’s story and the countless moms I have since spoken to—in my office, after parenting presentations I have given, or even while chatting with my friends—I have come to realize just how serious mommy burnout can be. Like Stacy, when most moms first come to see me, they have no idea that they have a real problem. They just feel overwhelmed. Or they assume that with a few new parenting strategies in their back pocket, their days will run more smoothly. Mommy burnout sneaks up on moms over time. Aside from being one of my first mommy burnout clients, Stacy’s story is also significant because of how bad things got for her. By the time she sought out help, her mommy burnout had bled into all areas of her life.

Thirteen years ago Stacy blew into my office with snow-soaked sneakers and red-rimmed eyes. It was December, and Denver was freezing. She was late for her first session, so I suspected that once she arrived she’d be out of sorts. I knew only Stacy’s basic information from our initial phone conversation: that she had a husband and young twin girls and that she hadn’t been feeling like herself for some time. I was prepared to ask her more questions to get a better sense of her situation, as I do with all my clients, but Stacy didn’t need any coaxing. She jumped right in.

“I need help,” she blurted out as she quickly sloshed across my office and flopped down into a chair. Her eyes were already welling up with tears.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I sat down across from her.

“I was rushing out of the house this morning and I couldn’t find my boots,” she explained. She unzipped her jacket and let it fall off her shoulders onto the chair behind her. “I’m always rushing. It’s like I’m allergic to being on time. I don’t know what my problem is. I wasn’t always such a mess.” She looked down for a moment. “Sorry I’m late to our first session.”

I’d heard this from many of the women who came to see me. Making an appointment for themselves is a “luxury” since they are already spread so thin. They spend their days getting their kids dressed, fed, and out the door in the morning before they set off on their own errands or to their office. Their afternoons are a flurry of helping their kids with homework, shuttling them to various activities, getting dinner on the table, and getting the kids through their bedtime routines before finishing up their own work and finally collapsing into their beds at night. Those who are married barely have the time or energy to even have a real conversation with (as opposed to barking some orders at) their husbands. I know that by the time these moms make an appointment, they are desperate. They may feel like they have tried it all and nothing is working, their family is falling apart, or their kid is getting into some serious trouble.

As Stacy settled back into her chair, she patted the snowflakes from her short brown hair and began telling me about the drama from that morning. Her three-year-old twin daughters had gotten up early and thought it would be fun to give their dolls a bath. They went into the bathroom, turned on the tub, and bathed all their dolls, including the ones made of yarn. Stacy was startled awake at five thirty by the girls wailing over their ruined toys. “But that wasn’t the worst part,” she said. “They left the tub on! I almost broke my leg sliding across the bathroom floor.”

When I asked where her husband was that morning, she explained that he was traveling for work. Stacy considered him lucky to be away, even if he was working. He got to sleep through the night, have room service deliver a warm breakfast up to him, and have a car service drive him to his meeting that “didn’t have Cheerios crunching beneath his feet.” Stacy was a little jealous that he got to spend his days talking to other adults. She questioned whether going back to work herself would make her feel like a “normal person” again.

Like many moms who stay at home with their young kids, Stacy described days spent picking up toys, reading the same stories over and over, and bracing herself through tantrums. Her patience was long gone and she had started snapping at her kids when they asked her to play with them. “I’m sure they’ll end up in your office in a few years,” she said with a sigh.

Before motherhood, Stacy had been a graphic designer. She told me that she had hated working for someone else and was happy to quit before she had the twins, but now she missed being out in the world. She longed for the days when she did something with her days, when she created something tangible. She felt like she was getting dumber every week because she really wasn’t using her brain. But then she felt guilty about feeling that way because of all she and her husband went through just to have the girls.

Stacy had gotten married in her late thirties and then went through several rounds of fertility treatments before she finally got pregnant. Like many of the moms that I work with, she never expected that getting pregnant would be so difficult. The emotional and financial turmoil that infertility caused her was overwhelming. And like other women in her situation, she assumed that once she finally got pregnant and had her babies, all would be blissful. But what I find is that women who had challenges getting pregnant go through the same roller coaster of emotions following the birth as the moms who got pregnant easily. They can suffer from postpartum depression, they are just as exhausted, and they need breaks, too. The difference that I have observed, however, is that the moms who struggled with fertility can carry more guilt with these common post-baby feelings because they wanted their babies so badly and now feel like they have little right to complain.

I also struggled with fertility issues with my first baby. I knew that after an intense uterine fibroid surgery, I would not be able to conceive easily and that I had a 50 percent chance of miscarriage. It took over a year to get pregnant, and two rounds of interuterine insemination didn’t work. I tried herbs, ovulation trackers, acupuncture, meditation, guided imagery, therapy, reducing my workload, headstands—you name it! The stress and grief that I felt that year is something that I will never forget. When I finally did get pregnant, I felt like I didn’t have the right to complain about anything because I should just be grateful that I was pregnant, even though I was sick every day for the first nineteen weeks.

As with any new mom, the transition to motherhood was jarring for Stacy. Sleepless nights. Round-the-clock feedings. Forgetting if she had brushed her teeth that morning. Stacy’s growing pains ultimately surged into full-blown postpartum depression. She took antidepressants for several months, but stopped when she felt that her symptoms were under control. She started sleeping better feeling happier and socializing more—until now.

Stacy recounted a story from the previous week when she hid from her kids. They were running around the house calling for her while she was crying in the shower. She just stood there, letting the water run all over her body, hoping that the twins would entertain themselves so she could get a few minutes of peace. Stacy knew what she was going through wasn’t normal. She just didn’t understand what the exact issue was. She hadn’t taken her medication in about two years, but she had started to wonder if she needed it again. She was snapping at her kids. Rushing around all the time. And, she had started to treat her husband like her third child, which was having a negative effect on their relationship.

Stacy described her husband as a loving, caring man who traveled often for work. This kind of schedule created some tension, as she would get a routine down and then feel like just when she had a rhythm going, he would come back and “mess things up.” She knew he was just trying to help and have fun with the girls when he was home, but it made Stacy crazy when he chased them around the house pretending to be a monster at bedtime. She felt like he was just making her job of getting them to sleep impossible. This is a common sentiment among the many mothers that I see whose partners travel frequently for work. They want their significant other around to help, but then when they are around, they feel like they just get in the way. Many of these women get annoyed answering questions about their schedule, where things are, what the kids are and aren’t eating that week, and just when their husbands are up to speed, they leave again. It is easier when they are gone.

Stacy explained that she often just felt “off” and joked that she had some kind of delayed version of “baby brain.” Since having kids, I can totally relate to this feeling. I’ve sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with me because I don’t always feel rested after a long night’s sleep and I sometimes get a serious afternoon lull around three o’clock. Sometimes I’ve felt like my brain is literally “off track.” I’ve even sent my kids off to school without their lunches, having made them myself only minutes before they walked out the door. This, by the way, would create another errand for me to squeeze into my day, which frazzled me even more and made me late to whatever I had going on that morning. But baby brain isn’t the cause of my fatigue and forgetfulness. And it wasn’t at the root of Stacy’s, either. Stacy’s kids were three years old. She was about two years too late for baby brain.

After that first meeting, Stacy and I fell into a rhythm of weekly sessions. It was a bit unusual for me because, for the most part, I meet my mom clients when they bring their kids in for treatment. Especially at that time in my career, I was seeing mainly kids, or kids with their parents. I had only a few individual adult therapy sessions at this point. Stacy was one of my first clients who came to me to get support just for herself. She knew that it wasn’t the three-year-old twins that needed to be in therapy, but she didn’t understand what was going on with her, either. Stacy chose to see me because she assumed that I would give her some ideas on how to handle issues she was facing with her toddlers, and that would make her feel better. She, like the countless other moms I’ve seen in my practice, didn’t realize that their issues weren’t centered around parenting strategies. They need support for themselves.

Once my practice started growing, I realized that I was seeing parents alone for half of my time. Mom after mom sat down in my office to talk about the same struggles. One mother I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Why Am I So Overwhelmed? What Mommy Burnout Looks Like
• Chapter 2: Didn’t I Used to Have Friends? The Connection Between Mommy Burnout and Isolation
• Chapter 3: I Know My Mom Is Just Trying to Help: The Difficulties of Creating a Support Network
• Chapter 4: How Many “Likes” Did I Get Today? The Social Media Mommy Trap
• Chapter 5: I Just Want What’s Best for My Children: How the Need to Achieve Perfection for Our Kids Adds to Mommy Burnout
• Chapter 6: He Just Doesn’t Get It: How Burnout Puts Our Marriages in Jeopardy
• Chapter 7: What the Hell Am I Doing with My Life? The Working Mom’s Dilemma
• Chapter 8: I Just Can’t Get It All Done . . . The First Step in Fighting Mommy Burnout—Ban “Busy” as a Badge of Honor
• Chapter 9: I’m Sick and Tired, All the Time. How Mommy Burnout Makes Us Sick
• Chapter 10: Are My Kids Burned Out, Too?
• Conclusion: #momlife for a New Age
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher