6 Reasons Moms Are Exhausted

December 18, 2015 0 Comments

Are you an exhausted mom?

Motherhood is tough. This is the hardest job I have ever had. Heaven and hell at the same time. Frequent interruptions, lack of control over the agenda, constantly switching tasks, too much to do, emotional outbursts, no holidays — all when while I’m sleep-deprived.
No previous training. What kind of employer would expect you to do everything from day one with no training, especially when someone else’s life and well-being depends on you?
The village it takes to raise a child looks more like a ghost town. Most of us raise our children almost on our own these days. In traditional societies it really was the whole village that got involved. I also made the mistake of not reaching out for support until I was completely spent.
We put ourselves last. Self-care? What is that? I didn’t keep sight of my own needs — they slipped out of my awareness. Self-sacrifice was the name of the game. But this is a recipe for becoming overwhelmed. We have to put our oxygen mask on first before we can be of any use to our children. What do you need right now?
Our brains have a negativity bias. As a psychologist, I knew this, but forgot to apply it to motherhood. Because it was more important for our survival in caveman days to notice the lion that wants to eat us for lunch and let the positive slip by, we are wired to notice the risks.Now that we are safe, our brain still notices possible problems more easily than what is going right, and so we worry and get stuck there. And we miss the good stuff, like our baby’s smiles and how good the sun feels on our backs. We have to choose to turn toward these moments to notice them and let them balance the scales. Mindfulness helped me start doing this again.
We judge ourselves. I had wildly unrealistic expectations of myself and was hard on myself when I didn’t deliver. Hindsight brought me this awareness, but back when I needed kindness from myself, my inner critic kept telling me to soldier on. Stopping to pause and deliberately cultivate this kind relationship with myself was a skill I learned to practice daily and it has gradually changed my life.

You can see the rest of this list on Psych Central. When you're finished, leave a comment and weigh in on whether or not you're an exhausted mom and how you get through it.