50 | The Hidden Cost of Coping: What It’s Really Stealing From You

Feeling like an overwhelmed mom running on fumes? This episode unpacks why late-night scrolling, snacking, and zoning out feel helpful—but quietly keep you in survival mode. We’ll name the real price of coping: your time, your connection with your people, and your confidence. Then we’ll walk through simple shifts to move toward real calm and mom life balance without another complicated system.

You’ll learn:

• How to stop feeling stressed as a mom (without numbing)
• Smart swaps that protect evenings and energy (hello, rest)
• How to rebuild self-trust so you don’t keep saying yes when you mean no
• Gentle encouragement if you’re craving Christian mom encouragement and a reset

Perfect if you’ve searched: overwhelmed mom help, mom burnout signs, how to calm my mind, time management tips for busy moms, how to stop yelling at my kids. This is your reminder: coping gets you through a moment—calm gives you your life back.

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🎶 Instrumental Acoustic Guitar Music by Viacheslav Starostin (original_soundtrack),

W E B S I T E - LisaCovert.com

I N S T A G R A M - @lisamcovert

Transcript

Lisa Covert: 0:00

How many times have you said yes to something and repeated it and you keep going? Why do I keep saying yes to this? Because you're not connected with yourself. You don't even check in with yourself before you decide something. You just heard a clip from today's episode of the Overwhelmed to Empowered Podcast. Can you believe we've made it to episode 50? That's 50 conversations about moving from surviving to actually living. And today's might be one of the most important yet, because coping might feel like it's helping you get through the day, but underneath, it's stealing something bigger. In this episode, we're unpacking the hidden cost of coping and what it's really taking from you. Welcome to episode 50. Hey, I am Lisa Covert. Welcome to the Overwhelmed to Empowered podcast, where we stop pretending we are fine and start leading lives we are proud of. No more to-do lists, no more burnout, just real talk, real tools, and the reset your heart has been asking for. Let's talk about it. Coping feels safe. It feels like Netflix on the couch, snacks after bedtime, or scrolling until your eyes burn. And in a way, it does help. For the moment, your body relaxes for a few and you feel some relief for a moment. However, coping was only meant to be temporary. That's all it ever was. When it becomes your way of life, it starts to cost you more than it gives you. It's like putting a piece of duct tape on a leaky pipe. Sure, that that stops the drip for a moment, for right now. But if you let that go, eventually that the whole pipe will burst. And the mess is ten times worse. That's what coping has become. What is coping stealing from you? More than you think. I want you to think about it. When the kids were babies, their needs were constant. It was eat, sleep, diaper change, repeat, washing their clothes. It was surviving, especially the first one. Survival was absolutely the goal. But here we are, years later, and sometimes it feels like we're still stuck there. Just with bigger kids and bigger problems. I mean, think about it. The 10-year-old, they may refuse to eat dinner. They may stomp their feet and refuse to do what you're asking them to do. Your teenager, yeah. They'll roll their eyes. They're probably gonna forget a project or something that needs to be done, and you're gonna have to last minute help them with that. Or maybe your inbox explodes. Instead of being present in all of these moments, you go right back to coping. Survival. Numbing out, shutting down, and snapping. Think about this. I want you to say this and hear it. If all I do is cope, I don't get to arrive. I don't get to actually live. Nothing is thriving, I stay in survival mode long after the crisis has passed. And when you hear that statement, can you accept that now? Are you willing to keep coping knowing that you are staying in survival mode after the crisis has way passed? I want to name for you three hidden costs. There's way more, but these are costs that cost you way more than what you're getting from coping. Your first cost is your time. Coping steals your evenings. That one hour of scrolling is turning into three. You're losing rest, you lose the reset, and you wake up already behind. That time, you think you're saving time, you think you're giving yourself some time and some comfort, but you're not. It's like going for a walk. At first you don't want to do it, but boy, aren't you glad that you did afterwards. Or making the dinner. Nobody's excited to say, hey, I want to make dinner. I mean, unless you're having a wonderful evening, but if your life isn't overwhelm right now, making dinner even feels like another chore. But when you do it, when you do something and you feel good about it, not just good because there is a checklist off, but hey, I made dinner today. I put something in the crock pot. It feels pretty good. It's done. I thought ahead about it. It's always about like people and you think about time. People say, oh, I don't have the time to meal plan, or I don't have the time. That's coping. Because it takes you way longer every day during the week to figure out what to have, to look in a fridge that you don't know what you have, than to plan on the weekends what you're gonna have that week. That is a time saver. And that's what happens to us with everything in life. We're coping, we're just running from the next survival to the next. And it is stealing your time. And going right into time, how about your second cost? It's connection. When you're surviving, you're too tired to laugh with your kids, too, too depleted to enjoy your marriage, and probably too foggy to enjoy yourself. The times alone are you sitting there and saying, Wow, what did I do today? That was pretty good. I enjoyed this moment. This was a little weird today. Oh, this might have even made me sad or overwhelmed. How many times have you said yes to something and repeated it and you keep going? Why do I keep saying yes to this? Because you're not connected with yourself. You don't even check in with yourself before you decide something. If you ask somebody for a favor, you would let them, okay, let me let me check with my spouse, let me check my schedule. You would find that okay. But you don't check in with yourself, you don't give yourself that same permission. Let me see if this is capable, and then let me even check is this heavier light for me? It doesn't mean that we're not helping people out, but when you're helping at the cost of yourself, nobody wants that. And that takes us right into cost number three, your confidence. Every time you escape into coping instead of choosing calm, you teach yourself that you can't handle it. You say, I can't, that's it, I'm gonna I'm gonna cope again. I'm just gonna sit here and scroll, I can't do anymore. And you know that lie that's inside that says you're not enough just gets louder and louder by you keep doing that. That's what I mean by hidden cost. Coping is stealing the very things you say you want most. You want peace, you want connection, you want the confidence, you want purpose, you want to move forward with that, you want to be healthy. None of this is giving you what you want. Let's press pause for one minute. Because if you're listening to this, I think you need to hear this. Listen, I know your time is stretched thinner than your patience some days. You're already doing all the things. Trying to hold your house together, your job, your kids, your sanity, your marriage, and figuring out how to actually feel better. That just feels impossible. But here's the thing: getting out of overwhelm doesn't have to be another thing on your to-do list. That's exactly why I created the Empowered Living Six Week course. It's simple, it's practical, and it's designed for real life. You get plugged in place, short video lesson you can do at your pace, and the exact steps I took to finally feel grounded again, without spending months in therapy or here to help people. This course gives you the reset without the open block. No fluff, no extra noise, just a clear, simple roadmap to go from burnt out to feeling in control again. Check it out now at LisaCovert.com and press apply. I promise your time's about to feel a lot more like yours again. It's like trusting your neighbor to train you for the NBA. When she's never driveled a basketball. It gets you through the driveway. You can learn how to do some stuff there, but it will never take you to the court. When we are showing up this way and coping and coping, who is that helping? Not helping us. And what about our kids? If we want our kids to grow up confident, calm, secure, making their own decisions and not following everyone else, we've got to stop just surviving. I don't care what age our kids are, every season I could learn from my parents. Because whether you realize it or not, they're watching how we live. Have you watched your parents? Have you said things that I don't want to do it the same? Or you found things that you liked and wanted to do the same, or caught yourself in patterns that you didn't even realize? We're teaching all the time. And if that isn't enough motivation for us to stop coping, whether you realize it or not, you can think that they're not seeing you at night, and they might not be. Maybe they are asleep. But when does this stop? Do you wait until they are watching? What about the mornings? Do they see you tired? Do they see you just throwing yourself together? Or do they see you, wow, you got up, and maybe you and again it's not perfect. You don't have to have some or makeup every day. I'm not saying that, but there is a difference between waking up in a hot mess, pressing that snooze button multiple times, and waking up and feeling grateful. I mean, imagine it. Envision waking up in the morning and being like, okay, that alarm went off, sure. Everybody always likes to cuddle in their bed a little quicker. Nobody loves to Chris snooze and just, I mean, turn off that alarm and just sit straight up. I mean, the snooze was like my best friend. But it just repeated and repeated this lie, and it turned into that I wasn't good enough. I would sit there and say, these kids deserve a better mom. My husband deserves a better spouse. I mean, it was continual. But when I stopped that nightly numbing, when I stopped feeling like that was the only time I was allowed to take a break when all the things were done and no one else needed me, I was able to take a break during the day. I didn't have to do this at night. I was able to see that the choices I was making were my own choices. Your emotions, your thoughts might invite you to the war. They might invite you to this survival party. But you decide if you show up at that party or not. I want you to think about that. You don't have to listen to those terrible thoughts. You don't have to. So let's wrap up today with some good news. Coping doesn't have to be your forever. You can stop. You can step out of survival and into a presence. You can stop duct taping the pipe and actually fix the leak. If you're ready to step out of survival mode, here's your next step. Head over to LisaCovert.com slash bootcamp and hop on the waiting list for the next boot camp. That's where we stop surviving and start living with intention. And if you want something today, grab my free guide at LisaCovert.com/ triggers. It'll help you spot the patterns that keep pulling you into coping so you can start shifting now. Both are always waiting for you at LisaCovert.com. I will see you in episode 51. And remember, take calm and know that you get to choose whether you want to accept that invitation to that survival party or if you are not interested and you want to join the other party of calm and peace and purpose and your choice.

Her Son: 12:54

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Lisa Covert: 13:05

If this episode made you pause, reflect, or even breathe a little deeper, would you do me a favor? Take 30 seconds and leave a quick review for the show. It helps more women who are stuck in the same overwhelm we've talked about today actually find this podcast. I'm not here for everyone, but I am here for the woman who's tired of holding it all together and ready to live a life that finally feels like her own. And hey, if you're feeling brave, take a screenshot of your comment and email it to me at Lisa at LisaCovert.com. Every month I do a little giveaway drawing for listeners who share or review the show. You never know, you might get something special. Thanks for listening, thanks for being here, and most of all, thanks for choosing to keep showing up for you.