Burned Out, Not Broken: The Truth About Stress in Moms

You’re not “just tired.”

You’re overloaded.

In this episode, we break down the difference between stress, anxiety, burnout, and depression — and why high-achieving moms often miss the warning signs.

We talk about chronic cortisol, invisible labor, perfectionism, and why burnout often shows up as irritability before sadness.

If you’ve ever thought,

“I should be grateful… so why am I so exhausted?”

This conversation is for you.

Burnout isn’t weakness. It’s biology.

And support shouldn’t start when you collapse.

Follow Previa Alliance!
Previa Alliance (@previa.alliance) • Instagram photos and videos
Previa Alliance Podcast (@previapodcast) • Instagram photos and videos

Keep the questions coming by sending them to info@previaalliance.com or DM us on Instagram!

Transcript

Copy

Spring Stress And Maycember

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hey guys, welcome to Preview Alliance Podcast. This is Sarah, and I am here, and we're in April. And I brought in our favorite maternal mental health therapist, once again, Whitney, to join me in talking about burnout and stress. Hi, Whitney. Hey, friends.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I love some spring.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Spring is amazing. We love spring. And I feel like this is a great time to have this episode. Right. Um, because maternal mental health month is May, and that's when we always again focus in. And you could guys this year are going to hear some replays of our series that we've done in the past, which is just really good, solid information. But before you jump into that in May, we we kind of can't neglect that May happens to us and it surprises us because May is they're calling it like May Zimber, like December. You know how moms are so crazy in December, all the school stuff, the parties. Well, it happens in May too, right? Like you do and it's sneaky, but that is when we all feel more stress and burnout. So hopefully, this episode, we're not wishing this upon anybody, but we're we're speaking here in truth reality. That we're preparing, we're preparing. Yes, when stress and burnout happens. Yes. Yes.

Stress Burnout And The Nervous System

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So I think we have to bring in this conversation is that we want to differentiate between stress and burnout from anxiety and depression, and really they work together in a sense, right? So stress can cause burnout. And if you live in a state of stress and burnout, then you will lean into more anxiety and depression. So it's kind of like these precursors here. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Kind of your foundation, but we don't like this foundation.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

No. And especially mothers and high achieving women in general, which I mean, if you're a mom, you're a high achieving woman. Like you are balancing it all. And it can feel, I think, the things that I've had to learn, and you don't really learn it this way until you become a mom, is what occurs in your nervous system. Because so maybe college, your early married life, you're living your best life, your single life, whatever. Right. Stress may have felt one way to you, but really when you're a mom, it comes at you. It's a whole body experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yes, it's so different. And part of it is too, our brains have a chemical reaction to things. So it's not something that we're voluntarily choosing to do. Our brain is doing it as a fight or flight response. So it's gonna up that adrenaline, it's gonna up that cortisol. But the thing is, when we live in that heightened state of cortisol, we live in fight or flight, we live in panic. And eventually that does lead to chronic anxiety. So we think about fight or flight, hypervigilance is what comes with that. So you're kind of always on it. Like you're always looking around, making sure, did I do this, did I do that? And it couldn't even necessarily mean I'm looking out for my own physical safety. I'm not hyper-vigilant about my safety. I'm hyper-vigilant of did I pack the kids snacks? Did I send money for the book fair? Do we have everything ready for practices? Oh, my kids have games on the same night, but at two different parks. How am I going to make that work? We're hyper-vigilant on all of these details. And then when you do something like December or May, Sumber, where we're throwing in so many more responsibilities or obligations, whoo, we are very likely and very quickly can lead into that high stress, high burnout, but chronic anxiety. Because June may come along and you're like, okay, great. Like my kids are set up for their summer care, or maybe you're a teacher and you're off with them. So you don't have the structure and the responsibilities, but your brain is like, hey, hey, hey, let's stress out over this. Are you sure you have everything taken care of? It seems a little too relaxed right now. Yeah. And you find yourself unable to relax or enjoy, or just to sit back and relax for a little bit and not have structure. Your brain's like, oh, but are we sure that we're sure we didn't forget something?

SPEAKER_02 4:33

I mean, I literally had a thought today of I need to train my brain what to do when I have nothing to do in that moment. Right. I had that thought, and I was like, Why am I asking myself that? But to your point, when you live at a constant juggling act of things, constant, your brain is just like a muscle, right? We've if we've trained it almost in our bodies. And I think this is a statement for most moms. It's like when stress hits, say it is that thing that occurs in the schedule. It is May Simber. It is something with your job on top of your kid being sick. It is your kids going through eat something, whatever it is. Our body response is almost the same as back in the cave days, right? Where we're like we'd be out hunting for food, and like, you know, a saber-toothed tiger comes our way. We're like running like mad people. Our bodies think that is occurring when in reality it's like my kids have three games on the same night. What am I gonna do? Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

That's the thing is we're not getting chased by an actual literal saber-tooth tiger, but the responsibilities of day in and day out feel the same way. We feel that same pressure, we feel the same responsibilities to do it all and to be all in everything, and especially when you throw in maybe a type A or a more anxious type personality. We love to sprinkle in some perfectionism for funsies, really. And that is when we kind of have to have a come to Jesus meeting with ourselves and say, you know what, it doesn't all have to be perfect. Maybe it's okay if we hit up the drive-thru more than we typically do because this is not a typical week.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Find ways to cut yourself some slack.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

And you know, that is research backed of the sense of that there's been research in stress and burnout, and it lacks in women research specifically, right? Because in general, women, I mean, pregnancy postpartum and motherhood. We're under researched in general, right? But it has shown that for mothers in this stage, we don't need to be like, I need a spa day, because guess who's probably booking that? I mean, while it is valuable, you should take care of yourself, but it's it's more of take a thing off your plate, is what's works in that moment and what is going to give you that short-term, like I can breathe for a second, versus of you being like, I need to start an exercise routine to get my stress, or I need to do this. Yeah, but take it away something, and drive-through is a perfect example, but to your also your point of perfectionism, it is show there's um Dr. Thomas Curran actually has researched this and showed that perfectionism rates have significantly increased over the past 30 years, and that is correlated with anxiety, depression, and burnout.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Absolutely. Well, if we think about it, I'm I'm gonna tell my age here, okay? I'm turning 40 in a couple of months. So you got to think that happened, I was about 10, so we're gonna say the mid-90s. Well, at that point, inflation really started hitting a little bit more. Normal day-to-day life became more expensive. And we're looking at housing, groceries, cars, like, and this was all pre-COVID stuff. Like we're talking several, you know, several decades ago. And so you had moms who had to enter the workforce where maybe they weren't working outside of the home before, or maybe they were working part-time and now we have to go up to full-time. But yet, yet, even then in the 90s, we still had a lot of gender stereotypes of, well, it is the woman that manages the household. She's the one that does the laundry, the dishes, managing the kids, homework, getting kids to and from sporting events and all of these things. And then we threw her into full-time work outside of the home. So we wonder why that is. It's it's all connected.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah. And then I think too, you know, the bar that has been raised from mothers from our grandmothers, you know, ages on, right? It's like they had the village, now we've lost our village. The ability for a lot of women to stay at home has been, you know, financially not possible. If they are able to stay at home, you have this insane comparison factor that often happens of like now. I am solely, you know, stay at home. I need to do everything and anything for my child, right? You have social media that is showing us the highlight reels of every single other mom in this world that you're comparing yourself to.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

And then our children and the state of this world is so much more complex, and the challenges that we're having to deal with that weigh on it, that we're not we're not mothering in a village community anymore. Where I mean, we're just worried about what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

And all of the all of the complications.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

So I think we have to realize we're we're mothering in an unprecedented time.

Warning Signs Moms Often Miss

SPEAKER_02 10:22

But you know, if you're like, okay, know all that, cool. How do I know if I'm stressed or burned out? That's why I pulled up this episode. We'll get back to that point. Is you're gonna show shines, right? Everybody has the signs. I'll speak to myself. Irritability is a big one when I kind to notice myself fabulous doom scrolling more than not.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, that dissociation to try and check out that fawn response. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Kind of brain foggy, which you're like, okay, I've got a newborn, could be either or true. Insomnia. Insomnia, almost resentment comes in. Yeah. And you kind of just have like lower levels of tolerance and of things. Feeling scattered more than usual. Uh-huh. Like it just you can't, and it's and then your body with the stress reaction, which doing the research for this was interesting, that they're saying that you know, the the body response on average is 90 seconds to a stressor. Okay. And I could see that, right? And but the researcher's point was if your brain doesn't continue the thoughts of those stress, then it will your body will let it pass. But what do we normally do? Oh, we do we have the stress, we're dwelling, we're ruminating, which we're just running that thought, that scenario over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Well, because if we if we don't ruminate and overthink it, who will?

unknown 12:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Who's gonna fix it? Okay, who's gonna fix it, Whitney?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

If we don't play ever scenario, yeah, we're prepared, we are ready for worst-case scenarios, which here's the thing like if it all comes down to it, like Armageddon, zombie apocalypse, like you need to find you someone with some anxiety because let me tell you, they've got about five backup plans, they can get out of there.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

We're ready, we're ready. I mean, we're underappreciated in society.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, say what you will about an anxious person, we're prepared.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

We are, we're ready. I'm grabbing Whitney, we'll be just fine. Us in the children. But to that point, what also affects us, and we've seen this, is increased anxiety and depression in ourselves. We've had sleep disturbances, we've had immune suppressions, we get sick more often than not, yeah, because if we're inflamed, right? I mean, I can guarantee a lot of women whose burnout stress, they've, if they do get the odd chance of a massage, their masseuse is going, you're carrying so much stress at this muscle. Uh-huh. And what is so interesting about stress and burnout is it impacts your organs. It impacts your muscles, it's your mind. It's truly an overloaded nervous system. That your nervous system is a crucial part of your body that you are going to pay the price of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

And no surprise here either that women are more at risk for stress and burnout, anxiety and depression. So we know here, again, external pressure is what causes stress, right? And our body activates. Now we're living in this activated state because ruminating thoughts, or it's a it's honestly some days it's whack-a-mole. If it's not this, it's something else that comes at us. Now, differentiate for us anxiety with me.

Anxiety Versus Depression Clarity

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So they're like, okay, where am I missing this?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

So we kind of talked about the burnout and kind of the tales of that. With anxiety, yes, you can still see the insomnia. You can see kind of the irritability, the brain fog. But what we typically see is more of kind of your spiraling thoughts of, but what about this? Or what if this happens? But if I'm not prepared, then something bad will happen and it feels inevitable. Versus, well, you know what? Sometimes you got to drop a ball and hope it's one that bounces instead of breaks. That kind of thing. So anxiety is very much like we're a hamster on a wheel and we just keep going, going, going about, but what about this? What about this? What about this? What about this? And it never seems to stop. And the more we what if, the more it keeps happening. We actually never find a solution when we're what-ifing. Very seldom do we get a solution if we're what-ifing, which is one of the reasons I do encourage voice journaling so often, is because when you say it out loud, you're actually giving yourself another opportunity to truly process it audibly. So auditory processing there, your brain can actually troubleshoot, problem solve, organize. If we keep it all in our brain and we don't say it out loud, or we're not journaling it in any capacity, our brain is just like, oh, that's a good point, but what about this too? And then this, and then that, and this, and over here, and we just feel like a ping-pong ball going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it's just a cycle that continues to repeat itself. It is the never-ending snowball. Yeah. That is anxiety, and you feel like you just can't stop it.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Now, how do they know if it's equaled burnout or depression? Because depression is tricky too, right? Especially for women, high-functioning women, right? We see it all the time in the news when unfortunate events of loss of life occur where they're going, I never knew she was depressed.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Right. So here's the thing: depression will not be eased by delegating things out, or like you said, doing the spa day or taking a vacation from work. If you're burned out or kind of teetering on that line of burnout, taking a break or delegating out some responsibilities will ease the burnout. And you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You have a little reprieve. Things may not be perfect, but you've got your head above water, and you're like, okay, I can do this. This might be a very busy week with, you know, practices and games and all of this. But after this, it kind of slows down a little bit. We're not going to have as many days that it doubles ups and all of that kind of stuff. Depression. You could take a vacation and you're not better. You're not any better. Things are very blah. Things never seem or feel hopeful. Again, that lack of motivation is just, well, what is the point? Whereas burnout, you see the point, you're just exhausted. But you understand, and the motivation is there, but you have the physical exhaustion to it. Whereas depression, you have mental and physical exhaustion, and you kind of just don't care. I hate to say, I don't say this in a derogatory way, but it kind of reminds me of Eeyore. Yeah. Where it's just always gray. Like we don't have extreme feelings of happy, and we're not necessarily extreme sad, we're not extreme reactionary, but it's just blah consistently. That is where I would have a lot of red flags about depression. That is where I would say you need to get into therapy. You may need to talk to a doctor about an antidepressant. We need to kind of get a handle on this before it gets worse.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Yeah. No. And so it is very important again, just to differentiate, just so if you if it resonates with you guys, we hope that you know what step forward. So

Tools That Lower Cortisol Fast

SPEAKER_02 18:09

let's go back. This is burnout stress. So let's talk through some tools that's going to help you guys. So as we said, it's been researched. Dr. Jill Taylor says, you know, the body response to stress, it surges about 90 seconds, right? Right. If we don't keep re triggering it. So one thing that she does recommend, and I know Whitney, you're a huge fan of this, is the breathing. You know, to lower the cortisol and activate your parasynthetic nervous system, which is telling your fight or flight, hey, calm it down. If you're like, really? It's yes, really. Yes. I it is, and it doesn't have to be anything crazy. You could do the box breathing. Yep. Inhale and out, and you just literally think about making that. If you're like, oh, I can really get it out is a big inhale, hold it and big exhale. That's fine too. We don't have to get perfectionist without our breathing to cope.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Right. Another thing that is really good. I follow another therapist on Instagram and she had talked about this where she often found herself rushing through things like doing the vacuuming really quick or scrubbing her face really fast. And she's like, wait, why are you rushing? You don't have to do everything at a hyper speed. So when you catch yourself doing a hyper speed, say, but why? Like, let me, I can take 20 more seconds to wash my face. Like, I don't have to rush through this. But another great thing is to lay flat on your back and get your legs at a 90 degree angle on a couch or a chair, and to put your hands on your stomach and on your chest and to really fill up those lungs to capacity and then empty your lungs and do that a few times. I mean, really take three minutes, four minutes and do that and do it with your kids. Teach them those skills. Because I know as moms, especially when we have littles, like they're with us all the time. Like it's really hard to be away from them because sometimes they don't want to be away from us. So if you feel that way, get them in on it too. You're teaching them great coping skills. You're teaching them mom is going to take care of herself too. So I'm allowed to do it also.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

No, I love that. And I think we've covered this well, but you reduce before you add, in the sense of at this point and stage in the game, stress, burnout, really taking something away before you try to add is so beneficial. And it helps more than trying to be like, I'm resilient. And it's micro recovery moments. There is actually research on this too, that even a five-minute kind of like nature moment is really great at reducing cortisol. And if that is, you know, you take the kids and you're like, we're gonna step outside for five seconds and we're gonna look at the birds, or I'm gonna on my lunch break, I'm gonna take a quick five-minute walk. Right. But get outside, and I know it helps me too to sometimes when we're so consumed in a thought or a problem or a situation, seeing outside and how much bigger everything is than us in this it kind of just visually reminds you, and it's hard because again, we all work kind of isolated now. A lot of people work from home. You just don't get that interaction so much. So sometimes it is you're like, oh my gosh, I've spent my whole entire day inside my cubicle or my whole entire day in front of this computer, or the kids have been sick and I've not left. That just two seconds outside can really make a huge difference. Right.

Boundaries Self Check And Closing

SPEAKER_02 21:48

So try that and boundaries. Okay. We know people pleasing and chronic self suppression here causes us to have more stress hormones and compromise. Our immunity. And really, it's like, you know, no is a response and a full answer. And it's also a nervous system intervention is no. It is. The answer no. And we have some other episodes on why are you a people pleaser saying no and boundaries? So encourage you to go back and do that. But before we head into May, our challenge to you guys is to kind of do a little bit of a self-check-in again and go in. Am I being reactive? Do I know I'm doom screwing more? Am I getting more irritable? Is my sleep being kind of off? And take an evaluation again of what's going on and truly try to do one of the tools we talked about. Right. Yeah. You have to invest it in yourselves. Because at some point, what has happened that we don't want this to continue happening is where it's kind of like a badge of honor when you say how exhausted you are. Right. Or how much you've got going on. Or your accomplishments equals or your task equals your worth. And we want to take that away.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah. Yeah. Productivity isn't the end all be all to your self-worth. And I know I'm one to talk. Get it, I'm one to talk, but it's a truth.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah. So, guys, we appreciate you again. We hope that this has met you guys where you're at. And we'll be back next week with a new episode. But thank you so much. Cheering you guys on.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Maternal mental health is as important as physical health. The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables like anxiety, anger, and even apathy. Hosted by CEO, founder Sarah Parkhurst, and licensed clinical social worker Whitney Gay, each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges as well as access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.