Why You're Overstimulated: 20 Reasons

How did you get in this cycle of overstimulation and reactivity anyway?

More importantly, how can you ask someone to help you if you don't know how you got here in the first place? 

So listen along as Whitney takes a step back from the neuroscience and gets laser specific and practical, sharing 20 common reasons moms are overstimulated
(I know, that's a lot!)

• No, you're not crazy
• Yes, you CAN do things to help
• And no... you're definitely not alone in it all.

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Loads of resources from this episode!

• More about basic needs here
• Learn about co-regulation here and here
• More on movement for moms and starting out here
• Read about hormones and sensory overload here
• Explore hormone healing resources related to minerals here
• Start learning about functional B12 defiency in this knowledgeable facebook group of other moms.
• Listen to the sleep episode
• Access Teresa's boundary building resources and MORE here
  
  
  

This podcast is not meant as medical advice or a substitute for any medical advice. Please contact your health professional with any mental health or physical health questions or concerns.

Transcript

 Why do you feel so easily overwhelmed and overstimulated as a mom? Have you ever wondered this? I remember back when I was dealing with some health issues that were leading me to feel more stressed and frustrated than usual. The practitioner that I was working with laid out all the details of what was going on with my life, and she kindly asked Whitney, how could you not be having problems?

Look at all that's going on in your life right now, and I hadn't really stepped back to think about it and that perspective shift affected everything. So today I'm going to be talking about 20 reasons why you might be feeling. Overstimulated as a mom. I know that's a lot. I started with, I don't know, 10, but the list just kept growing and growing and truthfully, I'm sure that once I hit stop, I will think of more reasons why we can feel so easily overstimulated as moms, but why should you care anyway?

Well, I think that it's really helpful for you to know what could be at the root of some of your overstimulation so that you can do what you can. I. I think sometimes as moms we can feel easily helpless because sometimes we've just adapted these strategies that require us to manipulate the environment or other things.

And when we become a mom, we are no longer able to have schedules and homes that perfectly suit our needs, so. Those environmental adaptations don't come quite as easily and a lot of the adaptations have to end up coming from within us, and that requires that we sit back and think about it. So we are gonna start that today.

Listen along and hit pause where you need to and just reflect as I go through these things. And another benefit of thinking about it this way is that. It helps us explain what is going on in our bodies and minds to people who care about us. It can be really hard to describe. What it feels like to feel overstimulated and overwhelmed and sometimes, I don't know, we could even just kind of feel crazy, like maybe it's all in my head anyway.

But if we understand what is underlying some of this, then we are able to explain our needs in a more effective way to people who care about us. But before I jump right into that list, let me introduce myself. If we haven't met yet, I. I'm Whitney and I'm an occupational therapist turned homeschool mom turned mom, coach, and I come alongside you to help you understand what is going on in your body and mind when you are feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated so that you can have a plan to meet your needs in the day-to-day chaos that is homeschool mom life.

So that you can understand ways that you can meet your own needs for this marathon and make it work for you and not just your kids. Okay, let's get right into it. Number one, maybe you've had sensory processing differences your whole life and you never really even knew it. Or maybe like me, you thought you'd outgrown it, and then motherhood brings it all coming to the forefront.

Maybe you have a kid and your kid has sensory or nervous system differences, and it's through your journey with your child that you've come to see that you have your own unique wiring. Maybe that is why you are starting to realize that you feel overstimulated. Number two, maybe you're overstimulated because you have kids who have needs that are very demanding of you.

Or maybe your kids have different needs than you do. So being that responsive mom to your child instead of the reactive mom is really hard. The third reason you might feel overstimulated is, as I said earlier, you can't control your environment like you used to. When you become a mom, you share your space with more people.

That means more messy spaces, and you're more likely to be visually overloaded because of that. Not to mention the loud spaces that used to be peaceful for you. The fourth reason you might feel overstimulated is you don't have a regular reset for your nervous system to discharge stress. So all of that stress just snowballs.

I've talked before about the stress cycle, so if you want to listen to more about that, I'll put a reference to a previous episode in the show notes to help you understand that. And there's also some posts and blogs up on my website, so I'll make sure I put links to those as well. I also have an episode coming out soon, which I'm really excited about, where we do a little bit more of a deep dive into cortisol, which is the stress hormone and how it affects us.

So that will help you understand more as well. But yes, we as moms often do not have a regular reset for our nervous system. The fifth reason that you might be feeling overstimulated is that you put everyone else's needs ahead of yours so you don't meet your basic needs. When I'm talking about basic needs, I'm talking about making sure that you are resting.

You are eating that you're staying hydrated, that you are even taking showers as often as you would like, that you are able to go to the bathroom. I know that sounds like it is an exaggeration, but. You know what I mean? Especially if you are in the throes of life with a newborn, right? Just going to the bathroom can be a huge feat.

I remember that when I had, uh, four kids that were five and under, uh, going to the bathroom alone was an unrealistic expectation, but just going to the bathroom, that required some gymnastics as well. Okay, number six. You might be overstimulated because you are sleep deprived. Yes, sleep is a basic need, but it deserves its own special mention.

I have a whole episode about sleep and that is a huge part of my story. Because again, that goes back to the fact that we share houses with other people and we've become a mom, right? And if someone else is not sleeping well, then you likely are not sleeping well. And simply understanding how that is going to affect your sensory regulation can be really freeing because we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves in with seasons of not sleeping well, and that needs to change.

So if you miss that, be sure to check out that episode. A couple of episodes be before this one. The seventh reason you might be feeling overstimulated is that you don't ask for help until you are drowning, and that's if you ask for help at all. Yeah, that one kind of stings. Number eight, you don't know.

What you need anymore so that you can't even ask for it.

The ninth reason is you don't move purposefully. So I talk a lot about how our systems that help us feel grounded and present and calm are often understimulated as moms. Mainly those are systems and sensory systems that are related to movement. So if we are not moving on purpose, and I'm not talking about, you know, going to run five miles every morning here, okay?

But purposeful movement. If we are not engaging in that, those senses will be understimulated and you will feel overstimulated. If you wanna know more about that, check out the show notes and I'll link you some resources there. Okay, we are halfway there. Here's number 10. You are overstimulated. Because of hormonal changes, life changes and monthly shifts in hormones fall into that category.

Hormones definitely affect our overwhelm and our sensory overload. Estrogen is a huge part of that, especially when it comes to sound sensitivity. I have a post in the blog about that, that I'll put in the show notes, but hormonal changes definitely impact our sensory sensitivity and to a certain extent, that's just to be expected and at least knowing what's going on in ways that you can support yourself through that can be huge.

And understanding that if you do have hormonal imbalances. Addressing that with a practitioner is very helpful, not just for your physical body, but also for your mental health and for your sensory wellness as well. Number 11, you feel overstimulated because you are running on a depleted body. So I will give you a bit of a disclaimer here.

This is not my specialty. Go to someone who does specialize in these things like a functional medicine practitioner, something like that. But our bodies are often depleted of nutrients after we become moms. Just from the stress of pregnancy and childbirth and repleting, that takes a lot of time. We might even go into pregnancy and childbirth and postpartum already depleted, and so then we start to have even more problems.

I. If you haven't heard of functional B12 deficiency, I encourage you to check it out. And the reason it's functional B12 is that it's a little different. You can't just do a blood test for your B12 levels and see that they're high and assume everything is fine because your body has to be able to use that B12.

Just because it's in your bloodstream doesn't mean that you can make use of it. So you have to have certain key minerals to be able to use that, and b, vitamins are essential for our nervous system. Many medications that we take or have taken in the past, if you tend to be kind of an an anxious person, or maybe it's for your reproductive health, those medications can affect your.

B12 deficiencies and your minerals, and I would encourage you to check it out for yourself and learn how to educate yourself about your own vitamin and mineral status. There's ways to do that and not to keep pointing you to the show notes, but I will put some resources in there for you to educate yourself, and again, I encourage you to check with your doctor or a functional health provider to learn more about those things and how to advocate for yourself.

Okay, number 12, you are overstimulated because speaking of running, you are running too fast. Rushing. We rush as moms and rushing is one of the worst things that we can do for our nervous systems. Homeschool moms are often trying to cram as much as we can into as little time as we can. Maybe we're trying to prove ourselves or our decisions to the world or to ourself.

Who knows? There can be so many reasons under that. But as moms, we are gathering everyone and we're running out the door, and even that rushing is kicking our nervous system into overdrive. And we pay for that. We pay for that in not just our relationships with our kids and being more likely to lose it, but we pay for it with our body and the cortisol spike that comes with it.

So rushing.

Number 13, you're overstimulated because the heavy mental load of motherhood leaves you with less capability to cope with the sensory stress of motherhood. Different kinds of stress don't occur in these neat little tidy boxes, right? Stress is stress and stress in one area of your life is going to affect everything.

It's gonna affect your ability to be resilient and flexible with other types of stress as well. So if you're going through a season where you're experiencing maybe some extra financial stress or marital stress, you're gonna have less bandwidth to cope with the sensory stress that comes along with motherhood.

So don't treat ourselves like we are machines, we are people, and we are complicated. And having more stress in one area leaves us with less coping resilience in other areas. 14, you are overstimulated because you don't regularly step back to reflect on your routine or your lifestyle to see if it is actually serving you well.

I've got a question for you. How often do you zoom out and reflect on your day-to-day reality and how it makes you feel? How that reality affects your energy, your satisfaction, how does it affect your joy? When we're so involved in the minutiae of each moment, it's easy to go through those motions mindlessly without stepping back to see if it is still serving you well.

Number 15. You feel overstimulated because you don't give yourself permission to feel dysregulated. The amount of sensory stimulation that you endure as a mom is astounding. Really. Could we just sit back and count how many times that you have had intense sensory events today? We will call them. I'm not even talking about the basic get through the day things like put your clothes on, brush your teeth.

Like cook meals? No, I, I'm not talking about those things, which would be enough in themself. I'm talking about loud, chaotic. Messy, like both with touch and vision, messy, all of these sensory events that occur throughout our day as moms, these demands that are placed on us by our beautiful children,

maybe your reaction is not always what you would want it to be. I get it. But the fact that you feel overstimulated. Someday makes a lot of sense. But how do you talk about yourself when it comes to those overwhelm moments? Do you even allow yourself to sit with the feeling of overwhelm and permit it to be there?

You can't grow through experiences that you don't acknowledge exist. And if your experience is. Overwhelm, anger, frustration in those moments. We need to let it be and acknowledge that it's there before we can do much about it. Number 16, you feel overstimulated because you're not connecting meaningfully with others.

We'll call that co-regulation. Co-regulation is not just for our kids. It's true that kids rely more on it than adults because they're still developing their self-regulation. But co-regulation is for moms too.

Molly Hagan at The Child Mind Institute says that co-regulation is simply the mutual sharing of calm between two people. It's also not just a mental process. It's go usually goes on underneath the surface as well. Mirror neurons enable us to be able to reflect back the emotional state of other people, and so co-regulation includes this just give and take.

That happens usually naturally within safe relationships. So make sure that you are investing in meaningful relationships for yourself, not just your kids. Oftentimes we don't really talk about what's going on, and if we do, we are just kind of venting, which has its place, but can often leave us with short-term relief, but ultimately still dysregulated when we're done.

So I think calm is the operative word here. 17. You feel overstimulated because of the very thing that is probably enabling you to listen to this podcast. Technology. You are visually overstimulated by your phone or your computer. It gets in the way of restorative rest and it takes away time that we might use to do things that would help us complete the stress cycle or find connection with other people.

And honestly, the connection on the computer or on the phone doesn't benefit you the same way as in-person co-regulation would. Now I'm not overlooking the benefits of tech. I mean, here I am recording a podcast, but it certainly has its limitations and yes, it can lead you to feel more overstimulated.

Number 18, you are spending less time outside. That really goes hand in hand with talking about things that we've talked about, like completing the stress cycle outside time is really critical to help you feel like a human and not having enough of it can lead you to feel overstimulated. There's tons of research about the calming effects of nature.

Even listening to things like bird songs and the effects that it has on our body, it's astounding. I'm sure you might have heard about the book Last Child in the Woods, but that was really eye-opening for me. I read it as an OT before I had my own kids, and I will say that it was really pivotal in deciding about helping me decide what I wanted my career to be like in my home life with my children.

So I would encourage you, if you haven't read that, to check it out.

Okay, hang in there. We are almost done. These are our last two reasons. Number 19, you might feel overstimulated because your thought life is really loud. That's right. Overstimulation doesn't just come from the outside. Feeling overstimulated can come from within you too. Developing mindfulness can really help with this.

Developing a mindfulness practice can really help with this. Learning to focus on your breathing outside of stressful moments can be helpful. Journaling, especially gratitude journaling, praying. These are all things that can be helpful if your thought life is really loud. I would also encourage you to make sure you are giving yourself time to think.

May I even say in silence or solitude? I know that's hard to come by as a mom, but even having 10 minutes of silence that is intentional and expected every day. Can go a long way as a mom who is evil. Easily overstimulated. Here we go. The last reason, but it's a big one. I won't go into it too much because it's a big one, but you should at least think about.

Maybe you are overstimulated because you have a hard time setting and sticking with boundaries that work for you. Yes, mom life and especially homeschool mom, life is one big lifelong exercise in boundaries. Sometimes we come into motherhood with difficulty with boundaries. Or maybe it just develops. And frankly, when you're around your kids, most of the time you're gonna have a lot of opportunities for your boundaries to be pushed, right?

So learning what boundaries actually matter to you enough to enforce and stick with are actually really important. I'll just go ahead and point out the elephant in the room. Sometimes sticking with these boundaries can be really hard for moms who are easily overstimulated because we know that sticking to boundaries can lead to conflict, and conflict can lead to loud disagreements and chaos.

And because of that reason, sometimes we are hesitant to set boundaries and enforce them. Seasons change, life changes. So setting aside time to regularly reflect on your boundaries before things go sour is really helpful. Theresa Wirick at Homeschool Mama's Self-Care on Instagram and her website is capturing the charmed life.

I'll put the link down in show notes. Theresa has great resources for boundaries setting as homeschool moms, so I would encourage you to check that out if you struggle with this area. We did it all 20 reasons in about 20 minutes, so that's not too bad, right? But I really do hope that. Bringing these things to light has gotten your wheels turning to help you figure out what could be contributing to your overstimulation and what can you do about it?

Because we have more power than we think, and we don't just have to sit away around and wait for things to get more calm and less chaotic around us because let's face it, it's gonna be a while before that happens. And when it does, people say, we're gonna miss this chaos. So let's lean into it and figure out a way to find connection even in the chaos.

That's why I'm here. I wonder what you think about these 20 things. Do you think that it resonates with what you're seeing in your life, or maybe you have some other reasons of your own? I'd love to hear. You can send me a message on Instagram. Or right here on the podcast app, you can hit send me a note and it'll come straight to my phone.

Let's talk about it. Let me know what you think. Until next time, I really do hope that you are able to find connection even in the chaos.