25 | Why Working Moms Stay Overwhelmed (And How to Break Free Without Guilt) featuring Dr. Shannon Sauer-Zavala

Are you secretly wondering if you're the problem... because no "productivity hack" has fixed your overwhelm?

Feeling like you're constantly failing at work-life balance—no matter how hard you try?

You're not alone—and you're not broken.

In this empowering episode, Dr. Shannon Sauer-Zavala joins us to uncover why high-achieving working moms are set upto feel exhausted—and how you can finally break free.

You’ll learn how to:

• Stop overcommitting without guilt
• Ditch the "shoulds" and reclaim your values
• Say NO with confidence (even if you're a recovering people-pleaser!)
• Lead with strengths-based clarity and create true work-life integration

If you're tired of running on fumes and ready to lead your career—and your life—with purpose, energy, and joy, this conversation is for you.

🎙️ Connect with Dr. Shannon Sauer-Zavala

Your next best step is closer than you think. Let’s go.

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Transcript

Shannon Fox:

Ever feel like no matter how organized or efficient you try to be, you're still exhausted, overwhelmed, and stretched way too thin?

In today's episode, we're breaking down why working moms stay stuck in burnout, and more importantly, how you can finally reclaim your time, your career, and your energy without guilt.

If you're ready to stop over=committing and start leading your life and work with calm and clarity and confidence, this one's for you.

Let's dive in.

Intro:

Hey mama, welcome to Career Growth for Working Moms. If you're stuck in a job that doesn't fit or burning out trying to do it all, you're in the right place.

I'm Shannon, a career coach and fellow working mom.

Here, you'll get simple career strategies and strength-based leadership tips to help you grow with clarity and confidence. So grab your coffee or reheat it for the third time and let's do this.

Shannon Fox:

Hello and welcome. I'm so excited to have Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala with me today.

Shannon is an award-winning clinical psychologist, a full-time professor, a mom, and the creator of the Fulfillment Formula, a science-based framework that helps high-achieving women overcome burnout and high-functioning anxiety so they can live their lives with more purpose, joy, and energy.

Her work has garnered millions in research funding, transformed the lives of 200 plus high-achieving women, and has been featured across publications and platforms for its practical psychology-based tools.

Today, she's here to help us learn how to reclaim our time, reduce guilt, and stop running on fumes so that we can thrive in our careers and our lives.

Shannon, welcome. I'm so excited to have another Shannon to talk to today.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Shannon Fox:

So your story is, you know, relatable—juggling motherhood, academia, building something on your own. What made you realize something needed to change and how do you juggle all of that?

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, yeah, that's such a great question. I think for me, I started out actually not particularly conscientious, and it wasn't until I figured out what I wanted to do, you know, in terms of being a psychologist and being a researcher, that I started to really buckle down.

And I think because I was a little bit of a haphazard person before that, I think I started to put a lot of pressure on myself to show up in ways that were receiving a lot of praise and a lot of like, you know, sort of like pats on the head from people more like ahead of me in my career.

And I think for me, honestly, like the turning point was after I had my kids and I was hosting a holiday dinner, my family was visiting from out of town, my husband's family and my family.

And I was just like in the kitchen crying because I was overwhelmed by all of the stuff that I had to do. And for some reason, it like didn't occur to me to ask any of the other people that were around to help me do anything.

Shannon Fox:

That's a typical mom though, I think.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think society really benefits from women drinking the Kool-Aid on what it means to be a good mom, to be a good partner, to be a good employee.

I think, you know, for better or for worse—I mean, for worse—if we live, if we work in kind of an established field and we're not working for ourselves, that there's this sort of feeling like we're sort of on borrowed time, even still, you know, as women.

And there is only enough room for a certain amount of us.

And, you know, whether that's true or not, I feel like that's the message that we get sent.

And so it's like, there's no room for error.

Shannon Fox:

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I can relate to your story, and I'm sure a lot of the career moms here are listening because, you know, you're trying to balance motherhood, trying to balance being a spouse, trying to balance your career.

And I know you work a lot. I mean, for me, I've done the complete overwhelm, burnout, like sitting in the kitchen, just crying and going, I don't even know how I got here.

Because you do love the accolades at work, but you do love to be with your kids and your spouse.

Like, so what advice do you have for these women that are listening that are like, hello, that's me, I'm raising my hand, please help me?

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, yeah. So I think for me, you know, why that sort of like breakdown moment was so powerful is that, you know, as a clinical psychologist, I'm working one-on-one with a lot of women just like me and giving them advice that I was not taking myself.

And, you know, I mean, no one wants to feel like they're a complete hypocrite.

And so, you know, I started to take some of the strategies that I had been applying to sort of high-functioning anxiety and really think about how can we tweak these so that they are just really attuned to what women who, you know, have it all are dealing with.

And so, you know, I think the first thing for me is that if you show up on the internet, you know, on Instagram, or, you know, any social media as a, you know, as a working mom, as a person that's wearing a lot of hats, you are going to get bombarded with like a ton of just like wellness or productivity hacks, right?

So, oh, try the Pomodoro method, and you'll just be more efficient. I'm a planner girly, so I love to make customized planners. And yet, I mean, I don't think I subscribe to this anymore, but I think there's this belief that like, oh, let me just try this new planner, and I'll be so much more efficient and organized, right?

Or, you know, you're going through a cortisol detox—which like, is not a thing actually. Like, that's just made up to have you spend money.

And so I think there's—you get bombarded with all this advertisement that makes it feel like the problem is you. And that if you just buy a product or a planner or a method, that this new productivity hack will help you become more efficient so that you can do it all and be it all.

But the problem isn’t actually inefficiency. It’s not that you are bad with your time. And if you could only like optimize a little bit more, you’d be less overwhelmed.

It’s an over-commitment. The problem is over-commitment, right? It’s that we think that we’re not functioning properly, or we’re not good enough in all areas of our lives if we don’t, you know, give 100% in all areas all the time.

And that’s just really not possible.

So I think really, the first step is acknowledging that, like, there are systemic pressures that make—that are set up to make us feel like we have to do everything all the time, because the world benefits from women's free emotional and literal labor.

Shannon Fox:

Right.

So that's like—that's a mind shift change, because I think a lot of people want to sit there and they see, oh, well, the Facebook, Instagram world of all the moms, and they all look like they've got it together, when we know that that's not really true.

And so they feel the pressure then to do that. And so that's a mindset shift that we all need to have to say, wait, I can't be 100% in all of these categories all the time. I can be 100 here, but then that's going to put me at 75 here. And you know, it may be at 30% down here for this category.

And that's okay. This is just the season that—and that ebbs and flows, right?

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, I love that language around seasons, right? Because like, I think—you know, another phrase that I really just like hate is "work-life balance," because I think that that really—like, what is balance, right? It means everything's equal, right? You’re giving equal attention. And that’s just like—that’s not really what it is, right?

It’s that like, some days, it’s more here. And some days, it’s more here. And like, you shouldn’t feel like you’re failing if it’s not 50/50 all the time, right? Because that’s really not reality.

It’s like, sometimes your kids demand more. And sometimes they’re—I don’t know, my kid, my oldest kid is in a very big, like, friend phase. And we have a lot of friends in the neighborhood. She doesn’t really need that much from me right now.

And I’m like, cool. Let me work on my—let me work on my side hustle, you know? But sometimes she does, you know, sometimes she needs a lot more. And that’s okay.

Shannon Fox:

And I think a lot of that comes with the “I should be doing this, I should be…” you know, and I catch myself and I'm like, man, I'm “shoulding” a lot. You know? Okay, stop.

And it actually goes back to what you were saying. At that moment, I'm over-committed. And I need to stop and realign, reassess where I need to be. So I'm sure that that's true for other people.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

For sure, for sure. And I think that like, another thing that makes it really difficult to like unburden ourselves from the commitments that we've made, is that we have been—we've been working on all cylinders for so long that we may have lost touch with what's important to us. Right?

Like, there's—we're getting so many messages from all these different places, you know, from society, from our mother-in-law, from our boss, from the, you know, PTA mom. You know, like, you're getting bombarded with all this information. And everyone's like, well, my thing's the most important, you should pay attention to it.

And I think that's what like leads us to be pulled in different directions. So one of the things I really love—I mean, historically, I've done it with patients, right, or clients, people coming in for therapy—but have been doing it more and more in kind of coaching space, is helping people use kind of a scientific method for, or a proven method for identifying their values.

And so when we think about values, it can seem like big and broad, right? So like, what's a value? And essentially, all it means is like, how you want to show up in your life or what direction you're heading.

And for a lot of people, we confuse values with goals, right? Like, it's my value to get all this stuff done at work, right? Well, that's not really a value. A value is a life direction, right? So in the same way that you don't want to go west until you arrive at west, it's like, you don't like be honest in your relationship one time, and you're like, cool, fulfilled my value.

It's something, it's aspirational. And when I'm doing values work with people, we spend a lot of time—we go through all the different domains in which people can hold values. So, you know, family relationships, parenting, partner relationships, work, education or lifelong learning, leisure, citizenship, health and wellness, right?

And we go through the motions of identifying like, what you want to be about in all of these areas.

And then my favorite part of it is like, okay, now you have to rate them and how important they are to you. And you cannot—you know, there's 10 of them, right? Like, you cannot rate them all 10 out of 10 importance. Like, you have to—you have to triage, right? We have to figure out like, what's important to you.

And I want you to like, spend a week and think about this, like, really reflect on this, because it's supposed to be, you know, like, what you whisper to yourself in the night, right? Like, you know, if you can't tell your therapist, who can you tell? You know, it's not supposed to be based on the shoulds.

And so once we identify that, then we can start to see the misalignment. We can see where, you know, I'm saying that my family is most important to me. And I am missing things because I'm staying late at work for like, I don't know, like networking drinks, right? Which isn't really even part of my job, I just feel like I have to show my face, right?

And once you identify your values, it becomes—I won't say easy—but it becomes clear what needs to be cut.

Shannon Fox:

Right, right.

And I would assume that like, the people pleasing part and the, you know, having to be perfect or be on all the time, that also becomes clear when you have your—those things aligned. And you know, you're clear on where those are, because then you're like, oh, my family's most important in that example. So I'm going to say no, and I'm not going to people please in this situation for those networking drinks, correct?

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, yeah. Right. And so I think like identifying your values and knowing what you want to do in your heart of hearts, right? Like is the first step, right? And then the second step is actually being like, sorry, can't. And I think that's where the people pleasing, the perfectionism, that's where that kind of comes into play, at least in the way that I think about a lot of this stuff.

And so, you know, another sort of like area of my academic research is on personality and personality change. And so I've had, I've had, you know, countless women come through my practice and say things like, well, I'm just like this, I'm just perfectionistic, or I'm just a people pleaser, or, you know, I'm an ENFJ. So I have to do X, Y, and Z.

And it really grinds my gears for a couple reasons. One, because most personality tests that people take on the internet or like in their human resources department, they're not based on science. So they're kind of like BS anyway. Right.

But the thing that I really don't like about it is that we have so much data now that shows that personality traits change and that you can actually shift. You can choose the direction you want to shift your traits. So if you're tired of being a people pleaser, you are not just like that.

Like we—there are actual strategies that we can use to nudge your trait in the direction that helps support your—your journey toward your values.

Shannon Fox:

Right. I know I actually grew up being a people pleaser and it—a lot of it came from like trauma. And that was, that was how I dealt with it, I guess. And then I started healing and I went to, you know, therapy and all of that. And now I'm like, I don't care. Like what my values, my priorities, this is my life.

And so I can totally see how it's shifted in that—just it, I mean, it wasn't overnight by any means, but I can see how that—people would say, well, this—they're kind of using it as an excuse. Well, this is what I took. And I took this test 20 years ago and now here I am, and I've gone through all of this and I'm a different person. And so I can see how that would be frustrating if I was a doctor and someone came in with that excuse.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

I mean, I think about all the time, if I just sort of foreclosed on any growth and just, you know, settled into the personality test results I took or that I got when I was 18, like, I mean, it would not be great to be honest.

Shannon Fox:

Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Well, I know one thing that moms struggle with is saying no and feeling—and feeling guilt. So what, I mean, tools do you have to help these moms listening to—to say no, whether to what is not important to align with what is, um, without filling that guilt that, you know, happens—that mom guilt.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, like I said, first step realizing like you just can't do it all. And it's not, there's no like quick fix productivity hack. That's going to fix it, getting straight on your values. So, you know, what's important. And then it's actually executing, right. It's actually saying, like you said, like, how do you say no.

And here I, you know, I'm a cognitive behavioral therapist. So, you know, in my like therapy practice. And so it's straight up, tell yourself something different. That's the cognitive piece. And it's do something different, which is the behavioral piece.

Shannon Fox:

Right

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

So I love the behavioral piece. And I think about changing our behavior as like a data collection or like a, you know, testing a hypothesis, right. Like I think people are going to be mad at me if I say that I can't work at the harvest fair or whatever at my kid's school. But I've never actually said no to anything like that. So I don't actually know what would happen.

Shannon Fox:

Right.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

And so we kind of talk about this as like a behavioral experiment instead of like, you just say no now, like across the board. It's like, let's just pick a low stakes, a lower stakes thing. Let's experiment. Let's say no. And let's see what happens.

And usually it's nothing. You know, it's so anticlimactic. And then that's data. Right. And we can take that data and we can apply it. And it gives us a little bit more confidence to say no next time.

The other thing that—so that's the kind of the behavioral side, right. And it goes hand in hand with the cognitive side. And that's just like, what is your narrative? What are you telling yourself? Are there these self-limiting beliefs at play that are causing us to feel guilty? Right. Like I am not a good mom or, you know, I mean, I can use examples from my own life, right.

So I mean, my kids are nine and six and I have long ago said, I'm not making your lunch. So you're either going to get buy lunch at school or you're going to make it yourself. And my little one buys lunch at school every day. And my older one makes their lunch every day. And, you know, I could watch TikTok videos of people putting together these like beautiful bento boxes with sandwiches shaped like mice and feel guilty.

But what I tell myself instead of like I'm a crappy mom is—it's more in line with my values to actually spend time with my kids than to like craft whiskers out of cheese, you know. And I am not involved in my kids’ PTA because I have a lot of other stuff to do. And the way that I show my kids that I care about them is by hanging out with them.

Shannon Fox:

Right. I love that because that is very practical tips. And it is all about the—what we're telling ourselves where, you know, I think a lot of times maybe it's just me. I'll build something up like, oh, they're going to reject me and make it a way worse. And like you said, just say no to one little thing. And then it's like, oh, that wasn't a big deal.

And then the next time you can say no again and you're like, OK, maybe it's not going to be—because I think we—at least for me, I have—I can work myself up into thinking it's going to be this huge thing. And it really isn't. So I love like find something that's easier, say no. And then you have data for the next time, you know. So that's very practical.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, and I mean, what I love about, you know, coming on podcasts and talking about these strategies is like—I mean, we didn't really talk that much about my day job—but like in my job at the university, I'm like—I'm a clinical trialist. So I design treatments for anxiety and depression. And then—and the strategy—the same strategies.

Shannon Fox:

Right.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

And then we test them. So we know that they work.

Shannon Fox:

They're not like this sort of like, oh, vibes. Right.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Exactly. Like they're so simple.

Shannon Fox:

Right.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

But it's like—but they work. And so you don't need to like drink hot lemon water upside down to get your—you know, get yourself aligned.

Shannon Fox:

Yes, I love that. Well, this is—we're coming to the end of our time. So if the listeners want to reach out and get more information from you, what's the best way to connect with you?

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So—so probably the best place to connect with me is on my Instagram, which is @self.made.personality. I think I might have—and I can't remember now. Did I send you a link for show notes?

Shannon Fox:

I don't think so. But if you do, I'll put them in there.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

Yeah, yeah. And so I'll send you a link for—for show notes. And basically, it's like kind of a one-stop shop for some of—some of just the ideas that I've been talking about today. So I—I made a sort of a free offering. It's called my “Should I Do This?” checklist. And it basically is like a cheat sheet on the science behind the factors we should consider when we're deciding whether or not to take on a new opportunity.

And then I have—I have like a workbook that's available at like a sort of a low price point that really is like how to take these practical strategies that we're talking about and apply them to your own—your own life. And then if people want to work with me for therapy, I am available for that.

Shannon Fox:

Awesome. Well, I'll have all of that information in the show notes below. So Dr. Shannon, right before we leave, I love to leave our listeners with one action step. So what is one belief you'd love to rewrite in every one of these high-achieving working moms that are listening right now?

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

I think the big takeaway is that sometimes we are the architects of our own cages and that sometimes all it takes to break down a bar—you know, one day at a time—is to just choose something, choose to do something different. And so I really challenge your listeners to—today—look at your to-do list or look at your calendar and figure out which one of these things is a soul-sucking obligation. And I don't even remember why I said I would do it and then figure out how to get yourself out of it.

Shannon Fox:

I love that. That is very practical. Well, thank you so much for being here today.

Dr. Shannon Sauer Zavala:

My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Shannon, for having me.

Outro:

Hey, working mama. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds to share it with a friend who’s stuck in her career but doesn’t want to sacrifice her family to grow?

Also, please leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. It seriously lights me up to know the show is helping you navigate burnout, find clarity, and lead with confidence.

All right, time to shut down my laptop and pretend I’m not hiding from folding that laundry.

I’ll meet you back here soon for another episode of Career Growth for Working Moms.

You’ve got this.