Are you a worn-out mom who used to be the star of the office, spend 45 minutes doing your hair and makeup, and take romantic getaways before you had kids…but now you’re constantly behind and out of PTO at work, there are three days’ worth of dishes piled in the sink, the kids scream when tablet time is over, and you’re so touched out by 8pm that you scroll Instagram instead of spending time with your husband?
Welcome to the club. If you’re paralyzed by what to do first whenever you miraculously find 15 free minutes and fall asleep in tears because you’ve always tried to do everything right but now it feels so wrong, you are NOT alone. I went crazy trying to “balance” it all and believing other experts who tell you to just wake up earlier or manage your time better. Turns out you’re not the problem; toxic productivity culture has led you to equate your self-worth with what you have to show for your time.
I’ve spent years applying my PhD research skills to find scientifically provenstrategies for keeping up without burning out—then tailoring them for busy mamas whose hands, hearts, and schedules are fuller than they ever imagined. Now I’ve helped dozens of other women discover the hidden causes behind your stress so you can reclaim your time, restore your energy, rediscover your identity, and look back in 20 years with pride instead of regret.
Join me, Dr. Amber Curtis—certified life coach, behavioral science professor, public speaker, devoted wife, and mom of four—every Tuesday for real, raw stories and actionable advice on productivity, organization, time management, and that elusive thing we call work-life “balance” so you can be the happy, present wife and mom you dream of without sacrificing the talents you’re meant to share with the world.
Ready to make more time for YOU? Hit play and make sure to tune in for new episodes every Tuesday.
It's time to take back your life for who and what you love. You’ll soon realize “time” was never the problem after all.
Stress isn't your enemy, but misunderstanding it might be. If you've ever wondered why you overreact, shut down, snap at your kids, struggle to relax, or feel like you're constantly living in survival mode, this episode is for you.
I share 10 life-changing truths about stress that EVERY mom needs to understand. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, attachment theory, and trauma-informed coaching, I explain why stress doesn’t mean anything is wrong; it means you need better tools to work with (instead of against) your nervous system.
Whether you're navigating burnout, parenting challenges, marriage struggles, anxiety, or simply feeling overwhelmed by everyday life, this episode will completely change the way you think about stress. Be sure to share it with every mom you know!
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:
What’s really happening when something triggers a stress response
Why traditional stress-management techniques and even therapy don't address the root problem
The three different kinds of stress affecting your nervous system
Book a free consult with Dr. Amber 1:1: https://tidycal.com/solutionsforsimplicity/free-consult
HOMEWORK:
Reach out to me via email or on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to tell me which of these 11 things spoke to you the most.
COMING UP NEXT:
Join me back next Tuesday at 5am Eastern to keep unpacking the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy.
Did you know your nervous system secretly shapes your thoughts, emotions, choices, relationships, and life? My 1-hour masterclass, "Finally Understanding Yourself, The Missing Manual for Your Brain and Body," gives you foundational wisdom and practical tools to feel calmer, more connected, and more in control no matter how chaotic things are around you: https://solutionsforsimplicity.thrivecart.com/ns101/
Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.
The trigger is happening because of something way deeper. And then the automatic solution that your brain offers you is not necessarily appropriate, let alone proportionate, to the situation you are currently in. It's all based on these past wounds and these protective adaptations that helped restore your safety in the past. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. I never sought out to become a stress expert, but that is in fact what I have become. Now I want every mom to know these big truths about stress. Because we all get stressed out. We just don't handle it very well. And that's normal. We are human. Our brains are designed to scan for threat. and make us stressed in order to keep us safe, not just physically safe, but socially connected to our tribe. I put together a list of 10 things I wish every stressed out mom knew. Each of these things could be an entire podcast on its own. If you haven't yet browsed back through all the prior episodes on this podcast, please do so, because there are so many important ones. especially my episodes on attachment styles or the five default stress responses. There are so many recurring themes that I talk about every episode, but again, they all come down to stress. It is essential that you understand what stress is, so that you handle your stress in a healthy, emotionally mature way instead of what was probably modeled to you and the very well-intentioned but ultimately harmful protective patterns that your nervous system offers you when you're stressed. As you listen to this episode and you hear firsthand how valuable and jam-packed my free content is, I want you to think about how much more you'd get inside my paid content like this masterclass I am hosting on 13 Things Nobody Is Telling You About Your Nervous System. It is going to delve so much deeper into everything I highlight today and you really need to be there, especially if you are someone that feels a lot of stress, whether that is because of something big that is happening right this moment, because of chronic stress that you just haven't seemed to be able to escape or get out of for years, or whether you have all kinds of unpacked emotional baggage that you are finally ready to start unpacking. I love helping you understand your brain and body like never before. This masterclass is going to do just that, so check the link in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there. And if you are listening to this episode after the masterclass on Thursday, July 9th, 2026, then use the link in the show notes to send me an email and request the training so that I can get it to you. Let's jump in. These are in no particular order. But the first thing I want you to know about stress is that your triggers are so much deeper than you think. A trigger is simply a circumstance that sets you off, that makes you stressed out. You hopefully know what it feels like in your body to get triggered. You feel maybe this surge of rage. You feel your blood pumping. You might feel your breath quicken, your throat tighten up. You might feel an urge to escape and run away. Or you might feel an urge to fight back, whether physically or verbally. We all get triggered. And as a mother, it is so important to know that one of the biggest triggers we will have is our kids. If you don't realize how normal this is and what is really happening under the surface when you get upset because they are crying or needing you or saying mean things or hitting a sibling or being quote unquote defiant, whatever it is, you need to know that what is happening in that moment has actually very little to do with the situation at hand. There is always something way bigger going on at the level of your nervous system. Same thing goes for your husband, for your mother-in-law, for all relationships. Anytime someone makes you upset, hurts your feelings, or does something that you dislike, it is because your nervous system is perceiving a big threat. And we want to make sure that the threat is real, not just perceived, and that you are able to assess the situation instead of respond to that moment from your triggered, dysregulated state. The second thing to know is that every stress management technique you've heard of, whether it is breathwork, journaling, meditation, prayer, talk therapy, and even vagal nerve exercises, all of those things are just Band-Aids at best. They are not actually going to solve the root of your stress. Obviously, we should talk in depth about each of those things I listed, but let me just cover two quickly for now. Both of these are going to be very controversial. I would love to know how this lands for you. Firstly, therapy absolutely has its place. And I have a lot of friends who are therapists. I have gone to therapy before. And in the self-help or the healing space, therapy is definitely touted or recommended as something that will help you heal. But I want to offer that for many women, talking about the problem just keeps you stuck. While it might help to have a diagnosis, there are so many underlying things that psychologists and therapists can't actually diagnose now that we have such a larger perspective from all this cutting-edge neuroscience. More than that, what often happens when someone goes to therapy is that talking about the problem ends up re-traumatizing them and putting them in a new, current state of stress that then compounds with all the underlying stress they have been repressing for a long time. Furthermore, therapy only deals with the mind. It doesn't address your body or your soul. And you are a holistic being who has these multiple different parts. We need a remedy that is going to incorporate your whole being. The great news is that healing is so possible, but it needs to occur at the level of your nervous system with a trauma-informed neurosomatic practitioner like myself who really knows how to help you Get to the root of your wounds and heal from them so that you can repair your nervous system and really move through the stuck trauma or stuck emotions that are driving the show in ways that just talking about your problems never will. If you have gone to therapy before, I would be so curious to hear about your experience. Was it helpful and in what ways? Or did you ultimately end up feeling like it was just the same old thing and it didn't actually help? The latter was definitely my experience, which is why I personally kept seeking other solutions and eventually found this incredible neurosomatic intelligence field and couldn't wait to get certified in it myself. The other really controversial thing I want to touch on here is the dimension of prayer. Us faith-filled women just want to get it right. We just want our lives to be oriented around the right values, what matters, and ultimately getting not just ourselves but our families into heaven. Of course God can do miracles and prayer is so powerful. But I see so many women struggling Because they've said the prayers and they've gone to the services and they're ultimately wondering where God is in their story, in their current situation. We're told to offer it up. We are told to sacrifice for the good of others. And those are admirable things. But I promise you that healing is possible and that God wants you to be healed. This is not just a spiritual battle. This is also a physiological battle where your nervous system, your sweet body, is really struggling and we need to get you the tools that help you feel safe in your physical body. For both of those examples, it is really common that you might have some improvements and see good results using them until some new stressor occurs. And then you're back in the same old position, or worse, wondering what is wrong and why nothing seems to work. The third thing you need to know about stress is that your kid's behavior is directly related to your stress level. There is no getting around this. As a mother, you are the emotional regulator of your entire household. Despite however much you try, you cannot hide your emotions from your kids. They feel when something is wrong with you. And you also can't solve their emotions for them. You need to be able to hold space for them so that they feel safe having those emotions instead of thinking that there is anything wrong with what they are feeling. Kids know when you are stressed out, whether you say anything or not, pretending that you're fine or even saying as much, does double damage because their nervous system is picking up on your dysregulation. So then if you won't validate it, then they think something is wrong with them. I know you've experienced this, where something has happened at work and then you go to pick up the kids and they just seem like they are out of control. Or at bedtime. When I'm stressed out about something and have something that I need to get to after they go to bed, they just dig in their heels and refuse to go to sleep all the more. I really want you to hear this part though, so please listen up. Your kids picking up on your stress level doesn't mean that they will act out. In many cases, it is the complete opposite, where because they know you're so stressed, they try to be that much more good and perfect in order to make sure that you are OK. This is a big hidden trauma response that I have seen all the time, I definitely experienced it in my own childhood, and it comes up with a lot of my one-on-one clients. There is a quote that says, the easy child is a traumatized child. I don't want to instill any fear in you, but I do want to call out the fact that sometimes good behavior and a compliant child are actually signs that their little nervous system has very anxious attachment and doesn't want to do anything to make you upset. The fourth thing to know is that stress is not bad. It is given the worst rap out there. Every time we hear stress, I know we feel it in our body, right? It just has that connotation. It's a bad word. But all stress is at the core is your brain perceiving a threat, trying to get your attention, and then trying to keep you safe. Your brain is always going to offer you whatever solutions have seemed to work in the past. Your brain is a predictive machine and so it is always calculating what it thinks will happen based on what has happened in the past. When you were able to get out of stress by doing something a certain way in the past, that is what your brain is now going to default to as a way of conserving energy. But again, that action is not driven by the situation at hand. The trigger is happening because of something way deeper. And then the automatic solution that your brain offers you is not necessarily appropriate, let alone proportionate, to the situation you are currently in. It's all based on these past wounds and these protective adaptations that helped restore your safety in the past. The fifth thing to know is that more than 90% of your response to stress is subconscious and automatic, meaning that you do not have conscious cognitive control over getting stressed or how you handle your stress. At least not until you learn how your unique nervous system works, you learn how to work with instead of against your brain and body, and you have the tools to catch yourself getting triggered so that you can intentionally choose a different response than your brain initially offers. This is why it is so important to understand your default stress response. I will put a link in the show notes to the free quiz that I have that helps you figure this out. It is so important to know your particular F response, as it's called. And then using this quiz, you can also intuit what other people's default stress response is and recognize that when they do something, it's not to get back at you. It's not to intentionally cause you harm. It is an indication that their nervous system is going berserk, that they are stressed out, and they need someone to meet them with love and compassion. Otherwise, the conflict is just going to escalate. The sixth thing to know about stress is that there are actually three different kinds of stress. We are all very familiar with acute stress, which is where you get cut off in traffic, your child is screaming or waking up in the middle of the night, your husband had a bad day at work and comes home and is ranting, you have a big presentation coming up at work with very high stakes attached, something like that. Acute stress is something that has a very quick escalation, happens in the moment, and then diffuses as the situation gets handled and the stress resolves. So you have this big hormonal peak of cortisol and adrenaline and all these stress hormones flooding your body. But then as things subside, your body re-regulates and you are able to return to calm. Chronic stress is something that many of us are all too familiar with these days. Especially if you are a mom, all the more a mom of young kids, you know what this feels like. Chronic stress is when you are living in a stressful environment and you don't know when it's going to be over. So you are just perpetually living in this state of heightened anxiety, hypervigilance, all the cortisol flooding your body all the time, probably having trouble resting or sleeping, that feeling of being tired but wired. It presents in a lot of different ways. Chronic stress is something that a lot of people experience if they have a very high-pressure, demanding, or unstable job. It applies to financial instability. It definitely occurs if you have aging parents or are the caretaker for a child with special needs. So, so, so many health problems are associated with chronic stress. So we definitely want to give you tools to better handle that stress, even if we can't just flip a switch and make the situation better anytime soon. The third kind of stress is cumulative stress. The formal medical or scientific term for this is your allostatic load. It refers to the total amount of stress that your nervous system is carrying or has carried. It combines both acute and chronic stress, but it also includes what has happened to you since childhood. any little t and especially big T traumatic events. It is all of the unresolved, unprocessed emotion and experiences that your body doesn't yet know how to release and fully process and work through. There's so much here and I really invite you to use the link in the show notes to book your free 60 minute consult with me. But we have got to reduce your allostatic load before you blow, before you have big health problems, before stress destroys either you or your relationships. The seventh thing to know is that you can't think your way out of stress. I want to say that again for all of my high-functioning, high-achieving, very well-intentioned but controlling listeners. You cannot think your way out of stress. Stress is always handled first and foremost by your amygdala, which is a very small part in the center of your brain. It is your fear detection center, and it controls whether messages your nervous system is receiving are going to get to travel up to your prefrontal cortex, which is the frontal lobe part of your brain, where you have your executive functioning skills and abilities. It's where you think it would be how you could problem solve. You don't have access to that when you are stressed. Similarly, any ideas or solutions that your prefrontal cortex wanted to send down to your body, would get gatekept by your amygdala on the way down. In other words, your amygdala will always hijack the process when you are stressed. Again, you have to know what is happening in your nervous system and how to work with that so that you can get your prefrontal cortex back online and access your rational problem-solving abilities again. The eighth thing to know is a bit of a downer, but I promise you there is a silver lining. That is there is no such thing as a stress-free life. We all kind of wish that we could just live in our comfort zone. But ultimately what we're saying there is that we want to live in this box where everything is easy. There are no problems. But of course, that would become stressful in itself over time. Living in the real world is stressful. And so it's never about avoiding stress. It is about knowing what stresses you out and why. I will say it again for emphasis, learning to work with instead of against your nervous system is what makes all the difference. It's what enables you to actually be resilient and to repair the ruptures that inevitably occur in your relationships. to keep moving forward when your nervous system wants to actually shut down and freeze. That leads to the ninth thing, which is that the goal isn't to never get stressed. It's not to be this perfectly calm, regulated person all the time that never gets triggered, never loses her cool, is always liked by everybody, et cetera. The goal is being able to respond appropriately and proportionately to whatever quote unquote threat is at hand. I love to use the analogy of weightlifting here because it just makes so much sense. When you are thinking about your nervous system, I want you to think about building up this skill of tolerating more and more stress, really increasing your capacity To get stressed and not let stress destroy your life, but just like we have to lift weights in order to get strong, we can't build that capacity and resilience to stress unless we actually do face stress. We have to face it head on. We can't be afraid of it, we can't shy away from it. If you are a parent, this is an essential skill that you want to be cultivating in your children as well. We don't want to raise them to think that the world is going to be perfect and comfortable. We want to equip them with all of these emotional regulation tools to know that whatever they are feeling is valid, not to make it a problem, but then how to handle their stress in a healthy, productive, emotionally mature way. Most adults don't know how to do this. And that's why I am on such a mission to help every mom learn to do it for yourself, so that you can then pass this on to your kids. The 10th thing I wish every stressed out mom knew is that most high-achieving women don't realize they are addicted to cortisol and actually feel unsafe without it. This one is definitely going to require its whole own episode at some point because I can't get into the biology of addiction here. Suffice it to say that the more you have grown up in the face of stress, meaning if you had a stressful childhood or you had hard relationships with your parents or you've had something traumatic happen to you, then your body released a certain amount of cortisol that became your new baseline. Just like all addictions, the body soon needs more and more of that thing in order to achieve the same high, here the same feeling of safety. Now, many women are walking around And they're constantly stressed, but then they struggle to relax, just like I talked about in my previous podcast episode, which I will link for you below. What's happening at the nervous system level is that your body doesn't know what to do without cortisol. So whenever there's not some stress in your life, your brain is really, really good at creating stress. and making up problems or keeping you perpetually anxious and on edge so that you can pump out that cortisol in order to feel like things are okay. You literally need cortisol in order to feel emotionally regulated. I know this sounds so counterintuitive, so again, I will come back to it in the future, but I cannot say it enough times. If this is of interest to you, if you want to know more, then definitely sign up for my masterclass happening this Thursday because I am going to delve into all of these things so much more. All right. Of course, I want to throw in a bonus item here. The 11th thing that you need to know about stress is that knowing your attachment style and your default stress response is the fastest way to fix all your relationships. I will link in the show notes the previous episodes I have made on attachment style, but they basically create your overarching F response when stressed. They really link together. A great first step for understanding yourself and then working to have the most close, fulfilling relationships is to understand both of these things, not just for yourself, but for those you love as well. Your homework for this episode is to tag me on Instagram at Solutions for Simplicity and let me know which of these 11 things really intrigued you the most. What do you want to know more about? What hit home? What raised your eyebrows? What made you pause? What made you worried or concerned? I really want to know, and I especially want to know what kinds of things you want me to explore further on this podcast. I am all ears. I have a whole agenda already, but I always want this to be relevant to you. Join me back next week for another episode unpacking even more of these hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is. So the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe. And if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.
