The Hidden Reality of Parental Burnout

In this episode, I sit down with registered clinical counsellor Hilary Evans to talk about the often unspoken reality of parental burnout.

Hilary works primarily with families and children with complex care needs, and through her work she began noticing how many parents were quietly carrying deep exhaustion, emotional overwhelm, and a sense of disconnection in their parenting.

In our conversation, we explore:

• What parental burnout actually is and how it differs from everyday parenting stress
• The emotional experience many parents carry - including guilt, grief, and shame
• Why burnout isn’t just an individual issue, but also a systemic one
• Early signs parents can watch for before burnout deepens
• Practical ways to start moving out of chronic stress and toward regulation
• Why feeling emotionally distant from your child says nothing about your love for them

One of the most powerful takeaways from this conversation is Hilary’s reminder that when parents feel disconnected or overwhelmed, it reflects burnout and not their worth or love as a parent.

If you’ve ever felt exhausted, stuck, or alone in your parenting experience, this conversation is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to Advantage, the podcast that helps you shift from stress to strategy. I'm your host, Katerina McCurdy, a registered clinical counselor and former frontline worker, here to help you understand the patterns that fuel stress, anxiety, and burnout. In each episode, we'll unpack what's beneath the stress and explore ways to meet it with awareness and intention. Let's get started. I'm really excited to have you here today because you and I have been trying to make this conversation happen for quite some time now. So I'm just glad that we finally get to sit down and talk. I'm especially looking forward to this conversation because today we're going to be talking about parental burnout, which I know is an area that you work with quite a bit in your practice. But before we jump in, could you start off by just sharing a little bit about who you are, the work that you do, and maybe what you enjoy most about it?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Sure. I'm so glad to be here. Um and thank you for having me. It's always a joy and an honor to be asked to share about mental health in general, but especially topics within that that I'm really passionate about. And so yeah, I hope that this will be helpful for the parents that are listening and that you get something out of today. And you feel even if it's just feeling a little bit less alone, um, I'm really glad that you're listening. So yeah, my name's Hilary Evans. Um I'm a clinical counselor and I live and work and um do all the things here in BC. And I work primarily in pediatrics with families and kids. I work mostly with kids with complex care needs um or medical complexities and you know, lots of different things that are presenting from for them. And I usually co-manage their care um with pediatricians. And so I have a real heart for families where there's lots of things going on. And um in working in the line of work that I do, I noticed how many parents were coming in um for family sessions and when I was meeting with them, just feeling totally spent. And what, you know, I've now come to realize is experiencing a lot of parental burnout. And so that kind of fueled my interest in this area is learning about like how can I best support these parents who are going through a lot, and um, it got me curious around like what what are some of the things that allow some parents to be able to get through some really hard times um in an adaptive way and and what are things that makes that harder? So I got really curious about the topic from kind of my clinical work in that area. Um so yeah, I'm I I work with a lot of parental burnout and I work with a lot of child anxiety to have some interest areas in that, in that sense. So yeah, as you hear me talking, you'll probably hear me gasping for air a little, a little bit. I'm currently in the third trimester of uh pregnancy. So I'm I am uh yeah, my all of my humanity is showing at this phase in my life. I feel like um so you'll you'll hear me kind of, I might be slow on my thoughts or um or breathing a little bit differently, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Well, I'm sure there's uh a shared experience of that with other moms who know exactly what that feels like and and what it's like to be back in in that place. Oh, totally. So we we welcome the messiness of of all of it. Yeah, it's great. Um uh to be honest, when I started this podcast, I didn't originally imagine having this conversation. Um, primarily because I'm aware so much of the research that is out there is on burnout related to work. And and I read in a book not long time ago a book about burnout that talked about how you know parental burnout is something a little bit newer that's out in research. Um would you say that's true?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, so it's not a new phenomenon. It's been around, I think, for a very long time. However, the research historically has been done mostly on burnout in the workplace. So even still, we see like so burnout burnout, we know it is not a that formal diagnosis, it's not in the DSM, it is in the ICD 10 and ICD 11. However, in the ICD, it is specifically talking about burnout in the workplace. So we have this history of research being done on burnout um specifically on the workplace, but within the last kind of decade, we're seeing this big emergence of research now coming out with um for parents. And I I'm thrilled to see the research. I think because it confirms what the experience has been for a lot of parents and that it is clinically significant. It carries huge impacts on both the parent, the child, and the family system. Um, so yes, like it showing up in the research is a newer phenomenon, but I always like to clarify that the experience is not a new one.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yes. Yeah, no, I appreciate you clarifying that because that's that's validating. Yeah. That goes back as as far as time goes. Totally. Um, well, I'm wondering if maybe we could start with just you know, offering a definition of what parental burnout is. How would you how would you define that?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, so if we like look at the OG definition of burnout, um, by it's so funny. If you look up, if you look up a picture of the guy who defined this, he looks so burnt out in all of his pictures. He looks angry. And I always think that that is so funny. Um, but he was a brilliant researcher, his name's Herbert Freudenberger. He like coined the term burnout, and he coined it by talking about it how it felt like a cigarette being burned down to the ashes. Oh I thought that that was like such a fantastic visual for people who experience burnout, as they feel like they're being burned down to the ashes and like there's nothing left. So he talks about in burnout how burnout has three main factors emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, you know, or sometimes people describe it as like a cynicism type of thing, too, and a decreased sense of accomplishment. Now I think that there's a lot of overlap between that and parental burnout, but parental burnout, we really see four factors that show up in the research that parents describe as a part of their experience of parental burnout. So, first one being the exhaustion of one's parental role. And um a lot of parents tell me that like this is like a different type of exhaustion than not getting a lot of sleep. Like this is like a deep, there's like a cognitive element of this exhaustion. There's a physical element, there's a mental element. So number one would be the exhaustion. Number two would be feeling overloaded and there being a loss of pleasure in parenting. That's a really common one. Um, and that one I I mean, you'll I think you'll hear my heart for this topic throughout. Like that one can often bring up a lot of emotional pain for parents because they're like, I I don't enjoy this. Like, I I feel like I want to be enjoying this, but I'm not deriving any pleasure from parenting right now. The third one would be emotional distancing from one's children. Again, that's one that often brings up a lot of emotional pain for parents because sometimes they sense it happening and they're like, I I like I can sense it happening, but I feel like I have no control over this. Um, like there's just kind of a growing distance emotionally. And then the fourth one that a lot of parents describe, and it's it's uncanny actually how many parents describe it in this word, like in these words, they talk about like the contrast between who they were or once were and who they are today at the present day or who they would want to be, right? There's they like notice and feel that gap. Um is all that making sense?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, no, it does make sense. You reference emotional pain. And I'm wondering, are we talking about guilt, shame?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Totally. I think the full gamut. Um, and it's different for each parent. I think I think there's a a lot of emotional pain that comes from the a grief too, of like, I feel like I'm missing this season, like I feel like I'm not here. There's sadness involved, and like this is not what I wanted out of my parenting experience. A lot of shame around this is not the parent that I want to be, and this is not what I want, or what sometimes there's even this sense of like this doesn't even feel like I'm living in line with my values, right? And so there's some can be some shame around that. And and actually, sometimes for many parents, there can be an anger around um like their current circumstance. So as I mentioned, I work with a lot of kids where there's like complexity in their presentation. Some of these kids have care needs, um, you know, or are born with disabilities, and parents having like a grief over what they imagined their parenting experience to be, or an anger about like, why is there so much on me? And like this doesn't feel sustainable. Like, how, like, how am I in this situation, if that makes sense. So yeah, I think that emotional pain, there's a full range of an emotional experience that could be held in that.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, which totally makes sense. Um, and I like that you ended with this question that people ask of like, how did I get here? Yeah because that that was going through my mind too, is there's so many reasons why a parent might end up at this place. Um are there, would you say, some more common examples or reasons for what might bring someone to a place of burnout in parenting?

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Totally. So I think well, and it's actually interesting. We we actually know a bit of what some of the risk factors are, but I think it's really important to name that yes, there are individual like, you know, factors that may contribute to burnout, but there are also a lot of things that we need to name about the bigger picture of burnout. This isn't solely an individual issue. This is a systemic issue as well. Um where I feel really like where I feel really passionate about when it comes to naming this is that I do think we need to name both because I've heard, you know, a lot of mental health clinicians talk about either camp solely. It's tricky, right? If we are only naming the individual factors of parental burnout, that can feel really isolating for a parent. That can feel really like a personal or moral failing when that's not really what's happening at all. But I've also heard a lot of people talk about like, well, parents are burnt out only because of systemic issues. And while I fully agree with the fact that the systemic issues are a very significant portion of why parents are really burnt out right now, if we only focus on that, I find it leaves people in a pretty helpless position, right? Where they're feeling like, oh, well, I'm set up to fail and there's nothing I can do to help myself. And that sense of helplessness and hopelessness is not at all productive for being able to get people even just a little bit more well. Right. So I do think that we have to name both. Let me even just pull up here like the some of the risk factors because I think it's interesting to talk through like what are some of the risk factors. So for the individual person, there's emotional factors and internal drivers, bearing witness to traumatic experiences, which again, we know that kids are parents of kids with complex care needs or disabilities, sometimes they have had traumatic experiences with their children in the medical sitting uh setting, you know, and these can be big T, small T, lots of different things like that. Right. Um for the person if they are having physical complaints that are a part of their burnout, you know, those might be individual factors. But then there's also lots of things that are in the environment or in the system that I think we need to name too. So some of those would be like organization of health and social care, right? Like what are our systems that are in place in our healthcare system? We uh I I don't think I'm surprising anybody by saying that our healthcare system is quite broken.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that many times.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah. Yeah. What social support does somebody have? What, like, where are they at socioeconomically? Like what are, you know, what resources do they have? What conflicts are are around them? You know, there's there's lots of things that are going on kind of in the bigger picture that I think we need to name too. Unpaid labor, like cultural norms, right? And expectations, what's their access to healthcare? What are their caregiving responsibilities? Do they have help with their caregiving responsibilities? Do they have child care? Do they have community resources? Like there's endless things in the system that I think contribute to this as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah, with this, I'm hearing this overarching theme of support. Whether that's, you know, with family, friends, community, but support is huge. And having having access to that.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, accessible support.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Um what might be some early signs of burnout that you commonly see that parents miss?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Right. Yeah. Well, so here is the thing. I think there's like, like with a lot of things, this is like a spectrum, right? And um I I don't like people to be alarmed by early signs, but just kind of to be noticing them. Um, there's also a lot of overlap between parental burnout and depression, which I think that we can talk about as well, because I think that that differentiation can be helpful too. There are aspects of parental burnout that I would argue are common experiences of parents in general.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Right. So, like the experience of overload, the experience of aspects of exhaustion, right? I like I've had those. I imagine you've had those with your kids. And I don't want to pathologize parts of you know, those experiences that are really common because I want people to know that, like, okay, they're not alone in that, and that's not something to be scared of. Okay, maybe, and maybe this is a bit of a tangent here, but go with me. I think this is relevant. So when I give presentations to like groups of clinicians or parents, I describe and I actually bring a roly-poly toy. Are you familiar with what those were? So like they tip over and then they come back to center. They tip over and then they come back to center, right? And they commonly have like um an annoying bell in them. I was trying to find a nice way of saying that, but usually they have this like annoying jinkling bell. Like the one that I have at home is like a penguin and it like tips over and then it comes back to center, right? Yeah. Um so the reason I use that is that I use that as a visual aid to talk about our body's response to stress. So I am a big believer that having stress is not necessarily a bad thing that we need to avoid, right? We are meant to oscillate between different states of being, right? Between like rest and stress. Rest and stress being activated and then coming back home to center. And so I'm I'm talking about that here because I think there is an aspect of being a parent where we will oscillate in our experience of being a parent and to be honest, just being a human, yeah, between different states, it's where the stuckness starts happening that I start to really want people to pay attention to. Like, oh, I'm not coming out of this. I'm not bouncing back. Yeah. Okay. Right? So if we think about kind of those four factors of parental burnout, like exhaustion from one's parental role, overlook and loss of pleasure in parenting, emotional distancing from one's child, the contrast between who you felt like you were and who you want to be. Like if you have a day of those things, like I'm gonna be honest with you, two nights ago, my kids were both having tantrums at bedtime. Like I didn't have a pleasure in parenting in that moment. I believe that. But yeah, like I was like, wow, and really glad it was over once they were sleep, right? That's not necessarily parental burnout, right? That is me offering between stress and coming back to regulation and and doing those types of things. When I am feeling a consistent or a chronic sense of a loss of pleasure in parenting, and there's like almost a stuckness associated with that, that's where I'm I'm asking people to pay attention. Like, is this a chronic thing that you're going through? Is it feeling as though you're waking up every day with these sensations? Um, is it something that you're noticing is harder to shake? Even if it's not happening happening all that, you know, often, but it's giving you a ton of emotional pain associated with it, right? Like you're you're feeling like I really am having a hard time with these experiences of those like there's no harm in getting help. Um but I hope that that all makes sense. That like yes, there might be early warning signs, but I don't want to freak people out that they're heading down the path of burnout if they are having what is a true like oscillation between stress and rest. Yeah. And they're able to bounce back. Um, where I want them to start paying attention is where that when they're getting stuck.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I think that's really helpful. I think it's great to normalize the back and forth. Um, because I think as it is, uh it's natural to worry easily and and wonder and not be sure and not have all the information and the knowledge of like when do I actually need to start paying attention or or seek help? And not that I believe that there's a wrong time to do that.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Uh, but I think it's really great that you can just kind of paint this picture of here's a good time to just start noticing. And even in the noticing, like, yeah, even then is a good time to just start talking and processing and maybe even just exploring ways to feel unstuck before it gets too big.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Yeah. And uh start exploring preventative strategies and start kind of noticing, like, whoa, how am I actually doing here?

SPEAKER_00 19:57

What would be a recommendation of something that somebody can start to do maybe on a daily or weekly basis just to help them start to feel unstuck?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So really good question. Um, and we can talk through maybe a couple different scenarios of what that might look like for a different um for different parents. Yeah. Um with different life circumstances. So let's talk about an ideal world first, and then we're gonna talk about some realistic situations. Okay, let's do it. Let's talk about ideal world, which I hope that there's some of you listening where this is your circumstance, but um you have some financial means to pay for private therapy or to make that happen. Book a therapy appointment or book, you know, an appointment with somebody to talk to. Um, that you can start processing, like what are things that I can do to improve my coping and kind of better understand myself. Um we can talk a little bit more about the research on parental burnout later because I find it really fascinating. But the one takeaway that I I will kind of put in here is that they did do a bunch of clinical trials um on comparing different group-based programming for parental burnout. And something that like blew my mind was that you do not necessarily need a clinician who is specialized in parental burnout to get help with parental burnout. Okay. Um, so like going through other coping strategies, meeting with a good clinician who is practicing evidence-based strategies, even if they're not like the the parental burnout expert in the area, will still prove helpful. So I say that as an invitation for parents who are like, okay, I want to get help, but like clearly I need to meet with somebody who specializes in parental burnout. Not necessarily.

unknown 21:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

I would be looking for a licensed clinician, one that has. A good education that is using evidence-based strategies, but don't fret it if they're not specialized in parental pronoun. Of course, that always helps. And of course, it always helps to find, I would just argue that find somebody you're comfortable with. So I don't know if that's helpful, but um this is again back to the ideal world situation. You can get in for some help. Um, you can arrange supports for yourself, like time for you to do things that are meaningful for you. Um, whether that's going to therapy, going to the gym, different things like that. If you have child child care help, you can arrange things like that. Those are things that can absolutely help. Again, in an ideal world, if you have a say friend who you can start talking to about some of these things, and you don't need to totally dump on them, you know, all of you know, everything and treat them like a therapist, but opening up a little bit about like where you're at around like, hey, these are some things that I'm struggling with, I think can be really meaningful. Yeah, just letting somebody in.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah, social connection. Yeah. Right. Um, to prevent some of that isolation or that those feelings of isolation. Like I'm it's so common. It's ironic for me because there are so many parents out there. Um and yet there is still this ongoing struggle to feel like we're alone. Yep. Right. I'm for whatever reason, I feel like I'm the only one in this moment that's going through this. Yeah. And so it's like our nervous system, our mind, it needs that reminder that, okay, I'm not alone. There might not be someone else that knows exactly what I'm going through because nobody is you. Um, but there are commonalities. We can still experience this shared humanity in maybe some of the emotions that come up or um situations. So being able to reach out and share.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Well, and we have this like fascinating idea, I think, and I don't know how we got this. I I mean, tell me if I'm wrong and you don't, you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. But I feel like us as adults view a lot of social time or social connection as a luxury. Yeah. Right? Like if I'm to say to my husband and he's great, you know, but if I'm to say to him, like, hey, um, I need I'm gonna go out for a girlfriend after the kids are in bed and go for a walk um or go grab a, you know, a Starbucks or whatever, right? In my mind, that's very different than saying, like, hey, I need to go to a doctor's appointment, or hey, I need to go to therapy, or hey, I need to go to the gym. It's like I'm going for my leisure time, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Yeah. There's like there's less urgency to it.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah, and like a different like hierarchy of value. Like, I don't know if I and I noticed that in a lot of my clients too. They're like, Yeah, must be nice. And I'm like, wait a second, like I'm just so curious how we kind of got there in the sense of like social connection to a certain degree. It well, not to a certain degree, it is like a basic human need.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yes. Well, I I just the other, no, not just the other day, uh, a little while ago, I was reading other research article that talked about uh connection being as vital of a signal um as hunger. Like we need connection in the same way that we need food. But you're right, it hasn't become as much of a priority for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Um, but that is interesting to note and unfortunate too.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah. So those are some things I would do if we're living in the in the ideal world. Okay. So some things that you can do no matter what your situation would be. Um, whether you so let's say for some people who are listening, you don't have access to therapy. I will say try to be creative. Ask your doctor. Sometimes doctors have access to clinics that are no cost. Sometimes there are like local clinics that are offer pro bono counseling. So be creative and see if you can access that. Let's say you can't. I would love for all of the people that I work with, my friends, that kind of thing, to start understanding a little bit of stress cycles and how we can complete them. And I think we could do a whole other episode on that. Yeah. Um, because that's a whole other topic. But like the the basic part of it is understanding, like, okay, how can we work through our stress and not just deal with the stressors in our life, but the stress in our life in our life too. So differentiating them as two separate things. So not just the fact that we need to get Johnny to school at this time and we need to pack a lunch and we need to, you know, then pick him up early to get to this appointment and then get back, right? Not just dealing with the logistics of the stress of the day, but dealing with the stress that's in our body. Yeah. So, and learning how to do things to complete the stress cycle. This is some wording that I've gotten from the Nikowski sisters who wrote a brilliant book on burnout, which I think we can put a resource to probably in the show notes. Um, but learning how to complete the stress cycle and how to help our body move through stress, I find that that's a really great um low cost, um, low barrier way that people can start improving things for themselves. And it's proactive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Like or proactive, but also something tangible. Totally. Right. Like you there are things that you can physically engage in that are cost-free that are going to allow you to exit that. Because there I'm finding that there really is this common misunderstanding that when the stressful situation comes to an end, that the stress just somehow finds a way of leaving our body on its own. Um, whereas in most cases, it's actually not true. Uh, and I've fallen into the trap of that, where sometimes I'm driving home and it's even just my own anxiety that comes into my mind, and then I'm totally spiraling. And then I somehow manage to convince myself, okay, that's not my reality. Um, let's come back into the present moment. And I'm trying to mentally disconnect from that stress, but I underestimate that now my body is in stress. Um, and then I come home and then all of a sudden I am irritable. Like, oh yeah. I yeah, totally all good parenting goes out the window. Anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

So Emily and Amelia Nikowski in their book, they talk about how our body speaks body language and not like our cognitive language. I like that. And it always makes me think of the like old school Jesse McCartney song, Body Language. I'm like dating myself, but I always get that stuck in my head when I after explaining this to clients. Right?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

I do, yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

This is like not a great song, but anyways, it always gets stuck in my head. That's bit of an aside. But our body does speak body language. It's so true that like even though we have resolved something, our body doesn't necessarily realize it's over, right? And we sometimes have to cue our body that it's over. So I and something that I commonly, when we were talking about earlier, like why do parents not seek help? I think part of it is oftentimes the stress or the overwhelm or the grief or whatever it is, it feels so big that it feels like if I even give this an ounce of my time or an ounce of space, I'm I ain't coming back from this. Yes. Right. Super common. Um, and parents sometimes are like they will even say to me when I do like a parent feedback session at the end, and I'm like, hey, can we take a minute and like just check in? You know, I'm noticing that you're and they're like, don't do this to me, right? Like, I don't have time for this, right? Because there's such a fear that if I open this part of me up, the it'll be the floodgate, like the floodgates and it won't stop flooding, right? And by having and learning a consistent practice around how we can move through our stress and our emotions, it helps us actually move through them more quickly and more readily and helps us realize from a like body and mind trust perspective that that's not actually usually what happens. Right. Like, you know, emotions, like the neurobiology of emotions is that they have a start, a peak, and an end. Right. Um, and so yes, things might feel worse in the moment when we give them time and space, but when we are able to get into a pattern of listening to our emotions and feeling our feelings, dealing with our stress, they typically will follow that same cycle of having a start, a peak, and an end. But a lot of parents haven't even given a chance for it to start, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Like, it's never gonna end.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yes. So I'm I'm curious. Um what's your general response to that? Because I hear that a lot too. And is it do you find that it's sufficient to be able to just offer some education around those stress cycles? Or is there something different that you find even more helpful for for parents or for people that are just they feel really stuck and really afraid to even try?

SPEAKER_01 31:42

So I like to be quite pragmatic and realistic in what I'm telling people and for better and for worse. The reality is that starting to practice this and starting to practice moving through stress cycles and implementing practices that help people move through emotion, it will help. Um, and it and it will help. But beating parental burnout, I think, is a series of baby steps and it's a series of small steps. And I don't, I don't personally believe that there is one intervention that alleviates 100% of parental burnout in 100% of people. If somebody claims that I'm like, run, like that to me has snake oil written all over it. Like, so it's probably gonna take a bunch of things. And I don't mean for that to be a Debbie Downer thing. I think that's just realistic. And most parents find that quite comforting when I say that because they're like, yeah, I don't believe you if you're trying to sell me that this is the one thing. Yeah. As far as is it sufficient? I think it's it's a helpful piece of information. I don't think it's sufficient. I think there's lots of things that parents probably need to work through this, but I think that it's a helpful piece of information of something practical that parents can do at home.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Okay. Um also I I like to note that like there's nuance in this. Like, I'm not gonna tell a parent, hey, I want you to just start feeling all of your feelings um by yourself at home for the first time ever with they have like a substantial trauma history. Like that just seems clinically unwise. Like, right? Like I'd want them to have somebody there with them. I would want them to start building a sense of safety around feeling their feelings. Yeah. So like there's there's nuance in this, but I do find that the information that I give people around the neurobiology of emotions and how there usually is a start, a peak, and a finish, you know, around that, especially if I'm able to walk them through that and actually give them a real life experience of what it's like to feel a feeling. Like I'm there with them, guiding them through, letting them feel a feeling, noticing how it feels to kind of crest and peak. And they build a bit of safety of like, oh, I did that once before with Hillary. Now I can maybe trust that that could happen again. Like that's huge. So that it's a helpful piece of advice, uh, you know, or information. I don't think it's sufficient.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah, I appreciate that. You mentioned trauma, and I'd love to talk a little bit about what are some of the ways that unresolved trauma can also lead to parental burnout.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

So I'll I'll caveat this with I'm not a trauma specialist. Um and and I I've taken training in trauma because I feel like anybody who works with populations that I work with should have should have training to be at least trauma informed. But I don't specialize in trauma. Okay. So I say that to just kind of own my scope a little bit. So with that in mind, I think where I can talk about this is how this relates to some of the, you know, stress cycle pieces and unresolved emotions that can carry in, right? Oftentimes what happens is when we have a traumatic experience, we're all familiar with kind of the common responses of fight, flight, freeze. Um, and it's really interesting to think about if we think about like again the neurobiology of emotion and all of this, when we experience like the the threat, and then our body picks, usually our nervous system picks a response without our vote, really. Right? We don't get to pick usually whether or not we're a fight flight or a freeze person that picks for us. Um when that happens, typically there is a finishing of this stress cycle that is within each of those responses. So think about like, okay, um stress happens, we get flooded with all of our, all of those lovely stress chemicals. I say that tongue in cheek, they don't feel that lovely all the time, right? We get flooded with all of those chemicals, and then we have to do something to exert and cue to our body that it's over, right? So picturing like um somebody comes in here and wants to fight with me, I don't know, right? I'm I'm throwing punches, right? I and I am my body is exerting itself, it is actively exerting itself. And then once I've finished, you know, hopefully I've fought off the burglar or whatever. Um, you know, then and then I kind of rest afterwards, my body has that cue of I've moved my body, I've exerted myself, and now it is over. So there's been that exertion that happens. Am I kind of on track with your question before I keep rambling on?

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Yeah, I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Yeah, okay. And then for flea, right? Like, so let's say like a um a lion approaches me and I'm running, running, running, running, running away, right? And I get back to my village of people and I'm like, okay, I like I'm safe. My body has the cue of like I've run and now I've stopped, and now I'm back with my people. I'm having my social connection, right? And then I've stopped. So the the chemicals that have been flooded into our system have now have found a way to kind of be released. And so the stress cycle has been completed. We see this happen with freeze, with kind of typically what happens after a freeze response is there's things that our body naturally does, like shuddering. Right. So when we come out of a freeze response, like I had a tonsillectomy last year. Zero stars do not recommend. Um zero out of ten. Um, but anyways, after I came out of the an like under the came back after the general anesthetic, right? I was like shaking, right? And like Peter Levine, you know, the guy who started somatic experiencing, right? He talks about a very similar experience of he was hit by a car and he felt the brake come off as he was in the ambulance going from the scene and he started shaking and chattering. So, but there are a number of reasons. So that's just the me nerding out about the like kind of the science of those responses that happens to us when we have a stressful event. When we have traumatic experiences, too, where we don't maybe necessarily get to pick what our response is, our body chooses for us, and we are unable to complete the stress cycle for those experiences, right? That lack of movement of getting out or finishing the stress cycle gets stored in our body, right? Right. And so there can be this sense of this like overload that happens of all of all of that. Um now there's so much more to trauma than just the like stress cycle component, but think about how much in our culture we are told to stifle some of those stress cycle finishing components. Right. Let's say that a parent is at the children's hospital with their child who has a disability, and the and the parent is advocating for the child, and the doctor who is on call is super rude and dismissive. And the parent usually is not given a social allowance to express or run or stomp or like right, like that's not socially appropriate. What is socially appropriate is the it's to often the mother biting her tongue, swallowing her feelings, remaining composed, right, and then going about her head. Same thing in the NICU. A lot of parents in the NICU have a substantial trauma that's been associated with having their child in the NICU and going through a difficult birth experience, all of that, right? And they remain on, composed, have a very difficult time oftentimes because there's no no completion of what's happening with the stress. So I think there's an overlap. Trauma is much more complicated than I'm I'm making it sound. It's a whole other subject. I think there's also a big part of the the experience of aloneness that we could talk about with what makes things like this traumatic.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Yeah. And and may I add, and with all those compounding experiences, then uh especially for those that are accustomed to overfunctioning, um, you just keep going. You just keep moving through your day. Not always intentionally, you're not intentionally wanting to stifle that uh that release, but it it happens so naturally too. Or maybe you're in shock leaving an appointment and you're like, I cannot believe that just happened, or that was the conversation we just had. And then you get in and um your kid has an outburst in the car, or you get home and now it's to the next appointment or laundry. And so I'm just imagining how it's a slippery slope, but also that how quickly that can it becomes more and more compounding.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah, it's a huge compounding variable here. Yeah. Right. Like it's a it's a really big compounding thing that happens. Um, because we have unresolved things that have happened that we feel we have no time to work through or no space to work through, or we start telling ourselves, oh, it could be worse, right? And so we don't give ourselves permission to own our emotional experience. Right. And this then this all adds up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah. Um, but it I can only imagine how profound it is, even just for you to be able to sit with and be with parents that are finally given the space and the opportunity to express and share their emotional experiences with you.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Oh, it is such an honor. And I because I think that these feelings that people have during parental burnout, um, there really feels like nothing more vulnerable as a parent to open up and tell somebody, hey, like there's this huge emotional distance between me and my kids. Like, I don't like being parent anymore. Right? Like that's a hugely vulnerable thing for a lot of parents to say. And yet that is the nail on the head of the experience of a lot of parents going through parental burnout. And so for the people who are listening to that to this today, like if you get anything out of this, I want parents to know that if they're feet they are feeling that way, that it says nothing about like it gives me goosebumps, it makes me tear up thinking about this. Like it it really says nothing about your love for your child. It says nothing about your worth as a parent. It says everything about how burnt out you are and your experience of parental burnout. And I mean that with every bone in my body. And I really want people to know that because I think that that is an experience that a lot of parents never say out loud, right? Like they because there's so much shame with experiencing these things. Like, y'all know how most parents end up disclosing this to me. Is that I front load them and offer it as an option of what a lot of parents experience. Right. Like I'll be like a lot of parents in this experience of what you're going through when I'm like picking up on a lot of the cues, right? I'm like, some a lot of parents like they tell me that they're experiencing some of these things. Has any of that happened to you? Right? Like, do you are you notice any noticing any similarities? And parents will grab it because I've offered it.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Right? Because it's too hard to say out loud that like I I don't want to do this right now.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

And that speaks to the shame that lives around that. Totally. Right. Um and I I know that you know one of the most powerful ways to combat shame, so to speak, is to do that in relationship, right? And to be able to experience that unconditional acceptance regardless of what you're feeling and going through. Is there is there anything that you want to add to that or anything, is there anything else that, you know, for those that are wrestling with shame or the fear of being able to talk about what they're what they're wrestling with, what might be helpful?

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Mm-hmm. I'm hoping that even listening to this and knowing that there's a whole host of other people that are experiencing this and that this is such a profound experience that it's actually quite clear the definition of parental burnout we get in the research. Like hopefully even knowing that will be helpful. Um finding a trusted person to talk to about that where you're able to share some of these things with other people is is you know a really important piece. Um and and if if you feel like you don't have anybody, like start start small, like talk with the mom at the playground, talk with a mom at preschool drop-off. You know, you don't have to share all of this type of stuff, but like, oh yeah, this is hard, isn't it? You know, it's that's okay to share.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Yeah. I'm wondering if we can end on this note. Um, as you know, I'm reflecting on connection, support, and all these pieces. Um do you have any kind of thoughts or ideas around how how can partners support each other?

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Yeah. So for those of you like listening that are privileged enough to have a safe and supportive spouse that you can trust, I think having these many moments of connection throughout the day and throughout the week can be really helpful. And um, I don't mean date night because for like I mean, again, in an ideal world, like yeah, I mean date night, but like that isn't always feasible for people. But like little moments of like, okay, we have a bit of a habit and we have a little bit of a ritual where after the kids are in bed or after dinner, we just check in. How are you feeling? What's going on for you, having conversations about like shared mental load and shared division of labor, like all of that, if you're privileged enough to have a partner that is safe and and okay with those conversations. Um trying to find a way, even if things are feeling a little bit rocky, trying to find a way to get to some of those places of where you can have those mini moments of connection, I think is really helpful. Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect, but even just these little moments of like, hey, I see you. Um, this is what I'm feeling, this is what you're feeling, like those matter, those little moments of connection, of like we're in this together.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Yeah. Okay. And then we can put that on a larger scale of, you know, if if that's not your situation at home, it's just connection with whoever that might be that feels like a safe person and and making that contact. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

For sure. Yeah, yeah. Cause we know that single parents are at a way higher risk of experiencing this, right? So yeah, there's gonna be lots of parents who who experience this who don't always have that at the end of the day, but maybe you have somebody, right? Like you have one of your best friends, maybe you have your mom, maybe you have a cousin, right? Like finding little ways to have connection is really important.

SPEAKER_00 48:40

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna actually make available um on Spotify and if I can on Apple Podcasts, but a bit of a survey of, you know, what would be helpful for people to learn more about when it comes to parental burnout. And maybe there's more that we can speak to this down the road. Um, while also keeping in mind that uh we're hoping to be able to talk a little bit more about stress cycles and how to practically go through them and what that looks like. But I really want to again express my gratitude for today and everything that you've brought into this conversation. When you've done so much work and poured so many sweat and tears into uh the work that you do uh in so many different ways. So, if for those that are listening, if you're interested in learning more and wanting to follow along with Hillary, she does have her own Instagram page. And I'll put that and make that available on my Instagram as well so that you can kind of get on there and see all the awesome resources uh that she has on there. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Ah, you're so welcome. Yes. And I look forward to talking again in the future and hope this is helpful for people who are listening. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Thanks for listening. If you haven't already, please subscribe on Spotify and Apple so you don't miss future episodes. You can also connect with me on Instagram at advantage.podcast for updates and extra resources. To learn more about my counseling services, visit vantagecounseling.com. Until next time, take a step back, breathe, and give yourself the advantage.