High-Functioning, Silently Unravelling | Dr Tuesday Watts on Modern Motherhood

You can look like you’ve got it together…
and still feel like you’re quietly unravelling.

You’re showing up.
You’re doing everything.
You’re functioning.

But underneath?
It feels heavy.
Overwhelming.
Like you’re just about holding it all together.

In this episode, I’m joined by psychologist Dr Tuesday Watts to unpack what’s actually going on beneath the surface.

We talk about:
– why so many women feel overwhelmed (even when life “looks fine”)
– the mental and emotional load no one sees
– why high-functioning women often feel the worst internally
– how shame quietly sits underneath it all
– and why this isn’t about coping better… but understanding what you’re carrying

This isn’t surface-level advice.
It’s language for something a lot of women are feeling… but can’t quite explain.

If you’ve ever thought:
“Why does this feel so hard when I should be fine?”

This one’s for you.

🎧 Listen now

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Produced by TAEPodcast - www.taepodcast.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

78,000 women shared this post. You were raised in the 90s and now you're a mother in 2025, trying to gently parent kids who aren't gentle, whilst trying to override your millennial factory settings, fighting for your life to regulate your emotions, whilst battling chronic overstimulation, worrying about all the ways you're traumatizing your kids, wondering if it's perimenopause, undiagnosed, ADHD, or both. Too tired to do any fancy morning wellness routines because you're too busy juggling the damn mental load. And trying to get all the protein in. It gives breaking cycles and barely hanging on. Dr. Tuesday Watts, psychologist, mum of three, and a self-proclaimed angry millennial mum. Joking, but also kind of not joking. You're staking a claim on the messy middle, the high-functioning, silently unraveling, overachieving mothers who look fine but often feel right. This is mother loading. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Identity.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

How are you? Thank you so much for having me. I'm good. I am in classic messy middle territory today, juggling work and a poorly child. It's just, you know the drill. I know we live in the messy middle.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

I live in the messy middle. I mean, that post was a hard relate for me. Actually, so many of your posts are, because I think when I say you're staking the claim, you're putting words and validations to emotions that women experience alongside love and gratitude and gratefulness and all the beautiful things about being parents that for years there has been a shame around also talking about um the resentment, the rage, the anger. And it's really important to name those emotions because it it impacts women's mental health. I I have had so many conversations with friends crying, saying, I don't want to be a shouty parent. Why do I feel like this? I mean, for me, when I had my daughter, my first child, it changed my life. But when I had my second, it massively tested my capacity. And my experience was very different to my first. All of a sudden I was in this chaos and relentlessness of two young kids under the age of three. I found it really hard, and my mental health took a big hit. Um, and then it always just links back to shame and to guilt. So I'd love you just to talk about what is the messy middle and the millennium mum concept that you talk about.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah, of course. So I think everything you've just said there, what makes it all so hard to make sense of is that we have so many of these really big but really conflicting feelings. Like you just said, like it almost doesn't make sense to us that we feel things like joy and gratitude, but also things like grief and resentment and anger, like it just doesn't make any sense to us. And I think particularly for our generation, you know, we were raised very much not to talk about these things. These were the feelings that, you know, you really got a sense of how acceptable they were based on whether or not they were soothed or whether they were shut down. And for most of us, they were shut down. Things like anger, things like sadness, you know, it was come on, be a good girl, be quiet, you know, stop crying, don't cry. Things like that were very much kind of swept, swept under the rug. And we saw it playing out around us. We saw the grown-ups in our space have big feelings and then never talk about them again. They were very much, you know, that was very much my experience growing up. Oh wonderful. And I think, yeah, so many women relate to that. You know, they watched the grown-ups grapple with these feelings that they didn't have the words for. It wasn't their fault. They just didn't have the language to explain what they were feeling, what they were going through. And so they never kind of came back to it. They never reconnected with us, they never kind of recalibrated or repaired after any rupture. There was never an explanation or context. And so we grew up with that kind of missing information. And now we're mums. We're trying to teach emotional literacy to our children because we're so much more aware now of the fact that they they need that kind of language. But also we're kind of meeting these feelings in ourselves for the very first time because they were so shut down when we were growing up. So we are learning whilst we teach emotional literacy, and that is so much messier and more complicated than people give credit to. It's so underestimated, like just the mental and emotional toll that that takes. And that's very much this messy middle territory that I speak to. Is that, you know, we're not we're not kind of glowing, grateful, gliding through motherhood, but also we're not kind of at crisis point. We're in this very messy, very kind of turbulent middle ground where we kind of oscillate between I'm drowning and oh, maybe it isn't that bad, I'm doing okay. We kind of move between these like states, if you like, and we're trying to make sense of it as we go. We're learning whilst we teach, we're finding our feet as we move through this space, and it's really complicated and messy and overwhelming and hard to make sense of. And there is no map or rule book for any of this because we are literally learning in real time, but whilst also kind of holding close this hyper-awareness we all have now of you know, what might damage our children, what what might cause trauma, how to, how to foster a secure attachment. Like there is so much information that we are that is taking capacity from us whilst we kind of learn and teach emotional literacy in real time. It's a lot, it's messy.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

It's so, it's so much. And if you add the layer of some physiological things that can be out of your control. So, for example, you know, if you are dealing with postpoderum anxiety or depression, or there's just some level of hormone shift. And I, you know, I found, I think you and I actually we must follow the same account on Instagram because I I noticed we like the same thing. This peanut campaign with Tommy TP around the word matrescence and how powerful. I mean, up until six months ago, I had never heard of the word matrescence. I had no idea what it was. And isn't that crazy to think that it is the term that describes the actual physiological, hormonal, um, neurological shift that actually happens to you during pregnancy and birth? It is the same, or not the same, but it is equivalent to the midlife version of adolescence. And it's massive. Massive. And nobody, it was just this thing of that's just what women do, that's just what mums do. And as you said, uh, with the generational piece with being a millennial, my fear was before being open and speaking about the feelings we just talked about, is that it was a sign of weakness, it was a sign that I wasn't coping. Um, it was it was really difficult to be vulnerable, but there's obviously so many women out there who want to have the terminology and want to have these discussions because what in four months you got 200,000 followers.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

So yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that's what really struck me through like all of the stuff that I was sharing on social media is that, you know, especially as a psychologist, I I kind of I felt a bit like I needed to share a solution or like a fix or like, you know, offer some tips or ways of making it all feel a bit easier. But that's not actually why people were coming. It was because finally someone was saying something out loud that they had felt but couldn't find the words for, and and they were looking for language, and it was language that, you know, generations before us never had. No previous generation has had this language, these words to describe these feelings. And that's what people are craving at this point. It's what I was craving, you know, as a psychologist in the thick of this kind of messy middle territory. I was like, I can't, I almost can't make sense of what I'm living through, but it's because I'm not seeing it anywhere. No one's really talking about how complicated and messy this process is. There's like so many things happening at the same time, so many feelings colliding and overlapping with each other and kind of hard to pick apart and make sense of. And that's when I started just saying it, just speaking like in real time, what I was feeling, what I was going through. And that's what's kind of drawn so many mothers in. It was like, oh, I see someone actually living the same life as me. And I can see glimpse, I can see glimpses of myself in that, and that's what we need. And you know, we talk and hear a lot about the missing village, and you know, it's not just for practical support, it's so that we can see a likeness with other people. We can see like that common humanity, that thread that kind of unites us and makes our experiences feel a little bit more tolerable because they're more normalized.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

And I think that's the most important thing is to normalize them. I I see it the shift in my own group of girlfriends. We had a great relationship, um, and we talked as mums do, but we weren't really telling the truth. But the point being is now we'll walk in, and one of the women the other week was like, I just screamed so loud at my child because I I feel so bad, but I was just up to my eyeballs and I've just had whinging all day. And she got it off her chest. We all gave her a hug and we were like, Oh babe, we get it, we've all been there. And it felt so freeing and liberating to actually be able to have that conversation with our friends, and you do need that village to support. So, do you find did you feel when you went and pressed post on Instagram? Was it an immediate sense of liberation, or were you worried about what the response would be? Um, or in terms of it?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

No, I think it was immediate, it was immediately a sense of like relief, like, oh, like finally I've got that off my chest, because it was taking way more energy from me and way more capacity from me to pretend that things were different or that I had it all together or that it was somehow easier than it actually was. Like it just it took way less energy just to say it as it really was. Yeah, and that's what I like. I say that to people all the time. They always say, Oh, thank you for being like so honest and authentic. Like it would take so much more from me to be anything else and to be anything different, and I just don't have it.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

I just don't have a lot because the load is heavy. The load is heavy.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

It's so heavy. I just don't have the capacity to pretend.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

And I think when I moved into motherhood, which I had always wanted to be a mum, and I have adored most of the moments, not every moment, but I it took me a while to accept that I had to meet new versions of myself that I didn't recognize and nor did I like all of the time, actually. And it's pretty layered, it's not just with my kids, it links to my ambition, it links to um my relationship so much, which we will get dig into. But if we focus on that identity and ambition piece, I mean, you were high performing, as you mentioned, being a millennial, go to school, get good grades, go to university. You trained as a psychologist. I mean, I suppose it must have felt hard to that you should have all the tools in your toolbox to be able to deal with motherhood, and then it completely floored you. I mean, how how do you feel about that whole part of perfectionism and ambition when it links to motherhood?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

I mean, it's perfectionism. I can kind of look back on it fondly in that it got me to where I wanted to be, career-wise, ambition-wise. Like I can very much see that it was my, it was like a motor, like driving me forward to just keep achieving, achieving, achieving. But I can also look back and see just how much it crushed me and just how much it cost me as well, because perfectionism ultimately is a survival mechanism for so many of us. We, you know, we perform and we try and get it right and we achieve in order to feel good enough. Like our self-worth is really heavily tied to our performance, and there's a huge control piece to it as well. Like, you know, achieving and performing means that you get to kind of control other people's perceptions of you. Um, and so there's a really kind of heavy cost in terms of like management, like managing yourself, managing other people's perceptions. There's a lot of energy that's required to kind of maintain that. It's all it's like that analogy of the swan, like we see and hear it all the time. You know, on the surface, you look calm and graceful and like you have everything all together, you're perfectly composed, but beneath the surface, you're just like pedaling like hell to keep pace with everything, with all of the demands. And I think what kind of broke down for me when I became a mother was that I could no longer get, you know, a certain outcome or output based on my efforts. Like it didn't really matter what I did. I couldn't get the output or the result that I was hoping to, or I couldn't control it in the way or manage it in the way that I had managed everything up to that point in my life. It wasn't like the harder I tried, the easier it became, and the more I achieved, which is the formula that had always worked for me. It didn't work anymore. I was putting, you know, I was doing everything by the book, I was checking all the boxes, doing all of the things that I thought made me a good mum, that I thought were really good for like my baby's development. I was going to all the baby classes, I was doing all of the things, but I was still, I still felt like I was failing, and I still had this baby who didn't seem to enjoy or cooperate. Or, you know, he wasn't this calm and happy baby, like everyone said he would be if I was calm and happy and you know, just meeting all of his needs and and making sure he got everything that was required, like he would just be this calm and content baby. He wasn't, and that you know, it made me immediately question my worth. And it made me question everything, everything fell apart because I was like, Who am I? Like, you know, I'm I'm no good at this.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Do you think I've been thinking about this a lot um before speaking with you? Because I think the temperament of your child determines so much, right? So much. It does. Um, and it cracks you open in ways that are so painful, but actually, are they also incredibly powerful because they make you look at a version of yourself that was probably there all along, but for year from in my case anyway, I think there was years of masking, years of performance. Um and when my daughter came along, she was so chill. I kept that up. And then he came, and it wasn't a case that people say, Oh, you're probably just tired. Don't be so silly, don't be blowing it up your life. It was that I had to really dig deep. And when I dig deep, I realized there was so much missing that I wanted to do. And a lot of people are calling it the millennial mom or the millennial career crisis. Um, and when you had that experience with your son and you dig deep, you quit your job, right? And I have just quit my job.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

So yeah, literally. It was like um uh it well, motherhood is like a total deconstruction and like unmasking, like you really have to you come face to face with who you really are in so many ways, and all of the coping tools and strategies that have kept you afloat, that's what it felt like for me. I was kind of coming face to face with all of the ways that I had kept myself going for all of this time that just weren't really working because underneath it all, you know, I was stretched thin inside my own life before I even became a mum. So, how on earth was I supposed to cope when suddenly I had to like lend my nervous system to another person who was learning how to regulate their own emotions and find their footing, like it was just never going to be a success with the tools and strategies that I had in place. So there was a real like kind of crisis moment of like, I can't do this like this anymore. I have to find another way. And it does call everything into question. And like suddenly, when I had my firstborn, nothing made sense anymore. Like, nothing made sense. I'd spent nearly eight years building a career in academia, and I was like, this just isn't me. Like I just do not fit this frame anymore, like relationships, friendships as well. I was like, I just I can't relate to these people anymore. I don't feel like I fit in that group anymore. I'm just completely changed, like inside and out. And like you spoke about matrescence, like it makes so much sense. I was just, I felt like every piece of who I was and every piece of my life was just overhauled overnight. And suddenly I was left kind of gathering up the pieces of this kind of fragmented life and identity and trying to fit them back together again, um, and struggling with that because it doesn't happen in an instant, it doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

It's something that takes time and like it takes a while to kind of make sense of how the pieces then come back together again to create this new version of you that's absolutely and it's really it's very disconcerting and it can break a lot of people, and as you said, it's trying to be kind to yourself and and give yourself the time to do that. And you mentioned there, I can't do this anymore. But was there also an element where you just didn't want to do it anymore, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah, correct. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, so much of what I was doing, like when I had my firstborn, like all of the baby classes and things like that, I didn't want to do it. I hated, I hated them, like with a passion. I felt like overstimulated by them, which makes so much sense for me. Um, but I felt like I had to, and like I was pushing myself to do that for him because I thought that that's what he needed. Yeah, but he hated it too, because he's like me.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

And so when you say like just to give some context to people listening, you you reference it as kind of sensory sensitive. Yeah, exactly. And that you are sensitive. And I think looking back now, I am absolutely the same. Like I get quite overstimulated. I mean, I can't, if the dryer is beeping and the kids are screaming and there's something else, I literally like it, it actually hurts my brain. And my horses all levels just go through the roof. Um so when you say that, and then did you accept? So we're we're at this crisis point. You've realized not only that you can't do it, but you don't want to do it that way. So you give up your role as a lecturer in the university, and then you're trying to find this new path, um, of which we we hear about a lot, because again, I'm gonna say it the millennial career crisis is this term that's thrown around because a lot of women are getting to the point and they're not giving up work because they want to stay at home baking cookies with the kids. And if you want to do that, great. But they're giving up work to navigate and pivot their career to something that fills their cup that they want to do. Um, but with that, because I'm going through the exact process right now and I'm only at the infancy, it's cracking me open in ways that I never expected. Like I feel like I'm on my knees. I feel less confident than ever before. I'm questioning my self-worth and self-doubt because I'm not at the top of my game anymore. I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. Um, how did how did you manage that?

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Oh, it's so hard. And like it, it's it didn't happen overnight. I mean, it sounds like a quick process, but it really wasn't. Like deciding to leave academia. I'd made that decision that that's what I was gonna do when I had my son, but I was already, I had already agreed to start a new academic position at a new university. So I knew that I was gonna have to do that. Um, and that it would take me some time to figure out what I was gonna do next. So I went along with that for a bit and went to that new academic position and and made it work for the best part of 18 months, I think it was in the end. I'd had my second baby in that time as well. So it wasn't an overnight experience by any means. I didn't just like wake up, decide I wanted to do different, leave the job. And then, you know, I was suddenly trying to find what I was going to do. It was like a years of like figuring out and trying and testing. And like when I had my by the time I had my second baby, I knew I wanted to work with mothers in some way. I didn't know what that was. I was still trying to figure it out. So I did lots of different things. I trained to be a hypnotherapist, thinking I might help support them in the perinatal period with hypnotherapy. I trained to do hypnobirthing. So I was helping people like get ready for birth and make sense of all of that time. I was still tweaking and trialing and, you know, figuring out in that time until I really landed in the space where I am now. But that took like three years to really fine-tune and figure out where I was going to be. And exactly the same as you, like it brought me to my knees at so many points because suddenly I wasn't achieving. I wasn't like, you know, high flying, and I didn't have any like tangible like results or output where I could say, like, this is a success. And so I'm worthy. Like it really, it really forced me to confront where do I get my feelings of self-worth from? And I really had to unpick and unpack and like detach myself from performance in order to kind of rebuild a new sense of inner, like worth, self-trust, self-confidence. But that took years for me to do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

And I think it's a really powerful process to go through. It's not easy. I'm going through it myself, and it feels a lot easier. Some days I'm like, what the fuck have I done? And I said to my part the other day, I need to crawl back to corporate and ask for a job back. But I know because I follow people like yourself and some other just unbelievably inspirational women out there that you know, there's that cheesy saying that it's easier, it's easier to stay in what's easy. Um no, what what is the term I'm looking for? It's easier to stay in what you know. Um but actually pushing through the pain, it does get better on the other side. It's so cliche, it's so cheesy, but it is true that I I'm I'm grappling all of these feelings because I kind of know when I get to the other side, it's gonna be extremely freeing. I don't know what that's gonna look like from a monetary perspective. I, you know, not everybody is in the position that they are able to do that. And if I do go back to corporate, at least I know I truly gave it my all. And what I would say to women, and I'd love to hear what you would, if you're in this crisis point and you are thinking about pivoting, try it. Just try it. If you're in the position to do it, yes, it's hard, all of those feelings of confidence and self-worth and comparison, and and we'll touch on that, but it is so powerful. Would you say the same?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Oh gosh, yeah. It is it's really powerful, but it's really testing as well at the same time. And I remember hearing someone um say something along the lines of, I wish people were more patient with themselves in the process of becoming, like it takes such a long time to become and to arrive at your destination. And I by no means feel like I've arrived at my final destination. I feel like I'm on more solid ground. That's where I feel now. And now I can start to build. But for such a long time, I felt like I don't know what my next step is gonna be because I can't see like the ground in front of me. I'm just stepping and and and leaping and hoping that I'm gonna land somewhere and not being sure where I'm gonna land. And, you know, that's such a human experience, too. We like exactly as you just said, we like what we know. That's how we're wired because what we know is easy to predict. It, you know, it's a safety signal. What we know and can kind of predict its movements. We know exactly what that's gonna do. So that means that we can be fairly confident that we're gonna be safe and survive, whatever that thing is. But when we start taking steps out of our comfort zone and start venturing into areas that we we understand less and are less familiar with, that really challenges our sense of safety. And so we feel like, oh, I want to retreat, I want to go back to what I know. Like you say, I want to crawl back to corporate. And I had like many points. So I was like, oh, maybe I just need to start reaching out to universities and just see, you know, if there's something that I can do that can fit around what I'm doing now. Like it, yeah, it's a really disorienting phase. A really disorienting phase, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

The way I keep trying to pull myself back is just one step at a time. And I am and like what you just said there, I find the idea of not being able to see the future really, really difficult. Um because I didn't wake up one day and have an amazing idea of a product or whatever, like I'm not sure what what I'm navigating, but I was like, I'm just gonna do one thing, and then for example, this podcast, and everyone's like, but you've never done a podcast. I worked it out, I worked it out, and we thought it was gonna be the small little thing, and then all of a sudden we're in the Apple charts. And and the the point being is that those small little things can lead to the bigger things, you just have to take a chance, try something new and give it a go. And I think in this world in 2026, the hustle culture of especially online, where you have to be a millionaire in six weeks. I launched a digital product and now I'm worth five million. It's really difficult to be patient and it's really difficult to have a mature mindset and take your time to iterate and build and to feel good about it. What would you say? Like, how dangerous, not just in the career side, but on the mothering side, how dangerous do you think social media is for women and mothers these days?

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Oh, I mean, immensely so. I think. I mean, there's two sides of it, right? Like, obviously, I'm not anti-social media. I think it it's extremely powerful. And, you know, for me, it's it's allowed me to build a community of women who aren't living locally to each other. And that's that's unbelievable in so many ways. But I think that there is a really dark side to it, and like you say, it kind of removes this messy process, like both in career and in motherhood. We don't see the messy journey, we don't see the missteps, we don't see, you know, the chaos of real life a lot of the time in motherhood and in career. We very much see the end result, we see the six figures, we see the glossy family days out that's so wholesome, and everyone's in their matching outfits and it looks amazing. Um, we we don't see the messy behind the scenes a lot of the time. And I think, you know, we we spend a lot of time on social media as millennials as well. We're kind of we're straddling these two parallel worlds, you know, the digital ones that we carry around in our pockets all the time, and our messy, chaotic, like high pressure, overwhelming, overstimulating real life environments. Like we're trying to live in two parallel worlds that literally look like completely different, complete opposite ends of the spectrum. And that's really hard mentally to navigate all of that because, as well, we're holding like all of those things, the glossy end results, the kind of wholesome family days out, the beautiful organic home-cooked meals that someone's done for their children on, you know, the beautiful aesthetic plates where everything looks really symmetrical and beautiful. We're holding all of that in our minds that's literally taking, like it's loading on us cognitively, and it's taking capacity, it's taking space from us as we navigate our messy real lives. And I think when you are in the trenches and when you know you have to cook the same food every day that ends up on the floor anyway, and you know, all of the usual stuff. What happens then is you're holding the glossy, beautiful Instagram version of that in your mind, and you're comparing your messy real life to it, and suddenly it feels less than, suddenly, it feels like there's a lot of room here for improvement, and ultimately it's failing. Like what I'm doing here is a failure. The messiness, the chaos, that is less than. And why aren't I doing better? Why aren't I coping better? Why can't I do it that way? That you know, it is really dangerous in lots of.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

It's a spiral. And I think that's why we set up mother loading because I was like, hang on, I don't understand. Like, why are we not talking about this stuff more? Why is there still so much shame? Why is everyone performing? And maybe my experience was different. My kids are, let's use the term spirited um and feral. And yeah, mine or two. Yeah, and they don't sleep. So maybe my experience was slightly different. But yeah, to your point, we we we cannot be comparing ourselves to this, you know, pinky.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

We can't, but we do. Yeah, because you know, yeah, because as humans, we're wired for social comparison. It provides us with a lot of information about how well we're doing. So we are wired toward it. We can't help ourselves. And I think, you know, spaces like social media are just they're like breeding grounds for comparison and holding your life up against the images and the things that you're being fed on there. And that's when you have to be really discerning about what you are taking in, um, you know, who you are paying attention to. There are so many ways that we can kind of claw back our attention and be a bit more mindful around what we are exposing ourselves to, especially if we're in a in a very like vulnerable point in a very like taxing season of life. I think that's even more important to be mindful of what you're consuming.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Well, thank you so much also for putting yourself and your vulnerabilities and authenticness on social media because though you said actually it's more freeing for me, it can be uncomfortable for some people. But having the balance is so important. And I saw something that you put up on on Instagram about how your you struggle with that with your partner because he is also, as is mine, overstimulated and depleted. Um, so can you talk to me a bit about like what boundary is resentment often pointing to? And then I don't want to say tips or tricks to save your relationship, but how it does impact your relationship with people and especially around intimacy and stuff. I think it's really important to talk about that piece too.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

So resentment, just like any other emotion, is a signal. It's pointing us towards something, it's asking us to take a closer look at something. And resentment is so often pointing us toward imbalance, like some need that's going unmet, some support that isn't being given, some load that isn't being shared. Um, so resentment when it crops up is always like waving a little red flag to me, like, oh, there's something here that needs tending to and needs some attention. And exactly what you just said, like I'm in a season of life, as is my husband, where we are stretched thin inside our experiences of parenthood. Like our children are seven, four, and one, and require a lot, and we are a very neurodivergent household. We are both neurodivergent as well. Um, and so it's very taxing trying to maintain careers, trying to give our children exactly what they need, especially when their needs and temperaments are especially intense. Um, it's it's a lot, plus trying to keep a marriage alive and going. You know, it takes everything to remember each other in all of that when a lot of the time we're just kind of keeping our heads above water, and you know, we can both agree that we're in a very difficult kind of phase, not in terms of us, but in terms of everything that we're navigating and juggling while still trying to remain the team. Because, as well, like I put this up on social media recently, and so many people resonated with it. When things feel hard, we can have a tendency to turn on each other and be like, Well, it's you, you're not doing this, you're not doing that. And it, you know, you can go into a very defensive, like self-defense mode, which is like normal, human, like our brain is telling us almost like there's a threat here, like you're under attack. So you turn and like lash out at the person standing next to you. But I think what's really been helpful for us is just having really honest conversations about like this is what not as an attack, not as an a defense, but literally just laying out on the table, like this is what I'm juggling, this is what I'm finding hard, this is what I don't have capacity for right now. Where do you have some capacity to help me with, you know, this, that, and the other? And just really laying out on the table where we both are, like emotionally as well, like creating space for those conversations where we can, like within reason, because often we are juggling a lot and there isn't the time and space for lots and lots of these conversations. They have to be very intentional and very like when the kids have gone to bed, and when we both feel like we have the energy to really sit in a conversation like that.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

I think as you said intention, yeah, it can be rare. And I think as you said, intention is so important because it is in season one. I opened up that we had started couples counseling, um, and a lot of people think, oh, they're on the brink of of breaking up because they the statistics show that 50% of divorces are actually when your children are under the age of five, because when you are in the trenches, it is so difficult. Um, there's so many layers of emotions that happen. But we had to go to counseling because we I we found it difficult to have those honest conversations and conflict resolution was a real problem. And I would say to anybody, if you can do it the way you have and you can sit at home, and now we do have the tools that we're able to sit down and have those conversations, it is so, so important because I think if you don't, there's this un unhidden language that sorry, there's this hidden language that you're you're both speaking potentially a different language, and there's assumptions being made, and there's resentments being built, and the load is heavy enough already, and it can have a really detrimental effect on you as an individual, but then also on your relationship. So thank you for sort of reminding us to keep that space. And you know, a big, a big one that we hear a lot from the women that we speak to. And I had a very emotional moment with Michelle, my co-host, on a podcast recently, where we talked about different parts of grief that we have for our body. Um, and hers, she's just had a newborn baby, so a lot of hers is is her physical feelings. And I was saying to her, mine actually isn't aesthetics, it's more my function. So, you know, I had kids later in life. I'm going from postpartum to perimenopause, and we talked about different things, grief, like hormonal grief, um, cognitive grief. But the big one for me was libido grief and intimacy grief because when you're carrying the mother load and your own personal journey, and there's a nervous system issues, losing that part of you, or maybe just letting go of it for a little while is is really painful, actually. Um it's painful deep down, it hurts me because I I want to be, I want to try. I want to be there for myself. I want to show up in a in a sexual way for myself, from my partner, but I just can't. I physically just can't get there, and it's so frustrating. Um so I just wonder like I don't I don't want to have you open up about your sex life, but just from speaking to mums and like that bridge between psychology and actual lived motherhood and intimacy. Do you have any thoughts, Ryan?

SPEAKER_00 39:17

That I mean, listening to you talk, my my grief wasn't necessarily around intimacy. I think my grief in within the context of my relationship was for the experience I thought we would have as a family for us anyway. And I think that's been a really big theme for us. Like as parents, I think going into this, we had this vision of like, you know, wholesome family life and everyone being happy and you know, doing all of the things that we dreamed of. And obviously, as a neurodivergent household, the reality is far from the expectations that we held close. And there's that we have so many conversations of like, not why does it have to be like this, but I wish it wasn't like this sometimes. And for us, like as a couple and as a family, there's a lot of grief around that, of like, this isn't what we thought it would be sometimes, and that's really hard to sit with. Um, and like it was a big thing for me just as a mother, like on my own, just being like, you know, I had so many expectations, and and there's been a death of my expectations, and so a grief around those.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Oh, for sure. A friend of mine once said to me, Um, expectations are disappointments and resentments waiting to happen. And when she first said that, I was like, don't be so cynical. I I completely understand what she's saying.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

Yeah, yeah. And like for us, you know, I think that's where our grief has sat, really. It's less around things like intimacy and more around things like this just isn't what we thought it was, and and we wish it was different sometimes, and it wasn't so hard in the ways that it is hard. That's quite a big theme for us. And I think, you know, with something like grief, there isn't a solution or silver bullet for grief. Grief, essentially, like I was saying, all of our feelings are signals. Grief is a signal that something feels different, that something needs to be witnessed and spoken about and brought into the light. And I think just having conversations like these where we're open about the things that feel different or like they have changed, that in itself is a step toward moving through it, not moving away from it, but it it makes it a bit easier and a bit lighter to carry, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah, absolutely. It really does. And I and thank you for allowing this safe space for us to have the conversation. It it means a lot, and I know it's going to mean a lot to listeners out there. And you know, what I keep saying when we reference back to the generational piece, it's funny because I saw a post on Instagram the other day that someone older said, I don't understand why parents just can't parent these days. And again, I know it brought it back to this shame and guilt. And sometimes I look at my parents, I'm making an assumption here because they're, you know, very supportive. But since I've been doing all this, they're almost looking at me like, what why are you talking about all this? Like, why are you feeling all this? And almost I wonder, do they think I feel like this all the time? I don't. Of course I don't. Like life is full of ups and downs. But when we do feel to feel it, we should be able to talk about it. And we should be able to talk about it confidently so that we can potentially move past it or not just not feel so bloody alone sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Yeah. And I mean, look, ultimately, we are helping to create that safe space for future generations, right? Like, look how long it's taken us to feel safe enough to say things like this out loud. The hope for me, definitely, you know, certainly, is that one day my children won't hesitate in turning to say, this feels hard because X, Y, and Z, like I'm having a really hard time with this, and not feel an ounce of shame, not worry about judgment, but just be so tapped in to who they are and how they're feeling about something that they feel able to share without judgment. Like that's the hope is that we're creating that emotionally safe space for future generations. So it's like, you know, it's building blocks essentially. And and our parents didn't really have that. And so we didn't have that in the beginning. And it's very much a space that we have cultivated through kind of this learning on the job and realizing that actually there's a missing piece here, and we didn't feel that emotional safety to begin with. So it's something that we're gonna have to learn and reclaim whilst on the job. Like there's a lot going on, and so when Older generations, you know, say things like, Why can't you just get on with it? Like we did. No, because we are cultivating something much deeper and safer for future generations. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

And and they say, Why didn't you just get on with it? On with it at a price and a trade-off. Exactly. And exactly, you know, you may not want to admit it and it may be uncomfortable. And I often think it'll be so interesting if God, I mean, there's lots going on in the world, lots going on with social media, but if we do get to a point where we can have more emotional freedom and stability, it'd be interesting to see if there's an impact on physical ailments within people because emotions manifest themselves physically so much. It would be so interesting to look back. So on that, um, I think I'd mention to you, we have a segment that we do for each guest in each week. It's kind of the invisible load exposed, and it's almost like a little mini audit, a mother loading audit as such. And guests rate kind of where they're at emotionally versus like practically. And because most women don't burn out from one thing, right? They have 50 million things. My brain is a hundred tabs open. And we want to get to a point where people are recognizing where the load sits sometimes so that they can potentially delegate it and they can, you know, give themselves a break, stop giving themselves a hard time. So I'm gonna do a rapid fire to you now, Tuesday, okay? Go for it. So on from one to ten, mental load, remembering everything, carrying everything, where are you at?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

In terms of my share or how I'm feeling about how you're feeling. Um, probably a seven. Seven, emotional load. Probably an eight. Ambition load. I feel pretty good about that one. So I'm gonna go one or two.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

And isn't it great to remind ourselves of what we feel good about because we forget to do that, we focus on the negative sometimes. Identity load.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

I would say one or two. I feel good about that.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Oh, I'm so I'm so happy. I love this for you. Uh body load. Oh, I would say about four or five.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

So I was gonna say which is the loudest right now, but I think the mental and emotional oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Oh yeah, but that's not news to me. So, what what do you do to work actively manage that? Um, just basically like what you've just done, just have an audit and just really sit with, you know, what what feels taxing in that load right now? And some of that load can't be shifted, like because of the nature of my family and their needs and things like that. But acknowledging it, I think, is a really important first step and really looking at the way that it does weigh on you, I think is really important.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

So if if a woman was listening today and she's at 10 on a few of those tipping points, you would say set your boundary as acknowledgement, acknowledge where you can. Yeah, I say the same all. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

It's a first step. Like, don't underestimate that first step because so many people just keep pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing until they can't anymore. And I think the first step has to be acknowledgement and noticing.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

For sure. I mean, my co-host makes fun of me a little bit because when I was going through my midlife reshuffle, as I want to call it now, as opposed to a crisis. Thank you. Uh, I had to sit down and build out a framework which included this invisible load audit. And she was like, that's such a nicky thing to do. But actually, it was so powerful. It was so powerful to see it down in black and white because otherwise it was just all this noise that I just could not control. Um what is one thing that you do not say out loud?

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Oh, I say a lot of things out loud.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Yeah, I feel like you're the worst person to ask this because you don't hold back. You're so unfair.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

No, that's the thing. I don't think there's anything that I don't say out loud now. I think for a while there there was a lot that I didn't say, but I honestly can't say that there's anything like I would share my ugliest thoughts, like with my husband um or with a close friend. I don't think there's anything I haven't said.

SPEAKER_02 48:18

I love that. And the fact you said, and I just it made me laugh so much. You were like, it's this lovely video of you kind of dancing, smiling, and you're like being an angry mum has changed my life. Yeah. But you just said it. And it's not that you're angry all the time, but like with so many of us have moments of being an angry mum, and I thought, I love that she is making this so accessible to so many women out there. So thank you. And Tuesday, if for people who want to who don't already follow you or they want to find you, and I know you do work with corporates, which is amazing. We didn't get a chance to cover that, but maybe we will do it again. Uh, you're doing some great work with brands like Boogaboo. Are you writing a book?

SPEAKER_00 49:00

I am, but it hasn't been announced yet.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Oh, okay, okay. Well, keep us posted. And if you want any announcement, let us know. But where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00 49:09

I'm on Instagram at Iam DoctorTuesday. That's where you'll find me kind of sharing and saying the ugly, unspeakable truths and parts.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

It's not, and you do an incredible job for a psychologist. Did you teach yourself all you're very good at editing? Your videos are oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:29

I just enjoy that part of it. Yeah, I enjoy that part of it. I do it all myself, but I'm quite creative, so I love all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Okay, amazing. Because it's amazing. For me, I'm 44 and I've recently taught myself Canva, Cap Cut, and because everyone's saying, Oh, have you a PR team? Like, are the studio doing this? And I'm like, no, we did it. And it's so it feels amazing to think it's fun, yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes when it's late at night and you know, I've been working all day and I've got the kids, and you're doing, you're like, oh God, but it's it's just it's exhilarating to learn something so new. It doesn't have to be the the Gen Z and the Alphas. We us as women, we can do whatever we want whenever we want. We just have to give it a try. Yeah. Dr. Tuesday, thank you so much, and we look forward to talking to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Yeah, chat soon.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Thank you for having me. Bye. Mother Loading is proudly sponsored by the Body Club, more than just a gym and reformer studio.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

It's a safe space for women and mums to connect, grow, and build a community, and to feel their best selves through every version of themselves. Thriving, not just surviving, through hormones, pregnancy, metaphors, and beyond. Visit their Instagram, the BodyClub UK, spelled V-O-D-H-I. To learn more about the Altringham and Northwood studios.