Navigating Motherhood and Career Without Burning Out: How to Manage Expectations and Energy {Part I}

I received an email from a reader of a 4-year old daughter. She’s been a stay-at-home mom since resigning from her post-doc role when her daughter was less than a year old. Leading up to her resignation, she experienced burnout from managing her full-time job, along with motherhood and household responsibilities.

However, she was really interested in going back to work but had some serious concerns and fears about managing it all, especially having the energy to spend quality time with her daughter. She asked if I could write a blog post to address these concerns and how to handle them.

Unfortunately, emails like this aren’t uncommon (although I do love receiving them!). We live in a world where society still views woman as the primary caregiver and housekeeper, no matter what other roles they have going on, and even if you have a partner to share the responsibilities with. 

Whether you’ve noticed it or not, you’ve received millions of messages from the time you were born. They’ve come from family, friends, religion, education, and society. 

All these messages create beliefs about how you should behave, what type of mom you should be, how your house should look, how you should discipline your kids, how you should dress, what your body should look like…the list goes on and on.

You might be wondering how this plays into balancing motherhood with a full-time job?

The answer is this, all the beliefs you have (that you might not even like) turn into expectations you place on yourself. Most of the time, these expectations are unrealistic, and when you don’t live up to them, you feel like a failure. The constant feeling like you can’t get ahead or be “enough” leads to burnout.

The reader in the beginning of this post shared that she left her job after feeling burnt out with all the roles she was playing in her life. In this post, I’m going to share with you what burn out is, and how you can avoid it.

When you understand how burnout works, you can transform your beliefs and mindset so that you stay energized and content with what’s going on, instead of overwhelmed and stressed. This might not create balance, but you will feel more at peace with how you’re spending your time.

Let’s dig into burnout and how to avoid it.

Defining Burnout

In today’s world, with the increase of technology and instant communication, we are pushed to do more. Productivity is looked upon as a badge of honor, and “busy” is a constant state of being.

When you’re a mom, trying to juggle multiple roles, you share your physical, emotional, and mental energy with others, CONSTANTLY! And at some point, you just can’t do it any longer. This is burnout.

Psychology Today defines burnout as:

“a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships.”

What Leads to Burnout

There’s a certain amount of self-pressure that leads to burnout. This can look like overperforming because you don’t want to disappoint your boss, or overthinking how you handled a situation with your child because you feel bad they’re upset, or procrastinating a task until the last minute so you feel immense pressure to get it done. 

Unfortunately, it’s not just one incident that usually creates immense overwhelm and stress, leading to burnout. It’s a bunch of things over time. And these “things” aren’t tangible situations or circumstances. It’s more in the way your brain operates.

These are some common causes of burnout:

-Perfectionism – trying to be everything to everyone, trying to do it all and do it perfectly, setting extremely high standards for yourself that result in long hours and excessive effort.

Some common perfectionist thoughts are:

“I have to do everything myself.”

“If I don’t do (x,y,z), I’ll fall behind.”

“I must always be available and responsive.”

Think about how these thoughts might play out at work? Or how these thoughts show up in your parenting and how you take care of the house?

–Worrying – when you worry about things that haven’t happened, but your anticipating might happen, you add to your mental workload, and deplete your mental energy.

For example:

You worry that because you’re a working mom, your kids will grow up resenting you.

You worry that you might not get that research paper in on time and then you’ll get fired.

–High Expectations but Low Self-Esteem – you have a lot of things you expect of yourself, but you don’t feel capable of living up to those expectations. This causes a lot of self-criticism and striving to be good enough, increasing stress and burnout.

What Happens When You’re in Burnout Mode

I want you to imagine hanging around with someone everyday who verbally reminds you about everything you have to do, all the ways you should be different, and numerous ways you’re failing. This person makes you triple check everything you’re doing because it doesn’t want you to make a mistake. They also constantly remind you of worst-case scenarios.

If you hang around this person long enough, you’re going to be a stressed, anxious, unhappy, and hopeless individual. You’ll be drained emotionally, physically, and mentally. But the truth is, you hang out with this person every day, it’s your brain!

When you continually give attention to this type of thinking that leads to burnout, you’re in a negative emotional state that’s primarily made up of stress and anxiety. And when you’re under stress, your body releases cortisol.

Research has shown that high cortisol levels actually shrink the part of your brain that is responsible for logical decision-making, and self-control/discipline. The primitive part of your brain (the amygdala), the part of your brain that wants to avoid discomfort and keep you stagnant, grows bigger making it much easier for you to give into procrastination and instant gratification. 

Your thoughts have a tangible effect on your brain and how it’s functioning.

If you’re in burnout mode, you’re struggling to use your logical part of the brain (prefrontal cortex), and you’re constantly giving into your primitive part of the brain.

This means even the thought of doing simple house tasks can feel mentally and physically exhausting and your primitive brain will help you avoid them. 

Stay Tuned for Part II

Remember, burnout is a true state of being. The good and bad part is that it’s self-induced. This is good because it means you have control to overcome burnout. It’s bad because you’ll have to make a conscious effort to pay attention to what your brain is feeding you.

Stay tuned for next week, where I’ll share with you how to recover or get out of burnout mode so you’ll feel more energized and happy with how you spend your time (and life!).

Have you ever experienced burnout? Let me know in the comments below!

Related Post: 5 Ways To Avoid Mom Burnout

**Before you leave, grab The “Type A” Moms Guide to Feel Organized + In Control of Your Time, for FREE.  You’ll find it here.**