131- Tools for Moms in Burnout- Boundaries, Breaks, and Resets

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Welcome to Every Brain is Different, the podcast where we celebrate the unique world of neurodiversity. We are your hosts, Samantha Foote, a neurodivergent, Board Certified Music Therapist and mom to three kids of ADHD and autism. And Lauren Ross, an ally to the neurodivergent community with over 10 years of experience supporting children and adults with autism.

This podcast is for parents like you. Navigating the world of neurodiversity with love and compassion. Together we'll create a world where every brain is valued and celebrated. We're excited to embark on this enlightening journey with you.

Transcript:

Samantha Foote: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Every Brain is Different podcast. It is Samantha and Lauren here with you,

Lauren Ross: Hello.

Samantha Foote: And today we are talking about the mental load of moms, and we are starting a three week series on this because I was at my cousin's house, it was like in August, and she said, “I [00:01:00] wake up overstimulated.” And I'm like, I feel that. Like I totally understand. Like I wake up overstimulated and we shouldn't be. Mom's- I don't know the mental load of carrying the household for you think about the groceries, you think about the meals. You think about all the things, right? And then you think like I, even if my husband takes my kids to their doctor's appointments, I am still thinking about like when the doctor's appointment is, how much they're missing school. Like all the things. Even my husband is great, like Lauren can attest. Yeah, he is amazing, but. He does not keep all those things in his brain. And I don't offload things to him because I just don't trust that he'll get them done. And that's on me. That is on me. And we are going to talk about strategies that you can do to offload things and like for example, like [00:02:00] the family, what's that called? The FDS plan. That Medicaid-

Lauren Ross: Uh, Family Direct Services.

Samantha Foote: Family Direct Services. Yeah. So I have this plan that I am just going to completely offload that program onto my husband, and he is going to be responsible for all the things for the FDS program for our children. I aspire to that, but I think after we go through this, I'm going to take these words into consideration and do what I am preaching because I am also burned out and I need to just chill. So that's not what we're talking about today though. First suggestion

Lauren Ross: First suggestion with that though: Before you do that, or when you do that because men are simple creatures, um, loving the offload, but make sure that you're setting the expectations and that they understand what that responsibility is.

Samantha Foote: Yeah! Yeah!

Lauren Ross: Just say, you're in charge of this now, then leave it, because that's just never gonna work, and you're gonna be mad at yourself later.

Samantha Foote: [00:03:00] Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we're gonna talk about. Like you can offload things, but set the expectation like, “this is what I expect. This is what it means for me to offload this thing. This is what I need you to do. Can you handle that?” And if they say no. Then find something else to offload.

Lauren Ross: What can you take on for me?

Samantha Foote: Yeah, ask them what they can take on and take it on fully. If they are taking on cooking meals every day, I don't know. Some couples do that where one person cooks meals all the time and just have them take that on fully. So taking on the meals includes making the grocery list, going grocery shopping, cooking the meals, all of that, and they take care of all of that. We're gonna talk about that in a couple weeks.

Today we're gonna talk about the mental load of motherhood because mothers receive constant interruptions, endless snack requests. Like I can be sitting here and working and my kids will be like, “mom, I want a snack.” [00:04:00] “Your dad is right there. What? What is going on?” And my husband will get them a snack, but they already interrupted me. If they already interrupted, I've already broken my focus, whatever. And then obviously therapy and school schedules, emotional regulation, all of that stuff. Because even if my husband is helping my kid with emotional regulation, they still are a distraction, like having their meltdown, right? And then I'm still worried about it 'cause I'm like, what if my husband can't get them to calm down? Then I had to step in and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So all those things, constant interruptions. Um-

Lauren Ross: An endless cycle.

Samantha Foote: Endless cycle. Yeah. And there are some statistics that I thought were wild. Moms are interrupted every three minutes, which is roughly around 400 times a day. That is wild. And I attest to that. Like kids, even my kids who are older, they still interrupt all the time. And I'm not blaming them, they're children, [00:05:00] but I'm just saying it overstimulates you. And then moms also make around 35,000 decisions per day where dads generally make 15,000 decisions per day. And this is not a “dump on dad's” podcast episode. Not at all. We are just focusing on the moms right now because they do tend to make more decisions and so we are just trying to support them. But this is not like dads are bad.

Lauren Ross: Yeah, we're not fascists guys.

Samantha Foote: It's not that at all. No, not at all- I think dads are awesome. We're just focusing on the moms today.

And then so today, we're gonna talk about what's happening in your body and in your brain, so you can stop the self blame. And then next week we're gonna talk about how to shift household systems. So you're sharing the load, you're not just delegating, you're offloading what needs to be offloaded. And then week three, we're gonna talk about building small recovery [00:06:00] practices. So, what you can do when you are feeling overwhelmed, and then language for your family. And then how to do one minute resets.

So we're gonna talk about burnout. Burnout is not a personal failure. It is a mismatch between the demands that you have placed on you and the resources that you have to do those demands. It does not mean you are failing at life because you're burned out. It just means you have to maybe reevaluate some things, offload some things, just find a different way to handle it, because living in burnout is not fun. It creates a constant alert state when days are wall-to-wall needs, and I lived in a constant alert state. I don't think it was 'cause of burnout when I did this, but I was in fight or flight 24/7. I could not calm down. Like my heart rate was always up. I was just always on high alert and it was wild. Like [00:07:00] I had to go to counseling, I had to get some medication and then I calmed down. But going through that was easily the hardest thing in my life because I was in constant overwhelm, constant fight or flight, and it was very overwhelming. But yeah.

But as a neurodivergent parent, some realities are sensory input hits harder than typical, typically developing people. So part of being neurodivergent is your sensory input is a little skewed. Noise might be louder than in a typical person, touch- you might not like being touched. You might have clutter, have decision fatigue, and all of that contributes to the overwhelm. And so common responses are that you're snappy, you're numb, or you just hide. And those can all be signals of overwhelm. Or you just want to go to your bedroom, maybe go in your closet and [00:08:00] just hide. Or you're really angry all the time and you don't know why, because no one's doing anything. You're just mad.

Lauren Ross: You're overwhelmed.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, you're overwhelmed. And so you're snappy. You have a very short fuse. So those are all signals of overwhelm.

And I really like this thing that I found. It's called “whisper talk or shout”, and this is your body's scale. And so the whisper stage, that is the. The least overwhelming stage. And you might feel mild tension, shallow breathing, foggy thinking.Ttriggers might be poor sleep, skip meals, clutter, background noise, any of that. So you're feeling on edge, but you're not quite all the way, over the precipice. Yeah. And so some strategies that you can use for this, you can have a one minute reset where you just breathe deeply for a minute. You can hum for 30 [00:09:00] seconds. I think we talked about the awesomeness of music on this podcast, obviously, and just humming. Just making music even for 30 seconds can have really powerful effects on your body. You can take a water break because most of us are chronically dehydrated, or you can stretch, do yoga. Then you can also look at your sensory environment. Maybe remove one sound if you're listening to something, if the washer's going, if the dishwasher's going, if your kids are making noise, maybe shut off the music or put on noise canceling headphones or something like that just to remove some of the noise. You can also shut off a light if you need to. You can declutter one area of a room so that maybe that's not overwhelming for you.

And then decision diet. So make one micro [00:10:00] action at a time. Don't try to make really big decisions. Just say, “oh, I need to do the dishes. Okay, what am, what's a micro decision that I can do to help me with that? I can take this glass to the sink.” It's the only decision you're making. You're not saying you have to do all the dishes, you're just saying you have to take that glass to the sink.

So those are some of the strategies, like the one minute reset, sensory evaluation, and then doing one micro decision, not making big decisions. And then you can also do positive self-talk, such as my body is asking for a small adjustment. So then you say that out loud, and then you do a small adjustment.

And then it's important to have boundaries during this time so that you don't go to the next stage, which is the talk stage. And so if you are needing a one minute reset and your child comes up to interrupt you with something that can wait, you can have that boundary up that says, “I will answer you in [00:11:00] 60 seconds.” And then set a timer because we all know. The kids are gonna do it for you. If you don't set a timer. At least my kids, they will be like, “Alexa, set a one minute timer.” I'm like, “that's not really what I meant.” But yeah, so you can say, I will answer you in one minute, or I'll answer you in five minutes. Just give yourself that time. And once again, boundaries are not for what the other person's going to do. They're what you are going to do. And sometimes teaching your family boundaries can be really hard because your kids might be like “Mom,” and then you say, “I'm going to answer you in one minute.” And they still continue to do mom, but they will learn as long as you don't give in, they will learn that you really do mean you'll answer them in one minute. And so it's not for the other person, it's for yourself. What are you going to do?

Lauren Ross: It's important to follow through with it too. Otherwise it's just all talk [00:12:00] and nothing's gonna change.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. Yeah. So definitely follow through with it and just teach them like, these are my boundaries. This is what I'm doing and this is how I'm going to respond to you. And eventually they get it, but sometimes it takes a little bit of practice.

But, if you do get past the whisper stage, the next stage is talk stage, and that feels like you're jumpy, irritable, you have spiraling thoughts, multitasking, impulse. All of those kind of things in addition to the foggy thinking and the stuff that was in the whisper stage. Triggers can be constant interruptions, time pressure, unexpected transitions, and unwanted touch. This is like one of my husband's biggest ways to send him into overwhelm is my kids touching him. He’s just “can you stop.” And so definitely know your [00:13:00] trigger and set up that boundary with your kids or set up that boundary with your partner. Say, “I'm going to set a five minute timer. I'm going to go in this room. I expect you not to interrupt me for five minutes.” And set up that boundary. And if they try to interrupt you, don't acknowledge them. Say, “I'm not going to acknowledge you unless there's a fire or something.”

Lauren Ross: Genuine emergency.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, a genuine emergency. Not like, I need water. That's my, I swear every time I sit down, my kid goes, “I need milk.” “You couldn’t have said that five seconds ago when I was standing in the kitchen. Really?” But, but yeah, but know your triggers, so then you can set up boundaries to mediate those trigger- triggers. I can't talk today.

Some strategies that you can do is a two step pause. So you say the word pause, and then you take three long breaths. A co-regulation cue, you put your hand on your heart beat on the ground, and name five things. And then [00:14:00] interruption plan is you have a family hand signal. This is my family hand signal. My kids know when I'm- Oh, you can't see this if you're listening. I put up one finger-

Lauren Ross: One finger up.

Samantha Foote: one finger up. If I am in a meeting-

Lauren Ross: The pointer finger.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, the point- “Forget you.” No, no. Put the pointer finger up. And my kids know if I'm on a call and I put my pointer finger up, they know they're not allowed to talk to me. They're not allowed to come near me. They need to go away. And if you do that though, make sure that you follow through. So if I put a finger up and then they still are coming towards me, they still are trying to interrupt me, I will full on, put my hand out and block them from coming and push them away. And I tell them before I get on the call, “if you come over to me, I'm going to do this.” And that's just teaching them boundaries.

Lauren Ross: Yeah. I’ve seen you do it a few times.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, you’ve seen me, “mmm go away.” Yeah. Yeah. [00:15:00] I do that a lot.

Hey everyone, Samantha here, and I'm thrilled to invite you to join me for something special, the Parenting Power Hour. This is your chance, parents and neurodivergent kids to bring your questions directly to me and fellow parents in the room. We're here to help you develop actionable plans that really work so you can. Finally stop the meltdowns and find peace in your home as a mom to three kids with ADHD and autism. I've seen and been through the challenges too, so trust me, we'll find solutions together that fit your family. Don't miss out on the Parenting Power Hour. It's a free online monthly gathering every second Thursday of the month, from 12:45 to 1:45 Mountain Standard Time. Visit everybrainisdifferent.com to reserve your spot today.

And then, reduce input. Again, you can wear noise canceling headphones. You can go to a quiet space. Tell your family not to interrupt you. A positive self-talk is [00:16:00] “alert does not mean danger”. Just because your body is in an alert stage, it does not mean that a lion is chasing you and going to kill you. I say that all the time. I'm like, “body, you're fine. A lion is not chasing you. You're not gonna die.” I say that a lot and my husband laughs at me, but-

Samantha Foote: If it works, it works.

Lauren Ross: It does work. It reminds me like, “Hey, you're fine”. I was talking to my mom yesterday and she was like really worried about something and she actually said something through that too. “She was like, body, you're fine. We're safe. You're fine.” And so I say that a lot when I'm like starting to get really nervous about something or I feel those, I feel these things like the jumpiness, irritability, spiraling thoughts, all that stuff. I'll be “like, body, you're fine. We're in your house. We are safe. Don't have to freak out.”

And some boundary scripts that you can use, [00:17:00] you can say, “kids, I want to hear you first. I need one minute. When the timer beeps, it's your turn.” So for example, if I get on a call, I can say, “I'm gonna be on this call for 30 minutes. Do not talk to me until this timer goes off”, and then when the timer goes off, then they can talk to me. Just make sure you're off your call because you said a timer.

And then if your partner, like something you can say to your partner when you're experiencing this is you can say, “my body is talking. My body is telling me I need a break. Will you please do, whatever you know you needed to do at that moment, will you please put the kids to bed? Will you please clean up dinner? Will you please do this? My body is telling me I need a break right now,” and those are just some boundary scripts that you can use.

If you don't calm down in the talk stage, then your body moves to the shout stage and that can feel like overwhelm, ragey [00:18:00] energy. Urge to flee. This is like when you're in your car. I don't know if anyone has ever experienced this. Do you experience this, Lauren? When you're in your car and you're like, I just wanna drive away. I just want to drive somewhere that is not my home and I'm just going to keep driving until I hit water.

Lauren Ross: Yeah. I guess sometimes like when you're on your way home and you’re like I don't want the home responsibilities right now. Everything sounds better.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. Yeah. So if you have that urge, your body might be in the shout stage. You might also be, you might just shut down and not do anything. I've done that before where my body, just like I passed out because I was so overwhelmed and my body just said, “goodnight. I'm done.” And that's an extreme-

Lauren Ross: You're not listening to me, I’m shutting down.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. That's an extreme version of shutdown, but you might just be in decision paralysis or [00:19:00] not be able to do anything, and you just sit there and doom scroll the whole time. If you just wanna doom scroll all the time, that might be your version of shutting down and then your executive functioning is offline. You cannot think, you cannot plan things, you can't organize things- like your executive functioning skills are just not there, and that's what your body in shouting stage might look like. Triggers for it are stack demands, sensory overload, long unsupported stretches, and then conflict on fatigue. And if you're experiencing a lot of conflict, if you're tired. All those things can be triggers. So once again, know your triggers, know what's causing it, get a little bit curious about what's causing it so you can know what you need to offload or create more boundaries around or anything like that.

Lauren Ross: Helps you be more proactive. And you know what those things are.

Samantha Foote: And it might take some detective work 'cause you might just be sitting there being like, [00:20:00] “why am I so ragey right now? I am just mad at everyone and everyone is frustrating me right now.” And then think about it like, have you had a lot of demands placed on you? Are you sensory overloaded? Are there a bunch of lights on? Is there music going? Is there other things playing? Is your house cluttered? Are people touching you? Has that been going on a lot? Just think about what's been going on that might have triggered what you are going through, because we talk all the time about how you have to do that with your kids. If they're having certain behaviors, get curious about what's causing those behaviors. Get curious about what's causing your own behaviors so that you can mitigate them and have your body in shouting stage or complete overwhelm.

And that's the one of the first strategies that we talk about is to remove yourself from this trigger. If you are in the shouting [00:21:00] stage because your kids are touching you and they're all over you, like climbing on you and all that stuff, and there's another responsible adult in the house, excuse yourself from the room and say, “I need to go take a break. I need to remove myself from the situation. You need to watch the kids right now.” And then you can ground your body, get cold water, push against the wall, do paced breathing, deep breathing, any of those things like, look and see, name five things you can see, like we said in the other, in the talking phase. And then one sentence you can say is, “I am not okay, and I am making it safe.” Or you can say, “this surge will pass. I will ride it out.” It's just some positive self-talk to get you through that. And then if you need backup. Call someone in. When I was in really bad [00:22:00] overwhelm, right after I had my second son, I called everyone I knew because I was in complete overwhelm and nobody was answering their phone that day. But, I finally got a hold of someone and I got ahold of my mom, but she was like six hours away. So then she called somebody else and they ended up coming over to my house. But yeah, so if you need real help. Don't be afraid to ask.

Lauren Ross: Yeah, it's okay to ask,

Samantha Foote: And if, like that day I needed professional help actually. Like I was so overwhelmed. I was like in psychosis that day. There was like postpartum things going on, but I did not wanna call 911 because I was like, they're gonna take away my kids if I call 911. That is not true. So I've been told. My doctor was like, “yeah, you probably should have called 911.” So if things get so bad that you go into psychosis, [00:23:00] maybe go to the ER or call 911 because they're not gonna take your kids away for one incident. At least that's not the protocol. I'm not- people do crazy things. So I'm not gonna promise, promise that. I'm not gonna promise that. But the protocol is not to immediately take your children away like I thought it was. Yeah. But I know some people have had horrible experiences with that, but I'm just saying like that is an option, and the protocol is not to take your kids away if you are having, uh episode like that.

The next thing we're gonna talk about is boundary scripts for the shouting stage. You can tell the kids, once again, “I need five minutes. I'm gonna set a timer. I'll be back when the timer goes off,” and then you can tell your partner. You can say, “I am at a shouting stage. Please take full ownership at bedtime, I need to leave.” And they need to [00:24:00] respect that when you need that time, and if they're not respecting it, that's a whole other discussion.

These are just daily check-ins you can do with your body, and these are signs that you're sliding up the scale, so there might be tension in your body, tension in your jaw, shoulders, stomach, any of that kind of stuff. Your breathing might be shallow. So you're not taking really full, deep breaths. Your brain can't hold a thought for more than 10 seconds. And then sensory wise, like sound or touch feels sharp. It physically pains you. That might be a sign that you need to get some help before your body starts going up the scale.

And then for interruptions, if you're in the ragey stage, I would say do five deep breaths before responding if your kid needs something, [00:25:00] because it's so easy to be like, “what do you want? What do you need? Why are you bothering me?” So just take five deep breaths just to remind yourself that you're safe. You're in a, like a safe environment and your kid is just being a kid. Can they learn boundaries? Absolutely. But that's going to take time. And then you know, there's reset- the 60 second reset plans. You can whisper- Oh, in the whisper stage you can whisper, but in the whisper stage you can do deep breathing. You can sip water, you can roll your shoulders, anything like that. And then in the talking stage, you do three deep breaths, say five things that you can see where noise canceling headphones in the shouting stage. You can splash cold water on your face or drink cold water. Do wall pushups or say a calming sentence like an affirmation to help you [00:26:00] get back to where you need to be.

If you need a five minute reset. Then in the whisper stage, you can tidy one surface, you can step outside. In the talk phase, just set a timer and close your eyes for five minutes. You can hum. You can text a friend. You can call a friend and talk to them. And in the shouting stage, go to a low stimulation space. You can do deep breathing or pace breathing. Once again, you can rinse your face, anything like that. Then an end of day reset, you can shower alone once your kids have gone to bed, if you're not completely exhausted by then. Do a five minute stretch and then write down three wins. There is this positive psychology research that says if you write down wins from your day, it like trains your brain to be more positive. And so if you're in this stage, like if you're in burnout, then doing those things will [00:27:00] help you see the more positive things in your life, so you won't get quite so burned out.

Lauren Ross: Yeah.

Samantha Foote: Two things that you can start today is to go pick your 60 second reset and you can practice while you're calm. Just like we practice with our kids when we're, when they're calm. Practice your resets when you're calm. So practice your deep breathing, practice naming five things, all those different things, and then tell your family how you're feeling. You can say, “today I was at the whisper stage and that was like, that was a good day”, if that was a good day for you. Or, “I'm at the whisper stage, so I wanna get back to calm. Here are some things that I'm going to do” and tell your family what you're doing, tell your family how they can help you.

Lauren Ross: But yeah, I have an app. I've sent it to my boyfriend. It has helped him. It's called Finch. It's so [00:28:00] great. It's like a self-care app, but I really love it because you can set it up, when you open it, it gives you an affirmation, it asks you your mood. There's a thing that like, lets you name your emotion. It like lets you dig deeper, but it also has this first aid when you acknowledge that you're like over the edge a little bit and it brings up. Here are five different breathing things you can do, here are movements that you can do, like here's a rant, write it out. And then it has at the end of the day, what are your wins, what it has like all of these prompts and it's super great. It has helped me, I had to use it this weekend. I was like overthinking something and I told my boyfriend, I was like, “get out the app? I need to do some breathing exercises.” And we did. We sat down outside and we did it and it's, and it has a to do like you can, do your to-do lists and all of that, like it's super great. Highly recommend it. They have a free version. It's amazing for- it's helped me with my mental health and it's also helped my boyfriend. So I’m plugging it.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, we [00:29:00] will have, we'll have a link for that in the show notes about that, because that sounds exactly like what we were talking about, so that's perfect. I love it.

Lauren Ross: The whole time you were going over, I'm like, all of this is in this app and I need to talk about it.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. No, that's awesome. I love it. Thank you all for listening this week. If you do need extra support or you're feeling like you need extra support, definitely get that app. And then we do have our Neurodivergent Parenting community where you can come. And get the support that you need and that can be found at everybrainisdifferent.com. We will see you next week for part two of our series. Have a good day.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. We hope this discussion on neurodiversity has provided you with support, understanding and inspiration. If you're looking for more support, Or you can go to everybrainisdifferent.com and download the ultimate guide to parenting your neurodivergent child.