Dr. Sheryl Ziegler - Mommy burnout : how addressing yours will make you a better mother and create a better life for your children

For all those who are yet to be parents, including my children,
Isabella, Hazen, and Hudson; may you learn from us
and
For all the mothers who bravely shared their stories with me

Contents

Why Am I So Overwhelmed?
What Mommy Burnout Looks Like

Didnt I Used to Have Friends?
The Connection Between Mommy Burnout and Isolation

I Know My Mom Is Just Trying to Help:
The Difficulties of Creating a Support Network

How Many Likes Did I Get Today?
The Social Media Mommy Trap

I Just Want Whats Best for My Children:
How the Need to Achieve Perfection for Our Kids Adds to Mommy Burnout

He Just Doesnt Get It:
How Burnout Puts Our Marriages in Jeopardy

What the Hell Am I Doing with My Life?
The Working Moms Dilemma

I Just Cant Get It All Done...
The First Step in Fighting Mommy BurnoutBan Busy as a Badge of Honor

Im Sick and Tired, All the Time.
How Mommy Burnout Makes Us Sick

I have worked with children my entire professional life, so you might be wondering how it is that I am writing a book on mothers. Well, it turns out that when you work with children, you have to work with their parents to fully engage. For some therapists that is a challengebut for me it is my passion. Early in my career, I came to understand that the New York City youth that I was counseling in upstate New York would be going back to the same home they came from after they completed the program. I realized that much of the work that we were doing would have little influence over them when back in the chaos and poverty they were coming from. When I was accepted into a doctoral program in Colorado, I knew I wanted to keep working to help children, but that I also wanted to understand the systems that affect those childrenfamily systems, community systems, and employment systems. While gaining this understanding, I shifted my focus away from just children, to families. And as such, in the past fourteen years I have come to understand the plight of the American mother very well through my work. I have celebrated with, cried with, and mourned with thousands of mothers. I have experienced my own journey of motherhood in richer ways because of this connection to women, all that they endure, and how big they love.

I was born in Harlem, to a teenage immigrant single mother. As a young child, I lived on welfare and food stamps in New York City. I have experienced all levels of disadvantage. I have lived a middle-class life in upstate New York and I have lived an upper-middle-class life. I received higher education after being awarded a full scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. My experiences have given me the comfort to relate to just about anyone, and I work every day to make good on the promise I made to myself and my scholarship funders: that I would pay forward the gifts I have been bestowed any way I can.

This book is one of my pay-it-forward projects. I have witnessed thousands of mothers in their battle to raise their children well. I have listened to countless women say that they feel they are the only ones going through certain challenges in their parenting or marriages. After hearing these stories for so long, I started feeling like I was carrying around a huge secret. And although much of my job entails keeping secrets, I felt like this was a secret worth sharing. In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote of the problem that has no name in her landmark book The Feminine Mystique . By 2010, I thought that my work had allowed me to create a set of universal truths about motherhood today. And, by examining these truths and acknowledging them, I wondered if there could be a shift in the motherhood landscape. By giving a name to Friedans problem with no name, at least in the context of my work, could womens health and happiness improve? And ultimately would the lives of children improve? And hence, the problem, for me, became mommy burnout.

Let me rewind for a moment here. Throughout this time, I became a clinical director in a residential treatment center for kids, started a private practice, and tried to get pregnant to start my own family. And, I began to experience what I was observing in women. I couldnt get pregnant. I was commuting an hour each way on a busy highway to a high-stress job, was detached from my friends and family back in New York, and was newly married in Colorado. Just thinking about that time now brings me back to that space of stress, worry, and loneliness.

When a year had passed without getting pregnant, I sought out fertility treatment, resigned my position, went on a yoga retreat, and headed to Hawaii for a vacation with my husband. Lo and behold, I got pregnant with my daughter on that trip. At the time, when people told me, See, you just needed to relax! it took all my restraint not to snap at them. What were they talking about? I wanted this baby so badly I would have done just about anything, and they were suggesting that I was the cause of my infertility ? No, I refused to accept that narrative. I didnt want that story filling up my baggage.

Fast forward to today: I have three children. My second, a son, was conceived in Costa Rica, and my third, another son, I didnt have to leave the country for! The third child was the only one I didnt have to try hard to get. With all of the knowledge I have gained from working with women, from tirelessly researching the impact of stress and from seeking out my own treatment and support, I have come to terms with the fact that stress did play a role in my ability to bring my babies into the world. That was a tough realization, because all I had ever wanted was to be a mother. But now I see that I was enveloped by stress, and thought I could power through it to get what I wanted. Now I know better.

I felt the urgency to write this book just about the time that I had my second child and my world turned upside down. All of a sudden, I felt like everything went into fast forward. What was a lovely, manageable life for my husband Steve and me, with one child and my beloved dog, living in a funky loft, turned into having to move into a real house and juggling more than ever. My kids were two years and three months apart, and I felt like I had two babies at home. I was potty training and nursing at the same time. And the feeling of being overwhelmed at home was combined with an increased level of visibility in my work. I started getting media requests to do news interviews in my area, and essentially became a go-to therapist for all child-related stories. While this was exciting, it was also exhausting. When you go on TV, you want to look your best. I still had baby weight to lose. I had to do my hair. I had to look relaxed and refreshed. None of which I felt at the time!

When I returned from maternity leave eleven weeks later, I found going to work much easier than being at home. I was now a mama of two and of course more evolved and enlightenedI had more to give my clients. I took in peoples stories and viewed them through my new perspective. I began to see patterns of guilt, shame, regret, and doubt in mothers. I saw the experiences of motherhood in a deeper way than before, and was personally far more connected to the depth of their struggles. We were in the same place, and I could relate to my patients. This made me a better therapist.

I think the change in my life also made my work with children far more emotionally profound. I had a strong empathy pouring out of me for young patients. I struggled to hear their stories of being bullied, or of going through their parents divorces, or of trauma and abuse. I needed to regain my center so that I could continue to best treat them. And eventually, giving support to their mothers became a way I could do just that. By naming the symphony of issues that made mothers feel stressed, isolated, depressed, and like failures mommy burnout, and by working to provide a plan to help lift mothers out of this cycle, I could affect the lives of children in a broad way. I have transitioned through the stage of being a therapist and not being a mother to being a therapist who is now also a mother, and it has been through this transition that I have uncovered how serious burnout can be in motherhood.