Moms carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. With never-ending demands from work, kids’ school and activities, holidays and birthdays, vacation planning, scheduling appointments…the to-do list goes on and on. Social media doesn’t help, as it can appear that other moms have it all together. But the truth is, it’s incredibly common for parents to feel overwhelmed in today’s world.
With so many things on your plate, carving out time for yourself can feel like a real challenge. Moms are often the last in line to have their own needs met. That’s why therapy can be so important, especially when life feels particularly busy and overwhelming. Taking that time for yourself is not at all selfish. Rather, you will learn tools and skills to help you manage overwhelm, assess your own needs, and develop an emotional toolkit to get you through those hectic periods of life where it all feels like too much.
Fitting a weekly therapy session into your life may be easier than you think. While many moms love seeing their therapist in a calm and soothing office environment, you may find it easier to have your session virtually if that fits best into your schedule. Or, you can combine therapy with exercise by meeting your therapist for park therapy in Queeny Park.
Regardless of what type of therapy works best for you, the important thing is to dedicate that time to yourself. This will help you find peace in the nonstop job of being a mom.
A St. Louis Therapist Shares 10 Ways Therapy Can Help Overwhelmed Moms in Missouri Find Peace:
1. A good therapist can help you recalibrate expectations you have of yourself.
It’s entirely possible you are trying to do too much for too many people over far too long a period. The fact that your mom or sister can do all of the things does not mean you can or should. A good therapist helps you see yourself so you can set fair goals and expectations.
2. You can rediscover your strengths with the help of a therapist.
Sometimes, when you feel failure falling like rain, it’s because nobody is highlighting your strengths. Or, it could be you are not working within your own strengths. A therapist can help you discover that you do not need to implement or execute every idea you have – sometimes you can plant the idea in someone else’s head and they can do it. You don’t have to do it all alone.
3. Your St. Louis therapist can help you analyze your mental load.
The work of a mom runs about 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. We do not know if we will be called out of a dead sleep because someone threw up, a 4 pm meeting needs to be moved because we suddenly need to take someone to the hospital for an x-ray, or literally any number of emergencies only a child can manufacture. And that is not even discussing the mental load.
The mental load refers to making appointments; signing up for soccer; regularly practicing reading with your seven year-old; making sure your 12 year-old has her bag packed for a sleepover; handling every email the principal sends; and ensuring you actually have milk in the house. It’s managing schedules, purchasing everything needed to run a household, and the emotional presence to be…well…present. Sometimes, a therapist can help you figure out how to redistribute workload and mental load
4. A therapist can suggest some calming activities.
Speaking of the emotional presence required to be present – a good therapist can help you learn mindfulness so you can counterbalance the chaos and be in the present. A therapist can help you train your mind so that instead of mirroring 270 Southbound traffic at about 5:05 pm, you can practice meaningful steps to embracing yourself and focusing on the moment. Mindfulness might sound like something your yoga teacher would suggest, but breathing techniques and other skills can ground you in multiple contexts – including traffic, as it happens.
5. Therapy is a form of self-care.
Self-care is a major talking point right now. It might be easy for you to set it to the side or think about how to approach it after you get a raise. But the fact of the matter is that self-care – meaningful self-care – can be taught. Sometimes it’s hiking in the woods by yourself. Sometimes it is a yoga class. Maybe it’s dancing in the kitchen. And the hour you spend away from normal life in your therapy session is also a form of self-care.
Whatever form it takes for you, self-care is making yourself a priority.
A therapist helps you tackle how to regularly and routinely incorporate helpful self-care into your life, as a lifestyle and not a gimmick.
6. In therapy, you can analyze your own needs.
Sometimes a big part of mom culture is pretending to be more superhuman than you are because you deny your needs for the benefit of those around you. If you have pursued a career in a “caring profession” (teaching, nursing, social work, etc) you understand this well: some supervisors have made a career out of exacting increasingly high expectations with incredibly low rates of pay.
It isn’t super human to pretend your needs are unimportant, but many of us have socially conditioned ourselves to forget or never even understand how to assess our needs, much less meet them. A therapist helps you do exactly that: understand how to assess your needs and then meet them.
7. Therapy in St. Louis can help you manage overwhelm.
A good therapist helps you adjust your thought process to manage overwhelm when it happens. It’s not a question of if, it’s when. We all get overwhelmed. The trick is we need ways to manage it better by directing thoughts to a better place than, “Well, x, y, and z happened because I’m an idiot.” There are better pathways – a therapist can help you discover them.
8. Your therapist can help you develop an emotional toolkit.
When strong emotions hit, it can be easy to blame yourself for whatever is going wrong. But healthier coping strategies exist, and therapy can be a place to identify what those could be for you. Maybe another option might be to phone a friend, go on a drive, or any number of things depending on the individual. The point is you want to create an emotional toolkit before you need one, and a therapist can help you practice these skills proactively.
9. Therapy can help you overcome negative self-talk.
We could all use a way to increase positive feelings towards ourselves and decrease our internal criticism. Many of us have grown so accustomed to hearing the negative voices in our own heads about our weaknesses and shortcomings that hearing that criticism becomes like a set body temperature. It is just our normal, our state of being. Imagine how much your quality of life would improve if you had someone teach you how to increase your positive feelings of self and turn down the volume on that internal critic!
10. A therapist can give you tools for moving through your day.
Sometimes brain fog, depression, grief, or any number of circumstances can make daily life routines hard. When these factors are impacting our lives, our executive functioning takes a hit and it can become difficult to complete tasks, stay on budget, and manage all your obligations. A therapist teaches you how to organize and execute your schedule and routine in meaningful ways.
If you are ready to explore how therapy could help you manage feelings of overwhelm and make life feel a little more manageable, reach out to us at Marble Wellness. Our team of therapists specializes in maternal mental health and understands the demands on moms today. Better days are ahead!
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Additional Counseling Services at Marble Wellness in St. Louis, MO and Chicago, IL
Counseling services designed to help set you on a path of living a more fulfilled, calm, and happy life.
St. Louis
Our St. Louis team of therapists have a variety of training backgrounds and areas of expertise. We specialize in anxiety, depression, grief, chronic illness, therapy for men, couples, and maternal overwhelm. We can also help new moms with various postpartum concerns, moms in the thick of parenting, and moms with teens. We can also chat from wherever you are in the state with online therapy in Missouri and online therapy in Illinois. No matter where you are in your journey, we would love to support you.
Chicago
Our Chicago team of therapists offer a wide range of mental health services to help our clients through the different challenges and hurdles in their life. In addition to anxiety, depression, grief, therapy for men, and maternal overwhelm, we are specialized in professional burnout, therapy for breakups, and love partnering with working moms.
