Ep. 20 Preventing Holiday Burnout for the Working Mom

This is Lacey Jones with Elevate the Individual. Episode 20 Preventing Holiday Burnout for the Working Mom. Welcome back. I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving break. I hope you were able to maybe you try something new. Whether you made it or you ate it. I hope that you relaxed. I hope that you had a chance to maybe create something. And I hope you had a fun time. And if you didn't, that's okay too, right? Life is 50 50. Sometimes we enjoy Thanksgiving holiday and sometimes we don't. But I'm glad you're back for another week on the podcast. And this week we're going to focus on the working mom. Now, I know the phrase working mom seems a little redundant because I've never met a mom who doesn't work, whether inside or outside of the home.

But chances are, if you're a mom, you are no stranger to hard work. So as you listen, feel free to apply the concepts to your personal situation and the work that you're doing, whether that's inside or outside of the home, or both. But as we chat today, I really want to dig into the concept of feeling burned out or feeling oh so done with our responsibilities and our obligations as working moms. We've all experienced the roller coaster that life has offered the past two years, and now we're right in the midst of the holiday season.

Our Halloween candy is hopefully long gone, and our Thanksgiving feasts have all been cooked and eaten and cleaned up. And it's time to turn our attention to Christmas traditions and festivities and all that that brings with it. But overwhelm can quickly set in as we attempt to juggle too many things for too long, or we set unreasonable expectations for the different activities and experiences we organize for our family. So burnout can set in when we experience a prolonged sense of overwhelm. And nothing good has ever come from a burned out mom. And this state of overwhelm can be the result of juggling way too many things for way too long without any sense of relief or reprieve. And I think it's a feeling we as moms are very well acquainted with. And when we're at work, we have demands to meet, and then we take that work hat off.

We have the demands of home and family to meet. And sometimes we're wearing both hats at the same time, and we end up dropping a ball or two or three or four. And when we do, we can compound all of that with thoughts and feelings of guilt and shame. And it's so easy to tell ourselves that we should be doing better as a mom or a better as an employee, or we should be a better partner or a better boss, and we should just be better, right? Well, these thoughts and feelings, they're going to seriously compound the issue when we already have this state of overwhelm. So how do we know if we're headed for or if we're currently in a state of burnout? Well, first steps first, if you're starting to feel extensive overwhelm over a period of time, you need to push the pause button, and you got to do this really quick.

Check in with yourself and ask some questions. So, number one have you lost motivation in a certain area or two of your life? Do you have a general sense of failure? Are you feeling defeated? Have your thoughts turned negative over a prolonged period of time? Or are you no longer finding joy and satisfaction in something that you once enjoyed doing? As you ask yourself these questions, and as you gain an awareness of your current emotional state, you can then use the Ctfar model that we've been working with in our previous episodes to gain insight into how your current thought process may or may not be serving you.

So a quick summary for those who need a recap of that model. We start with our circumstances. This is the sea line, and these are the facts of a situation, including the words that people say to us.

Circumstances are neutral, and we naturally have a thought about them based on our different perspectives and experiences in life. So one circumstance is not going to generate the same thought in different people, but the thought that is generated is going to create a feeling or emotion within us. When we're in that specific emotional state, we take certain actions, or on the flip side, we don't take certain actions. And these actions create a result for us. And the super cool part of this model is that the result we create is a direct reflection of our thoughts. So knowing that our thoughts ultimately create our results, it can be so empowering when we see that we're no longer at the mercy of our circumstances, it doesn't mean it's always easy to take ownership of our thoughts. So this most beneficial work that we'll do is through the lens of personal grace rather than judgment. So with that quick review, we're going to check in in our fictitious friend Marissa, who is currently experiencing a state of overwhelm this holiday season.

Well, not based on one person in particular. You might find some similarities between you and Marissa. So Marissa has signed up for a 25 minutes coaching session with me, her lovely coach, because she's feeling overwhelmed and burned out, and she just doesn't want to keep feeling that way. And as Marissa's coach, I'm first going to ask her some simple questions to kind of better understand what's going on.

This is often called the Thought Download, where Marissa shares her current struggles and frustrations. And there's no fear of judgment in this space. It is a safe space for her to just unload her thoughts. That's my job as her coach is to create that safe space. So after a couple of minutes or so of listening to the thought download, I have learned that Marissa feels like she has so much to do between now and Christmas, and she hasn't even started shopping, and she's worried about the budget.

And her kids are sick, and work is more stressful than ever because they are just so understaffed. Now, there are many directions that I can go with this coaching session, but I'm going to start with the first generalization and start breaking it down into facts. Marissa, she stated that she has so much to do between now and Christmas and that she's feeling overwhelmed and burned out. Now, it's important to point out that no two people are going to agree on what qualifies as so much to do and what doesn't. When we generalize and we move to more dramatic thoughts, we really pile on unnecessary emotion that keeps us stuck, and it hinders our ability to move forward.

So using this Ctfar model that's going to help us organize our brains, it's going to show us where our power lies, and it's going to bring awareness to the ways that we're either limiting or empowering ourselves. It's really a beautiful tool when used properly. And this is where I start building Marissa's model. She stated that she's feeling overwhelmed. So in Marissa's feeling line, we're going to write overwhelmed. And if you have pen and paper, you can write down the models. You can kind of map it out and follow it along.

But as this is Marissa's unintentional model, we're going to take a look at her thought process leading to that feeling of overwhelm. We want to see what story her brain is naturally clinging to that's leading to this emotion. And Marissa has stated that she has right so much to do. Well, this is the thought that we're going to use in her thought line. So now at this point, I want to know the facts. I want to know what's in that circumstance line, right. What is happening or what is Marissa seeing that is causing her brain to naturally believe that she has all of this stuff going on that she has to do? Well, after a couple more questions, marissa is able to identify 23 items on her to do list.

She has gotten very specific, and she's quantified what she means by so much. So now Marissa is looking at her to do list, and her thought is like her natural thought is, I have so much work to get done. And when she is thinking this, she starts to feel rather overwhelmed. Well, when Marissa's overwhelmed, she tends to eat or scroll on her phone and social media, and she avoids working. She also doesn't come up with creative solutions that would allow her to conquer more than one task at a time.

And she doesn't consider, like, removing anything from her to do list or delegating items to coworkers or family members. So as a result, Marissa has completed very few items on her to do list, which is a direct reflection of her thought that she has so much work to do. Now, if you remember, I had previously stated that burnout is a prolonged sense of overwhelm. So instead of feeling joyful and confident and productive, marissa is moving forward, feeling even more overwhelmed, and she is making like a beeline for burnout. So let's build a model to more fully understand how burnout might impact Marissa. I'm sure you have some thoughts about it, but what we're going to do is we're going to place burnout, this prolonged sense of overwhelm in the feeling line.

And if you remember, in our last model, marissa wasn't able to complete the 23 items on her to do list, so her circumstance line still reads 23 items on the to do list. But at this point, Marissa is starting to believe that she is never going to complete her list and that she's a failure. Right. We've gone from overwhelm. We're headed right towards burnout. So the thoughts get a little more intense, but this leads to a hopeless feeling of being burned out. And the scrolling, the eating, the social media, the avoiding work, it's created a negative effect in her life, preventing her from using her brain to think creatively and proactively.

She's now using these unhealthy coping mechanisms, or buffers, to prevent her from feeling her emotions. Right. She's trying to seek these quick hits of dopamine rather than the pain of failure and disappointment. Right. Who would choose failure over a quick hit of pleasure and dopamine? Well, as a result, Marissa is failing to take care of herself, and her to do list is growing.

So now what? How does Marissa overcome this feeling of burnout? Well, I would recommend that Marissa keep working with her amazing coach. That's what we're here for, right? You have someone who can offer this outside perspective and help organize all the little pieces of your brain, and it's such a valuable tool as you try to get unstuck. So, Marissa, keep doing what you're doing. Keep working with your coach. But this is where we're going to push pause, and we're going to go back to the unintentional model because I want to show Marissa something. It's most likely that Marissa believes she's feeling burned out because she has 23 items on her to do list. She is looking at the circumstance and blaming it for creating her emotions. Right. She's blaming all of those line items for the way that she feels, and she's saying, Well, I'm just scrolling because I have to do this on my to do list.

I'm just scrolling because I have to do that. Right. She's now blaming the reason why she's using the unhealthy coping mechanisms on her to do list. But I actually want to point out that there's a space between the circumstances of our lives and the emotions that we feel. If you notice, there's a sneaky little thought line between the circumstance line and the feeling line, and it plays a huge role in our emotional health.

So that's where we focus. Now, Marissa currently has that list of 23 items, and at certain times in her life, 23 items is going to mean different things. In her current state of overwhelm, she's again choosing to think that she's a failure, right? Which then creates this feeling of burnout. But in maybe previous times of her life, she may have thought something else. Maybe she was previously able to generate the thought, well, this is doable. If I create a plan which caused her to feel a little more hopeful, or maybe she might have thought, Well, I need to get help, which created a sense of being proactive. She could have chosen to believe that she can edit that list to focus on the most important items, feeling a little more confident in her ability to prioritize, right? Depending on where she's at emotionally, what's going on in her life, the experiences that she's had, she's going to create a different thought about those 23 items with everything she's got going on.

But just notice that with each new thought, the circumstance never changes, but the emotions did. Marissa is going to accomplish different things based on her emotional state. Her emotions are going to drive her actions and her lack of certain actions. So we can walk Marissa from a state of burnout to a more peaceful and restful state by simply offering her a different perspective and story about her to do list.

We can build new intentional models with each new story to see which one better serves Marissa. And each new intentional model we work through with very deliberate thoughts is going to look different for each person. This is where you start to own your journey. Your journey can take all the time you need it to as you try on new thoughts that move you along the path in a way that feels genuine and authentic to who you are.

And another tool that can be helpful along this journey is boundaries. If you remember from the previous episodes, boundaries are made up of two parts a request and a consequence. And we state the boundary with an if then statement. So in this context, we're going to create boundaries that are self imposed as we work our way to a more restful state. Now, please remember that the consequences of boundaries are not tied to our emotions, their actions. For example, a self imposed boundary for a mom who's trying to juggle work life and home life and all of the above life. It might be this. If I'm not finished with this work task by 03:00 P.m., then I will stop at three.

I'll put on my mom hat. Now, keep in mind, if you're going to set a time limit, you want to set one that is reasonable for the amount of work that you'd like to accomplish. And then you're going to get your booty to work and you're going to accomplish that task within the time frame. And you might have to adjust your expectations or your distractions or your quality of work expected, but that work is going to get done.

And parentheses, right, this is actually a really great training for another day, and maybe we can focus on that in the coming weeks because it can be so helpful just how to get work done in your allotted time frame. So stay tuned for that. But to kind of come back to where we were, when we combine boundary work with thought work, you're going to create self imposed boundaries and follow through with them. You will generate hope and peace and this sense of accomplishment within your life that really is the greatest form of self care. So as you work on your thought process and notice the different feelings that come up for you, take time to push pause and truly see what's creating your feelings of overwhelm and burnout.

It's not the to do list and it's not the demands that everyone else is placing on you. It's your thought process in regards to those demands and that to do list. As you seek to take responsibility for your emotional state, you will empower yourself to accomplish great things and you're just going to kiss that burnout goodbye. It is valuable work, but it doesn't have to be completed alone. Now, I mentioned that Marissa has a beautiful, wonderful coach working her through this.

So if you're a mom or a teacher and you're just tired of juggling all that life throws at you, reach out to me. You don't have to keep moving forward in this frazzled state of overwhelm and just say, well, it's the holidays. I'm supposed to be overwhelmed, or It's the end of a semester, it's end of a quarter, and the kids are crazy.

I just am supposed to feel this way. No, it really is possible to create peace for yourself, not just for your kids or your students, but for yourself this holiday season. And it can be fun. So hop on to Laceyjonescoaching.com. You can schedule this 25 minutes discovery or recovery call with me and we'll come up with a game plan for you. So let's work together to create this holiday season that you envision and that you look forward to.

Now, just a side note here, if you find this podcast to be anywhat useful, please share it with a friend. The best way to help a podcast grow is by word of mouth and sharing the link to your favorite episode. So on behalf of your friend and myself and your kids and your students, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to put in the work. Let's do this together.