Being An Overwhelmed Mom

Welcome to the Design Your Dream Life podcast, where it’s all about helping moms live their best lives. My hope with this podcast is you’re more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog lover, Chicagoan and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my lovely friend. I’m so happy to be here with you today for another amazing episode. Today we are talking about being an overwhelmed mom. I was just talking about my podcast and how there’s gosh, nearly 2 million downloads and just how incredible it is that we’ve created this community here. And I’m so appreciative of you. I was thinking about how I haven’t missed an episode even during both of my maternity leaves. Can you believe that? I don’t know anyone else who has done this.

Most of the other creators and podcast producers and coaches and entrepreneurs who I know, they just repeat episodes and it took so much planning and preparation and just some hard work to make that happen. And I know that was several months ago for my last maternity leave, but I was just reflecting as we sort of do on the year and I think it’s pretty awesome. So I’m patting myself on the back and thanking myself for that. And I want to thank you for being here and encourage you to thank yourself for the things that you’ve done this year that you really want to be proud of. With that, I think it kind of dovetails nicely into the topic of overwhelm, and you’ve heard me talk about this before on the podcast, how I really was able to do that and create so much content without getting into overwhelm even during my maternity leave.

And I continue to kind of use these tools and practices to not get overwhelmed. But today I really want to take a different approach with overwhelm.

I was talking with my sister-in-law and she was saying how much she loved a reel that I shared and it was like her favorite one and it was about overwhelm and she just said the way that I articulated it was different and it was really, really helpful. So that’s what I want to share with you today. Before we dive into that, I almost forgot, I want to make sure that you are on my email list because for this entire month it already got started, but for the entire month of December, I am giving away a ton of free stuff, free downloads, classes, bonuses,courses, content PDFs, just a whole wide range of different free gifts that I want to give to y’all.

So if you are not yet on my email list, you can get started by heading on over to momonpurpose.com/mantras, M-A-N-T-R-A-S, and you can get the new mindset mantras for moms. And if you are in Grow You, I just want to say that you will get all of these kind of bonuses and downloads inside your portal. You either already have them or they will be coming. So if you are not on the email list at all, this would be a perfect time to join. That way you can take advantage of all the free stuff. Alright, now let’s dive into overwhelm. I’m going to read to you the kind of text that I had in this reel, and then I want to break it down. Oh, by the way, if you are not following along, I sort of revamped my Instagram strategy. You can follow along @NatalieBaconCoaching, and I’m just sharing my personal life with the lens of how I’m applying these tools.

Like I want you to see how, these practices can really change your life. And I want to be an example of that for you. So that’s kind of this new approach to Instagram I’ve had for a few months now and it’s going really well. So come on over, Natalie Bacon Coaching and you can join into the community. You can send me a dmm, if you’re coming over from this podcast as well. And just let me know you came over from the being an overwhelmed mom episode and say, hi. Let me know where you’re from. I just, I’m not, it’s not lost on me. How amazing. It, it still is that, I get to connect with all of you from all over the world, let alone just all over the state or the country. It’s super amazing the internet, right? Okay, now let’s talk about what was in the reel.

Here’s what it said. Your feelings are valid, your overwhelm is valid, and that’s not who you are. You are not an overwhelmed mom. You are a mom who feels overwhelmed. The difference is everything. You are a loving, connected, supportive, amazing mom. That’s who you are. Okay, I want to dissect this because there is so much packed into this that can really be helpful for you in any season, whether it’s overwhelm or resentment or any other emotion that you are over identifying with. And the first part of this is to validate your feelings. So when I say your feelings are valid, your overwhelm is valid. That means validate how you feel. So your feelings are always coming from your thoughts, your primitive brain. There’s no kind of escaping this, and that’s okay, but you 100% can manage it. And that’s kind of the work that I do with my clients inside Grow You and the work that I’m teaching just all the time, it’s how do we manage our brains so that we can live our best lives?

And so part of this is knowing that your primitive brain is trying to protect you. And yet, sometimes it sort of misfires . So it puts you into a stress response when your kids are fighting, but there’s really no danger, okay? That’s like a misfire. There’s no real threat to your survival even though your brain thinks so. So when you feel overwhelmed, it’s sort of like that misfire, but you still feel the legitimate feeling in your body. And so part one is just validating your feelings. It’s saying, yes, yes, my feelings are valid. Yes, I am feeling overwhelmed. And it’s not because I’m doing something wrong. It’s not because I’m not good enough. It’s just because I am a human being. And this is part of the human experience. So you’re saying yes to yourself and yes to your feelings.

Part two, when I say, and that’s not who you are, you are not a quote overwhelmed. Mom is separating out your feelings from your identity. So when we say I’m an overwhelmed mom, we conflate our feelings with who we are. And your feelings are not who you are. Your identity is who you decide you are. You get to make that choice intentionally. Your feelings are just the vibrations in your body that you experience. And all healthy humans experience positive and negative feelings. So just kind of a side note here about toxic positivity. Toxic positivity says ignore the negative feelings and only focus on the positive. But real empowerment is embracing both positivity and negativity and then choosing intentionally how you want to think and feel. So sometimes you want to feel negative emotion, you get to decide that, but when it comes up on default, the work is to validate the feeling, but separate it from who you are. So switch your I am to I feel instead of I’m an overwhelmed mom, it’s, I feel overwhelmed. And then you immediately create distance between you and your feelings, and then it instantly becomes something temporary that you can experience.

Like you can feel overwhelmed without making it a part of you. So it’s, I feel overwhelmed and you can apply this to anything. Instead of I’m anxious, it’s, I feel anxious. Instead of I’m frustrated, I feel frustrated, instead of I’m resentful, I feel resentful. And so when you add in that feeling word, it separates out who you are from your feelings. Yes, your feelings are valid. You can experience and feel any feeling and it’s not who you are. It’s okay to feel exactly how you’re feeling, but it doesn’t mean that you are this way as a person.

And then part three is to decide who you are on purpose. You get to decide who you are. Your identity is exactly who you want it to be. You’ve probably heard that quote, “whatever comes after I am becomes your destiny.” So decide on purpose how you want to think about yourself. You can decide to think I’m a really good mom and I’m a human mom who gives herself grace for the messy parts. I’m fun, I’m loving, I’m connected, I’m energetic, I’m amazing. Fill in the blank intentionally. And don’t use negative feelings to do it. I promise you this is such a simple tool and yet it has a profound impact. So if you are gearing up for the holidays or planning vacations or just anything else that is going on in your life right now that is creating overwhelm for you, it’s your brain that’s creating the overwhelm. And simply start shifting the way that you think about overwhelm by saying, I feel overwhelmed. And that is going to give you that perspective, that awareness that the overwhelm is something you can experience.

It’s not who you are. And it can be temporary. I have such a healthier relationship with overwhelm now I feel it from time to time, but it’s so rare. I think as someone who used to identify as type A feeling overwhelmed, sort of came as a badge of honor. Like it was just part of the territory. And that doesn’t have to be the case at all. And it’s not for me anymore. So I want to be an example of that to, you that if you kind of think back to how long you’ve been overwhelmed. Another side note, I’ll never forget that I was once coaching a client and it was with respect to overwhelm. And she said that this, what I’m about to tell you is what really changed it for her. I said, how long have you been feeling overwhelmed?

And for her it was decades. So it didn’t matter what the season was because she had been feeling overwhelmed basically since college. And that was the big aha moment for her, that it was her brain.

And while all feelings are valid and you can experience all feelings, if you just think about sort of a plate of hors d’oeuvres and on the plate, there is a wide variety, let’s say like 20 different hors d’oeuvres. And each of those hors d’oeuvres identifies a feeling you get to decide which you take and which you leave. And on default, your brain will likely pick overwhelm. If you don’t want your top three feelings to include overwhelm, you don’t have to pick it up anymore. And this is only available with kind of practice and and mind management. But I want to bring it up here because it’s so powerful to just know that it’s available to you, that the overwhelm comes from the way that you’re thinking about your circumstances. It doesn’t come from your circumstances, but because you have a wicked smart brain like we all do, your brain quickly jumps to the feeling.

And if it’s in the habit of feeling overwhelmed like it was for my client for decades, then it’s even faster. Your body has memorized that feeling. So as much as you don’t want to feel overwhelmed, your body feels really safe feeling overwhelm. So in this episode, kind of the the crux of it is really just separating out your feelings from your identity. But then what you can do after that is start to create better feelings. And you do that by creating better feeling thoughts. So practicing intentional thought creation. And that will get you to shift your mindset in a really effective way so that you can feel how you want to feel so that you’re consciously choosing what hor d’oeuvres you take off that platter. And again, it’s not that you’re ever going to get rid of that primitive brain. So overwhelm will come up from time to time, but there’s a huge difference in that experience. And the one where overwhelm is your number one emotion. So much so that you have over identified with it as part of your identity. So if you just take this one exercise away from this podcast and stop saying, I’m an overwhelmed mom, and you start saying, I feel overwhelmed right now. I like to place my hand on my heart. That physical touch is a form of self-soothing. Just take a deep breath. That is huge. It will separate out who you are from your feeling and it will empower you to process the feeling and then decide consciously how you want to move forward. This kind of whole perspective is part of what I call clean thinking, where we’re separating out thoughts, feelings, and actions from the circumstances of our lives. And when we say I am, fill in the blank, I am overwhelmed. We’re sort of mixing ’em up. We’re mixing up feelings with our thoughts and we’re making it who we are. And when you can get to clean thinking and separating out feelings in their bucket, from your thoughts, from your actions, from the facts, oh my goodness, life changing my friend.

Because then you can decide on purpose how you want to think and how you want to feel. And I never want you to think something or feel something that doesn’t feel true to you, but your brain defaults to one thought and one feeling, and there are hundreds available to you that will feel true. So if you have a hundred things to do, overwhelm, isn’t going to serve you. But you might not want to be happy about that. Maybe you want to feel empowered or confident or capable or curious why you decided to do that and and commit to that. There are countless, I think, ways that you can create stories. And that’s just what a thought is, right? It’s a story about your life. And so I think that mindset work sometimes gets a bad rap with toxic positivity and just kind of being delusional.

But that is not at all what I’m ever suggesting. I’m suggesting noticing and knowing that there is an option with respect to how you think and feel and choosing thoughts and feelings that empower you, that feel true to you, that help you is the best way to create your life. And if you are kind of combining feeling overwhelmed or other negative emotions with your identity, that is not going to be helpful because if we say I’m overwhelmed, it creates so many problems for us, right? And we feel kind of stuck like we have to change our circumstance. And often we can’t do that. And so it’s a very disempowering, we then become a victim of our lives. And I’m suggesting and teaching and coaching the opposite to become empowered and powerful so that we can live our best lives. Alright, my friend, give this exercise a try. Notice all week long if you are combining your feelings with your identity and separate them out and just say, I feel whatever that emotion is, I feel overwhelmed, instead of I am overwhelmed. Let me know how it goes. I’ll talk with you next week. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about Grow You. My membership for moms, where we take all this work to the next level.