3 Tips To Immediately Do When You Feel Mentally Burnt Out
EPISODE 3
by Dianne Jimenez
This article takes 8 minutes to read
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Hey, welcome back! Thank you for spending some time here with me. In today’s episode I’ll be sharing with you my 3 tips to immediately do when you feel mentally burned out – like D.O.N.E., your brain’s fried, there’s no more processing power left in there, it feels like mush. You get the picture.
For years, I’ve prided myself on being a great multi-tasker. But soon enough, I became a mentally burned out mom with zero patience and lots of guilt, after the fact. Over this last year I’ve come to realize 3 things that I’m going to share with you today!
1) It’s OK to NOT do ALL and EVERYTHING myself.
There’s a time and place for things and it all doesn’t have to be done right away – or by me!
For instance: Making supper and school work
Often when Onnig comes home, he’ll take care of the kitchen clean up while I get the kids ready for bed or if I myself have a meeting to attend right after dinner he’ll handle the cleanup and kids stuff. Sometimes, he even tackles folding all the laundry while he’s watching a show on Netflix and I’m STILL in a meeting.
How did we get here?
As cliché as it sounds it’s communication. We’ve often watched those dating and relationship shows where all the guys wanted to know exactly was: “what do you want?”.
No dancing around the topic. Just be specific and to the point.
Want to go from 'drowning' to peace of mind?
And so we’ve had dancing and skating and it’s true – it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it ends up in more disappointment or resentment in the end. So we’ve dropped all that and just come clean.
Can you help me with the laundry? We have so much and I can’t do it all by myself. We’re 5 in the house contributing to all of this.
And that’s it.
Without emotions flaring or sounding like I’m blaming – I just state what I need and what my limitations are. I also emphasize that we all contribute to the amount of laundry that we have.
Just to be clear also, this wasn’t a one-time conversation. Life IS happening. And we’re not always on top of what needs to be done, right? So the occasional, “hey …” just to get us all on the same page, doesn’t make us feel so alone.
2) To let go of things I can’t change (or change right away)
Parenting and balancing life out? It really messes you up sometimes. So the first thing I do: pause – take a breath and take a step back.
I often ask myself,
‘What’s the goal?’ or ‘What’s the point of all of this?’
I let the basic needs guide me especially when I feel stressed and running around with things half done.
find out how families with 3+ kids tackle the beast: laundry!
Here’s another example: The after school chaos and changing the sheets.
– yes it’s another laundry example because it’s never ending, right?
This exact scenario happened just the other night where Onnig was in a school board meeting after work. He had to stay at work for the 2+ hour Zoom meeting that started at 7pm.
I was running the show at home AND it was change-the-sheets day for the boys. The sheets were washed; they just needed to be folded and new sets put on the beds.
Ugh… Another task to add to my already long list
…after helping one revise for next week’s French quiz, the other making sure he’s on top of his homework and answering the older one’s questions about holiday traditions. He had a presentation coming up… All this while prepping supper!
The evening was going to be longer because I still had baskets from the previous day’s load. It was never ending…
In my mind, and physically: There was A LOT going on.
Seems like I couldn’t let go of anything at this moment because everything NEEDED to get done and at the same time, it felt!
But, instead of adhering to my sheet rotations, fold the recently washed and put new ones on the bed, I went with my girlfriend’s bright idea
- just use the same sheets I just washed
How to get your kids started with laundry
Oh what a time saver!
The only thing though, I still had a load of their blankets to dry.
So I asked 1 kid to switch the load for me and get those blankets dried right away since they take over an 1 hour to do and we’d be cutting it close to bedtime.
I realized that I was trying TOO hard or expecting way too much of myself – for what though?
Ticking off all the points of a good mom and being on top of all things in the house? There’s no such prize. I checked.
3) Feel good about the small wins, they count!
This is something we, as parents, have to acknowledge and put a spotlight on from time to time.
Often we feel like we’re in a losing battle with the whole ‘trying to get organized and stay on top of our kids’ activities and schooling’, plan get-togethers and playdates, etc. that we forget the many wins we’ve accomplished throughout our day:
Let’s start celebrating the simple things, like:
- Getting up and enjoying those few seconds of silence after a long night of interrupted sleep from kids waking with accidents or bad dreams.
- Coming home and seeing that the beds were made by them and you taught them that! Or,
- Having 5 minutes alone-time in the bathroom or in your car to surf the net , check in with friends or scheduling that long- overdue appointment with our doctor.
3 things to establish now before losing your s#!t later on
Celebrate the tough wins too, like getting a workout in: whether 5 minutes or an hour. That’s huge! I totally give myself a pat on the back just for meeting my daily water intake of the day.
It’s the little things.
Still not sure what I mean?
If it all can’t be done, then what’s the ONE thing you can be happy with, when you complete the following sentence:
- At least I got (insert to-do item) done, and I’m OK with that.
This last one takes a mindset shift about TIME where, I know you know this, but let me just press on it so it sticks:
Everyone gets 24 hours/day, no freebies or extras. There’s only so much we can do within that time.
So, where we decide to focus our time, determines the success of our day.
Our focus can either be split in a million different ways (like in the supper and laundry examples I just gave) OR, and here’s where that 24 hours isn’t so limiting after all,
… put 100% focused on 1 thing… for a specific amount of time.
So that could mean a 10 minute chore, 30 minute laundry session with little helpers or someone taking 20-minutes to tidy up the kitchen at the end of the night, while the other is finishing up with folding or putting the kids to bed.
YOU decide.
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And here’s a bonus realization:
Forgive ourselves way more
This is something I have to remind myself of every time. And I’m going to get real vulnerable with you.
I have that recurring scene in my head from when I lost it on my kid when he was 4 and acting up in pre-school that it was affecting his school work and we were called in a few times by the director.
That scene of me lecturing him with full of emotions in the car;
It plays over and over in my head whenever I see him today – at 11 years old – lose it at a level 10 for something that’s not a level 10 issue.
He’s ultra hard on himself and he feels like he’s the worst.
I cringe every time I think of it and it breaks my heart a little bit. I can’t believe that I’m telling you this right now.
I feel an extreme amount of guilt and pain in my heart when I get reminded of that memory. It wasn’t my finest parenting moment at all.
But what I do right now is:
- stop. Forgive myself for holding on to those feelings and shame, and for putting my son through that experience.
- Let it go and put our focus on helping him bounce back from feeling like the worst person ever, and
- give him tools to help him work through his struggles, similar to the ones I’m listing today.
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Let’s do a quick recap on the 3 tips to immediately do when you feel mentally burned out:
- Tell yourself that It’s OK to not do all and EVERYTHING yourself
- To let go of things you can’t change (or change right away)
- To feel good about small wins. They count and add up!
- Bonus: Forgive ourselves way more.
Well that’s it for me!
I hope you found today’s episode helpful and got 1-2 takeaways from it.
If you liked this episode, I would appreciate a review on whichever platform you’re listening to. Also, if you find that my tips or examples on today’s episode will help guide fellow parents, then by all means, please share the link of this episode with them!
Thank you for spending your time with me today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week! See you next time!
Referenced in this episode
- For the water intake reminder, just search Water Drink Reminder on Google Play!
