Parent Burnout: Part 1-What Is It?

Burnout is when you experience emotional exhaustion, a disconnection with your feeling of “self”, and feel a reduction in self-fulfillment (happiness, satisfaction). When we are talking about parenting, this is when you feel overwhelmed, underappreciated, lost, and worn down. Been there; more than once. Even when your specialty is “kid stuff,” the process of working with and parenting children is tough and can run your parent (and person!) batteries down to the red zone. This blog series will break down what burnout in general (and specific to parenting) looks and feels like, what you can do to recognize if you are there, and the steps you can take to function and feel better.

Signs that you may be burned out as a parent:

Physical exhaustion:

Research on burnout, in general, suggests that the first early warning sign that something may be wrong is physical fatigue. This looks like feeling tired even when you have been in bed long enough that you should feel well rested, disjointed or disrupted sleep patterns (difficulty falling asleep despite being tired, difficulty staying asleep), and daytime feelings of sleepiness and mental slowness. When your sleep is off, this makes daytime responsibilities harder to manage and can lead to increases in anxiety and irritability. A sleepy parent is a grumpy parent. A grumpy parent is not an effective parent.

Emotional fatigue:

The next step in the parental burnout cycle is a feeling of emotional distance from their children and their role as a parent. This is a protective mechanism that your brain uses to try to conserve your mental, physical, and emotional energy levels. Parents at this stage of burnout will often say that they love their children but find it hard to spend time with their kids because it feels like too much. In essence, parents often report that although they love their children, they have a harder time liking their children and enjoying the process of parenting them.

The synergy of fatigue and emotional distance:

When we are considering the “big picture” of parent burnout, the physical and the emotional combine and then begin to spin and grow. Although your system is trying so hard to put you in “low battery mode,” the continued experience of fatigue builds over time, making the process of being with, trying to connect with, and managing kid stuff feels increasingly harder, more burdensome, and less rewarding. This creates a different version of you as a parent. This recognition of the parent you used to be, how you feel like you should be as a parent, and how you see yourself currently as a parent are often three different versions of you. This feeling “less than” as a parent can create distress that feels like it won’t change or end, shame, and guilt. These big, bad feelings are never good when they hang around for a while. As opposed to job burnout, parent burnout is a different creature. If your job drags you down, you can take some time off, switch roles, or even change to a new job or field of work. Parenting offers no such “outs.” This can lead to stronger and longer-lasting issues over time. When parents are chronically burned out, this can sometimes go from worse parent than before (using aggressive or more harmful than helpful parenting styles) to more dangerous tendencies like abuse and neglect.

These ref flags for parent burnout are important indicators that you need to act to make some changes. Struggling with parent burnout is very hard on you as a person, but may actually be harmful to your family and your children. Check out Part 2 of this blog series for some tips on steps to take to turn parent burnout around.

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