The Hidden Struggle: Burnout and Executive Function Challenges in Working Mothers: Practical Solutions for Reclaiming Your Balance
Ever been mid-sentence in an important meeting when you suddenly remember you forgot to sign your child up for the school trip?
Or found yourself staring at a to-do list, completely overwhelmed, even though you usually feel on top of things?
If so, you're not alone. Many working mothers experience these moments everyday, which often point to a deeper issue: the connection between working mother burnout and executive function challenges. This post will explore the link between burnout and executive function skills and give you a few practical burnout solutions for working mothers to jump start positive change in your life today.
Understanding Burnout in Working Mothers
Working mother burnout isn't simply being tired. It's a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged or excessive stress.
Working moms are particularly at risk for burnout. We tend to not only be the managers of our professional work, but also often take the lead in household management and childcare as well, making work-life balance for mothers incredibly challenging. Even if you have a great partner in life, it can still be difficult to make everything work.
Not to mention for us middle-aged mamas, we often are involved in the support and caring for our aging parents as well. Sometimes referred to as the "sandwich generation," working moms who are taking care of both younger and older family members tend to feel that there just isn't enough to give, particularly to ourselves.
Executive Function and Its Role in Real Life
Executive function skills are the cognitive processes that enable us to plan, organize, prioritize, and manage our time effectively. These skills are particularly strained in working mothers who juggle numerous responsibilities.
Burnout can significantly impact our cognitive functions, leading to forgetfulness, difficulty focusing, and impaired decision-making. This creates a cyclical relationship: burnout worsens executive function, which in turn increases cognitive overwhelm. So why are we surprised that we're left spent at the end of the day?
And although executive function challenges for moms are particularly notable for those with ADHD, difficulties within the world of executive functioning can cause challenges for others as well who may be pushed to their cognitive limits with all of the demands put on them.
Recognizing the Signs of Burnout
Burnout symptoms manifest in various ways. Physical symptoms may include fatigue, headaches, and sleep disturbances. Emotional indicators can be irritability, anxiety, and a sense of detachment.
Cognitive symptoms, especially executive function-related, can include difficulty concentrating, memory problems, and feeling overwhelmed. These symptoms can manifest in daily life as missing deadlines, forgetting appointments, or struggling to complete tasks – all signs of how to recognize burnout as a working mother.
In real terms, you scheduled a client meeting at the same time as your kid's play at school so you need to fix that. And then you went home and realized that you forgot to call your mom back and you forgot to wash your kid's soccer jersey for the game tomorrow. And now you can't sleep because you're thinking about what went wrong today and wondering how you can possibly get it all done tomorrow. Enter the return of the vicious cycle tomorrow.
Most people go to social media or the internet in search of solutions, but often the advice that is most easily found is very "cookie cutter" in style, leaving many working moms feeling even more lost and critical of themselves when looking for ideas about what to actually do.
Why A Lot of Advice Falls Short
Often, the advice given to burnt-out working mothers revolves around just practicing generic “self-care.”
You might be told to "take some deep breaths" or "just say no to requests" but without the real support needed to make sustainable change.
A lot of advice fails to address the systemic and social factors that contribute to the problem, such as unequal division of labor and lack of support systems for burnt-out working mothers.
Now we can't solve all of those problems here, but we can find ways to help you feel like you know where to start. And better still in our isolated online-based world…we can help you make a connection with other real working mothers who are working to make the same types of changes in their lives to find better balance between work and family responsibilities.
Because why not learn from each other? Let's lean into that creativity that lives within you and give you a chance to brainstorm and learn with other amazing working mothers across the world.
But what can I do today, you might ask?
A Few Ideas to Get You Started Today
Here are three actionable strategies to try today:
Learn to prioritize ruthlessly (and assertively): Identify 2-3 tasks that are absolutely necessary today (like it feels as if the world will end if you don't do them level of importance) and focus solely on those today. It's much better to do a few things well than to try to do everything poorly. Systematically prioritizing can dramatically reduce your daily stress if done consistently.
Pick your calendar style and learn to live by it: Decide if you're a tech-based calendar or a paper calendar type of mama. And now add in everything you need to do (in and outside of work) for the next week. Don't trust your memory- it just adds to the overwhelm. Effective time management starts with a reliable system.
Pick ONE wellness or self-care strategy to start today: When I say one, I mean one. But you do actually need to find time for yourself today, even if it is taking 5 minutes to breathe and look out the window from your desk. Or maybe it is to close your screen today while you eat your lunch. Whatever you choose, make sure it's realistic and focused on YOU today. Practical self-care doesn't need to be time-consuming to be effective.
These are a few basic ideas, but know that the trick is to try strategies long enough to know if they work. No one strategy will work for everyone- you need to build your personal toolbox of strategies that work for YOU.
Remember that you are a beautiful work in progress. Today is your day to start letting go of the false belief that there is a "correct" or "perfect" version of you that you haven’t reached yet and start to love the person you are NOW.
So Now What?
Whether you're struggling with executive function skills for a known reason (e.g., ADHD) or an unknown reason (just feeling completely spent and spread too thin), the challenge of balancing work and family responsibilities as a working mother is real. Usually rewarding, but sometimes completely overwhelming.
Know that you are not alone and that a community of support can make a significant difference in overcoming working mother burnout. Empowered Focus is here to help.
We offer a variety of services, from 1:1 coaching to online learning modules paired with supportive group coaching opportunities to help you learn, share, and grow with other amazing working mothers across the world.
You can learn more about our burnout solutions for working mothers by looking at our Services section. Or send us a message on our Contact Us page to see if our services are a good fit for you.
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Disclaimer: While Dr. Liz is a licensed psychologist, the information provided herein is intended solely for educational purposes. Services offered by Empowered Focus, LLC are not to be considered a substitute for mental health therapy. Individuals requiring mental health therapy are advised to seek support from a qualified mental health provider in their respective localities. A valuable resource for locating such providers is Psychology Today.