Why Mums lose their shit all the time
Mental load is toast. Also, fitness stuff is coming back! Scroll down for an update on that.
Preface.
Not all Mums lose their shit all the time.
Not all parents are Mums.
You don’t have to be a Mum or a Parent to lose your shit all the time.
You don’t have to be a Mum or a Parent to have an exhausted mental load.
I am a Mum.
I have an exhausted mental load.
I lose my shit all the time.
This is why.
La Cloche is a cafe in Wellington and I frequent it every week to meet my very good friend. We call our weekly meets “our therapy'“ and it’s a chance to breathe and let off a bit of steam built up over the week - a reset of the mental load, if you will.
My friend and I have declared our weekly meeting an absolute necessity because as busy, working, responsible parents, shit is hard and sometimes our mental load is close to boiling point. We’ve found that our own brand of talk therapy over a coffee works wonders for our the maintenance of a reasonably good standard of mental health.
My friend and I are “good mums”. You’ll see why this is in quote marks later.
To me, a “good mum” is someone who meets and sometimes exceeds the needs of their children.
I’m certainly not perfect.
I fuck up all the time.
To me, being human is also what a “good mum” is.
But being a “good mum” sometimes comes at a price.
We traded in our pre-kid life, for a new life of servitude.
One that most “good mums” don’t have much prior experience in.
And so we’re all learning. All the time. Constantly.
Today for instance, I learned that when my daughter goes on a sleepover, I should pack a battery pack charger thing for her phone. Not a charger, because there might not be a handy place for her to plug into, but a battery charger pack thing. You know what I’m talking about?
Remembering to do this for her next sleepover is added to my mental load. I must not forget this.
How about remembering requirements for school - is it library day? Is it swimming? Is the school fundraising for something and does my kid need to bring “a gold coin donation”? Have they brushed their teeth, is a favourite outfit clean and ready to go? Have they eaten breakfast? Did you make a doctors appointment? Do we need milk? Is my car out of petrol? Lunchboxes, homework, is the cat fed? What about the dog? How much special food for the dog do we have left?
This list goes on.
And this work is invisible. It doesn’t look like a lot to anyone outside of my brain, but when you add it to eleventy billion other things, it shouldn’t be a surprise when the ball gets dropped from time to time. Or in my case - all the time. I’m a “good mum” but I fail all the time due to an exhausted mental load.
And if you have an ADHD brain like mine, with dozens of other unrelated and less important garbage going on in there, adding an exhausted mental load is often the breaking point. And that is when I, and I’m sure others, lose their shit.
So how do we stop it?
That’s the million dollar question, eh.
Experts say increasing communication skills in the home is it. Asking for help when we need it. But asking for help, to me at least, is just another thing I have to do. Sometimes I’d rather be left to my chaos to just get on with things, rather than give the instructions for others. So yeah, nah. Asking for help, isn’t really the answer, at least not for me.
If we want to well and truly trash the effects of an exhausted mental load, I reckon we need to let go of the perfection, or this weird striving to be a “good mum”.
That’s not an easy thing to do when people praise us for being good at multitasking, and being a “good mum” always prepared for every eventuality. Being good at managing all the things, and being praised for it, means we often take pride in it. “You’re such a good mum!” they say.
And as natural born people pleasers, we take pride in being organised and on to it.
And when you’re told you’re good at something, it’s fairly natural to want to chase that praise.
And you know what? If your mental health is not impacted by an exhausted mental load, keep calm and carry on. None of this matters for you.
But for me?
Nah.
My brain is fried, and this year, I’m just not doing it.
I’m not much of a new years resolution kinda gal.
But this year, I will be trashing, not tolerating an exhausted mental load.
I’m pretty sure I can meet and sometimes exceed my kids needs while being an average mum instead of a good one.
What do you think?
Fitness fun and dodgy health.
Anyone who has followed my weird ramblings for a while will know that the origins of this blog was the road - my road - to getting fit and healthy in an anti diet, HAES-adjacent way.
I started it as a nutrition coach and personal trainer. I shared recipes, exercises, how to get off the couch, how to just do a few exercises at home. Exercise snacks. And then it evolved to a varied approach of writing about lots of different things. My business life, my mum life, my doggo, a bit of exercise, no recipes. And then it changed again to me taking out the trash. Squashing rubbish theories. Sharing peer reviewed studies. A how to do a life inspired by feeling good rather than measuring up against anyone else.
However.
Some of you know last July my health markers took a nosedive. I won’t go into the details here, but after what felt like dozens of medical professional opinions, appointments, and various medicines a diagnosis finally came about.
Essentially, my metabolic health isn’t in good shape. And that was causing my respiratory system to become unhappy. And that caused some of my previous excellent health markers to no longer be excellent.
So.
This year, starting today actually, I am working with my good friend Tara from Allergic to Sugar, to get those health markers back on track to where they need to be.
The food I eat needs to change. The amount of movement I do needs to change.
And I thought I might take you along the ride with me, if you’re keen on all that beginner level exercise, nutritionally dense food eating, and increasing strength and mobility in a sustainable way.
No diet talk. I hate diet talk.
But there’ll be a fair bit on how to get more veggies in. How to prioritise protein. How to drink more water. How to get my steps up. It’s a repeat of the journey I started back in 2017. I have the skill, the experience, and now, the desire to turn my health around. I’ve done it all before, and now, I’m doing it all over again.
Join me?
Thanks for reading this newsy. I really appreciate the time you give to me for this and I hope you get some value from it. If you have any questions you can reply directly to this email or if you’ve landed here from a link, email lou@sweatypals.nz. You can also follow me on Twitter X here, and instagram here.
Please remember while I am a qualified fitness trainer, and I’ve done some nutrition study, I am not a registered dietitian or nutritionist, nor a doctor of any kind. Information shared here is through my own lived experience, personal study or a peer reviewed study I have nerded out on reading and sharing with you.
Lou xx
Hella relateable. Thank you x Sorry the health stuff has been a rough ride and looking fwd to sharing in your journey back to good health!