Why People Pleasing Your Kids Keeps You Overwhelmed (And What to Do Instead)
Your phone buzzes. It's your darling child.
"Mom, I forgot my cleats. Practice starts in 20 minutes. Can you bring them?"
(This isn't the first time.)
Pretend this is a choose your own adventure book. Decide now:
A) Drop everything and go, or
B) Say no.
If you chose A:
You close your laptop mid-sentence. You run to his room, digging through the closet, under the bed, finally find them shoved in a gym bag. You speed to the school, resentful the whole drive, already doing the math on the work you'll now have to catch up on tonight instead of sleeping.
If you chose B:
You text back: "I can't today. You'll have to practice in the shoes you wore today, or sit out." You feel a pang of guilt. Then you go back to what you were doing.
Here's the formula most of us are running without realizing it:
guilt + no boundary = a resentful drive and a longer night
Choosing A doesn't actually make you a better mom. It makes you a resentful one, and it teaches your kid that "I forgot something" is always your emergency to fix, not theirs to learn from.
The formula that actually protects your week looks different:
a clear no + a small, honest guilt you let pass = an evening that's still yours
This is the exact kind of moment we work on inside 1:1 coaching. Do less isn't about doing less parenting. It's about doing less rescuing, less over-functioning, less absorbing everyone else's forgetting as your own overwhelm.
PS Imagine getting that text and just... not spiraling. That's what 1:1 coaching builds, one moment like this at a time. Book a consult here.
HOT OFF THE PRESS
“Stress is somebody setting a piece of paper on your desk. Overwhelm is having like 16 pieces of paper flying at your face.”
There’s a big difference between being stressed about one thing and being overwhelmed by everything.
Sometimes, a little pressure actually helps us get moving. But when too many things pile up at once, pushing harder can actually make the problem worse.
You don't need more motivation, you simply need fewer things competing for your attention.
This is where so many working women get stuck.
We assume that if we're falling behind, we need to become more disciplined, manage our time better, work faster, or somehow squeeze even more productivity out of ourselves.
So we keep pushing.
Meanwhile, the real problem isn't that we're not trying hard enough. It's that we're trying to function normally while our brains are dealing with way too much at once.
This episode can help you recognize the difference between overwhelm and ordinary stress and understand what your brain actually needs when everything feels like too much.
Check out episode 290 here: https://tinyurl.com/OWWPod.
“Your job is to say what you actually want to say without making yourself or your message smaller.”
Avoiding a difficult conversation doesn't mean you're avoiding the discomfort. You're often just choosing a different kind of discomfort — the kind that follows you around all day.
We get stuck waiting for the perfect timing, the perfect words, or enough evidence to prove we're justified in speaking up. Meanwhile, the conversation gets bigger in our head.
And sometimes the thing we're most afraid of isn't even the conversation itself. It's what we think might happen afterward.
What if they're angry?
What if they're disappointed?
What if they don't agree?
What if I feel embarrassed?
But you don't have to control what happens next in order to trust yourself and move forward.
If there's a conversation you've been rehearsing in your head for days, weeks, or maybe embarrassingly long enough to qualify as a hobby, you're probably paying for that avoidance with your time and energy. Listen to this episode and discover a different way to think about the difficult conversations you've been putting off.
Listen to episode 291 here: https://tinyurl.com/OWWPod!
WORK WITH ME
1:1 Coaching Spot Open 📅
If having hard conversations fills you with dread, set up a free one-hour discovery session with me. We can figure out what's holding you back and get you the tools you need to say what you need to say.