Why I Created Lead Like a Mother: My Burnout Story as a Working Mom Therapist

You look “fine” on the outside, but inside you’re exhausted, snappy, and one more email away from losing it. In this first episode of Lead Like a Mother, Christina Runnels, licensed therapist, author of Boldly Both: A Mom’s Guide to Balancing Career and Family Without Guilt, and fellow high-achieving working mom shares her own burnout story and explains why this podcast exists. You’ll learn what working mom burnout actually looks like (beyond just being tired) and walk through a simple 3-Minute Burnout Check-In so you can see where you really are and take your first small step toward relief this week.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• The real signs of working mom burnout for high-achieving women (physical, emotional, and mental)
• Why burnout hits ambitious working moms in leadership roles especially hard
• How the mental load and invisible labor keep you stuck in “always on” survival mode
• The 3-Minute Burnout Check-In you can do today to gauge your burnout level and choose one thing to drop, delay, or delegate

Mentioned in this episode:

• Free Working Mom Burnout Check-In PDF 

Transcript

 Hey friend, if you are a high achieving working mom, see if this sounds familiar. You wake up, you're already tired. You move from getting everyone out the door. To back to back meetings, to school pickup, to dinner, to bedtime. And of course, by the time you finally get to sit down, your brain is still running through emails, the to-do list and thinking about who needs what tomorrow.

On the outside, you look put together. On the inside, you feel burned down, overwhelmed, and literally one more email or school notification away from just snapping. And somewhere in there you thought, why can't I figure this out? Other moms seemed to be handling it. So what's wrong with me? If that is you, you are exactly who this podcast is for.

Welcome to Lead Like A Mother. I'm Christina Reynolds, licensed therapist, speaker and author of Boldly, both a Mom's Guide to Balancing Career and Family Without Guilt. And this show is all about helping high achieving working moms find real work life balance, recover from burnout, and lead well at work and at home without losing themselves in the process.

In this first episode, I'm going to share why I started this podcast. While you feel the way you do and give you a quick, simple burnout check-in, you can use today to see exactly where you really are and what needs to change. First, let's get into it. Okay? This is where you do the jingle.

Alright, so let me take you behind the scenes for a minute. Okay. As a therapist, I've sat with so many working moms who look like they're doing it all. I mean, they're leading teams. Some are running businesses while managing households. Of course, remembering every appointment, birthday, oh my gosh. The school theme days, don't get me started.

They're also the ones that the teachers, bosses, and family members tend to go to when. Something needs to get done, but behind closed doors, they are telling me things like, I'm so tired. Like I could just cry in the car before I walk in the house, or I yell at the kids and then I feel really horrible about it.

I've also heard I'm successful on paper, but inside I feel like I'm failing everyone. And I want you to know this is not just your story. I've lived a lot of it too while I was building my practice, speaking, riding boldly, both, and of course being mom, I hit my own version of burnout. I mean, I was saying yes to everything, holding the mental load for my family and my work, my practice, and I told myself, this is just what it means to be a working mom.

This is the season that you're in, and I should be able to handle this. But guess what? My body and my brain were saying? Nope, not a thing. I realized I was way more irritable, quicker to snap, of course, just waking up feeling like I never went to sleep, and I noticed that I really wasn't even actually enjoying the life that I had worked so, so hard to build.

And honestly, that was my wake up call. I had to admit. The way I was doing high achieving working mom life was not sustainable. I needed better boundaries. I needed different rhythms and a different story, a different narrative about what it means to be both ambitious and a good mom. Out of that process came my book, boldly both, and now this podcast.

Lead like a mother exists because you should not have to choose between being a strong leader and a loving present mom, and you should not have to burn yourself to the ground to be both. So let's get into what you're actually experiencing. Burnout for high achieving. Working moms often doesn't feel like falling apart.

It's quite the opposite. It looks like holding everything together, but at a cost that you're not willing to pay. And sometimes those signs that we feel or, or feelings that we're having can be, again, that irritability, snapping, which unfortunately really just comes to the people that you love the most.

Having a hard time to, you know, turning off your brain at night is often another feeling, or even just feeling detached or numb or just this overwhelming, heavy feeling and wondering, is this ever going to end? Is it ever going to get better? I want you to know it's not that you're weak or not cut out for this.

It's that you're running on unsustainable pace while carrying an invisible backpack, literally of mental load and emotional labor that no one else sees. Burnout hits high achieving. Working moms differently and uniquely hard because a few. Patterns that we have and that I've seen over time. First is perfectionism.

You feel responsible for getting it all right at work, at home, and of course in parenting. Another thing that comes up a lot is people pleasing You say yes, so others won't be disappointed. Like your boss, your partner, your kids, maybe even your parents. And the other thing we see and and feel a lot in a pattern is invisible labor.

Because you are the one that's remembering the school forms, the extra clothes, the birthday gifts, the school activities, what's in the pantry, what's on the calendar, what needs to be on the calendar, and no one sends you that email saying Thank you for that job that you're doing. You are essentially working multiple full-time jobs.

You've got your paid work, your unpaid work at home, and essentially the job of project manager for everyone's lives. Of course, your tired, of course, you feel stretched too thin. Nothing is wrong with you, but something is wrong. With the load and the expectations. Now, instead of just nodding along and moving on, let's turn this into something actionable that you can use today.

So if you're able, I want you to grab a piece of paper or open the notes app on your phone because we're going to do a quick, simple three minute burnout Check-in. And you're going to answer three questions around energy, resentment, and margin. All right, so question one is about energy. On a scale of one to 10, where one is completely empty and 10 is deeply rested and energized.

What is your energy level today? And I want you to write down the first number that comes to mind. Don't overthink it, don't qualify it. What is your energy level today? If that number is a four or below, see that as your body waving a little flag saying something needs to change. Moving to question two on resentment.

Who or what are you most resentful of right now? It might be a person, it might be a role you're playing. It might even be a situation that really just feels unfair, but I want you to write a sentence. I am most resentful of blank right now.

Resentment is often a sign that a boundary is either needed or it has been crossed. Third, we're going to measure margin. What is the one thing you can remove, delay, or say no to this week? To even cre, create just a little bit of space. And it doesn't have to be huge. It truly can be something small, like ordering dinner one night instead of cooking or saying no to an optional meeting, or even just letting that laundry.

Wait one more day. If you have what you need for tomorrow, letting that laundry. Just wait one more day and I want you to write a sentence this week. I will give myself permission to let go of blank. And guess what? That's it. In three minutes, you've just checked in on your energy, your resentment and your margin, and now you have a clearer picture of how depleted maybe you're feeling, a clue about where a boundary might be needed.

And one specific place that you can create just a little bit of breathing room this week, that exercise that we did in this work, this is the kind of work we are going to keep doing together on this podcast. Small, actionable, honest shifts that make a real difference over time. If this check-in hit home for you, here's what I need you to do next.

First, I created a simple, quick working mom burnout check-in PDF that walks you through these same questions, but gives you a few reflection prompts as well. You can grab it through the link in the show notes, and I want you to set aside 10 minutes this week to fill it out, and from there, keep it somewhere.

You'll see it. Use it as a starting point for the changes that you want to make this year. Second. If you felt seen in this episode or you got something you needed, I would love for you to hit follow or subscribe to lead like a Mother so you don't miss what's coming next and share with a friend who can use the same information.

In the next episode, we're going to zoom out and talk about three keys to surviving working mom life. F burnout time and mental load, and we'll talk about how to start shifting each one without blowing up your whole life because you are not failing. You are carrying a lot, but you don't have to carry it alone.

Thanks for being here for this very first episode of Lead Like A Mother. I'm so glad you're here and I'll talk to you soon.