About this Episode

So many moms are chronically overwhelmed. Yes, there is a lot on your plate and the responsibilities never seem to end, but is there ever a break from the overwhelm?

This episode unpacks 3 hidden causes that might be fueling your overwhelm. And, once you know about these hidden causes and learn how to address them, you might just find your overwhelm significantly reduced or gone altogether.

If you identify as a “Good Girl,” “Martyr Mom,” or “Eldest Daughter” you will definitely resonate with this episode.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

How chaos-seeking, control, and codependency fuel overwhelm and keep you in a self-perpetuating loop.
Real examples of what each pattern looks like in everyday life — from being glued to social media drama to overparenting, micromanaging, or overgiving.
Why codependency can look like kindness or responsibility but is actually self-abandonment.
The importance of recognizing compulsive behaviors as survival strategies rooted in trauma and fear.
How to start shifting these habits through therapy, journaling, and radical self-compassion.
Why learning to pause, breathe, and sit with discomfort is the first step toward breaking the overwhelm cycle.

Episode Resources

Codependent No More by Melody Beattie
The foundational book has helped me understand and begin healing her codependent patterns. A must-read for “good girls,” eldest daughters, and martyr moms learning to take up space in their own lives.

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you.

Free 4B Self-Care Framework© Guide: A great way to get started on your self-care journey, this guide provides an easy-to-use framework that makes self-care actually supportive rather than another burden on your to-do list. Get the Guide →
Rituals that Replenish: Instant Access Workshop: This DIY 3-hour workshop (1 hour per week) will help you get to know your true wants and needs and will help you develop the habit of practicing one self-care ritual in your daily life. Learn More →
The No Longer Last Journey®: Live Coaching Program: This 12-month program includes monthly coaching & community calls, classes, reflection guides, and weekly self-care reminders to help you overcome obstacles, improve your self-worth, and make self-care a sustainable and supportive part of your life. Learn More →

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, I am Mia. Hemstad I'm a wife. I'm a mom

of two kids, and I'm a trauma-informed self-care coach. I also live with diagnosed PTSD and depression. I started sharing my mental wellness journey online in 2017 when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. And since then I've heard from hundreds of women who all struggle with the same thing, putting ourselves last.

This is a struggle that's. Keeping so many women burned out and unhappy through no fault of our own. By the way, I've been working on my own healing as an abuse survivor since 2013, but when I became a mom, I really started to do the inner work of figuring out why I was putting myself last, and how to start prioritizing myself for the first time in my life.

This podcast is about sharing. All of those lessons with you. So if you're interested in hearing honest stories, life advice, and inspiration that encourages you to make your health, happiness, and wellbeing a priority, then definitely stick around. [00:01:00] Welcome to your no longer last journey.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast Mia here. Today we're gonna talk about the shocking reason why you are always overwhelmed, or rather reasons that are fueling your overwhelm and not helping you get to the bottom of why you're actually overwhelmed. So I would say there's primary causes of overwhelm and secondary causes of overwhelm, and today we're gonna be focused on the secondary causes 'cause they're more standard and easier for me to talk about and then hopefully.

As you peel back the layers of those other causes, you're able to get to the real reason why you're dealing with overwhelm. I mean, and overwhelm is something that all of us go through. So I hope, I hope you don't feel particularly pointed out. Um, you know, I've been coaching women for five years and overwhelm is definitely a.

Theme that comes up a lot. We start off our coaching calls by going around the virtual room saying, you know, everyone share two words to describe how you're feeling. And not a month goes by that not at least one person says overwhelmed. So [00:02:00] know that you're not alone and overwhelmed is a normal part of life, I think.

But. Hopefully what this episode can help you do is to give you more tools and points of awareness to help you realize when you are making your overwhelm worse and figuring out how to handle it and make it better so that it doesn't become this debilitating, paralyzing part of your life. I personally have really struggled with overwhelm.

I. Did not know how to handle it in the past and still to this day when something happens to me that's really triggering of past traumas in a way that I haven't experienced before, I can get really overwhelmed, but thankfully I'm able to recognize it and I have the tools I need to like move through. It doesn't mean it's easy, doesn't mean it's pretty.

I think sometimes we think that healing and recovering and managing our mental health is gonna look like this very like neat checklist organized. Process when sometimes it's like a lot of ugly crying, a lot of vulnerability, a lot of reaching out for help, and it's definitely not linear and it's definitely not [00:03:00] a mess free.

So, , I just wanted to start off that episode with that. , Okay. So the shocking reason why you're always overwhelmed. Remember I said there's primary and secondary reasons. Okay. Primary reasons could be literally anything. I know for me, a primary overwhelm. For me is always gonna be, well, hopefully not in the future, but right now and in the past, money is a huge trigger for me 'cause I grew up not knowing where my next meal was gonna come from.

Worrying about losing our home, worrying about my needs being met, you know, just having basic needs as a child of clothes, food, shelter, and those things. Not being a guarantee really has messed up my brain in a way that like money is a constant trigger for me. So. It can become something that makes me very overwhelmed.

But instead of addressing overwhelm, you know, you know, sitting with breathing through journaling, through that trigger that's causing and fueling the overwhelm, that primary trigger of money trauma, I tend to jump into secondary triggers of overwhelm [00:04:00] in order to avoid the primary trigger of dealing with my money trauma.

So what are these secondary triggers? And this is what I'm gonna spend most of this episode talking about. The secondary triggers of overwhelm are chaos, control and codependency, chaos control and codependency. And I'm gonna give examples for each because you'd be surprised how often all of us tend to do this.

Um, tend to engage with, seek out, participate in chaos, control, and codependency in order to avoid. Tackling what is overwhelming us. And I think underneath the question, what, what is overwhelming me is what am I scared of? What is scaring me right now? And I think if we tapped into that, it would help soften us to the problem rather than causing us to run away from it.

Um, like, oh, this thing is overwhelming, it's spiky, it's scary. I'm gonna run instead of, there's a version of me that's scared right now. She's worried about [00:05:00] something and I'm gonna sit with this version of me and try to understand and listen for what's really going on so that I can address the true problem, which is the thing that's gonna actually help reduce the overwhelm.

But instead, most of us, including me, I've really been working through this in therapy this year. I feel like every year of therapy, like there's like a, an overarching theme of an issue I'm dealing with. And this year you guys has definitely been codependency. Oh my gosh. Okay, so let's start from the top.

Chaos. Chaos seeking. What does this look like? We all know that person. Maybe it's you. I used to be this way. Who looks for chaos as a form of distraction. You're on Facebook looking for the latest tea, you're on Instagram looking for the latest C. When I say Facebook, it's because back in early motherhood when I was really overwhelmed, Facebook was still like big.

Okay? And so, you know, I'd see two people fighting about religion or politics or. Whether or not to take [00:06:00] their kid to the doctor 'cause it's a rash and there's all this fighting in the comments and I'm reading it and everything. And I'm not tending to my own problems. I'm not tending to my own self. You know, I barely had any time or energy during the early phases of motherhood and with what little I had, I honestly should have been.

Going on a walk, taking a shower, brushing my teeth, feeding myself a good meal, tidying my home, reading, doing something that brings me joy. Meeting with a friend. But instead, I got into this pattern of seeking out chaos every day, or the family group chat. What is the latest chaos? What's mom doing? What's dad doing?

What's sister doing? What's brother doing? And what's everybody's opinion about it? Okay. These, these are just a few examples of how we seek out chaos in our lives in order to distract ourselves and we get all involved and we wanna do something about it. And that's the control piece. So control is when we.

Overstep into somebody else's [00:07:00] life and try to control the person, whether it's how they look, how they dress, how they act, how they talk. This can also look like the parent that's way overly invested in their kids' performance. On the soccer team, you know, being way invested in whether or not their kid advances to the next level, whether or not their kid is on the bench or playing as often as possible.

Or, you know, being successful or a parent controlling that child's academics and being obsessed with if they're getting straight A's, or, control takes so many forms. It could even be like, constantly nagging your partner and over things that are stupid, but you are so overwhelmed by your own stuff and you're so scared of what's underneath it, and you're avoiding it, that you are now chaos seeking and then trying to control someone or something in your life.

Another example of this is controlling your diet to an unhealthy degree. Being [00:08:00] obsessive about every single thing that goes in your mouth to the point of stressing yourself out and stressing out the people around you. Control can also look like. You know, being super obsessed with working out and then if you miss a day being like so out of control and a mess because you need this thing in order to avoid the thing that's bothering you.

Um, another example is people who are very controlling of their environment, where they can't handle if their home is in disarray and they constantly need everything their home to look like. Nobody lives in it. That's another form of control. Okay? So there's so many forms of control, and ultimately what's underneath it is somebody who's seeking safety, somebody who's seeking stability, and somebody who's seeking to avoid addressing the messy, ugly trauma or trigger that is underneath the overwhelm.

Marker

Okay? And number three is codependency. Codependency. And I highly recommend you read the book, codependent No More. By Melody Beatie, [00:09:00] I will link to it below. This book is changing my life, and if you are eldest daughter martyr mom, good girl. You need to read Codependent No More. Because codependency is when we control somebody else to the point of hurting ourselves.

We become so obsessed with taking care. It's, it's controlled through taking care. Taking care to the point where we hurt ourselves, we overstep, and part of what fuels codependency is such a low self-worth and not really believing that you deserve time, energy, resources, opportunities, beauty, love, happiness, joy.

Experiences you are more comfortable with fueling all of that into somebody else as a form of taking care and codependency on the outside it looks really good. It looks very good Samaritan, it looks very like love your neighbor. Um, but it's so extreme to the point where you are. Not giving [00:10:00] yourself what you need and you are hurting yourself, and the most extreme version can turn into you becoming resentful of the person who you're taking care of.

Okay. It's like people pleasing in the most extreme form. Okay. And I definitely have suffered from this in the past because I grew up with a constant religious indoctrination that I am my brother's keeper, that I'm a sacrifice and die on the cross the way Jesus did, in the way that I love my, those around me.

And, you know, every time I even thought of doing anything for myself, the, the sermon on Sunday was like, look at how far Jesus went to care for you. You should be doing the same. And so God forbid that I prioritize my needs on any day because I should be giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. And if you also struggle with low self-worth, codependency can make you feel good about yourself, right?

Because you are taking care of your caregiving. And if everything and everyone around you, religion, authority, figures, parents, society, culture is telling you that this is the right thing to do, serving others is the right thing to do, pouring [00:11:00] out is the right thing to do. Then you have all of those messages validating your codependent behaviors.

, And these things, chaos seeking, controlling and codependency are compulsions. They're things we do so habitually that we don't even realize we're doing them. So it's really important, if you wanna stop this in its tracks to notice first the physical. Trigger emotional and physical trigger that comes up.

Notice where it comes up in your body before you act in the compulsion, and you're not gonna notice it at first until you've done the compulsion. You're chaos seeking, you're controlling. You know, you're getting in the group chat, putting in your 2 cents about what she did and what he did. You know, you are, um, commenting on your child's grades at dinner without thinking you are, you know, reaching out to that friend again to listen to them vent for three hours, even though you have things you need to do and you need to take care of yourself.

After you've done the compulsion, I want you to then step back and go, wait, what happened before that? [00:12:00] What triggered this compulsion to chaos? Seek to control to be codependent. It's only through the action of it that you're gonna be able to realize that you must have been triggered at some point.

Because that's the thing about compulsions. They happen so habitually that we don't even realize we're doing them until we've done them. And so. It's really important as you're in the process of figuring out, okay, I definitely do this, me, how do I unravel this pattern? You gotta be super compassionate because in the process of unraveling this pattern, you're gonna be still doing this pattern and you have to forgive yourself.

I know for me, when I started to become more aware of this pattern, um, I would go to therapy and I would just be like, oh my gosh, I did it again. Like I told myself that I wasn't gonna. Overextend myself and give more than I have. And then I did it again. I heard that this person was in trouble, and then I overgive, I heard that this person would, I didn't even, I, this person didn't even come to me, but I reached out to them and tried to figure out what they needed and then tried to give them what they needed, even though I didn't have that to give.

And why do I keep doing this? I feel so [00:13:00] helpless. I feel so powerless. I feel so stupid. I feel so ashamed. So many emotions come up when we realize for the first time that we have one of these three C's and it can really be mortifying. And the only thing I can say to you now that I'm more on the other side of this journey is.

You have to be patient and you have to recognize that it's part of the process. These messy feelings of coming into awareness and feeling embarrassed and ashamed and guilty and upset and angry. Feel them. Don't try to not feel them. Oh, I need to only be compassionate. Don't be angry. Don't guilt yourself.

You're gonna feel guilty, you're gonna be angry. That's normal. It's natural. Feel those feelings. I'm doing bilateral simulation right now 'cause I'm like kind of bringing up these emotions. Feel your feelings by doing bilateral simulation while you feel them Breathe. This brings both sides of your brain online, helps you to stay in the parasympathetic state.

Stay calm, basically, is what I'm trying to say. Feel your feelings because it's part of the [00:14:00] process of appealing and releasing this. This compulsion. , I kind of jumped ahead of myself 'cause now I'm talking about what to do about it. But I hope you can see what I'm saying when I say there's a primary trigger that's fueling the overwhelm.

And then there's a secondary trigger, which is chaos, seeking control and codependency. And the bottom line is there's a reason that you do this. That's what to me, helps me to continue to stay open and compassionate with myself is there's a reason that I do this, and therapy can really help us unpack the reason.

Journaling can really help us unpack the reason. Coaching can really help us unpack the reason, but there's a reason all of us, as human beings, we're all out here trying to get our needs met and we're all out here trying to protect ourselves. It's very primal. It's very normal. It's very natural. So as you dig into this, you need to have this foundational understanding that there's a reason why you do this, and it probably feels self-protective in some sort of way.

And as you journal through this and dig through this [00:15:00] and talk about it in group and coaching and therapy, you're gonna open up some wounds and some traumas and some triggers that are gonna demonstrate to you where this compulsion, , when you started it. Where it came from. Like I know in dysfunctional families that aren't able to have normal relationships with each other, gathering and communing around the latest chaos is one way that dysfunctional families connect.

Yeah. So maybe that's a, a trigger for you. I know it was for me, um, control controlling my environment. It's something that I was raised in. I was raised in an environment that always had to be clean and tidy, and I definitely took that into my adulthood. And was trying to control everything, and that was only making me miserable and exhausted.

Because as you know, when you have young kids, you clean one area, you look behind you, the area you just clean is dirty. You clean another area, you look behind you, the area you just clean is dirty. There's a level of letting go and permission of letting things be imperfect that has to happen.

So for each one of these things, [00:16:00] they require a different antidote in order to become aware of it and heal from it. I know for codependency, the bottom line for codependency can often be low self-worth, feeling like you don't deserve to be the focus and the main character of your life. So you go around making other people the main character because you feel so deeply uncomfortable taking up space in your own life using time, energy, and resources and money.

On yourself because it makes you feel comfortable and it feels familiar to let everybody else take center stage and let everybody else take up space and not you. And so I think that the, , the big problem with all these things, not only are they just like unhealthy behaviors that, um, keep us from taking good care of ourselves, but they make the overwhelm worse.

So basically you start out this pattern by being triggered. And then you avoid the trigger [00:17:00] through chaos, control and codependency. And when you avoid something, it only grows. It gets bigger. And then when you do the chaos control and codependency, you make your life more difficult and overwhelming. 'cause you're bringing in all these problems.

And then because you've been avoiding the original trigger, the original trigger becomes bigger and taking over your mind, your body, your heart, and you don't know what's going on. And then you come back around to the trigger again eventually 'cause you haven't dealt with it. And it's even bigger than it was before.

And so then instead of dealing with it, then you go back into more chaos, being more controlling, more codependency, and the cycle repeats itself. And so if you're like me and you're like realizing this like I was six months ago, and you're like, oh my gosh, I need to stop doing this. It is preventing me.

From taking up space in my life, it is preventing me from taking good care of myself. It is preventing me from doing what I need to do to be happy. How do I get out of it? And I would say is number one, [00:18:00] you need to remember that there's a reason why you do this and you need to start there so that you don't just sink into a shame puddle.

Number two, you need to get help with processing through it. Therapy coaching support groups. There's codependency support groups. You can also get more education on it so you can become aware of this. Again, the book Codependent Omar, is super helpful. You also need to practice self-awareness through journaling.

Journaling is really important with this. I would journal through what I was feeling before I did the codependent behavior. What my thought process was, you know, what I was avoiding and by doing the codependent behavior, how I feel after doing the codependent behavior. You know, I was really kind of like unloading what was going on for me mentally and emotionally before, during, and after these compulsions, and it really started to help me understand.

What was going on with me. Um, and that leads to my next tip for [00:19:00] like how to get through this and how to overcome this is you gotta get good at sitting with the ugliness of it, the discomfort of it, you know, a compulsion that I used to have. It's so much better now, but I still honestly do still have it, is I used to bite my nails a lot.

Now I just kind of like pick the skin around them, which I know is still bad, but it's like so much better than when I used to bite them. Okay. But that compulsion was visible. I could see it, and it made me very ashamed and it still does. And that's why my nails are red right now. It's a big deal for me.

Because I am allowing attention to be called towards my misshape and nails from years of abusing them, from years of biting them and picking them and peeling them. So that's part of my process of healing my relationship with that and overcoming that compulsion and dealing with it. But I think until you're ready to like face it and sit with the discomfort of that awareness and accepting.[00:20:00]

I do this to make myself feel safe. You can't get to the next step. You have to sit with how sad it feels and how out of control you feel when you are in the process of chaos, seeking, controlling, or being codependent and you hate it, but you can't stop it. It's gonna feel like that for a little while.

And I know for me. It felt like I'm on this. Rollercoaster and I can see that I'm on the rollercoaster and I'm like my. Smarter, more mature, more healed self. It's like get off the rollercoaster, get off, get down. And the rollercoaster version of me is like, it's too late, I'm on it and I can't get off it.

That's like the hardest phase of the healing journey because you see it happening, but you can't stop it. And if it's anything I know from the last 10 years of therapy and self work is that you can't skip that part of the process. You have to be willing to witness [00:21:00] yourself on the rollercoaster. And then when you come off the rollercoaster, you have to be there with open arms to be like, we made a mistake.

We're gonna learn from this. We're gonna get help with this. Either that's therapy coaching, we reading, learning, journaling. We're gonna do something so that the next time the invitation to the rollercoaster comes around, we decline the invitation. And that leads to my next point, which is. After you have witnessed the compulsion and not acted on, it takes time to get there.

You need to sit with it. Sit with that discomfort of not jumping in to save somebody, not jumping in to control somebody or something. Not jumping in to seek chaos. Let people fight and give their opinions about the stupid thing in the group chat and just watch it happen. Not jump in, don't get on the rollercoaster, sit with the [00:22:00] discomfort and go, why do I feel the need to jump in?

What am I avoiding? What am I scared of? And after you breathe through that and hopefully the emotions come down, maybe you can grab a piece of paper or the notes up on your phone and just kind of jot down like what came up for you. What am I scared of? What am I overwhelmed by? What am I avoiding? And you would be so surprised at what comes up.

And that's the really cool thing about facing our compulsions, our toxic behaviors, our patterns. On the other side is like deep self knowledge, like realizing who we really are underneath. The chaos seeking, the controlling, the saviorism, the codependency, the hard work, all this, the identities and layers we place on ourselves and project to the world.

What's underneath. That's the beauty that comes from not getting on the rollercoaster, deciding to sit still, deciding to breathe through the, the emotions, and then checking in with ourselves with those questions. [00:23:00] That's where the growth happens. This messy. Challenging, vulnerable, difficult facing of ourselves that can really help us learn more about ourselves and then eventually learn to love ourselves better and take care of ourselves better.

I was nervous to make this episode 'cause I felt like it was very like philosophical and esoteric. But I hope with the examples I gave, it's very concrete. Um, again, codependency is something that I am really unpacking and I can't recommend the book codependent No More Enough because it's been life changing for me in realizing how quickly I avoid giving myself what I need and I'm quick to give other people what they need.

I'm the ultimate caregiver. I know why I'm like that now because I was the middle child of 11 children. My parents weren't always around doing their job. So the responsibility to raise and care for my younger siblings often felt to me. So it makes sense that I am wired to assess people's needs and to fulfill people's [00:24:00] needs, but that's why I'm so passionate no longer last as a mission for women and especially for mothers.

Who had to be the good girl and are now the martyr mom, because without this, we will become resentful. We will burn out. We will not fulfill what we came here on this earth to do. Whatever it is that makes you happy. And unfortunately, a lot of us end up being really depressed, high functioning, depressed, high functioning, anxious, and we deserve more than that.

You deserve more than that. And that's what's so important. And if you were raised and trained to believe like you are your brother's keeper, it's good to help others. It is. But the moment you helping others starts to impact negatively, your ability to take care of yourself and to be the healthiest version of yourself and the most cared for version of yourself, then that's not taking care, that's codependency and it's unhealthy.

I like to say that no longer lasts, doesn't mean me only, [00:25:00] or me first all the time. It just means me too. It means I also, with the limited time, the 24 hours in a day, the limited money, the limited energy, limited resources, I also deserve to be on this list of who gets care and who gets to fulfill their dreams and who gets to get what they need and show up and live their life.

I also get to be on that list, so. I hope you'll choose to keep practicing being no longer last, even though it's really hard, even though these compulsions are coming up. And I hope the next time you see chaos coming up in the group chat or you know, people fighting on Instagram about the latest political nightmare, or you feel the urge to comment something that's trying to control your child or your partner, or you feel the urge to reach out and save someone.

'cause you don't wanna address what's really going on with you. [00:26:00] I hope that this episode will help you pause, take a beat, breathe through it, and connect with yourself so that you can continue healing. Because I can't tell you how much more self-compassionate, self-aware kind to myself, I feel.

Codependency has been this monster in my closet that I hadn't addressed because I didn't have language for it. And now that I've been in the work on this for like six months, I feel like I've unlocked a new level and the confidence and the self-love that comes with that is so powerful, and I just wish for you to feel that too.

That's all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, I'll link to the codependent no more down in the description as well as some other great self-care resources and I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Okay.

[00:27:00] This podcast was produced by Aura 17.

This podcast is a production of AURA XVII