My Facebook hasn’t been updated in forever, my website hasn’t been updated in a while. I’m still here. I’m still coaching. So what happened?
ADHD Burnout happened.
At the end of October 2023, I lightheartedly told one of our family friends at the dance studio, “I just have to make it to February 1st. That’s when my class ends.” He looked at me sympathetically. “It’s only October. That’s a long time at your pace.” I gave him the mantra I always used when I was overscheduled, “It’s fine. I thrive in chaos.” It wasn’t fine though. Between my own schooling, homeschooling my kids, extracurricular commitments, and running my own business, I was at 60+ hours a week and that didn’t even include cooking, cleaning, or self-care. I was drowning in chaos.
My own class ended on February 1st, but it seemed like every time I dropped something, competitions, dance performances, and promotional events for my business seemed to pick up. That pattern continued until June when all their activities ended. My Mom and Dad had heard my frantic energy on the phone throughout the spring and offered to take the kids on vacation for 2 weeks. At the end of the 2 weeks, I felt physically rested, but I was still mentally exhausted when I thought about tasks that felt like the things that had led to this exhaustion. Was I suffering from burnout?
Almost everything I read about burnout was related to careers. I wasn’t feeling burnt out about coaching, specifically, but what about my role as a stay-at-home-mom? I don’t have set hours or a boss setting expectations, but I’m essentially on-call 24/7 for the needs and wants of a family of 5. Maybe this is career-related burnout, just not in the traditionally defined sense. (Note: Stay-At-Home-Moms, I see you doing multiple full time jobs. You are totally valid in feeling burnout, even if others don’t recognize it.)
The Causes of My Burnout
Spoilers: It involves time blindness, people pleasing behaviors, and guilt. You know, the trifecta of ADHD, resulting from a lifetime of not being diagnosed or treated.
Time Blindness: Since I was agreeing to activities that were in the future, I couldn’t really judge the amount of time available for new tasks. It wasn’t until I had to do all of them that I realized that it wouldn’t work. By that point, I felt obligated to continue. My daughter’s dance teacher, Ashley, tells the kids all the time, “Just because it fits in your physical schedule, that doesn’t mean it fits in your mental and emotional schedule.” I had planned to physically attend all of the activities scheduled, but I hadn’t considered the mental cost of transitioning constantly throughout my day or the emotional toll of constant running.
People Pleasing: As a people pleaser, I tend to say yes to everything and then figure it out later. You can probably guess how that turns out. Sure, it feels great to tell someone I can do something for them, but it doesn’t balance out the stress, as I try to make it work in a complex schedule, or the disappointment I feel when I can’t follow through with my promise.
Guilt: Finally, I had to address the guilt from past COVID-impacted years that led to us committing to more than we could handle. We had really locked down during COVID, due to our interactions with an immunocompromised family member. This had occurred when my son was just getting old enough to really be involved in our social and academic enrichment programs. Once we started back into our extracurriculars, the kids and I were eager to make up for lost time and opportunities.
I want my kids to be educated, well-rounded, and compassionate human beings, but let’s face it, opting out of any one activity isn’t likely to prevent them from being successful or happy in life. We all have to make choices, based on our limited time, energy, and resources. This was my chance to model that balance for them and help them learn at a time when mistakes aren’t high risk.
Recovery
In a lot of articles about burnout, they talk about changing jobs or taking a vacation or leave of absence. That’s not a possibility as a stay at home mom and homeschool 3 kids. First step, find a way to avoid this scenario in the future.
I asked my family to help design some guidelines for future activities and scheduling:
- School, self-care, and family connection come first.
- Each kid can pick one parent-intensive activity (or short duration activity where I have to wait there).
- If your activity is less than 5 hours a week, you may also pick a longer duration activity if it is drop-off and/or doesn’t require much driving.
- Socializing and extra activities (parties or social gatherings for the activity) will be added little by little until we find balance.
- While Mom tries to balance the schedule, it’s up to each person to take responsibility for their own activities as much as possible by creating systems that help us get ready and prepared for our activities on time.
- If we begin to find that we are overwhelmed or neglecting school/self-care, we will work together to find where the schedule can be adjusted.
I also needed to take care of myself.
- Focus on adequate sleep, diet, and daily movement
- Make sure that I have some time that is protected from interruption, even if it’s just to walk around Target.
- I make time for single-focus relaxation. My relaxation often involves multitasking to avoid feeling unproductive and I’m not sure that my brain registers that I am relaxing.
- Quality time with friends and family. The kids and I bonded over Pokemon Go and went on regular hikes and walks to talk and play. In addition to a regularly scheduled virtual meeting with a friend, I set up a coffee shop visit with some of the other moms in my kids’ activities.
- Scheduled time for communication and connection. Each evening, my husband and I make time to talk. We check in with each other about our day, talk about things we’re excited about, and then run down the next few days to figure out logistics. Not only does this allow for better scheduling, but it helps us connect with each other’s interests and happenings on a daily basis.
All of these rules and guidelines are easy to implement when there’s nothing going on, but how is it working out in practice? Well, I guess I’ll have to let you know. Right now, the few one-off activities haven’t broken our schedule, but we also downsized the number of activities we’re working with. I’m trying to pause before offering to help or taking on new duties, but impulsivity is something we ADHDers know well, so I’ll take the progress I’ve made and keep trying to grow.
Are you struggling with Burnout? I’ve created a few worksheets to help you identify the sources of your burnout and a few resources to help you recover.