Welcome to become a calm mama. I'm Darlyn. I'm your host.

And today I'm going to talk about the parenting stress cycle, which I'm

sure you are very curious about. And you're

probably thinking, does she live at my

house? Does she know what's going on in my life?

Am I in a stress cycle? How will I know if I am in one?

All right, so we're going to clear up all of those questions in this

episode. I like to start talking about stress with

this little story or vignette. Okay, so imagine you're

walking your dog at night. Now, I have dogs, and I do walk them at

night, and I live in a place where there are coyotes. Imagine that you live

in a place where there are coyotes, and you're out walking your dog at night,

and there is a pack of coyotes, and they start chasing you,

okay? So you're there with your dog, and then here comes a pack of

coyotes, and they start chasing, running towards you right then

and there. Your brain is going to activate your stress

response. It's going to quickly assess the threat

and decide whether you should run, stop and throw rocks

or go hide in the bushes, right? That fight,

flight or freeze. So you

run, right? You're like, okay, I'm going to run away from these coyotes.

Now, when you are running, when we think about a stress cycle, what you're doing

is you're dealing with the stressor. You're dealing with the thing

that can do you harm, that external circumstance that

is creating the stress response. So you run.

Ah. Okay. Now imagine you get back home, you

come in, you close the door, right? You close that door. You're like,

you're technically safe because you're coming inside,

and you close the door, but your body actually doesn't know that yet.

It still has all of that stress juice

running through your system. Like, the stress response got

activated, you ran, and you're creating all that

stress juice to activate, to respond to the

environment. And you get inside and you close the door, and the stressor

is dealt with, but the stress juice is still there. So now once you're

inside and you're safe, it's time to deal with all that stress that

has accumulated in your body. It's time to complete the.

The cycle. The stress cycle. So how do you do that?

You do that by getting your breath back, you know, like, start to.

Okay, whoa, whoa. That was it. Oh, my God. Maybe you tell

someone what happened. You walk in the door, your family's there. You're like, you won't

believe this is happening. What just happened? There was a pack of coyotes. It was

chasing me. And you're like, ah, right? And your family comes around

you and they give you a hug and you start shaking and maybe

crying. And now when all that

release has happened, you've let go

of the. You're not in stress. You're not in the stressor anymore. You're not in

that dangerous environment. You're inside and you've dealt with like allowing

some of that stress juice to go away. That means that you've

had a stress cycle and it has been completed, which is like a big

yay, right? Completed my stress cycle. Now

we're gonna talk about parenting stress cycles and what they look like in a minute.

But I want you to imagine the same scenario. Your moms, okay?

Imagine not all of you, but for the most part now

you are like outside, you're getting chased by the

coyotes, you're freaking out. You get home

and you need a minute to like, come down

from that stressful experience, right? You need a

chance to deal with that stress juice. But instead you

walk in and all of a sudden there's another stressor. You

walk into the house and your kids are arguing and your husband is yelling at

them. Or you deal with that stressor. And then you head to the kitchen and

you notice the dishes are piled in the sink and there isn't any meat thawed

for dinner, and you serve cereal instead. And you tell yourself how much you suck.

And you get into bed and you're just like, I am just terrible at

being a mom. And you're still, you know,

giving yourself negative messages. You're still creating a negative,

stressful environment with your own brain. And this can

go on and on and on. Because what happens

to us as moms is a lot of times we deal with a

stressful situation, and then immediately

there's another stressful situation. You know

what I'm talking about? Let me give you an example from parenting, from my

own parenting life. I love this story because it makes me laugh.

All right, so I had like a one year old and a three year old.

I went to the grocery store and the baby, the little one year

old, was in the cart in the, like, you know, basket area, like the part

that they sit in. And my 3 year old was hanging

on the side of the shopping cart, like, okay, I know it's not you. You're

not supposed to do that, but that was what was happening. And we were in

the checkout line and he was kind of hanging on the side. Now he doesn't

weigh much, right? He's three. He's hanging there. And

the little one says, you know, like, cart starts to want to get out,

right? They don't want to stay in the shopping cart. They don't want to go

through the line with like the stranger checkout person. So I picked

the baby up and I put it on my hip. And what happened was the

balance of the grocery cart was. Was then tipped.

There was no longer centered. And so my younger son,

who was hanging on the side, the shopping cart started to fall

on him. And I grabbed the shopping cart,

full grocery shopping cart with one arm,

pulled it up off of him so that it did not fall on him

while still holding another baby in my arms.

Mamas, you know, right? Like, we are incredible. We

can do this kind of stuff. So this is why I tell this story though,

is because finish checking out, figure out if

the kids are getting the balloon or the lollipop or whatever's happening in the line.

I walk to the car, to the parking lot. I'm in the parking lot

unloading, and this person, this clerk who

works at the grocery store, says, nice save,

mom. And I turned to him and I was like,

huh? He's like, nice save

inside with the grocery cart. Like you caught it

from catching your kid, you know, falling on your kid.

I was like, oh my God, that's right, I

did. That was crazy. And it

was him acknowledging what had happened. That was the only reason why I

remembered. Because probably right then and there, the

little ones started to argue about who's getting the balloon. And you know,

my three year old was really rambunctious and I'm worried he's not going to like,

stay near the cart and is he going to go mess with all the water

bottles and are they all going to fall and like, is he going to stay

close when we go back to the parking lot? And how am I going to

get two kids in the shopping cart while also emptying the groceries into the

cart and putting the cart away? But how do I put the cart away and

leave my kids in the car? All that chatter

is me going into another stressor. Another

stressor, another stressor. That's what it's like to be

a parent. We have so

many stressors coming at us all the time

and we don't really have a chance

to deal with that stress juice.

So then what happens to us is that

something else happens in parenting, like

misbehavior. And all of a sudden

we are in the pack of Coyotes like, the

misbehavior becomes yet another stressor

that we cannot quite deal with calmly because

we have been in an active stress spiral

for so long. This is one of the

things that I see with parents, particularly moms, because then they'll

say, like, they'll say to me, you know,

like, oh, my gosh, I don't know what's wrong with me. You

know, something happens with my kids, and I'm super reactive, and I can't stay calm,

and I act nutty. And I'm like, what the hell's wrong with me? I'm

like, you're a human being that is in a highly stressful environment,

and you're not taking any time to deal with the stress juice build up in

your body. Or there's moments

where you're handling that entire parenting situation.

You're super calm. You're not even thinking anything of it, and you're dealing like, this

kid wants this cup, and this one kids want this cup, and this kid wants

chicken nuggets, but he doesn't want chicken nuggets. So instead, you're gonna make a sandwich,

but then you're out of bread. So, like, okay, what about a bagel? And then

you're just like, I watch you moms. You're amazing,

and you're handling stuff really well.

But what you're not realizing is you're taking care of a bunch of external

stressors and not realizing that the stress

juice is being built up in your body. So then

when your one kid hits your other kid or they start having

a meltdown or they start screaming, then

you're in an activated stress response. All of a sudden you're like, stop

it. You know, don't do that to me. Or,

stop it. Don't do that to him. Or, you know, whatever that response is. I'm

gonna get into your responses, but what I want you to see is

that you have these external stressors,

right? We have these situations in our life. Some

life coaches call them circumstances. I tend

to call them situations because it's not like

one. A circumstance to me is like, you know, my husband

is unemployed or something like that. He's not. But, you know, imagine.

But that's like a circumstance, like a life circumstance. But

in parenting, it's kind of confusing because we're like, in a bunch of, like,

a lot of situations. It's kind of like a

saga. Like, there's just like, so many different moments, moment to moment to

moment, and you're sort of dealing with all of these situations

over and over and over again. And what you're not realizing is that stress

juice is being built up now.

What the heck is stress juice? Right? What am I even talking about?

I want you to think about that. Stressor is the

external. What's happening in the environment, circumstance,

situation. You know, you take your pick what you want to call it, and

then we have stress juice. This is the stress

response. It's a chemical cocktail. It's not a cocktail that

is delicious. It's a cocktail that is,

you know, life. It saves your life, Right? It's a

chemical cocktail of cortisol, adrenaline, epinephrine.

These are neural hormones or neural chemicals,

and they actually course through your body and they create that

intense stress response. They're good. Stress juice is

good. Like, we like it because it actually

helps us respond to our environment so we don't die.

But when we have a lot of stress

juice, we have. It's not good to live in chronic stress. It's not good to

live in this chronic place of stress juice. Stress juice, stress juice, stressor, stress juice,

stressor, stress, right? That's a cycle that

isn't going to feel great. Because

when you have too much stress juice, like, it's good in short

bursts, but when it's built up and not allowed to release,

then it becomes. It clouds your thinking, makes you less

ineffective, makes you less effective. It

makes you more reactive, right? This whole podcast is, calm mama,

Become a calm mama. Right? And so we're learning how to become less

reactive and less impulsive. We're trying to

figure out ways to feel more clarity, to have more

energy for our life, to have more time to be with our

kids and be present. So what I am

teaching you today is that one of the reasons

that you're in this stress cycle,

parenting stress cycle, is because of stress juice.

It's not because of the juice itself. It's because you never really give yourself

a chance to reset that stress juice.

So I'm going to teach you next week exactly how to

reset that stress juice. But I want to talk

a few more minutes about the parenting stress cycle,

okay? So when you're sitting there and you have a reactive moment,

and you're like, what the hell's wrong with me? Like, I was so calm earlier,

and now I'm all reactive, or I'm constantly

reacting with my kids like, that whole what's wrong with me?

Thing, or like, I'm a bad mom or I'm

messing up my kids, like, no, you're not. You're

human. You're human. Being you are a normal human

being who is responding to stressful

situations. There are stressors when

we raise kids. They're demanding, right? There's

a lot going on. Now think about some of the

behaviors that you're reactive to. A person

screaming, a person crying,

a person being aggressive, a person

arguing with you, peppering you with questions,

blaming you, lying to you. Now

if you were like a human, like a normal adult with another adult, parents

always say that, like I would never let another adult treat me like I let

my kids treat me, right? Because yeah, you would put

some pretty strong boundaries around that behavior. If somebody was

screaming, you're like, oh shoot, there's, there's, they're in

danger. If someone is crying, you're like, oh my God, I need to help them,

right? In any other life situation, these

behaviors would mean that you are in a stressful situation and

that you need to do something. Your brain would tell you that you need to

protect yourself, you need to get bigger or get louder or fight back or run

away. So if you're having a normal,

if you're a normal human, as we all are, and you're having

a reactive moment with your kids, just like

just letting you know, that's absolutely normal.

Now there are ways to retrain

your brain so that you don't get activated in the first

place, so that you don't interpret their behavior like they are

a pack of coyotes. That's what's happening. You're like,

your kid is like screaming and your brain is like, I'm being

attacked by coyotes. Well, you're not. You have a three year old

who doesn't like, you know, chicken nuggets or doesn't want chicken

nuggets that day or changes their mind within 10 seconds, which is super

annoying. But you're not actually in danger. So

we had to train our brains to see

the misbehavior or the behavior itself differently.

So when we look at that, the behavior that's like screaming and crying and blaming

and aggression and you know, arguing and in your face.

Then you know, you're kind of thinking you're in danger.

And we want to train you. That's part of why my program

is three months, is because I want to help you really

move through your reactivity and change,

like really change the way you're wired, change your brain wiring

to see misbehavior as different. So that's what I'm going to talk

about in two weeks is like how to reframe behavior.

Now, aggressive behavior is not the

only behavior that happens in parenting,

right? There's other behaviors that

your mind might right now might be thinking like, but okay,

what about when they're just dilly dallying? What about when they're just grumpy?

What about when they're just being sad? What about when they have bad grades? What

about if they're not being polite? What about if they're rude to a friend?

Like that's not really coyote being chased by coyote

behavior. Right? So what,

what's that? Why are you reactive to that?

It is also because you are human. It's not because you

think you're in danger physically, it's because you think you're in

danger socially. We

are social and community based species. We

have a need to feel accepted and included. And so when

our kids behavior threatens that belonging,

we will fight to get back that okayness.

It's almost existential. We're worried that we're going to be rejected,

that we will be rejected by our kids, that our kids will be

rejected by society or that our family will be rejected

by the other families because of our kids behavior. You know what I

am talking about moms, right? This is so

normal to worry about that. And that's because

we're a community based social species.

We have been a species. We're not lone wolves.

I don't know why I have so many like coyote and wolf situations here. But

you know, we're not lone wolves, we're pack of coyotes ourselves. They thankfully

we don't, you know, band together and maraud. Although we do as a society.

Okay, sorry. We as a

species are like we, we live in a community. That's

how we have kept ourselves alive and survive. Right?

You've got one person tending the fire, somebody else

tending the children, somebody else, you know, going out hunting, someone

else, you know, making the food. Right. That is partly why we're

also very stressed as a site, as a, as a family. Because, because we're like

where are all the people who are supposed to help us raise these kids? Cause

we are social beings, but yet the nuclear family is not really social. So it's

another stressor. Just being in a nuclear family is a stressor

on our species. Okay, I keep going off on different

tangents. I'm sorry. The

behavior, the dilly dallying, the grumpiness,

the being sad, the bad grades, not being polite, that

is triggering you as well. It's triggering

your stress response. You're not thinking you're in physical danger,

you're thinking you are in like social

danger. So what Happens if you're under

attack, right. You fight back. You show up maybe

with your stress response and you're yelling or

you're doing different behaviors like yelling or criticizing or

threatening or bribing or you know, taking away

things, you know, impulsively, right. So that's kind of like to

get your power back. Or when your kids, when you're worried

that your kids behavior is unacceptable, right. You might

be soothe over soothing them to make them happy

so that they like you. Right. You might be coming hard,

coming down hard on them so that you know,

none of you are at risk of being socially rejected. You might be like over

parenting. So I think of soothing sometimes as under

parenting. And then sometimes we are over parenting like we're

coming on too hard, too strong. That's from a fear

place, right? Or you could just be yelling and acting big

and acting loud to get that power back and reestablish your safety.

So this is the parenting stress cycle. There's different reasons why we

get stressed. We're either kind of activated on that physical

sense or activated on that social emotional sense. But there's an

external stressor kids behavior. Our

brain interprets it as dangerous and then we react to

it. We create stress juice. We respond

in ways that we don't love typically. Right.

We either are too permissive or too harsh or

yelling, too reactive. And then we feel

like crap. So the cycle itself is

the kid's behavior. You're over

or under reaction to it, mostly overreaction,

then you feel guilty and then nothing changes.

So then you have the same behavior. You overreact

and then you feel bad and nothing changes. Same

behavior, you overreact, you feel bad,

nothing changes. So

that cycle is what feels

like cuckoo for us. Like we're just like, what is

wrong? Why, why? What is wrong with me? Like why can't my kids

just behave differently? Or why I, why can't I stop

reacting to them so that I don't have to feel

guilty so that I can actually deal with their behavior. Right.

So where we, there's a couple of places where

we can interrupt the parenting stress cycle. So I'm going to give you

three ways to get out of that parenting stress

cycle. And then over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to

go in deeper on those strategies. So this week we're just

talking about what is the stress cycle? Why do I get so

upset? Where's the fear coming from?

And then how do I respond? And like, how can we change it?

And then we'll get into more of the how next time. So

the first way to get out of a

parenting stress cycle is to decrease

the stressors. Now, how do you do that?

One is teaching your kids better ways to deal with

their feelings so they don't act out so much.

Emotional coaching your kids, helping them build up emotional literacy

tools is one of the best

ways that you can create less stressors, less

misbehavior is by giving your kids the tools

to know what they're feeling, know how to talk about those feelings, and know how

to communicate those. Know what to do with those feelings in ways that

don't cause problems. For example, if you have a kid

who's hitting because they are angry or they are

overwhelmed or highly stimulated,

and they're hitting, and then that creates an external

stressor. Imagine if instead of hitting their sibling, they

knew to go hit a ball outside or they knew how to, like,

take a balloon and, you know, bat it around the house. Or like

those little. Those, like, look like little paddle tennis. Tennis.

Tennis rackets that are wooden with a little pink ball.

I always think, like, like. Like how much saddest, how

satisfying that is. I mean, little kids have trouble, but they can clap their hands

together, they can throw stuffed animals, they can hit a pillow.

So we want to teach our kids better ways to deal with

their feelings, and then we don't have so many stressors. Right?

Yay. Another way to

decrease stressors in your life is by creating more routines,

setting better limits so that there's just less friction,

you know? And you're like, yeah, darling, of course, like, if I could get my

kids to listen, I would be so much better. And it's like,

yeah, that's what parenting is, right? It's setting limits. It's

communicating those limits to your kids and then letting them

experience the impact of those limits, which are often called

consequences. And then when they have feelings about the

consequences, we emotionally coach them without changing

the situation so that they learn how to cope and deal with

hard things. So

the decreasing the stressors is really like, okay, I

want to decrease this. The level of chaos and

behavior in my family. Having routines for

bedtime, having routines for the morning, having. Having routines for meals,

having routines for cleaning up, having routines for hygiene.

These are the types of. Having routine for clothes. These are the types of things

that kind of create a lot of stress in

us because they're just like, a lot of friction around these basic. Not

basic, but these everyday things.

Like I always say, do not weaponize

that strategy against yourself.

Don't give up. Oh, that's why. Okay, well, I'm not good at routines. Oh, well,

I don't know how to help my kids with their feelings or my kids really

reactive or. You know, instead, I really want to invite you

to either work with me, you know, connect with me, reach out,

Instagram, DM me, or go to the website

calmmamacoaching.com you know, and book a call

with me because I can help you.

Like, that's. That's parenting tools, right? It's not something

you're supposed to know. Nobody teaches this stuff.

So, you know, getting those parenting tools, how do you set a routine up? How

do you create a limit? How do you help your kids with their feelings?

Okay, so you can get support for that. But that is what that is.

One way to get out of the parenting stress cycle is to decrease the

stressors. The second strategy to get

out of parenting stress cycle is to deal with your stress juice

the more frequently you reset your

stress juice. Like thinking about that early example, the coyote, right?

Like coming down from a moment where you're like,

oh, my God, that was intense. Like, I

think about, I saw this Instagram reel that made me

laugh so hard because it's so true. It's like the

10 seconds that you get as a mom after you

buckle your kids in the backseat and you walk to the driver's side and

you get in your car. That. That can be 10

seconds of reset. Or when you

finally get those buckles on, buckle, right.

I'm terrible at sounds, but when you finally get all those buckles

and then it. It's time to drive off. Take a

beat. Exhale. Jeez, that

was a rough morning, girl. You

did it. Give yourself a little pat on the back.

Exhale. Shake your body. If you saw me right now, I'm like shaking my shoulders.

I'm like moving my belly a little bit, move my hips

around. That is a way to reset

that stress juice. Taking a pause, break. I've

taught that many times, and we're going to talk about it again next week. But

thinking about, how can I walk away from this moment without reacting

and going in and reset myself, moving my body,

doing mindset work, right? That is how we do

the. That's how we reset our stress juice

either in the moment or like, I'm going to talk about next week. Calm mama

breaks. Super important, super valuable. And it's the way we

regularly. It's like, it's like stress hygiene, right? Just like

you take a shower however frequently you do or you eat or

you go poop Right? You do these certain things because you know

that they're good for your body. And so taking a break, a mama break,

is also good. So I'm going to teach you how to do that.

That's the second way to get out of a parenting stress cycle. And the third

is reframing behavior. So

right now, our brain looks at an aggressive

behavior or looks at a bad grade

or looks at, like a kid who's sad, and we

make that mean a bunch of things. We add

meaning to the behavior that then creates stress.

We make it mean something about us. We make it something about

the future. We look at that behavior and we create a bunch of regret

about what we've done in the past. Or we look at that behavior and we

use it to blame our partner or the nanny or the teacher.

So reframing behavior,

changing the way that you think about misbehavior

helps you not feel so stressed by it. So I'm going

to go through in two weeks and talk about how we

reframe behavior, because that is a very, very

powerful, powerful tool. But we do

all of this. We get out of our stress cycle so that we can feel

better and have a better relationship with our kids. Absolutely.

But really, the big picture goal is to raise emotionally

healthy kids. That's why we do this hard work of

parenting, is because we want our kids to grow up and not be messed

up. Right? All right, so this week,

I want you to notice when you are in a stress

cycle. That is one of the most important pieces

to getting out of one is just noticing that you're in one,

inviting you to stop judging yourself with that guilt.

Right. Behavior reaction. Guilt is the cycle.

Instead of that guilt when you're like, I'm such a piece of

shit, mom, instead of doing that, I'd like to invite you

to ask yourself, wow,

why did I get so stressed in the first place?

What could I have done differently? How could I have paused?

What am I making this behavior mean? And just starting

to get curious with yourself. And then next week, you'll get some

new tools on how to break out of that stress cycle. So this week, I

want you to notice when you are in one. That's your only job for the

whole week is just notice when you lose your shit. That's pretty

easy, right? I'm not telling you to stop losing your shit. I'm just telling

you to notice when you do. So hopefully that will be easy for you.

And if you're not losing your shit, awesome. Good for you.

That means that you have really created a lot of room

for you to reset your stress juice as a parent. Be proud of

yourself. If you have a lot of stress juice, just know we're going to deal

with it over the next couple of weeks. All right, everyone. I am always so

grateful these times to chat with you and to be with you during

the week. Wherever you are in your car or like on your

making dinner or wherever you are on your walk.

I am honored to be in your ear and to share this

time with you. Have a great week, Mama. I will talk to you

next time.