13 Tips To Help Stressed Mums Feel Better

Stress and Motherhood seem to be intertwined these days. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

My hope is this post helps you, Mama.

Stressed mums

Believe it or not, a small amount of stress can be a good thing. Yet additional or excessive stress is never good.

Getting stress under control is super important whether you’re on your first baby or fifth. For your health and the health of your family.

Here in this post, I aim to give constructive, science-backed advice about holistic stress relief, so you can take charge of your health, lower your heart rate & blood pressure, and reduce cortisol levels.

In plain English, this means feeling calmer, happier, and present, with greater energy to take on the day.

Specific tasks

Are you a stressed mum – struggling to keep on top of everything?

Perhaps you’re a new mum experiencing so many stressful events one after the other. Or a mum to teenagers who drive you round the bend?

From your to-do list to family’s demands, a job, a home, a (less than) full-time social life, aging parents and the bits in between. It’s all really stressful.

No matter how carefully you plan or prioritize, you still experience even higher levels of stress and erratic emotional states.

What are you doing wrong, you ask?

In one word. Nothing.

You’re not doing anything wrong. We’re in the 21st century, where “mommy burnout” is becoming hard to avoid if we don’t get control of it today.

Take control by applying any or all of these holistic tips in this post and reduce your stress for the sake of your body’s health (and mental health.)

Powerful Stress Reducers

Physical exercise

Even a short walk can do wonders for getting rid of stress.

Exercise is number one for resetting the body after a stressful event. It gets rid of any kind of stress, hands down!

A fantastic resource for explaining this in detail is a book called ‘Burnout: Solve Your Stress Cycle’.

In it, authors Emily and Amelia Nagoski share how, if we don’t complete the stress cycle (through exercise or exertion) and then calm down afterward, it never stops.

Those tight shoulders and constantly feeling like you’re on high alert? Exercise can get rid of that.

Stress is an ancient form of fight or flight, so in our ancestor’s era, we’d be chased by a huge tiger or an aggressive human stealing our food.

Our sympathetic nervous system would kick in, flooding the body with cortisol, and we’d run FAST. Or, we’d fight, depending on the situation.

If we didn’t get eaten (or beaten), our stress levels would reduce naturally, knowing we were no longer in danger.

This is normal stress. It ends, but only after the stress forces us to take action.

Nowadays, we are dealing with one stressful situation, followed by another, endlessly in short succession.

Not so much of a hugely stressful situation as being eaten by a tiger, mind you, but multiple tiny triggers build up to something big in the long run.

And this is because the stress cycle never ends!

Therefore, by exercising, you close one stress cycle. If another one comes along (and it will), you take yourself off for another walk/run and feel the relief.

Exercise is great if you’re looking to improve your work-life balance, as it can become a nice hobby once you find something you enjoy doing.

You can also get your young children to join you – my boys love skipping races, of all things!

Try out different exercises, such as cardiovascular (running, walking, swimming) and muscle toning exercises (yoga, weights). I’m also a fan of YouTube for free exercise videos when the weather’s bad.

Side note: Exercise is also good for regulating your hormone levels, which in turn will help reduce stress in the body. 

Beware of unchecked stress

Environmental factors and major traumatic life events can all trigger an episode of stress, yet all are different in terms of the levels of stress caused and the symptoms that follow.

If you’re reading this and your stress levels are at an all-time high, know you’re not alone, and you can get help.

The thing is, you’ve got to communicate to get help.

So, begin by asking yourself some probing questions. Admitting to yourself that you’re stressed, and committing to beat it.

Talking to a family member or having a support group among friends is good for talking about stressful things. 

In 2020, 9.8 million American mothers suffered from burnout (aka chronic stress). According to a study outlined by the Guardian, mothers are 40% more stressed than everyone else in the UK.

Let’s dive in and discuss how to reduce your stress levels, bringing you back to more important tasks, such as enjoying quality time with your loved ones (stress-free, of course).

Gratitude

We hear a lot about gratitude these days simply because it’s powerful and beautiful simultaneously. It puts us in a different mental state after practicing gratitude.

Gratitude also works on the parasympathetic nervous system, activating the rest and relaxation part of our body, which counteracts the stress response.

Gratitude is a way to bring us back to this moment only. To what truly matters and to what we value the most. When we practice gratitude, we come from a place of compassion and love rather than fear and negativity.

A simple way to practice gratitude is to write a gratitude list. Ideally, write your list every day.

Make it a daily practice. This way, you build up on the good stuff and reinforce it, making the feelings of thankfulness last longer.

Pick three things that you’re grateful for every day.

And write them down. It can be the little things or big things. It’s your gratitude list.

I also cover gratitude practices in my journaling workbook. Take a look by clicking here.

Limit Social Media

Social media is truly a cause of stress without admitting it.

For the simple fact that social media initiates FOMO (fear of missing out) by its eternal “my life is SO great” vibe (you know what I’m talking about).

Therefore, bite the bullet and control how much time you spend scrolling it. In other words, don’t spend a half-day browsing; limit it to 5-10 mins every so often.

And bring in a ‘digital sunset’. I learned this from the amazing Brian Johnson, who bangs on about stopping technology at least one hour before going to bed.

Or why not try and go teetotal for a weekend and get off it completely? I’ll bet anything you feel less stressed.

Forgive Yourself

Being stressed is not a reason to be hard on yourself. Instead, it’s a reason to build compassion, self-worth and self-respect at what you’ve overcome.

Having young kids, unexpected weight gain, lack of sleep, longer hours, multiple physical symptoms and any other stress triggers with no idea how to help yourself is not a reason to punish yourself with cruel talk.

Tell yourself kindly but firmly, “I’m doing my best, and I’m doing good”.

The thing is, you can exacerbate your stress by becoming stressed about being stressed!

We are our toughest critics, beating ourselves up over every little thing. And therefore, awareness of this can naturally reduce stress levels without changing anything on the outside. 

Be With the Little Things

The gorgeous smile of your small children. The warm cuppa in your hands. The homemade cookies. That hilarious phone call. 

The warmth of your house in winter even. In the grand scheme of things, ask yourself whether what you’re stressed about will matter in 5, 10 or 15 years? Probably not is the answer.

Whatever little thing you can be mindful of brings tremendous peace and presence to your day and reduces stress. Being with the little things is one of those perfect gifts.

Rather than focusing on your to-do list, or the chores, or workload, or whatever else is happening that feels too big to handle, focus more on the small things.

Bring in some quiet time to your schedule on the evenings when the family is asleep at a decent time.

It’ll calm you down and bring you to a place where you feel you can tackle the big things (if they need tackling that is!)

Spend Time Outdoors – Move your body!

Have a good time outdoors, whatever you’re doing. Enjoy a day out somewhere nice. Or some personal time shopping or whatever else you’d love to do.

Spend your entire day outside if you can and your stress levels will naturally come down.

Preferably choose a sunny day and a beach, and watch your stress melt away with the sea.

Cuddle!

Have you heard of Oxytocin?

Throughout our antenatal classes with my husband, we heard about it again and again – I became obsessed! Oxytocin is a key stress beater!

Also called the love hormone, it directly impacts cortisol, reducing it and lowering blood pressure to boot. 

Eat Healthier Foods

My favorites to lower stress are oats, blueberries, chamomile tea, and dark chocolate for calming the body.

By slowing down at dinner time for example, you’ll help calm down the stress in your body. And help your digestion along. Win-win!

Deep Breathing

We don’t breathe right much of the time. Shallow chest breaths and a sedentary lifestyle mean we don’t get the ideal level of oxygen into our bloodstream.

Deep abdominal breathing is fantastic for reducing stress. It wakes you up way better than coffee!

With abdominal breaths, you take a deeper inhale so your abdomen puffs out, and then breathe it all out by contracting your tummy muscles.

It takes a bit of practice, but it’s worth it to get the hang of it.

Try out some essential oils to help the room you breathe in smell nicer.

Using a rollerball on your pulse points or a hot bath with some essential oils works wonders to reduce stress.

FYI – Lavender is my choice for helping calm the nervous system. 

Enough Sleep

Stress contributes to poor sleep, so it’s important to prioritize getting more hours if possible.

If you’re not getting the hours of sleep you need, get advice from a medical professional or search online for good sleep solutions.

My personal favorites for getting more rest are getting my husband to wake up with the kids (!), making the room smell nice and welcoming, or using a lavender/essential oil spray for your pillow.

But I’ll admit – it’s super hard to sleep well with little kids who wake up at night. Read this post if this is what you’re struggling with (sleep deprivation)

Accept Offers of Help

Perhaps you’ve got amazing close friends eager to support you somehow?

Whether it’s taking you out for coffee or watching the kids for an hour so you can take a break, really do accept the help.

Allow yourself that. They’re probably experiencing similar situations as you and would benefit from time out doing something different in response.

The 4As

Don’t forget this proven well-being system for reducing stress, aka the 4As. The best option is to avoid the stressor if you can (hard in practice, though)

• Avoid – Remove the stressor (the thing causing stress)
• Alter – Change the stressor
• Accept – Accept and surrender to the stressor
• Adapt – Change your viewpoint/mindset/position in regard to the stressor

Check Your Unrealistic Expectations

Often, expectations are a cause of stress. Are you expecting your child to behave a certain way, then getting disappointed when they play up?

Do you expect to have help and don’t get it?

Try to remove expectations if you can. Expectations always lead to disappointment.

Take a step back, pause, and re-assess your expectations. Ideally, by dropping them, you will find your stress reduced.

Take a deep breath, stretch your shoulders up and down, and tell yourself, “What will be will be”.

This often brings stress right down and gets your mind back in the present moment.

I hope you find this post inspiring with these healthy ways to reduce stress.

The good news is that stress can be reduced with simple lifestyle improvements. Give any or all of these tips a go, and see how you feel.

Ultimately, don’t be afraid to see your medical doctor for advice on reducing stress.

If you found this post helpful, please share it! And comment on which tip you found the most useful. I love hearing from you.

For more encouraging reads, visit mamasfindyourvoice.com

References:

Megan Leonhart, 2020, 9.8 million working mothers in the U.S. are suffering from burnout, Make It, accessed 25.11.21, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/03/millions-of-working-mothers-in-the-us-are-suffering-from-burnout.html

Mohd. Razali Saklleh, 2008, Life Event, Stress and Illness, accessed 25.11.21, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341916/

Jamie Doward, 2019, Working mothers ‘up to 40% more stressed’, accessed 25.11.21, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jan/27/working-mothers-more-stressed-health