242 | Racing Thoughts and To-Do Lists: Managing an Overactive Mind

Dive into the pervasive issue of racing thoughts and overactive minds that many mothers experience. We explore how the mental load, societal expectations, and personal pressures contribute to this mental overwhelm. In this episode of Moms Without Capes, you will gain insights into the science behind anxiety-induced overthinking and discover practical strategies to manage and quiet your mind.

Resources mentioned:

Episode on the Eisenhower Matrix

An Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Buy Yourself the F*ing Lilies by Tara Schuster

To schedule a 15 minute consultation to see if therapy could help with your journey, go to www.momswithoutcapes.com/start (This is for moms who live in Montana ONLY)

Transcript

Racing Thoughts
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[00:00:00] If you're a mom who's ever felt like your mind is running a mile a minute, juggling endless to do lists and drowning in the what ifs of life, know that you are not alone. I know how exhausting it can be to carry the invisible mental load of motherhood, planning meals, remembering appointments, juggling schedules, and worrying about everyone else's happiness.

For moms struggling with high functioning anxiety, this mental chatter can feel relentless. Like there's no off switch. And it's not just the mental load, is it? Many of us also wrestle with the pressure to do it all and be it all. Codependency tendencies can make us feel like we're responsible for everyone else's happiness, while supermom syndrome convinces us that taking a break or asking for help is somehow failing.

Sound familiar? If it does, then you're in the right [00:01:00] place. Welcome to Moms Without Capes, the podcast where you'll get practical strategies for reclaiming your sense of identity beyond motherhood. I'm Onnie, a mental health therapist and mom of six, and my goal is to help you prioritize your needs and carve out space for yourself so that you can discover who you are beyond your role as a mom.

In today's episode, we're diving into practical ways to quiet the constant mental chatter, reduce the overwhelm and bring some clarity and calm to your life. We'll explore techniques that you can use right away to manage your overactive mind so that you can feel more present, focused, and most importantly, More like yourself.

And towards the end of the episode, I'll share with you how you can get your hands on a resource that will help you reclaim your sense of self beyond motherhood by lightening the mental and physical loads that you're carrying. So [00:02:00] don't go anywhere. Now let's dive in. Let's talk about racing thoughts. If you've ever laid in bed at night completely exhausted, but unable to shut off your mind because you're replaying the day, planning for tomorrow, or stressing about something that you forgot to do, then you know exactly what I mean.

Racing thoughts feel like your brain is on an endless treadmill, constantly moving, but never getting anywhere. The constant mental chatter It often comes with a sense of urgency. It's like your brain is trying to remind you of everything all at once. Appointments, school projects, dinner plans, and that one thing you promised your kid that you would do, but then completely forgot about. You end up spinning, unable to focus and feeling more overwhelmed than ever. But the thing is, is when our mind won't stop racing, it doesn't just keep us feeling overwhelmed. It [00:03:00] impacts our mental health. Racing thoughts are closely tied to anxiety, specifically high functioning anxiety.

It's the kind of anxiety where you look like you've got it all together on the outside, but on the inside, your mind feels like a chaotic whirlwind. Now, why is this so common for moms? Let's break it down. First, there's the mental load. If you're not familiar with the term, the mental load is the invisible labor of keeping a household and family running.

It's not just the act of doing things. It's the constant thinking and planning. [00:04:00] I'm going to assume that you, my friend, are carrying the bulk of the mental load. On top of that, many of us struggle with codependency tendencies, feeling like we're responsible for everyone else's happiness. We want to fix, help, and ensure that everyone in our family is okay. And while it comes from a place of love, this sense of responsibility.

can make our mental load even heavier. I get it because I have been there for years. I thought that I was solely responsible for each of my family members happiness. It kept me feeling trapped and because of that, I grew to resent [00:05:00] my husband and kids.

Frankly, it sucked. And it was detrimental to my relationships. Thank God that I came to my senses and recognized what was happening, so that I could start setting healthy boundaries, recognizing my own worth, and realizing that I was not responsible for their happiness. Then there's Supermom Syndrome. The belief that we need to do it all. And do it perfectly. This pressure to be the perfect mom adds another layer of noise to our already overloaded minds.

We're constantly critiquing ourselves. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? What will people think if I mess up? When you put all these factors together, it's no wonder racing thoughts [00:06:00] are such a common experience for moms. But here's where it gets even trickier.

All this mental noise can make it easy to lose yourself. You're so busy keeping track of everyone else's needs, to dos, and expectations that you completely forget about your own. Over time, It can feel like you've lost touch with who you are outside of being a mom, a partner, or a caregiver. If this resonates with you, I want you to know that there is hope.

You can quiet the racing thoughts, you can manage the overwhelm, and you can reconnect with yourself in the process.

So no wonder we are struggling with a racing mind. As moms, we often find ourselves juggling an endless array of responsibilities, managing household chores, coordinating family [00:07:00] schedules, attending to our children's needs. And for many, we're even balancing professional commitments. This burden is known as the mental load, a term that encapsulates the invisible yet overwhelming cognitive labor involved in keeping a family and household running smoothly.

This mental load is not just about the physical tasks we perform. It's the constant mental juggling act of remembering, planning, and anticipating the needs of others. It's the reason why, even when we have a moment to rest, our minds remain active. We're running through those to do lists and worrying about what needs to be done next.

Compounding this is the pressure of perfectionism and a deep seated desire to please others. Many of us hold ourselves to impossibly high standards, striving to be the perfect mother, partner, and professional. This relentless pursuit [00:08:00] often leads to self criticism and a pervasive sense of inadequacy, when we inevitably fall short of these unrealistic expectations.

Societal norms and expectations further exasperate this issue. There is an implicit and sometimes explicit expectations that mothers should be the primary caregivers, the emotional anchors, and the managers of household affairs. This conditioning leads many of us to take on more than we can handle, stretching ourselves thin in an attempt to meet these societal standards.

This relentless cycle often spirals into feelings of shame and guilt. We tell ourselves, if I just did more, I'd feel like enough. But the truth is, no matter how much we do, it never seems sufficient. This unending chase leads our minds in a constant state of overdrive, perpetually racing [00:09:00] from one thought to the next.

I am currently reading The Gap and the Game by Dan Sullivan. I highly recommend this book. It is due back to the library today and I have to remember to renew it after recording this because I'm still working through it, but it is a great book about getting out of this cycle of never feeling like enough.

In it, Sullivan talks about living in the gain versus living in the gap. He refers to living in the gap as when we measure ourselves against our ideal, which typically isn't realistic and it's often future based. So we're measuring ourselves against this place that we are not as of yet, so it leaves us feeling.

Like we are not enough or unsuccessful [00:10:00] versus living in the gain, which means that we are measuring ourselves against our starting point and looking at where we started being thankful, like practicing gratitude for our past experiences. So it's all about the measuring stick we are using, where, what are you measuring yourself against?

Are you measuring yourself against where you are from, the progress you have made in your life, the hard things you have done, the challenges you have overcome, or are you measuring yourself Again, some unrealistic expectations about yourself, about motherhood, about what your life should look like. Are you shooting all over yourself?

I have an entire episode about this and looking at how are you measuring [00:11:00] yourself and what needs to change so that you can be in the game again. So to understand why our minds race. It's essential to dive into the science of anxiety. Anxiety triggers our brain's fight or flight response. Yes, our stress response.

This is a survival mechanism designed to protect us from immediate threats. When you feel anxious, your stress response is activated. And in this state, our brain remains in constant problem solving mode. Think about being chased by saber toothed tigers, right? This is an evolutionary response. We have evolved

to have this response to keep us safe. If you're running from saber toothed tigers or stuck in traffic, as is what produces the stress response [00:12:00] nowadays,

all of your systems shut down because It needs, your body needs all of its energy to deal with the trigger, whether it is imagined or real.

When we are triggered,

Our mind is vigilantly scanning for potential dangers and it generates a cascade of thoughts aimed at anticipating and mitigating these perceived threats. Notice the word perceived. It does not need to be a real threat in order to activate the fight or flight response. In the context of modern motherhood.

These threats manifest as everyday stressors, upcoming appointments, household chores, work deadlines, concerns about our children's well being. All of these triggers activate the stress response. Our brains latch onto [00:13:00] these tasks and worries, causing our thoughts to race as we attempt to manage and control every aspect of our lives.

Exhaustion further compounds this issue. Sleep deprivation, a common challenge for many mothers, heightens the brain's reactivity to stress. Research indicates that lack of sleep makes us more sensitive to negative events, intensifying our fight or flight response. This heightened state of arousal makes it increasingly difficult to calm our racing thoughts, and this just puts us right into a vicious cycle.

Where anxiety leads to poor sleep, which in turn fuels further anxiety. It's a cycle. So what can you control and what do you need to let go of? Understanding this interplay between anxiety, the brain's stress response and exhaustion is crucial. It highlights the importance of addressing both [00:14:00] our mental and physical wellbeing to manage and mitigate racing thoughts effectively.

So now we talked about why we mothers experience racing minds, and I gave you a little bit of the science behind these racing thoughts. So now let's move on to what are some strategies that you can put in place to quiet your mind. The first one is the thought download.

This is just a brain dump. Of all of the swirling thoughts onto paper before bed or in the morning.

Right now, I have been practicing. Over the past few weeks, I have been doing morning pages. This is a concept I've talked about in different episodes. This is a concept by Julia Cameron. [00:15:00] In her book, An Artist's Way, she recommends writing three pages of brain dumping.

early in the morning before you consume any other information. The idea behind this is to let your subconscious just flow. Often when we have all of these thoughts racing around our mind, they can become very jumbled.

So putting pen to paper allows you to make sense or Organize these thoughts. Simply putting words to the thoughts can give you a different perspective than when they're just jumbled in your mind all at one time. So doing a thought download, doing a brain dump allows you to get all of these swirling thoughts out of your mind and onto paper.

Another [00:16:00] strategy is to use the Eisenhower matrix. I will link to the episode I did on the Eisenhower Matrix in the show notes of this episode. What this is, this is a way of organizing your to do list.

When your mind is thinking of all of the tasks that you need to do, there is no differentiation between the tasks that are urgent versus those that maybe you don't have to do today. All of those thoughts, all of those tasks are on your to do list in whatever order you're thinking of them.

And so the Eisenhower matrix is a tool to be able to organize. Those tasks

that will let you see what is urgent, what is important. [00:17:00] It divides them into four quadrants. The first quadrant includes those tasks that are both urgent and important. Quadrant two includes tasks that are urgent but not important. Quadrant three are tasks that are important.

but not urgent, and Quadrant 4 are neither urgent nor important. So organizing your tasks as such can allow you

to be specific and focus on those tasks that are both urgent and important, and work downward from there, and perhaps delegate or automate the other tasks. Another strategy is to use the five minute rule. If a thought or task takes less than five minutes, Do it now. Otherwise, schedule it or [00:18:00] let it go.

That rule is pretty self explanatory. Another strategy is to set boundaries with your mind. This might mean coming up with a mantra. Not my problem, not my responsibility.

What is that saying?

Not my circus, not my monkey. But the same idea lies behind it things that you can let go that you don't need to be involved in Setting some boundaries around your time and energy

is going to help you Manage all of the thoughts swirling around in your mind and the more you set boundaries the more boundaries you set The easier it will become and the quieter your mind will become because you start determining what you will let in.

Another strategy is the power of the pause. When you find [00:19:00] your thoughts spiraling, you can take back control through doing breathing. You can interrupt the spiraling cycle. A 30 second breathing reset.

Not clearing your mind,

but turning your thoughts to focus on your breath because your mind might be racing with thoughts, but it cannot have two thoughts at one time. So direct your thoughts to your breath for 30 seconds. Focusing on breathing in.

This is a grounding technique that allows you to pause that racing mind and focus on your breath.

A final strategy I want to [00:20:00] mention is one that you can do at the end of the day. Think of a computer screen. You're in Windows and you've got 50 tabs open. This might be your mind throughout the full day. You can use a visualization exercise to close those tabs of the thoughts that you're having.

Closing the mental tabs one by one and releasing that tab. as we wrap up today's episode, it is essential to remember that your worth isn't measured by the length of your to do list or the number of tasks you complete. Being a mother encompasses so much more than constant productivity. Our minds naturally seek out problems to solve, often leading to an endless cycle of racing thoughts.

The real challenge lies in recognizing this pattern and gently [00:21:00] guiding our minds towards more peaceful and constructive pathways. 

I encourage you to try one of the strategies that I talked about today. If anything, try a brain dump.

You'll be amazed at how putting words to all of those jumbled thoughts can be a game changer.

I'm excited to hear if any of these strategies worked for you. So come join the Moms Without Capes Facebook group and let me know, let us know what you tried and how it helped to quiet your mind. The Moms Without Capes Facebook group is an awesome community of recovering super moms, of moms who are on the journey of reclaiming their sense of self.

So, as I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, I have an awesome resource for you. Something that will help you [00:22:00] on your way to reclaiming your sense of self beyond motherhood. Making space for self care hobbies and fun is impossible when you are carrying the full load of domestic labor. Having a to do list that runs a mile long.

And doing it all yourself can lead straight to burnout and can be devastating to your health and your relationships. I created a guide that will walk you through how to share the load. It involves conversation starters, tips for managing expectations and practical strategies for redistributing household and childcare tasks.

Grab your guide today by visiting momswithoutcapes. com backslash share the load. Or click the link in the show notes of today's episode.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Moms Without Capes podcast. As you learned you can manage your racing thoughts and quiet your overactive mind by lightening your mental [00:23:00] load, being aware of the societal pressures and expectations that you may be placing on yourself and then employing some practical strategies that decreases your stressors and allows you to break free from the stress cycle.

Remember, you are 100 percent responsible for your own life and for creating the joy that you want to feel. Stop living on autopilot, slow down, check in with yourself, and please, above all, take care of yourself because you, my friend, are worth it.