Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a family therapist near me

Parental burnout symptoms like emotional numbness and exhaustion that sleep won't fix are warning signs.

Parental guilt creates a shame cycle that depletes you further and makes parenting harder over time.

When parental exhaustion leads to emotional distancing, children think something is wrong with them.

This post is Part 2 of a series.

In Part 1, we looked at what happens when your needs go unmet for too long. Your window of tolerance gets narrower. Your body's stress response goes into overdrive. You end up snapping at your kids over tiny things, then feeling terrible about it.

But knowing this doesn't make it easier to actually take care of yourself. There's something else getting in the way: guilt.

Why Parental Guilt Makes Self-Care Harder

When Iris first started the Taming Your Triggers workshop, she couldn't fully engage with it. She'd lurk in the community but not really participate. She went through the workshop multiple times before she could truly take it in.

Why? Because there was a voice in her head saying, "I should be able to handle this.”

She'd grown up in a poor urban neighborhood in the Philippines. Her mother worked long hours. They didn't have much materially, but they had a community—neighbors who shared rice when you ran out, who watched each other's children, who showed up for births and deaths and everything in between.

Now here she was in Canada with almost everything she thought she wanted materially. A safe home. Food. Enough money. And she was struggling.

The voice said, "Your mother managed with so much less. What's wrong with you?"

Comparing ourselves with other people—whether it's our own parents, a friend, or a theoretical parent who doesn't lose their mind when their kid says "No"—almost always creates shame.

You believe good parents don't need breaks, so you push through your exhaustion. You snap at your kid.

Now you feel shame about snapping. You also feel shame about not being the patient, present parent you wanted to be.

So you double down. You try even harder to be that perfect parent, which means neglecting your needs even more.

The guilt and shame actually make you a less present parent. When you're running on empty, you're not really there. You're going through the motions, but you're irritable and disconnected.

Your shame is a response to impossible standards combined with inadequate support. Your guilt is keeping you stuck in patterns that aren't working.

Breaking the guilt pattern

What helped Iris start to shift is a moment in one of our coaching calls where I guided her to just sit with something: "This is hard."

Her life in the Philippines was hard. Her life in Canada is hard. They're both hard. You can't compare them. Your hard is your hard.

Something clicked for her at that moment. She'd been carrying this story that because she had material advantages now, she shouldn't struggle. That her stress wasn't "real" somehow.

Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a family therapist near me

But the research on cortisol levels tells us: Your struggle is real. Even if you have advantages. Even if other people have it worse. Your nervous system is responding to the chronic stress of trying to meet impossible standards with inadequate support.

The shift is from "I should be able to handle this" to "What do I actually need right now?"

What Happens When You're Running on Empty

Signs of parental exhaustion

How do you know if you've crossed from regular tiredness into something deeper? Watch for:

Persistent irritability and anger that lasts for weeks, especially at home. You might hold it together at work or in public, but the moment you walk through the door, everything your child does sets you off.

Persistent irritability and anger that lasts for weeks, especially at home. You might hold it together at work or in public, but the moment you walk through the door, everything your child does sets you off.

Emotional numbness or distance from your children. You go through the motions of parenting, but you can't access the warmth or connection you used to feel.

Emotional numbness or distance from your children. You go through the motions of parenting, but you can't access the warmth or connection you used to feel.

Physical exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. You wake up tired. You go to bed exhausted. Rest doesn't restore you anymore.

Physical exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. You wake up tired. You go to bed exhausted. Rest doesn't restore you anymore.

A growing gap between who you are as a parent and who you wanted to be. You notice yourself doing or saying things you swore you'd never do.

A growing gap between who you are as a parent and who you wanted to be. You notice yourself doing or saying things you swore you'd never do.

Impact on your children

When you're just exhausted, it mostly affects you. Your kids might notice you're tired, but they're probably OK.

But when that exhaustion leads to emotional distancing, there's a higher risk you're too depleted to notice what they need. There's a higher risk of harsh responses—snapping, yelling, maybe even physical reactions you never thought you'd have.

Researcher Gershen Kaufman talks about "the breaking of the interpersonal bridge"—that moment when the connection between you and your child ruptures. When that happens repeatedly without repair, children don't feel seen or safe.

Iris's daughter Malaya experienced her mother as someone who erupted like a volcano on the regular. Children in that situation tend to internalize it as "Something is wrong with me" rather than "My parent is struggling."

One afternoon, Iris looked at the messy kitchen and recognized she was getting depleted. Instead of pushing through to clean it, she went down to the courtyard of her apartment building. She chatted with neighbors for about 15 minutes. Just adults talking about nothing important. It recharged her.

When she came back upstairs, Malaya came home from school and asked to watch TV. Iris said yes. But when it was time to turn off the TV, Malaya had a big meltdown. She screamed: "You're mean! You're a bad mama! You're the worst ever!"

The old Iris would have erupted right back at her.

But because she'd taken those 15 minutes to recharge, Iris had space inside herself. She could pause. She could just let Malaya have her emotions without getting flooded by them herself. She just held space.

After a while, Malaya calmed down. She went to play with her toys. Later, while Iris was making dinner, Malaya called out: "Mama! I love you. You're the best mom ever." She had been overwhelmed and dysregulated. Iris's calm presence helped her to re-regulate.

That's what taking care of yourself actually does. It shows up in the moments that matter most.

The guilt tells you that meeting your needs is selfish. But the research—and Iris's experience—tells a different story. When you take care of yourself, even in small ways, you have more capacity to be the parent you want to be.

Your struggle is real. Your hard is your hard. And meeting your needs isn't taking away from your children. It's what allows you to show up for them.

In Part 3, we'll look at practical self-care tips for overwhelmed parents—what to actually do when you're already depleted and how to start widening that window of tolerance again.

Lumanlan, J. (n.d). Taming Your Triggers workshop. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers

Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348

Kaufman, G. (1989). The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes. Springer Publishing Co.

Lunkenheimer, E., Sturge-Apple, M. L., & Kelm, M. R. (2023). The importance of parent self-regulation and parent-child coregulation in research on parental discipline. Child Development Perspectives, 17(1), 25–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12470

Mikolajczak, M., Gross, J. J., & Roskam, I. (2019). Parental burnout: What is it, and why does it matter? Clinical Psychological Science, 7(6), 1319–1329. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619858430

Mikolajczak, M., & Roskam, I. (2018). A Theoretical and Clinical Framework for Parental Burnout: The Balance Between Risks and Resources (BR2). Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 886. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00886

© Psychology Today