Do you often feel anxious or irritated, especially when you're around your child? Do you often feel like you might snap, perhaps even threatening violence if they don't do what you say? Are you so disconnected from them that you sometimes consider walking out and never coming back?
If you have, it's possible that you're suffering from parental burnout. Listener Kelly reached out to me recently because she has been diagnosed with parental burnout and wanted to know what research is available on this topic, and on how to protect her two-year-old from its impacts. We did some searching around in the literature and it actually didn't take long to turn up the preeminent researchers in the field who actually work as a team and one of whom - Dr. Moira Mikolajczak, kindly agreed to talk with us.
We learned about the warning signs to watch out for that indicate that you might be suffering from parental burnout, and what to do about it if you are. We ran a bit over time at the end of the episode and I wasn't able to ask about whether self-compassion might be a useful tool for coping with parental burnout but Dr. Mikolajczak and I emailed afterward and she agreed that it is - I'm hoping to do an episode on self-compassion in the future.
More information on Dr. Mikolajczak's work on parental burnout can be found at https://www.burnoutparental.com/
The Parental Burnout Assessment, available in French and English, can be found here: https://en.burnoutparental.com/suis-je-en-burnout
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References
Brianda, M.E., Roskam, I., Gross, J.J., Franssen, A., Kapala, F., Gerard, F., & Mikolajczak, M. (2019). Treating parental burnout: Impact of two treatment modalities on burnout symptoms, emotions, hair cortisol, and parental neglect and violence. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Moira_Mikolajczak/publication/339852433_Treating_Parental_Burnout_Impact_of_Two_Treatment_Modalities_on_Burnout_Symptoms_Emotions_Hair_Cortisol_and_Parental_Neglect_and_Violence/links/5e6e1dcc92851c6ba7048086/Treating-Parental-Burnout-Impact-of-Two-Treatment-Modalities-on-Burnout-Symptoms-Emotions-Hair-Cortisol-and-Parental-Neglect-and-Violence.pdf
Cesar, F., Costa, P., Oliveira, A., & Fontaine, A.M. (2018). “To suffer in paradise”: Feelings mothers share on Portuguese Facebook sites. Frontiers in Psychology 9, 1797.
Hubert, S., & Aujoulat, I. (2018). Parental...
