Maternal Mental Health: Sharing the Load and Loving Motherhood More with guest Erica Djossa

About this Episode

On this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast, Dr. Amy and Sandy are joined by Erica Djossa, a psychotherapist and the CEO and founder of MomWell to discuss the “mother load”—the mental load of care, responsibility, planning, organizing, managing, scheduling, and more that women carry at any given time. Whether you’re a new mom dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety or a working mom with school-aged teens who is struggling to fight overwhelm, frustration, resentment, and anger about all you need to bear, don’t miss this compassionate and empowering episode discussing the unfair and unjust roles that have been put on many of us. It’s an episode about not only getting support, but also feeling camaraderie with other women who are experiencing similar feelings.

About Erica Djossa

Erica Djossa is the CEO and founder of Momwell, and a registered psychotherapist specializing in maternal mental health with over a decade of experience. As a mother of three rambunctious young boys, Erica understands first-hand the challenges of motherhood. Perfectionism, pressure, and loss of identity fueled her battle with postpartum depression, and she realized how difficult it is to seek care. She founded Momwell to set a standard of care for providers and ensure mom-centered specialized mental health support at any stage of motherhood. Erica has been featured in media publications including Time Magazine, Washington Post, USA Today, The Toronto Star, Breakfast Television, and Scary Mommy. She’s the author of the book, “Releasing the Mother Load: How to Carry Less and Enjoy Motherhood More”.tional issues.

Connect with Erica

Website: www.MomWell.com

Instagram: @MomWell

TikTok: @Mom.Well

Facebook: @HappyAsAMother

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Read the transcript for this episode:

DR. AMY:  Hi, smart moms and dads. Welcome to another episode of the Brainy Moms podcast, brought to you today by LearningRx brain training centers. I’m your host, Dr. Amy Moore, joined by my cohost, Sandy Zamalis, and Sandy, and I are super excited to have a conversation today with our new friend, Erica Djossa. Erika is the CEO and founder of MomWell, host of the amazing MomWell podcast, and a registered psychotherapist specializing in maternal mental health with over a decade of experience. As a mother of three rambunctious young boys, Erika understands firsthand the challenges of motherhood. Perfectionism, pressure, and loss of identity fueled her battle with postpartum depression and she realized just how difficult it was to seek care. She founded MomWell to set a standard of care for providers and ensure mom-centered specialized mental health support at any stage of motherhood. She’s been featured in lots of media publications nationally, and she’s here with us today to share insights from her book, “Releasing the Mother Load, How to Carry Less and Enjoy Motherhood More.” Welcome, Erica.

ERICA: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

SANDY: We’re so glad you’re here. We like to start every episode by having our guests talk about how they got interested in their specific topic. You open your book with a really powerful personal story that I think will resonate with many of our listeners. Would you share that story that you opened your book with and talk a little bit more about how it inspired the, that you have behind you there, and your work in general. 

ERICA: Yeah, it’s been called like the volcanic eruption story, the rage story, it’s got lots of different names. We talk about it frequently on my show. But I was about 12 weeks or so, three months postpartum after my third baby was born. I had three boys in the span of three and a half years. And I was a therapist at the time, had been in practice for a number of years, worked with children and families and felt like, you know, I should know what I’m doing. Like I have the skills. I’m equipped for this, you know, and found myself struggling, sort of waking up at capacity already every morning and any little inconvenience would just cause me to be like out of my threshold of my ability to manage with it. This particular morning was just chaotic. I was trying to do one thing for myself, and as moms know, especially in those early postpartum days, very rarely do we get to do that. I was trying to get to the gym and feel, you know, a sense of normalcy and the pulley on the van door snapped and everything was going wrong and wrangling, you know, two toddlers and an infant, and I pull out on my way to the gym and I get pulled over by a police officer, a male police officer, who just like throws the book at me worth of tickets and starting to say like, “I understand, ma’am, like what you’re going through.” And I’m like, “You have no idea. You have no idea what I’m going through!” Like, tell me more about how you understand what I’m coping with right now. And my reaction was just so out of character. I got home. I missed the gym. Obviously I called my husband. I’m hyperventilating in the driveway, you know, gagging and throwing up. And I’m like, “I’m not okay. I am not okay. This is not, I’ve never seen this version of myself before.” And that’s something I actually hear from a lot of clients who go through, whether it’s postpartum rage or anxiety, intrusive thoughts and anxiety, depression is a sense of like, “Oh, don’t feel like myself. I don’t know who this person is.” Or, this feels so uncharacteristic for me. So, my husband came, he was in the city two hours away,  called and made me an appointment, came home, relieved the kids so that I could go and speak to my doctor. And from that point forward, started taking medication for postpartum depression, but also realize that like this approach to motherhood that I was trying to achieve and live out this perfect idealistic Pinterest-worthy motherhood that we feel so like pressured to embody and live out was entirely unsustainable; unsustainable for me, for my mental health, for my family, for my relationship. And in that experience, one of the things that continued to come up that had a heavy impact was I felt I had to carry it all. I felt I had to carry it all by myself because that’s what made me a good mom. And I started the work of unlearning these myths or these assumptions and societal messages that we’ve been taught and started to work with my partner to redistribute the load in our home in a way that we could both work together as a team and be well. Like it wasn’t just all on one person. So that was a catalyst moment for the book. And I went on that journey of unlearning myself to the point that he’s almost more the default and sort of primary parent now then me looking back in the rearview mirror four or five years. But I learned a lot on that journey, how to get to the place that we are at now. And my therapeutic lens really allowed me to see the beliefs and the norms and the societal, cultural norms that kept me stuck in those patterns. So I bring this really interesting identity lens and therapeutic lens to this topic. And it’s been really well received so far, which is so exciting.

DR. AMY: So you titled the book then “The Mother Load.” What exactly does that mean? What does that encompass?

ERICA: Yeah. I visualize it as an invisible backpack. So when we become parents, there are all these essential tasks that are invisible, but they need to be done. They’re underappreciated and they often get handed to Mom over Dad if we’re, if we’re in a like opposite-sex partnership. So this is essential. We feel the weight of it. We don’t know how to articulate it. It’s very, it’s so invisible and abstract that it’s even invisible to the person who carries it. We can feel it. Like when I have this conversation with moms, we feel the weight of that responsibility. Or like when we get pregnant with our second, there’s almost like there’s excitement, but there’s maybe also dread ‘cause we know what comes with it, like we feel that. But because it is a thousand tiny things instead of one big thing, it’s so difficult to make it visible to our partner. So it’s things like anticipating, researching, planning, monitoring all of the inventory in the house, planning, scheduling, all of those, cognitive and mental pieces that happen in the background that are unacknowledged and often thankless, but are so fundamentally essential to keeping our household flowing.

SANDY: Why do you think that falls in the mom’s lap? Is that a societal thing? Is it just because we’re really bad at asking for help? What’s contributing, you think, to that invisible backpack that moms seem to take on and dads don’t necessarily, unless that, you know, they’re a default parent like you mentioned earlier?

ERICA: Yeah. When I started writing the book, I was actually surprised that gender norms play as big of a role as they actually do. Like I wasn’t I didn’t set out thinking that you know, surely there are other reasons but family of origin and how we have observed what it means to be a “good mom” quote unquote or a good dad plays a big role and gender norms and societal expectations of these roles also plays a big role. So I talk in the book about this sort of ever scrolling filing cabinet that we have in our brains that holds all of these messages that we’ve ever received about what it means to be a good mom. We’ve seen it in our friends’ parents growing up, in our own mom, our grandma, on TV, you know, when someone makes a comment about, “Oh, she, she really doing that?” or whatever. And we archive all of these messages into this sort of memory box of what we think it means to be a good mom, or we’ve been told it means to be a good mom. And then when we step into parenthood, we go to that box as a framework or as a road map to how we want to live out our, you know, parenting life and how we want to perform in this role. But when that box has been accumulating junk and contradictory messages and has just been auto filing things in there without any real critical evaluation or critical, like, criteria by which we’re going to say, “Does this align with my values or not? Is this contradictory to what I believe?” Like it’s all just kind of valuable pieces shoved in there with junk mail. It’s so important for us to step back and re-evaluate and go through this really intentionally and say, “Okay, what of this that I believe or that I have internalized over the years, whether it’s gender roles, whether it’s, you know, what my mom has told me it means to be a good mom, whatever that is, how much of that do I actually still subscribe to and still believe as an adult standing in this moment right now?” And, of course, when we have like a newborn latched to us, it’s not the first place we go, right? Like we have a lot of practical things to be managing. But if we don’t get intentional at some point about this We are striving for a bullseye or a target that is not clearly defined for us and so we go in every direction and kind of run ourselves ragged trying to live up to what it means to be a good mom. And a lot of what society tells us and a lot of what previous generations of mothering have told us is that being a good mom equals care work and domestic household tasks. And that is just not true, and not the case, especially for a generation who is also expected to be a provider in the home because we need to like dual income households now. So we are now, you know, stuck into the more, you know, male partner gendered roles in the providing and taking on some of that responsibility. And yet the care work and the household work has not redistributed in the same way that our partner’s equally expected to show up in that space. So these are some of the contributing factors. There’s a lot of old like underlying beliefs about what a good mom should be. But also there’s all these other expectations growing of women in the workplace and in other areas that. Like something’s got to give. We can’t do all things a hundred percent in all of these areas. 

DR. AMY: Well, I had actually not even thought about it that way. I, you know, my mom was a career woman. My husband’s mom was a career woman. And so, I just sort of automatically thought, well, you just balance it all, right? It wasn’t that I had this traditional 1950s view of motherhood, and then I tried to add working to it. I just thought I saw my mom balance it really well and just assumed that it was going to be easy to do because she made it look easy. Well, she had me. I had three boys just like you. So it wasn’t super easy and I found myself then questioning, “Well, I must not be a good mom if I can’t do it like she did.”

ERICA: Right. Yeah, it’s, it’s a really common experience for, everyone has a different threshold for when they’re going to hit that moment, right? I didn’t hit it with my first, I didn’t hit it with my second, though retroactively I could see that I was struggling, but I hit a wall with my third. And I think that when people hit that sort of threshold and at how many children and whatever, it’s probably different person to person. But when we do, what we end up doing is saying, “Oh, I must not be cut out for this. I’m flawed in some way.” Like I look around and everybody else appears to be doing this and they appear to be doing it with ease, so this must be a me problem. And this is what keeps us really stuck in these patterns because this is a societal problem. This is a lot of other big problems. This is not an us problem, right? Like the expectations on mothers to show up the way that they do with no, you know, political like policy systemic support to provide all of this free care work and also contribute to the household and also do these things, is the major problem. But we sort of expect or see others doing it and feel like we are flawed. So when we do that, we don’t step back and question or even feel—it doesn’t feel empowering. This is what I’m trying to say. Doesn’t feel empowering to redistribute, distribute the load. It’s coming from a place of “I’m failing and I’m weak and I can’t do this so I need help.” Versus actually this load was meant for more than one person to begin with. Take your fair share because I’m drowning in plain sight. Like it’s more empowering when we can understand that it’s unrealistic to carry to begin with than if it’s like, “I just can’t keep up. I’m flawed in some way. I need someone to throw me a life raft.” Which also is sometimes the case, but it’s, it’s harder for us to accept or redistribute. It doesn’t feel as empowering. 

DR. AMY: So how does all of this contribute to this mom rage that you talk about? Like, how does it contribute to it? What does that look like? And how is that any different than the typical anger that a non-mom or a non-new mom experiences?

ERICA: Yeah, so I’ve sorted anger in a few buckets. We’ve got postpartum rage, and this is something that we see often shows up with postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety. It is one of the most commonly overlooked symptoms, anger and uncharacteristic anger is one of the most commonly overlooked symptoms for postpartum anxiety or depression in the postpartum period. So we’ve got a very physiological thing going on there that warrants, you know, talking to our provider about. And then we’ve got this, what I call kind of maternal rage or anger. And this is like it possibly also in a resentment bucket if it’s directed towards our partner or includes our partner. But this is where all of those things, like I was saying, we are, there’s a lack of childcare available to us. And then when we do find it, it’s not affordable, but also I’m supposed to show up at work and pretend like I don’t have children because I have to be an equal provider in the home or we can’t make it in Toronto or New York or wherever we live. And I’m also expected to carry all the logistics for the care work or organizing the care that will be in place. And I have to come home and do a second shift of all of the logistics of the house. If that doesn’t enrage you just even like thinking about it and how disproportionately unfair that is. You know, some of this is really justified and understandable, but what I see with clients and when working with parents and couples is it gets misdirected and like partners become sort of at war with each other or keeping score because we see our partner as the problem or they’ve never been expected to anticipate, monitor, like this has never been expected of them in their gender slash social role ever within the home or with care work. It’s increasingly becoming the expectation more now, but it hasn’t been. So while we are suffering because they can’t see this invisible load, it’s not, or often not, most often not, the case that they are doing this intentionally to slight us or to hurt us or to harm us. But because we can’t see the other context, our partner becomes the enemy. And so, Mom Rage can be a couple of different forms, like we can have different targets. It can be our partner, like targets of our anger often are people who are around us. It can be ourself, we can go inward with our anger, we can be hard on ourself. It can be our partner. It could be our children, for me, I felt this more postpartum rage that I was talking about. I felt that with my postpartum depression, but I actually felt it towards my toddler who is in a very busy, and reckless stage that I couldn’t take eyes off of him for a moment. He was dumping shampoo all over the couch or actually bought a bell that I put around his ankle so I could know where he was in the house because he was just so mischievous and like into everything, right? So my, like my frustration or irritability though, I didn’t lash out and that’s not how I deal with my anger, but my irritation was often with him. And so understanding what is going on behind our anger. Is this rooted in something physiological going on like postpartum depression for me and when I treated that, that irritability, the clouds parted and it left and it was totally different. Or is it we are feeling this unjust, unfairness and how do we work through that and clearly identify the actual problem versus seeing our partner as the problem. That can be a really sticky situation to get into.

DR. AMY: Well, and they can’t read our minds, right?

SANDY: Right.  Well, again, I, I feel like, I love that you said that, you know, you can channel that anger in many different places. Oftentimes it does land on the partner. So let’s talk about that a little bit. How do you open up that conversation to your partner to help share that load? Because you’re right. You know, we have taken on this invisible pact, but they have their own invisible pact. That’s different. And how do the two come together to be able to figure out what those family values are going to look like or what that shared load is going to look like?

ERICA: Yeah, it’s. You brought up a really great point and this is something that I really try and approach in the book is a neutrality here. Because I find—and I have a lot of conversations in this space and there’s a lot of different creators in this space—and it can be very like anti-husband bashing and I can understand where that might come from. But I, that was not my experience. I had the most willing and supportive partner and I had really, with my A-type perfectionist, you know, personality was like, “I’m gonna kill this motherhood thing. I don’t even need you for this. Like, I’m gonna just rock this,” right? So I saw the patterns play out, you know, that he didn’t put them on me. And I kind of co-opted myself into them and sort of we hadn’t had conversations about them. So I have a very neutral stance our partners have their own socialized rules and pressures. Now they are around family, but in a different way. I have a couple of podcast episodes on the invisible load of fathers and what that is and trying to really unpack it with some clinician dads in this space, but one of the really tricky things that happens when we approach this topic, especially if we do it when we in the moment when we are sort of dysregulated or frustrated, it becomes a tit-for-tat keeping score. “I have all these things on my to do list.” “Yeah. Well, I also have all of these things. Do you think I don’t have my own stress and my own pressure? Like I have this going on at work and I have this thing to manage.” And so, choosing, I have in the book, red light versus green light moments to have a conversation because how we start a conversation, 95 percent of the time, how we start one will dictate and predict how it will end. So not flying off the handle when I see the dishes in the sink and choose the moment when the kids are around and I’m already dysregulated to launch into a conversation about how you never do anything around the house, but really taking it away and chewing on it to understand, “What is it that is actually bothering me?” Is it the dishes? Is it that you don’t anticipate that I’m going to need a clean and empty sink for dinner time or to prep lunches in the morning for the kids? Like, is it that you aren’t, you know, in tune with the routines at the house? There’s something really concrete there that I can communicate in a positive way.  “I need you to monitor and be on top of this because when I come in after the fact, it has this ripple effect for me.” But when we are launching into these conversations, when we are dysregulated, or if we’re very focused on winning and keeping score, or we see our partner as the enemy, then we are not going to get anywhere productive. Now in the book, I made something I call load maps because I understand that even making this invisible load visible has its own invisible labor to it, right? Like it has its own load. So I tried my best for the sort of universal loads that we might experience to map them out and make them visible for you so that you have a concrete tool to sit down with your partner and show them the things, if you have a hard time finding the language, so that you can maybe even go through those lists and put each initial beside each task to do a little tally or inventory to say, “Look at this. Like, these are the things that you even have to think about day to day that I’m managing and carrying and what on this list are you able to take on because this is too much for me?” But how and being intentional with how we go into those conversations really matters. 

DR. AMY: And I would think that, well not I would think, I do know, that we have to revisit those task lists because each stage of childhood changes what tasks might need to be done, right? So it might be changing diapers and you know feeding in you know in the early years, but you’ve got school-agers who are now participating in sports and extracurricular activities, right? It changes as our kids grow. It was funny. My youngest is 19 now, so mine are 19, 23 and 25. And I feel like I’m still working on launching young adults, right. And sometimes I feel like my husband thinks we’re done. “Right. And I’m like, yeah, I think we still need to have some, you know, conversations about, you know, what car insurance issues are like,” right? And so we have to keep revisiting those at every stage of development, I think, in order to be successful and not start to feel resentful. 

SANDY: I think you have to do it even after kids, too. As an empty nester husband and wife, we kind of had a big conversation not too long ago because both of our jobs require a lot of time. So, you know, again, you’ve got to figure out who’s doing the laundry. Who’s making dinner, right? Who’s going to the grocery store? Like it never ends, you know? Which you actually point out in your book, Erica. Like, these are things that don’t have a finality to them, right? These are all these tasks …

ERICA: There’s no done. Yeah. No state of done. They’re cyclical. And I think that we aim for a state of having, let’s say, the house on done mode so we can rest and relax, but none of these household or care tasks often are linear in that way. They’re often cyclical. So it feels defeating to finish the laundry to have the kids come home from camp and just throw laundry back in the empty baskets. They were empty for one minute, you know, it’s to be expected because when we can see them as cyclical, there are no, they’re never in any one static state. They’re always moving through the different states. And it’s really important to note that. Even season to season within our own lives. Like when I was launching the book, for example, my husband had way more of the load than I did because I was, had so much going on at work. And we’re in, you know, coordinating the summer camp schedules and crazy pickup and drop offs right now. Like that ball is always fluid and in motion. And I can’t even like state the importance enough of flexibility when it comes to how we approach these things. We often want to set a very like rigid systems or very like rigid, defined responsibilities in the home. We do need to have clear roles and responsibilities, but there also needs to be an element of flexibility and fluidity to them because I might be less capable when I’m struggling with postpartum depression or in a depressive episode than I would be when I’m operating at full capacity. And so things are always ebbing and flowing depending on the stressors in our lives, the stage we’re in, the work projects we’re facing. And so I make a case for having, you know, regular check-ins with your partner and getting in a really good communication routine of where that’s at. Because it should get into like a really natural dance and ebb and flow as you get better at this over the years. 

DR. AMY: Yeah, we had very, we had very clear, what we would call MR and DR, Dad’s responsibility, Mom’s responsibility. And what I found was if there were, my husband was in the military for 26 years and so if he was deployed, I would still need to be able to know how to do those things that were labeled Dad’s responsibility. And whatever the alternative, if I was on a work trip.  And so, you know, one of those things was filling the gas tanks in the cars has always been Dad’s responsibility because I can’t stand to do it. Right? So he was very gracious and, you know, after church on Sunday, he always fills my car. And I can remember my car being empty for some reason and pulling into the gas station and y’all, this was like a year ago and sitting there not knowing how to open the door to the gas tank.  Like sitting there walking around the car, looking on the dashboard, trying to find a button, could not do it, right? My husband’s an O.R. nurse and I’m sitting there thinking there’s no way I can call him. I ended up calling him and he just happened to be in between surgeries and was able to say, “You just push the door and it opens up.” But I thought if I had just asked, “Hey, just in case I ever have to get my own gas, maybe you should show me how to open the tank door.” It’s kind of embarrassing, I can’t even believe I just did that.

ERICA: No, this was me at Costco a month or so ago. Grocery shopping is one of the things that my husband does. Now, I went to Costco for I don’t know what reason, probably because I wanted to like actually shop, like I wanted to like get things like not-on-the-list type things. And do you think I could even remember the pin code for my debit card? Cause the only place I use my debit card is at Costco. And I hadn’t used it in so long that I was like, “How do I even use this debit card right now?” And it’s moments like that where, you know, it shows how much things have changed for us. And then also, we have something in our company called SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures. In the book, I talk about it more as like maternal knowledge or parental knowledge. The knowledge that we gain by being in proximity with our children and being the one in these roles day in and day out. Now, if we go a man down, the other partner needs to be up to date on the SOP and the processes and what to do and has to be informed and have that knowledge. We should be able to step in and out of each other’s roles. Maybe a little, I wouldn’t say seamlessly, it might be a little clunky because like we’re not, we’re rusty at it or whatever. But we should be able to step in and out of these things for each other because stressors happen. Life happens. Travel happens. You know, mental health things happen. Health things happen. So, this, sometimes I feel like maternal knowledge sometimes feels like it gives us power, like, you know, mother’s intuition, “mother knows best” kind of mentality sometimes. But the more that we can be in sync and attuned to this knowledge between our partnership and our parenting, the more empowering it is because the more freedom we have to step in and out of this role with a bit more ease.

DR. AMY: And do you have some suggestions on how to share that knowledge with one another? 

ERICA: Yeah, really, like, common things that come to mind are incorporating them into, this starts so early on, this could start with trying to conceive infertility. Like, you’re going to all the appointments, you’re hearing all the information, you’re doing all the research. Include them. If they can’t be there physically, dial them into the appointment. The research together, like all of this accumulating of mental knowledge, maternal knowledge, whatever bucket we want to put it in, starts very early on and if we build systems or think about ways to share that, then we set ourselves to not have like such a, not deficit, like backlog to have to like get them up to date on. But I was at that place where I had that backlog and we worked, you know, sort of section by section starting with like the school. He took over as the primary school contact. They don’t even know me anymore. I can walk in and they’re like, “Who’s your child?” And my husband walks in and they wave him down. They’re like, “I’ll call him. He’ll be down in a moment.” You know? So start with like one section that feels doable, that you don’t feel so anxious about letting go of because it’s so close for you, but you can, you know, build some tolerance around and start there with one domain or one area. And get them up to speed, have them take ownership over it, and then have weekly syncs or bi-weekly, like whatever that looks like for your schedule. We kind of do daily syncs for like immediate things in the week. Then we do weekly syncs on like the bigger items, or what needs to be scheduled, or what camp is coming up next week, and things like that. And then, carve out time for bigger, overarching things as well, like whether it’s family planning, values, vacations, and things that we don’t get to talk about day to day. But building in that communication so, so important.

SANDY: What suggestions do you have for single parents? Because it’s a different hurdle for them, but they still need that respite. They need that ability to share the load.

ERICA: Yeah. It’s interesting. It can vary whether the co-parent is involved or not involved. How contentious that relationship is can also play a big role. But one of the things I was really conscious of writing the book was that you don’t have to be partnered in order to read it and to learn strategies to release the load. A lot of the load that we carry are unrealistic expectations or things that we have internalized. And then there are some that are essential. So going through the book will allow a single parent to get really clear on their values so that they can let go of the bloat and the things that are just causing extra, you know, distress and weight on them so that they can kind of triage and focus on the essentials. And then it also, you know, learning how to ask for help and to build a community around us, whether it’s another single mom and, “Hey, I’m going to come over and stay the night tonight so you can get some sleep. And then if you alternate and do that for me next weekend,” and like starting to build some of that community. But I find that we’ve also struggled to ask for help sometimes. So in the things that are the essential that we might still be struggling with, who within our community or support system might be able to step in from time to time as well?

DR. AMY: So we need to take a quick break and let Sandy read a success story from our sponsor. And when we come back, we just want you to share a couple of ways that moms can begin to take more control of their mental health and find some joy in their lives.

SANDY: Em was a ball of nerves about math. It made her so frustrated that she would avoid it at all costs. Then her family found LearningRx. The LearningRx team created a brain training program tailored to Em’s unique needs and goals. Her dad loved the one-on-one help and her mom was thrilled with how adding deliberate distractions actually improved Em’s focus. After completing her training at LearningRx, Em’s confidence soared. In fact, she says she feels smart in math and science now and wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. While your child may or may not achieve these same results, LearningRx would love to work with you to get answers about your child’s struggles with learning. Get started at LearningRx.com or head to our show notes for links to more helpful resources. 

DR. AMY: All right, so we’re continuing this really fun conversation with Erica Djossa about the mother load and what that means and what, the kind of challenges it creates in the family dynamic. But let’s talk about some ways that moms can prioritize their own mental health. Where should they look for help and resources? What should they, what are some warning signs that they might need some professional help? And then maybe just some everyday ways to increase joy in their lives while they’re doing all of the load or half of the load.

ERICA: I think that it’s going to depend on the stage of motherhood you’re in a little bit, but there are still some key signs. They just maybe show up a little bit differently. So if you’re, you know, pregnant or in the postpartum period and you’re having insomnia or a lot of intrusive, disturbing thoughts or you’re having a hard time feeling like you can relax or calm, like there’s this constant undercurrent of panic or fear or anxiety, you know, it’s time to speak with somebody and see if this is, like, the baseline. We are really like, I mean, it makes sense. We are only accustomed to our own baseline. We don’t know what it should feel like more commonly to everybody else. So if we’ve always had an undercurrent of anxiety, or if we’ve always had an undercurrent of low mood and depression, when that starts to dial up slowly in the postpartum period and be amplified, it might not, and it likely won’t announce itself to us, right? It’s going to come out in some red-flag ways that I see like these undercurrents, but it’s going to come out and things saying things like, “I wonder if I should get some help.” If you are wondering, I’m going to say it’s time. “I don’t feel like myself.”  And “My family would be better off without me.” There’s a few sort of really red-flag key statements that we start to hear, whether it’s anxiety or depression, where it’s like, okay, we need to seek some help and support. And also, we don’t need to wait until we’re in crisis. We don’t need to wait until it is so bad that we must seek support because we’re in crisis now. Like if you’re not feeling like yourself, if you are anxious if you are not enjoying your motherhood experience, talk to somebody about it. Because you, like motherhood should not feel like a dark cloud every single day. There are dark moments and it is certainly not the romanticized ideal that maybe we are sold that it was. But if you’re not having moments of joy and you’re not, you know, finding your groove in your pocket a little bit in your role, talk to a therapist, talk to a friend, talk to somebody about that. There are, like, Postpartum Support International has some really great free peer-support groups to see and kind of feel out, like, “Is what I’m experiencing normal? Like, is this what you’re experiencing?” And then also MomWell, my maternal mental health platform is across many provinces in Canada, and we’re across 15 states in the U.S. serving over 65 percent of the population and actively brokering in network contracts to lower those barriers to care. And all of our therapists are specialized in this adjustment to motherhood and beyond, including things like the division of labor and mom rage and how to navigate all of that. When I step back and look at the sort of pie chart of what really weighs on maternal mental health and what really deteriorates our mental well-being versus restoring it or revitalizing us, I see things like, the division of labor in the home, lack of support, sleep deprivation. We have a free sleep plan for Mom that helps you make a sleep plan that is not tied to your baby’s sleep. There are key things and areas that if we start to work on, then we can start to feel like ourself again. Yeah, and I find that when we seek out or maybe work up the nerve to talk to our primary provider, only, okay, 60 percent of physicians in a survey that was done, this was across Canada, 60 percent of them reported having no maternal mental health training. And so, if we’re not dealing with somebody who understands the nuances of this field, what sometimes can happen is we might be minimized or dismissed of fears and concerns. We might be told things like, “This is what motherhood is. You just need some rest.” You know, like, “Welcome to motherhood” kind of comments. If you work up the nerve and the courage to talk to a provider and you are dismissed, please do not stop there. Right? Like find a maternal mental health specialist, find an OBGYN who is trained in maternal mental health. Postpartum Support International has a directory to help you find those clinicians because is this nuanced specialized support out there that is safe and nonjudgmental and will hear your experience, what you’re going through and we’ll understand it.

DR. AMY: So, you know, most insurance companies in the United States will allow you to self-refer for mental health therapy, but there are still some insurance companies who still require a referral from a primary care provider. So what language do you suggest moms would use so that they don’t encounter some pushback or gaslighting or some of that that you’re talking about, “Oh, it’s just part of, you know, being a new mom.” How should they insist on needing and getting this referral?

ERICA: Mm hmm. I feel like the most common language that physicians or, you know, other providers are more accustomed to and gets talked about more these days are postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety. Like, those are pretty mainstream things that we can talk about and say, like, “Can I have a referral for postpartum depression or a therapist or a doctor or something?” And then if I’m being dismissed, I might also like ask if they have maternal mental health or any specialized training in this field, and if not, do they know somebody who does? Like, it’s okay to ask for a second opinion or to go in with some questions. Because when we’re talking, we’re talking things like intrusive thoughts which can sometimes be scary and disturbing thoughts about harming your baby, but I know as a trained clinician that there’s zero intent behind these thoughts. And I know how to distinguish them from psychosis and psychotic thoughts. And so you want somebody who you can trust opening up to. So doing your research and even asking them a few questions, interviewing them a little bit first, and if they don’t have the specialized training, then asking to be referred out to somebody who has that training. And even maybe come equipped with the provider who you want the direct referral to, because Postpartum Support International’s directory can give you that and come informed about their background and their training. Unfortunately, that’s some of the work we have to do.

SANDY: For sure.

DR. AMY: What would you like to leave our listeners with? Because we are just about out of time. 

ERICA: Yeah, I think that if we can shift out of the “I am flawed and that’s why I’m failing at this” and shift into seeing that what is expected of me is unrealistic and wasn’t my burden to carry individually to begin with, then we can actually start to make some changes. When we’re stuck thinking that we are flawed and we are not cut out for this role, what solution is there for a person who is broken? Like, all creative problem-solving and planning and, you know, solution seeking stops there. And then we really prolong our suffering and our distress. So I just challenge you to step back a little bird’s eye view and see that what is being expected of you is what is unjust and unfair, and this is not a you problem. Have some self-compassion and lots can change from there. 

DR. AMY: Great advice. Erica Djossa, thank you so much for being with us today. We will put links to access Erica and her work and her book in our show notes. You can find her at momwell.com on Instagram at momwell, on TikTok at mom.well, and on Facebook at HappyAsAMother. Again, we’ll put that link, a link to purchase her book, in the show notes. Listeners, we enjoyed having you with us today. We really appreciate you listening to us and our show. If you love us, please leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple podcasts so we can reach more smart parents like you. And we’d love to see you on Instagram. We are at the Brainy Moms. If you want to know more about what Sandy does day in and day out, you can find her on TikTok at the Brain Trainer Lady. So look, that’s all the stuff we have for you today. We’ll catch you next time.

SANDY: Have a great week.