Mom rage: Overwhelm and burnout don’t make you a bad parent

Most of us have been there. Your kids are full tilt. You’re overstimulated, overbooked, and running on empty. Losing it happens — and so do the guilt and shame that follow.

Today, Jessica sits down with therapist and mom Michelle Puster to talk about the overwhelm, guilt, and burnout behind mom rage, especially when raising neurodivergent kids. They share their own strategies (like mindfulness and self-compassion) to ease the intensity, help you reset your nervous system, and make you feel like yourself again.

• Watch: Brené Brown on shame

• Read: Dr. Laura Markham’s book Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids

• Learn more: RAIN meditation technique

• Listen: Managing your emotions as a mom with ADHD

Jessica Shaw: Let's talk about the parenting feeling almost everyone has and no one admits: rage.

Michelle Puster: This one particular morning, I got them into their car seats. I'm sweating, crying, yelling, trying not to yell, but yelling, getting short and rigid and, ugh. I get them in and I'm so like out of my mind, angry and overwhelmed. I come in the house and I remember kicking their little play kitchen and it made, I mean, the good thing is they didn't see it, but I just remember feeling crazy, like crazy out of my mind.

Jessica: Mom rage, or dad rage, or caregiver rage is tough. It can make us feel like we failed. We feel embarrassed, ashamed, flawed, and a billion other self-loathing adjectives. To be clear, we're talking about emotional rage here, not physical on any level. Not that I'm giving emotional rage a pass, because it's also toxic and damaging, whether leveled at our children or ourselves.

Sometimes when we're parenting a neurodivergent kid who has behavioral challenges or doesn't listen in the same way that a neurotypical kid might, or is just simply being a kid, we lose it. And I'm not super psyched to admit this, but I've yelled, I've slammed a few doors, and I did something one time in my life that I'll share in this episode that I don't think I've ever told anyone.

Why? Because I'm embarrassed that I couldn't control my feelings in that moment. But I'm not alone. And if you're listening and feeling pretty vulnerable right now, you're not alone either. You know who's right in there with us? My guest, Michelle Puster, a therapist and a mother of three kids with and without diagnoses. She vents, I vent, and somehow knowing we're not alone turns the shame volume down. I'm Jessica Shaw, and this is "Everyone Gets a Juice Box."

Okay, so tell me about your family.

Michelle: So I have three kids. I have twins that are 11, and then I have a 10-year-old. They're 18 months apart. So when they were little, it was very hairy.

Jessica: Yes, I can imagine three kids in that close age range. That is, that is a lot. And tell me, I mean, tell me more about your children because I think one of your kids, one of the twins, has ADHD and dyslexia. One of the twins has dyslexia, and then your younger child, you're not so sure, right?

Michelle: Right. So I actually am getting my other twin tested for ADHD inattentive type because as he's creeping into adolescence, I'm seeing some things. But my daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia pretty early, like first grade. And I've always noticed that my youngest is strong-willed and highly sensitive. She and my son are both highly sensitive, so they have some sensory stuff.

And I think they just take turns being difficult. You know, they take turns. Sometimes when they were little, it was all at once. Everything was hard and everything was like a soup of, I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know which way was up. And as they got older, it kind of I could kind of see like, "Okay, this is what you're, this is your challenges, this is your uniqueness, this is your stuff over here." And it got a little bit clearer.

Jessica: So tell me about your rage. I want to know like how does your rage manifest? What does that look like?

(03:58) The weight of early motherhood and professional demands

Michelle: Well, sadly, when they were little, I was a new, I mean, newer therapist. I was learning emotionally focused therapy, which requires you to sit in people's emotion. So I would, you know, go into the therapy room and I would sit with people's emotion all day and I was struggling, you know, to learn it and be good at it. And then I would come home and I would have these three, you know, needy toddlers who all needed they needed like three of me, right? But they got one of me and there was barely enough of me.

And I had this guilt about, you know, I'm showing up at work, but I, but I'm like a shell of myself by the time I come home. And I remember one day my daughter like came and sat next to me and I like kind of recoiled because I had nothing to give. I had, I was empty. I was depleted. And I was filled with guilt because I knew as a therapist and especially learning attachment specific things, like I am her everything. You know, I am the one that's going to, me and my husband are going to, you know, create her sense of safety and security.

So if I can't respond to her calmly and just even be there to give her a hug when I come home, that's going to be a problem. And that was one part of it. That was kind of the quiet part. There were often mornings of rage where I would be trying to get them to preschool and my husband had already gone to work. So it was on me to get these three little kids who didn't want to go in the car, didn't want to go to preschool, didn't want to be separated from me, didn't want to get dressed.

And somehow I had to get them dressed, get them into car seats, which I hate car seats. I hate having to put three kids in three car seats. It was a nightmare.

Jessica: Whoever invented the latch for the car seat should go to prison for life as far as I'm concerned.

Michelle: Oh, and then when they figured out how to unbuckle them, oh man, I don't. So, I would get them, I remember this one particular morning, I got them into their car seats, which was, I mean, I'm sweating, crying, yelling, trying not to yell, but yelling, getting short and rigid, and ugh, you know. I get them in and I'm so like out of my mind, angry and overwhelmed. I come in the house and I remember kicking their little play kitchen and it made, I mean, the good thing is they didn't see it. There were other times they saw my rage for sure.

But I just remember feeling crazy, like crazy out of my mind. And the worst, the worst part was I had everything I ever wanted. I had a career I loved. I had three beautiful kids. I had a supportive husband. And I was more depressed and overwhelmed and out of my mind than I had ever been before.

Jessica: And then you feel kind of guilty because you're like, on top of everything else, you're exhausted, you're depleted. Forget having any time for yourself. You're probably a little pissed at your husband that you have to get all three kids out. You're, and you're like, you're sleep deprived. And then on top of all that, there's the guilt because you're like, "Oh, and I'm not even grateful enough. And I probably just stubbed my toe on my kids' kitchen."

Michelle: Right. I, yes, 100%. The worst part was I blamed myself, you know, I didn't think, "Oh wow, maybe this is too much for one person. Like, maybe it's reasonable that I'm losing my mind. Maybe, you know, this is just too much for any one person to handle." I thought it was a personal failure. I thought it was a personal weakness. I thought I needed to try harder. I needed to do better. And if I couldn't do it in a way that I felt good about, then it was my fault.

And so that contributed to shame. And you know what Brené Brown says about shame, if you don't talk about it, it thrives, right? So I was just in this constant spiral of, you know, I would drop the kids off to preschool and I would look at all the other moms and I'd look how they were dressed and look how the kid, and I was just like, you know, they are clear, they know how to do it and I'm a failure and I am like, but the thing is, now they could have been looking at me and thinking the same thing. You know, it wasn't like they could see that I was falling apart. It wasn't like I was hiding it. I was masking it. But at the time, yeah, there was always a story about everybody else had it together and I was the one that was, you know, losing my mind.

Jessica: Yeah, I mean, I feel that so much. I feel like I live in New York. I'll be on the subway and I'll see a kid who's kind of bouncing off the walls and driving their mom or their parents crazy. And the parent will be so calm and they'll just be like, "Okay, let's talk about, you know, what you're doing. What, what would be a better way to approach this?" They'll honor their feelings and they'll do all these things. And I'm like, "Oh my God." You know what I would have done in that situation? First of all, I would be dying inside because everyone would be watching my kid be the one who's acting out.

And then I would just be like, my insides would be in knots and I might, and I might want to like run off the subway and be like, "I can't with you anymore." And I probably would say something like, "Stop, stop enough." And then feel horrible about myself and then feel like, "Oh, now everyone's also looking at me because I just lost it."

Michelle: Right, totally. Yes, I have had many of those moments.

Jessica: Yeah.

(09:54) How ADHD influences parental rage and emotional regulation

Jessica: So you also have ADHD. How does that impact your rage? Do you think it does?

Michelle: Well, you know, when I started kind of recovering from rage, I was, it was always like a puzzle, like, "What is my deal? Why do I have such a hard time?" And I think there was a combination of, you know, there was some trauma in childhood, there was some alcoholism, chaos, there was, and yes, I think my ADHD and that difficulty with emotional regulation. Because even though I feel like I am in the healthiest place that I've ever been, which is like really cool to be able to say, I still struggle, like I still like have those moments, right? And to some degree, I think it's just human, but I think that my ADHD does make it, like my emotions are just closer to the surface. So whatever the emotion it is, it's like right there.

Jessica: I hear you. And then it's sort of like, you know, you talk a lot and you speak about this and on your podcast, and I've heard you say this and it makes so much sense to me that intellectually you want to do one thing and you're like, "I know what I should do. I'm a therapist." You're a therapist. I mean, this is what you study. This is, you help parents. "I know what I should be doing." And then your prefrontal cortex is like, "Oh, actually, I have another idea."

Michelle: Right.

Jessica: Tell me about that. Can you explain that? Like explain the neurology of this whole situation.

Michelle: Yeah. So I mean, like when I was first really, like I remember, when the kids were younger, I would be, I would always like make these commitments like, "I'm not going to yell anymore." And Dr. Laura Markham has this idea that, you know, she doesn't suggest making charts for kids. She's like, "But if you want to try it for yourself, go ahead." So I made myself a chart and I was like, "Whenever I would not yell, I would get a smiley face. And whenever I yelled," I don't know what it was, an X, I didn't get very many smiley faces. And I love this because it's like, "Oh no wonder, that feels really crappy." Kids probably don't, this feels crappy for me and I cannot.

I mean, I want nothing more than to respond calmly, but my brain gets hijacked. And at that time, I was in full-blown parent burnout, which means that my window of tolerance was much more narrow. So we all have a window of tolerance, right? And ideally it would be wide. It would be like, it would take a car accident or, you know, something like really sudden happening to kind of trigger our fight or flight. But if we're in burnout or chronic stress, or we've experienced a past traumatic experience, which many if not most have of us have done, the window of tolerance is very narrow.

So that means that we can feel okay, but then it's really easy to flip into fight or flight. So at the time I didn't realize that and, you know, I would kind of feel okay, but then my, you know, kids would throw their plate off the table and I would just lose it, right? And it was like, I didn't even have time to think before I was reacting and losing it.

And then even when I learned how to, like I started to be able to expand my window of tolerance. And there was several factors, like I got a parent coach from hand in hand that made a huge difference. Mostly because one: support, but two, she kept telling me, "You're not crazy, you're not a bad mom. Like you're in a really overwhelming situation. Like it's a lot of what you're trying to do." And I was like, "Oh, okay, that's news to me."

And then I also started meditating. And I noticed that that really expanded my window of tolerance. It was like magic, but it took time. It took like a month for that to really, you know, for me to really notice the difference. But then what would happen is I would feel the rage like you described, like it just feel like your whole body feels like it's on fire and you want to scream and I would remove myself. So I was able to or I would start yelling and I would stop and I would remove myself.

But then I would fall into this pit of shame, like what, like you were saying earlier, "What's wrong with me? I'm a therapist. Why can't I get it together? Like why am I reacting this way?" And so that wasn't particularly helpful either because my kids would kind of move on. They'd be like fine and I'm in this depression like hole and I'm kind of withdrawn for the rest of the day. So I, so then I found Kristin Neff and self-compassion, and I started using that as a tool for now I've removed myself, but I still have to figure out what to do with these thoughts that are fueling the anger. I still have to deal with the shame that I'm feeling that's now putting me in a hole. So the good thing about it is it was like therapy five times a day, you know? Trigger, going through this whole process, starting to relate and respond to myself differently. And over time it got better and better and better.

Jessica: What are your triggers? Because I always feel like, and for me, I feel like I have a million triggers. My kids fighting is a huge trigger. I always feel like as a parent, my cup is full, and all it takes is like two little drops and then my cup runneth over with frustration. And then I am like slamming a door or just leaving home and turning my location off so my kids can't find me and, you know, which is so horrible to do as a parent, just to like walk out and they're safe, don't worry, everyone. But I, what is your trigger? What is your thing that's like, okay, this is my point of no return.

(15:58) Understanding personal triggers and the impact of chaos

Michelle: Yeah, there's definitely multiple. So yes, kids fighting because it's like, here's two people you love and you feel guilty, like if I was doing it better, they wouldn't be fighting or I should have intervened sooner or, you know, someone's getting hurt so you like want to protect the one that's getting hurt. But so that's definitely one. Then being ignored, my son, the one that I'm getting tested for inattentive type, he often ignores me. I know that it's not intentional, although it does seem like he has selective hearing. But that like, you know, is very triggering.

Chaos, so sometimes even when they're all happy, but they're kind of just like a lot of energy and running around and just like, I was like, it was the feeling of chaos and things feeling out of control. And that one I, I kind of like working with my parent coach, realized that that was the feeling I had growing up, chaos and feeling out of control. And so even being it was really strange to me when my kids were laughing and joyful, that I would feel triggered. Like I just want to run away and like cover my ears. Like what in the world? So, and of course it wasn't always joyful, right? Sometimes it's chaos and people are yelling and things are being thrown or whatever's happening. So chaos is a big one.

Anytime I feel powerless, like the other day my youngest daughter shut down and just stopped talking. I had no idea why. I had just taken her to get ice cream and she just shut down and stopped talking. I had no idea why, but when I talked to her, I tried to give her space. Nothing I was doing was working. So I started to feel that and it was really interesting. Now I'm like observing myself like, "Huh, she's not really like acting out, quote unquote, right? She's like just not responding to me, but I feel powerless because I don't know what's going on." Another trigger.

Jessica: Yeah, I feel like that's a big one for me too. And I, it's taken me years to sort of recognize my anxiety that my kid is experiencing something or, "Oh my God, they'll never be able to handle X, Y, or Z." That anxiety makes me spiral and and oddly makes me angry. It doesn't make me sad. It makes me rage-filled.

(18:25) The RAIN practice and uncovering deeper emotions

Michelle: Right. Yeah. And you know what is interesting about that? I think anger is often on the surface. But what I have learned is, um, I do the RAIN practice that I learned from Tara Brach. So RAIN is recognize, allow, and then investigate, or I change it to interconnect and then need. So essentially you're like filled with rage and you're like, "I'm angry, I'm embarrassed," and this is my inner dialogue, right? So you start naming the emotion, which kind of gives you some space from it.

Jeff Warren, a meditation teacher, says, "Welcome to the party." So you're like, "Welcome to the party, anger. Welcome to the party, embarrassment. I'm so glad you're here." But that is in an attempt to allow the emotion in versus judging ourselves for it, right? And I notice as I'm moving through this, then the I, interconnect, it is like, "I'm not the only parent in the world that's going through this. There is probably another parent right now experiencing probably almost an identical situation. I'm not alone."

And I've noticed that as I do this more and more, I start to get to tears and I start to get to the underlying emotions, the sadness, the fear, like you said, the anxiety of, "Oh my gosh, it feels really awful to feel powerless, to feel like fearful of is my child okay?" So there are a lot of times there are underlying emotions under the anger and rage that we don't always realize are there and we don't always realize that's what's fueling them. And so if you find, you know, if you find yourself doing this and you, and you catch and you start to cry like, "Oh my gosh, this is just awful," really embrace that as this is, this is healing, right? Because I've moved under the anger to the deeper emotions. And now I'm feeling them, which is going to help me move through them, which is the goal.

(20:31) A closer look at the influences on Michelle's parenting journey

Jessica: I want to break into my conversation with Michelle here for a second. Michelle name-drops a lot of people who have been influential for her parenting journey. And in case you haven't been pausing this podcast to Google them, I'll give you a quick rundown here. Brené Brown, the researcher and best-selling author. Dr. Laura Markham, psychologist and author of "Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids." Jeff Warren, author and meditation instructor. Kristin Neff, the author of "Self-Compassion." And Tara Brach, a psychologist who created the RAIN technique for meditation. Take that list and do your own Googling if you want. And let's go back to the interview.

(21:27) Navigating rage with emotionally tuned-in children

I'm curious for your kids, like for your daughter with ADHD, does she process your rage and your anger in a different way than her twin without, who doesn't have an ADHD diagnosis?

Michelle: Yeah, for sure. She is very in tune with emotions. So I like how now we talk about, you know, ADHD and dyslexia superpowers. And her superpower for sure is emotions. So I will, she'll be, I'll be slightly off. She's like, "Mom, what's wrong? Are you okay?" Or my husband and I are talking and she's like, "Are you guys fighting? Is everything okay?" Or, you know, she just is very in tune. So if I'm angry, it scares her.

She, I can see the fear in her eyes. I can, she tears up. She asks me if I'm okay. She tries to take care of me, which I have to say, you know, "Baby, it's not your job to take care of mommy. I'm angry. It's all right. I'm going to be okay." But she wants, you know, to, she wants to kind of care for me. But I think she really appreciates, she like gets it. She has said to me, you know, "Thank you for parenting this way."

And what she means is like I don't punish her when she gets angry. I understand that she's struggling with an emotion and I understand that she, her brain is, you know, off balance and that she needs me to just listen and be there for her through it. And I think that me being there for her through her anger helps her know, "Okay, this is normal." But for sure, if I'm angry, she's, it's still scary because I'm her mom, right? I'm, I'm the one that's like her safety. I'm her everything. But yeah, she's so sensitive to that anger.

Jessica: It's interesting. My daughter also, it's like I feel like because I have such a short fuse and I go to rage so quickly, as does she. And it's so interesting to hear you say that she acknowledged how you parent her. I also, I could never punish her for it because I, I kind of feel like the one thing I feel good about in this whole cycle for me as like lose it, yell, feel like crap, apologize, you know, articulate how I could have done differently, rinse and repeat. But with my kids, I have to point out to them, I have to own it. And I always apologize and I always say, "Hey, I want to tell you what happened. Um, shouldn't have, that wasn't the best way to approach it."

And I feel, on one hand I was like, "God, they have a mom who is like always apologizing." Like that's not great. Like at a certain point you shouldn't have to apologize for, you know, every single thing. On the other hand, I've noticed with my kids that because they also have very, you know, like you said, sort of deeply emotionally attuned emotions right on the surface, they will also now apologize too. And I feel like being able to take a breath, even if you can't control it in the minute, but take a breath after and kind of reflect on that, like I I it's like the smallest of pats on the back I give myself.

Michelle: Yeah. No, I that gives me chills when you say that because 100%. I mean, really what you're modeling is that ideal thing, right? I, the same, apologize, I have to apologize a lot. But by like saying, "Oh, you know, that wasn't okay for me to, you know, get yell in the car. I'm sorry. That wasn't okay for me to do." Whatever. We are modeling exactly what we want them to be able to do, to look at their behavior, to look at what wasn't great about it, to own their side of it, to, you know. So, yes, I think that's great to be able to apologize to our kids when we mess up and we're setting a good example when we can do that.

Jessica: Yeah. I love that. Michelle, you're also a therapist. Are there times where parents, I feel like we've just had a therapy session because you've helped me so much in this in our conversation. But do you find sometimes that when you listen to parents tell their stories to you, that you think about your own life? And like has there been something that that someone has said that has been, I don't know, sort of elucidating for you as far as, "Oh, I do that. And that's an interesting way of dealing with rage."

(26:00) Insights from a therapist's chair: the power of resolve

Michelle: Yeah, for sure. I feel like I probably learn as much from my clients as they learn from me, right? And, um, recently one of the parents was talked about, um, making a commitment, you know, to not rage. They, I can't remember. I feel like they used a different word than resolve. I think it was resolve. And I really liked that idea because I think we do have to make a decision that this isn't okay for us. This isn't how I want to show up as a parent.

And it's easy to justify, like there is that balance, right? Because on one hand, we might get swept away in guilt and shame, but on the other hand, we might justify and say, "Well, they were doing this. You know, my kid was doing X, Y, Z, so they deserved it or they needed to be yelled at or they..." And that's not helpful either. Like either side of the pendulum isn't helpful.

So I love that this parent said, "I have a resolve not to yell." And so then that helps them look at themselves versus looking always at, "What's my kid doing that's not okay? What's my kid doing that I don't like? What do I, you know, how do I get them to stop doing this and start doing that?" It, it was like, "Okay, how can I put the focus back on me as the parent and where I get stuck because I don't want to yell. Yelling isn't something I want my kids to grow up with. And when I do, I'm going to try to work through it." So I really loved, um, that parent's statement of, "I, I have this resolve because it's like I'm going to keep coming back to just working on this even if it takes a lifetime."

(27:44) Reflecting on rage: a path to understanding and healing

Jessica: When Michelle said, "Even if it takes a lifetime," that really spoke to me. When I was a kid, if something was really bothering me, my mom would tuck me in and say, "Jessie, you know what? The sun is still going to come up tomorrow morning." Rinse and repeat for a lifetime. Maybe as parents, we need to understand that tomorrow is another day. That yes, there are really rough times and there are easier times. And just because something sends you somewhere one day, another day, the same behavior might put you on a different path.

As Michelle said, sometimes she can name the emotion and hear the support saying she's not crazy, that she's not a bad mom. Talking with Michelle made me think about my perspective on my own rage because I've had low moments. I've often labeled myself a rageful parent, as if I'm acting in a state of rage all day. And there's a lot of shame that goes along with this.

But the truth of the situation is not the same as my feelings about the situation. I'm certainly not rage-filled 100% of the time, not even remotely close. If you ask my kids, they might say, "What are you talking about?" They have long forgotten that one time I turned off my location tracking, even if I haven't. And it took this conversation for me to realize that. That's why we do this. That's why we talk to each other. That's why we share our stories. And that's why there's always going to be a juice box for you here too.

Thanks for listening to "Everyone Gets a Juice Box." Our show is hosted by me, Jessica Shaw. It's produced by Cody Nelson, and video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Jesse De Martino. Briana Berry is our production director and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voice memo to podcast@understood.org.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.