In my Denver therapy practice, I work with many mothers juggling work and family. They are capable, warm, conscientious, and have a history of accomplishment. What's changed is that demands have multiplied and the margin for difficulty has disappeared.
Work, children, and managing a household — each demanding on its own, harder in combination. Whether in a marriage that's become harder to tend or managing more on your own, you often feel out of step with the people closest to you, wanting to parent thoughtfully but without the energy or support to do so.
What tends to be most painful is the story you carry alongside all of this. You've excelled when the stakes were high and yet can't seem to stay on top of things that should be easy. Even though it's not accurate, you feel like you're letting everyone down.
The strategies that once worked — the perfectionism that ensured quality, the willingness to take on more, the difficulty saying no — were adaptive at one point. They stopped working when demands increased in ways the old approaches couldn't keep up with.
Attention, executive functioning difficulties, anxiety, a loss, illness, sleep problems, or perimenopause often also contribute, sometimes bringing attention and memory difficulties that were manageable before to the surface right as everything else is asking more of you. A child's ADHD diagnosis can also prompt a closer look at your own history.
Therapy focuses on understanding what's actually been happening. That often means looking at where limits are hard to set and why, how collaboration with the people around you might work better, and why things feel unmanageable. For some, this also means revisiting a history of self-blame.
As our work progresses, what tends to shift is a growing sense of agency and competence. New options occur to you in situations that once felt all-or-nothing. When things slip, there's less self-blame and more of a felt sense that you've been here before and know the way back.
If this is familiar, I'd be glad to set up a consultation.