3 Strategies - How to be Emotionally Supportive when you're Worn out Yourself — Peaceful Living with Miranda

So many mums are struggling with mental health issues here in Australia - and much of the Western world is no different. So how do can you be emotionally supportive to another mum friend - let’s face it, we all know how it feels to be a mum - when you’re already struggling with burnout yourself?

This post will outline 3 simple ways to still be able to support your mum friends, within these parameters:

without adding to your own mental load too much
staying low-key and not overcommitted
showing your friend that you do actually care, and that you are here for them.

If this is what you need for yourself and a friend, I pray this post gives you some new strategies!

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3 simple ways to be emotionally supportive to a mum friend when you’re worn out yourself

Mental and emotional health is universal

Many people don’t realise that when it comes to mental health, we all have it. It’s a universal thing, because it’s just like physical health. It’s just health and wellness overall - but mental health problems are defining the Western world today, and while it’s a fact that in many of these societies there is more wealth and comfort than ever before, there have also been a dramatic rise in mental health issues, too.

As one of the hardest jobs around, and definitely the longest-lasting, parenting is a huge strain on our mental and emotional health as mums. We are always needed, and often overgive (let’s face it, these are our offspring! We want them to feel loved, and all the things we did (or maybe didn’t) feel as a child ourselves.

If you’re not (currently) struggling with your own mental or emotional health, at least one of your friends will probably need your support.

It’s part of being a good friend

When you see a mum friend struggling, or maybe she’s even open enough to tell you she is struggling, you might feel helpless. Or, you might start offering to do things for her, and to help her out by having the kids, cooking dinner occasionally, and so on. But what if you’re already loaded to the limit yourself?

Most mums these days are overloaded, between financial expectations, work, parenting, afterschool activities, and to be honest, even holidays can be stressful too - leaving little time for our nervous systems to recover, or indeed to even have time to think of creating this time.

This also means that we need to be careful how much extra we take on - but we want to help our friend who is struggling, too! So what do we do?

Being emotionally supportive has to be simple….

Being emotionally supportive can be simple, but if you’re struggling with burnout yourself, you need to be very strict on yourself, to ensure you keep it that way.

This is where this post comes in, and we’re about to jump into my 3 strategies, but firstly I want to introduce myself!

I’m Miranda, an experienced teacher, and the emotional health coach and gentle parenting consultant behind Peaceful Living with Miranda. I help mums not only with their child’s behaviour and building family connection, but most of my clients contact me regarding their own emotional overreactions to their children and partner (yelling and frustration), and feelings of guilt and burnout that are creating overwhelm for them. I bring advice, encouragement and my professional background to my clients with both kids and adult wellbeing in mind - and we bring PEACE back into your household - through you as the Mum! Find out more about how to book here on my Emotional Health Bookings page, and grab a Zoom session if this rings true to you!

How to be supportive of another mum who is struggling with mental and emotional health

1: Pare it back!

Something you need to realise when you are supporting anyone through a mental health struggle is that this is not a 5 minute thing. This is not something that requires you to just blitz them with love for 2 weeks and then forget them. While they may really appreciate you helping them in that time, it will also probably increase your own burnout levels, and even completely overwhelm them.

I’m not saying don’t do this - but a little awareness of both your own and your friend’s limits can be really helpful here.

It’s so important that we don’t overload ourselves for too long - and this can be especially true if you’re one of the ever-growing, amazing group of women with ADHD - because this can increase impulsivity, and often results in overcommitting and then feeling ‘stuck’.

Give to your friend, do what you can to help without being overwhelming - and you will help her and yourself simultaneously, without making it more difficult than it has to be.

2: Get regular!

So, whether or not you do really get involved there for a bit, make sure that you are regularly catching up with that person consistently. It might be a text, a phone call, or a little something dropped off at their house, if that’s easy for you. It could be a ‘need me to grab the kids from school so you don’t have to wake the baby?’ type of thing.

(I know that was absolutely 100% wonderful when friends would do that for me! How useful was that!)

Regular touch points from you mean you are being emotionally supportive to your friend without adding to their overwhelm, which is often a huge element of mental and emotional health.

It also means they feel like someone actually cares - and that they are willing to still care, even when your friend feels like they are forgotten by the world. Many people can withdraw when someone else doesn’t put in any effort into the friendship, but this could even be almost expected when a busy mum friend has depression or anxiety, or burnout. It can be hard to instigate anything you don’t need to. So, be the seeker for them for a little while - even a text once per week is a great touch point.

I would even sometimes set a reminder to text certain friends on a certain day. If I had two friends I was aware of who were struggling, I’d text one on a Thursday and one on a Friday - just a 2-minute message saying ‘Hey! How was your week? Thinking of you!’. This is simple and so easy to do.

3: Don’t be part of the gossip group.

Ooh, this one is a big one. We do not talk about other people behind their backs. And, if someone has shared something in confidence with you, do not go about discussing it everywhere, or criticising their actions to others.

While we all make mistakes because we’re all human, this can completely ruin a friendship and, in your friend’s time of vulnerability, possibly plunge them further into their depression or anxiety. It’s never nice to hear other mums gossiping about each other, or putting each other down - and it makes people wonder if you are teaching your child to talk about others in an unhealthy way! Let’s champion other people and build them up, not undermine them when they need us to be emotionally supportive, not destructive.

Bonus Tip: Pray for them!

If you’re a faith-based woman like I am, you might like to pray for your friend. Jesus is the original healer, the one who knows both you and your friend inside and out, and asking him to guide you both as you step through this together, can only be helpful, right? You can ask them if they mind you praying for them, or even just add them to your prayer list to keep in mind when you read the Bible or pray through the week. God answers prayer, just not in the way we might think - keep that in mind! In this way, He’s already answered it anyway - because you are here, praying for your friend and being alongside her in her struggle.

Being emotionally supportive means we can be there for our mum friends as they manage through a darker period of their lives.

This might mean we do things like take them a meal, send them a text, organise a self-care basket or appointment for them, pick up the kids, or even organise their washing to be done for them one day.

But importantly, we also need to look after ourselves, too. We all have our own families to manage and care for - and while we don’t want to ignore others’ pain just to save ourselves, we do need to make sure we can function peacefully too - because otherwise the cycle continues, doesn’t it? I hope these tips are helpful to you as you are emotionally supportive to a mum friend - or anyone - in your life. Good on you for caring for them so much - the world needs people like you! Just don’t hit burnout yourself because you’ve got such a big heart!

If you’re a compulsive ‘carer’ to the point of exhaustion, constantly, this might indicate that you have a wounded inner child, and that you are potentially trying to either:

a) escape the emotions you don’t want to feel, or

b) make up for your lack of self-worth, ingrained from childhood, or even

c) you get your identity from your actions rather than the fact that you are a God-created human being who is amazing already, before you even get out of bed - and that’s tiring!

If you want to dive into this with a Christian faith-based emotional health coach, without any new-age practices, let’s chat! Go to my Emotional Health Bookings page and a simple session is a great way to start.

Listen To The Mum Wellbeing Podcast Right Here - 15 Minute Episodes To Help You Move Through Your Mum Life!

You might be interested in these other posts:

How To Start Your Healing Journey For Emotional Health - When You Don’t Want To Be An Angry Mum Anymore

3 Major Things Daughters Of Narcissistic Mothers Need To Know For Your Own Family Emotional Health

Inner Critical Voice: What It Is & How To Actually Change Your Judgemental Habits

3 Strategies - How to be emotionally supportive to a mum friend when you’re worn out yourself