Why So Many Parents Feel Stuck in Survival Mode
Many parents describe feeling like they're just getting through the day, functioning, but exhausted. They're caring deeply for their children, meeting responsibilities, and holding things together, yet something feels off.
This experience is often referred to as survival mode. And if you're reading this wondering whether this describes you, you're not alone.
What Survival Mode Looks Like in Parents
Survival mode doesn't always mean crisis. For many parents, it looks like:
• Constant mental load that never turns off
• Emotional exhaustion even when you've slept
• Feeling disconnected from yourself
• Reacting more than you want to
• Little space for rest or joy
• Running on autopilot through daily routines
Parents in survival mode are often capable, conscientious, and deeply invested in their families. The issue isn't capability. It's capacity.
Why Child Behavior Often Feels So Overwhelming
When parents are overwhelmed, child behavior can feel especially intense. Emotional outbursts, anxiety, resistance, or neurodivergent needs can trigger fear that something is fundamentally wrong.
Often, child behavior becomes the place where all the family stress shows up, not because parents are failing, but because the system is under strain. When your nervous system is depleted, your child's dysregulation feels unbearable because you have nothing left to meet it with.
Understanding what's happening beneath the surface, in both you and your child, is what allows real change.
Why Highly Sensitive and Empathetic Parents Struggle Most
Parents who are highly attuned, empathetic, and sensitive often absorb more emotional information from their environment. You notice everything: your child's mood shifts, your partner's stress, the teacher's tone in the email. Over time, without enough recovery or support, this attunement leads to deep exhaustion.
This isn't a flaw. It's part of how some nervous systems are wired. But when sensitivity meets chronic stress without adequate recovery, burnout becomes almost inevitable.
Many parents I work with are neurodivergent themselves, ADHD, autistic, have an anxious attachment style or are highly sensitive which adds another layer of nervous system demand that often goes unrecognized.
When "Just Push Through" Stops Being an Option
Many parents try to cope by pushing harder, doing more, or minimizing their own needs. You tell yourself it's temporary, that once this phase passes you'll rest. But the phases keep coming, and eventually pushing through stops working.
Your body starts signaling, through irritability, shutdown, illness, or complete depletion, that something needs to change. This isn't weakness. It's your nervous system asking for what it's needed all along: support, recovery, and a more sustainable way forward.
Support at this stage isn't about "fixing" you. It's about understanding what's happened to your capacity and rebuilding it in ways that actually fit your real life.
What Actually Helps
If you're reading this and recognizing yourself, you don't need to have answers yet. Understanding what's happening is often the first step toward feeling steadier.
I work with overwhelmed parents to understand their nervous system, their child's needs, and how to build capacity that lasts. This isn't about strategies alone. It's about addressing what's actually driving the depletion.
We work on both: understanding your child's behavior (sensory needs, emotional regulation, developmental stages) and rebuilding your own capacity to respond with steadiness. Both matter. Both get addressed.
→ Learn more about Parent Support here.
You Might Also Find Helpful
• Understanding parent burnout and how therapy can help
• ADHD in women and how it intensifies parenting stress
• Perinatal support for new and expecting mothers navigating overwhelm
Ready to explore support?
Let’s discuss how therapy can help you move out of survival mode and into grounded confidence.