When exhaustion isn't just too little sleep: could it be burnout?

Feeling overwhelmed and perpetually tired isn't just a part of perimenopause or getting older. If you’ve been hustling and hurrying from dawn to well past dusk for as long as you can remember, then perhaps you need to think about burnout.

In this episode, we’re talking through the phenomenon of burnout as it specifically relates to perimenopause. Here's how tuning in may change your approach to daily stress and fatigue:

• Discover what burnout really looks like during perimenopause and why it might be more than just everyday exhaustion.
• Learn the subtle signs that suggest your tiredness might actually be something more serious.
• Explore holistic, practical strategies that can help manage hormonal imbalances and alleviate symptoms, ensuring you feel more in control.
• Understand the pivotal role of support systems and how strengthening your network can provide the relief and backup you need during tough times.
• Find effective and easily implementable self-care routines, designed to boost both physical and mental health.

This episode is packed with actionable advice and deep dives into why perimenopause might be hitting you harder than expected — and as always, what you can do about it too. 

Whether you're struggling with fatigue, emotional or mood changes, or just looking for ways to better manage your day-to-day health, you'll find something useful in this episode.

Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au

• OPEN NOW: Discover how to use food as your most powerful medicine, smoothing hormonal fluctuations and easing perimenopause symptoms naturally. (Yes, you have more options than hormone therapy!) Say goodbye to feeling out of control and hello to feeling more like your old self every day, with PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!)
• The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
• Been told your blood test results are "normal" or "fine" while you feel far from your best? Discover the power of optimal blood test analysis with The Blood Test Decoder: Optimal Ranges for Women Over 40.
• For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.

Transcript

Sarah McLachlan: 0:03

Hey there, I'm Sarah McLachlan. Thanks for joining me on the Chaos to Calm podcast, a podcast designed for women over 40 who think that changing hormones might be messing with their mood, metabolism and energy and want to change that in a healthy, sustainable and permanent way. Each episode will explore topics related to health and wellness for women in their 40s, like what the heck is happening to your hormones, what to do about it with nutrition, lifestyle and stress management, and inspiring conversations with guests sharing their insights and tips on how to live your best life in your 40s and beyond. So if you're feeling like you're in the midst of a hormonal storm and don't want perimenopause to be horrific, then join me on Chaos to Calm, as I share with you how to make it to menopause without it wrecking your relationships and life. Hello and welcome back to Chaos to Calm. This is episode number 43, and you're with me, Sarah, the perimenopause naturopath, and you know Chaos to Calm. It's all about turning the perimenopause rollercoaster into a smooth ride, and I love using evidence-based nutritional medicine, lifestyle advice and my other naturopathic tools like herbal medicine and things like that because that really gives you full control over your health and your well-being, and that's really what I'm all about is helping you get into your best state of health so that you can have less of the perimenopause symptoms and really have that smooth journey through to menopause there.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:47

So it's just me and you today, and we are going to dive into a topic that is perhaps impacting you now. Maybe it has in the past, maybe you know someone who's really struggling with it and this episode is for you. If you find yourself some days feeling like you're on top of the world, but most of the days you're feeling like you're dragging yourself through mud each day to get through all of your tasks and things on your to-do list and you probably don't have energy for anything fun because you've just got enough to get you through the basics and even that feels like it's really difficult. And you know a hint about the topic today it's not just about how you slept last night or how much you did or did not drink. Today we're going to be talking about mum burnout and like it's an actual, real thing that is discussed in the research, which is, you know, kind of refreshing, I suppose, because it is real. Like any mum will tell you that you can feel really burnt out from mothering. It's challenging and you know it's mum burnout is magnified by the hormonal rollercoaster of perimenopause, like so many other things that I talk about. But you know I, honestly I c an often I feel really disheartened and disappointed because women's health is really undervalued, or specifically I should say, poor health, for women is actually really normalized. So so often, you know, I'll speak with women and they'll tell me that they've tried to approach their doctor or some other primary care person about how tired they've been feeling or how, you know, the not the thrill, even just the enjoyment of life has gone for them. And they get told oh, you know, you're a busy mum, you work, that's normal. You know I'm always about common is not normal. There's lots of things I'm about, isn't it? I should have like a manifesto, the perimenopause naturopaths manifesto, anyway. So today I want to talk about why it isn't just part of being a mum and some tips on what you can do about it.

Sarah McLachlan: 4:01

First of all, let's talk about how being a mum is a tough gig, like it is. It's relentless. It's challenging physically, emotionally. Each phase that your kids go through brings its own challenges. You know, sometimes people say it gets easier as they get older. But tweens and teens and even young adults. They all have their own challenges. For you as a parent, their own challenges for you as a parent, you know they're just different and so it. You know it is relentless.

Sarah McLachlan: 4:36

We get a lot of you know on social media. It's great, but also it gives us a lot of shoulds about what we should be doing or how we should be feeling. Or you know how we want to navigate things, or comparing ourselves to perhaps what we think we should be doing and we're not. So it's you know. It's no wonder that you're feeling exhausted. You know you're pushing poo uphill every day. You've got little to no support. You know we don't have that village anymore. Your kids you know there's lots of, lots of annoying things. You know, when my kids were younger I was like like, oh my gosh, if I have to hear that same question one more time, I'm going to go nuts.

Sarah McLachlan: 5:12

You know how many mental notes or lists are you carrying around? I bet you've got like a million tabs open in your brain and probably on your phone as well. I bet you've got at least one list-making app on your phone. I mean, the Apple iPhone even comes with its own reminder. I bet you've got at least one list making app on your phone. I mean, the Apple iPhone even comes with its own reminder and task listing thing. But there's so many other apps there as well. I don't even want to tell you how many lists I have on there Too many.

Sarah McLachlan: 5:39

So, yeah, all right, exhaustion is pretty common for mums but, like I said, said it does not have to be normal, all right, I've heard, you know, so many stories from mums that I've talked to and worked with, that they're, you know, their GP or a friend or something you know they see on the media that, oh, it's normal to be feeling this way and I bet that resonates you. I bet you've heard that before. But no, no, no, no, common does not have to be equaling your normal. We do not have to feel exhausted or burnt out as mothers. It's not normal for us. You know, as I mentioned before, we don't have a village to support us. If we look back to traditional cultures, women did have a support network. They had a village around them as they cared for their babies and their children and, you know, after birth they were nourished and nurtured for at least a month before they did anything, let alone. You know strenuous stuff like working and running a household. But you know, like, look at us now, like we're prized for getting up and out of bed and getting back into exercise and losing that baby weight straight after birth. And you know, so we're straight back into it doing the exercise, doing the shopping, housework, cleaning. It's almost straight away. You know.

Sarah McLachlan: 7:00

I remember after I had my third child, I had a home birth and my midwife was very clever and canny because she told me I had to decide where I was going to sleep. The house that we had at the time had some stairs and she told me I wasn't allowed to walk up any stairs. You know, there was some method in this because of a little tear, but um, uh, yeah, I had to decide whether I was going to be upstairs or downstairs for the next couple of weeks because I wasn't allowed to walk and like, move my legs sort of up and apart. So it got to the two weeks. So I decided I would stay downstairs, which kept me out of the kitchen, which was awesome, but it meant that, you know, and so someone else did the cooking and we had heaps of meals in the freezer. So that was okay, but I couldn't do the laundry and I couldn't do other things. Excellent choice.

Sarah McLachlan: 7:53

But also, how clever was she? She told me after the two weeks that she knew I would get up, try and get up and get straight into things. And she could see I was already. I'd been through a lot of stress, we'd had a house fire and we were living in a rental, so there was a lot going on. But she knew that if I just jumped back up and got into life which is what I would have done I was going to take a long time to recover from the birth. So she helped me and tricked me. But it was great.

Sarah McLachlan: 8:20

It was a lovely start or lovely postpartum period, that one with my Alfie. But for most of us, you know, it's straight into it. That's how I did my first two. I had cesareans with those and then I was still kind of straight back into it and I just stayed exhausted for a long time. And if this, you know, this is how we start motherhood and it just continues in that way, this, you know, this is how we start motherhood and it just continues in that way. And see it's, I can see.

Sarah McLachlan: 8:48

You know why it's normalized that we feel exhausted all the time, because we actually start motherhood exhausted or we go into motherhood exhausted, stay exhausted and just get more exhausted over time and the thing is like this is how we're moving into perimenopause and perimenopause itself can intensify the challenges. You know I talked about cortisol and its impact on our health in the last episode and how we can be more sensitive to it or how it can impact us in perimenopause. So the risk of burnout is definitely with us into perimenopause and beyond. And even though our children may not be young and we're not deep in the trenches of mothering young children, we are navigating perimenopause with tweens or teens. And that's a whole other level of hard, because what you're all going through intense hormone changes and brain rewiring at the same time so you know, just because they're older doesn't make it easier, it can even make it harder in some ways. I always say like I think that early motherhood is really intense physically, like it's a massive drain on us pregnancy, breastfeeding, postpartum recovery, all of those things and as your kids get older, I have found it and other mums I talk to as well more mentally and emotionally exhausting. Yeah, so anyway, let's talk about what it means for us, especially in perimenopause.

Sarah McLachlan: 10:19

What is mum burnout? Well, first of all, it's actually researched, but originally it was talked about as parental burnout. I wonder if you can guess, though, who was the most? Which sex was volunteering most to be participating in the research? So originally it focused that research on burnout. Parental burnout focused on parents with sick or high-needs children, so that was in the 80s, in the early 1980s, and then it wasn't really talked about again until recent years. So some like 30, 30, nearly 40 years later, um, so yeah, as I alluded to, when researchers put a call out for parents to participate in the studies, only women replied yeah, and let's face it, it is mostly in, especially in western cultures, mum's doing, uh, most of the unpaid care work.

Sarah McLachlan: 11:25

Probably all cultures, even traditional ones, women are the carers, and that's why we get burnt out in western culture, because we're also told we can have it all and do it all, and work and everything, and like we actually can't. We just can't. We can't do multiple full-time jobs. We're just one person. We're not bots, not machines. We don't have clones, you know it's.

Sarah McLachlan: 11:52

It's not reasonable for us to expect to be able to work full-time, run a house and do all the things that, like generations before us, the women who were running a full-time, run a house and do all the things that, like generations before us, the women who were running a house, they were running a house and raising children. That was their role. That was their job, you know, undervalued and unpaid, sure, but that was their job. There wasn't an expectation on them to earn an income and bring money into the house, okay. So there's, you know, research in bel in Belgium, underway at the moment that's really working to better understand, define, diagnose and and prevent or support mum burnout. So there's a few key things or three main aspects to knowing.

Sarah McLachlan: 12:34

If you've got mum burnout and it's characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion, wanting to distance yourself emotionally from your children, you know you're really checked out or disconnected, feeling overwhelmed by them and being with them and feeling incompetent in your role as a parent. So you know there's three key things there for mum burnout. But I would say, like, if you're thinking about burnout generally, that you may be burnt out and motherhood is a part of it, but also work and other things are there as well. So you may feel quite disconnected from other roles in your life, not just your children. You may feel physical and emotional exhaustion and like more sleep doesn't make that go away. That's how we're, you know, thinking about that. We don't just think I'll go to bed earlier tonight and I'll feel better tomorrow. This is like a deep, deep exhaustion there for you that just more sleep doesn't resolve, and you might feel incompetent yes, in your role as a parent.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:40

If it's mum burnout, but burnout generally. You're just feeling like hopeless and overwhelmed and perhaps your mood very low and not enjoying the things that used to bring you joy. Now, of course, that may be confused with depression. So it is important to talk with your doctor or health professional about how you're feeling, talk to others around you as well, so that you can get the, you know, proper diagnosis and support and help there as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 14:11

And you might find when you're burnt out, that you crave sugar and stimulants and you're overreacting to the small things and feeling, on you know, high alert and anxious and irritated and and angry, but also apathetic at the same time. There as well, and it can impact how you eat. You know, like I talked about cortisol and its impact on you, on how you feel, like your mood and and anxiety and and how you eat and your weight there as well last episode, and it's no different here. Like you know, your cortisol can be high for a long time, but actually when you're feeling burnt out, your cortisol might drop quite low and, uh, leave you feeling that real exhaustion and apathy, more so than and you're still, you know feel like you need the stimulants and and craving sugar and and those feel-good foods for yourself, um, but mostly you may find that you just don't have an appetite to eat and you're quite, yeah, low in your energy and you and your mood there as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 15:20

So mum burnout is different from things like postnatal depression, which has those similar characteristics around lack of energy and loss of interest in that. But mum burnout usually occurs in mums with children older than 18 months like that's part of the criteria around it, and your low or depressed mood is only in relation to the role and tasks of being a mum. So that's like your parental burnout is specifically related to that, whereas, like I was saying, I guess it's hard to tease out. Um, you could be burnt out. Motherhood is part of that, but also so is trying to work and do all the other things that you do, all the other roles that you have there as well. So you know, burnout is burnout, but it is true that just being a mother, and even if you don't do paid work, can burn you out. But if you are a mum and you're working and you know, trying to do all the things that we are told we should as a mum, then you may be experiencing burnout from the combination of all of those things. So you know why.

Sarah McLachlan: 16:34

Why is it worse or why are you more at risk in perimenopause? Well, you know, I'm always talking about our hormones, our sex hormones like progesterone, and progesterone in particular, as it declines in perimenopause into menopause, reduces our stress resilience, because it is our stress resilience hormone. But also how we experience perimenopause is altered by our stress and burnout there as well, because our adrenal glands, those little tiny pyramids that sit on top of our kidneys and make cortisol for us, and they also make estrogen for you. A little bit of estrogen as your body's own production declines for you. A little bit of estrogen as your body's own production declines as your period fades or disappears, so so does your estrogen there as well. But when your adrenal glands are super busy making cortisol, they're not as able to make estrogen for you.

Sarah McLachlan: 17:32

So you know, we know that responding to stress or, you know, having all these stressors in and being really busy can make your perimenopause symptoms worse, and so this is part of the way that it does that, because it's not making that bit of estrogen for you, then some of your symptoms are going to be worse, you know. And so if you think about if you're busy, you know, flogging your adrenal glands for the 10 years leading into perimenopause, then it's little wonder that you're going to have lots of perimenopause symptoms and feel exhausted and overwhelmed all at the same time and having lots of symptoms in perimenopause. Because the other thing to think about too is that chronic stress and cortisol can impact your menstrual cycle and and make it disappear and make more and ovulatory cycles where you don't ovulate, so you don't make progesterone. So you know it's a big soupy mess, isn't it? It always is, it's never. You know our bodies and our systems is never like oh, this is happening, it's this one thing, so we'll do that and fix all of that. It's all interconnected and interrelated there as well. So, yes, you might be more prone to burning out in perimenopause, you're more likely to feel overwhelmed, and that's as a result of that lower progesterone level there as well. So, yeah, lower stress resilience is a massive key to why you might burn out, but also it can impact all your other perimenopause symptoms as well, because when your adrenal glands are busy making cortisol, they're not making estrogen for you there.

Sarah McLachlan: 19:10

So what are you going to do about it? Well, you know you need like I talk to someone please Whether it's a healthcare provider familiar with perimenopause or you know burnout and fatigue and exhaustion. Maybe it's a nutritional medicine practitioner or naturopath or a friend, whatever it might be Getting your feelings out and talking them through is really important. So getting some support and you know, talking with your partner, if you have one, about what you can, what of the load that you can shift, or that you just you know that you need help as well. So it's kind of self-assessment there as well, checking in what do you need. I always say, like, think about it like you would, as if you were talking to a friend what do you need? What does your body need, what does your mind need, what do you need to feel better? And then you know you can start taking action from that. Yeah, and check off against, like, are you feeling any of those ways. Are you feeling disconnected? Are you using caffeine and other stimulants to get through the day, just feeling super exhausted, and no amount of sleep is getting rid of that for you. Then you know, maybe you are burnt out, maybe there's something else going on as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 20:32

So get your bloods done. You know when was the last time that you had a good, thorough assessment of what's going on in your body? So I want you to compare them, though, to the optimal ranges, not those general lab ranges, because the general lab ranges can often be normal or fine, but actually you're feeling rubbish. So you can download my free blood test decoder and that will help you with the optimal ranges and it'll also tell you a little bit about what those blood markers mean, what they're telling you. And also, I'd suggest have them looked at by someone who uses that functional or naturopathic approach to looking at your blood tests. So, yeah, last episode I talked about how cortisol, our main stress response hormone, impacts our body, including organs like your thyroid and ovaries. So it's really important to get those looked at on your blood tests so that you can remove any obstacles to feeling well or repair the damage being done by that chronic high cortisol, that might be low cortisol now, yeah, so really you want to investigate what's going on, and then you can always like listen to the previous episode about cortisol and stress and the tips that I've given you there around helping to prevent or repair the damage then.

Sarah McLachlan: 21:55

But again, it's really about nurturing and nourishing yourself. Treat yourself like a baby I've said it so many episodes in a row, but but it's, you know, getting those basics in place, because it's not just about bandaid fixes, you know, just little patches here and there. I'm all about the long game for you and helping you to take charge of your health and well being, and we, you know you don't do this by going into the health food store and buying a pot of ashwagandha withania, the latest herb to be. You know it's having its moment in the spotlight here and it is a wonderful herb, and you know it is really great for women struggling with insomnia and burnout and all of those things as well, but it might not be the one appropriate for you and really it's not addressing what's going on underneath it. You know where the dysfunction or imbalance is. So I want you to be able to identify and address the causes of how you're feeling, because that's how you get your long-term health and happiness, and the symptoms that you're feeling, of course, will resolve when we do that as well. So it's all about the long game here and you being out empowered to understand what's going on and address it and build the toolkit to know how to manage your health and your well-being there as well, despite the stresses of life as in you know, modern society.

Sarah McLachlan: 23:31

As a mum, so main, take out, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed is not a given in motherhood or perimenopause. This is not your new normal, common yes, normal, no. Now, if you want to know more, don't forget that you can check out my chaos to calm masterclass to tell you you know why things are like they are for you in perimenopause, why you are having. You know why you're feeling the chaos of all of the hormone changes of perimenopause, why, why are you getting so many symptoms, why are you not able to lose weight, why is your mood swinging wildly and why are you feeling exhausted? That's in there. I will teach you and tell you why and what you can do about it as well, and don't forget, you can download the blood test decoder to help you use your blood test as a tool to identify what's underlying how you're feeling. You can find the link to that in the show notes, and also the link to the chaos to calm masterclass is there too.

Sarah McLachlan: 24:36

So once again, thank you for joining me today on chaos to calm podcast. Uh, here's to finding your path to master the chaos that those changing hormones of perimenopause are creating with your mood and your metabolism and your energy. It is one step at a time and it is a long game, as I said, um, so I hope you'll join me next time when we are talking about the world of headaches and migraines in perimenopause, why you get them more often and what you can do about them. It's really common for women over 40 to experience the chaos of changing hormones, mood, metabolism and energy, but I hope you know now that common doesn't have to equal normal for you or them. You can help others understand they aren't alone in feeling this way and that perimenopause doesn't have to be horrific by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with other women in their 40s and beyond. Thanks so much for listening and sharing your time with me today in this Chaos to Calm conversation.