My guest this week is Dr. Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco. She’s a clinical psychologist and she has a new book called Mom Brain: Proven Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood—And Relax Into Your New Self (affiliate link).

We talked about what mom brain actually is—which is very different from the pop culture ideas about it. She also shares about how to deal with the resentment that many moms feel about all the invisible work they do for the family, and how to manage the common thought processes that contribute to mothers’ stress and anxiety. Ilyse does a lot to validate moms, which is especially important in a society that too often shames mothers for somehow not measuring up to unrealistic standards. Toward the end of our conversation I asked Ilyse how long mom brain lasts, and it turns out it’s probably a lot longer than we might think. If you’re a mother, I think you’ll get a lot out of this discussion, and please share it with other moms you know.

Topics we considered together included:

• What “Mom Brain” is and how it’s different from the pop culture idea of it
• What Ilyse observed in her own brain when she became a mom
• Complicated and often conflicting emotional experiences in motherhood
• Effects of acute or prolonged sleep deprivation on cognitive and emotional functioning
• Predictable disagreement in heterosexual couples after the transition to parenthood
• Issues of nature vs. nurture in the brain changes that moms experience
• Cultural effects on the division of labor for parents
• Mothers’ carrying more emotional and invisible labor in the family
• The New York Times article “Mom, the Designated Worrier”
• Fairness and resentment in relationships, and how to deal with resentment
• “Playing to your strengths” as partners and parents
• Relentless mom-shaming in our society
• The pressure and criticism that moms often find on social media
• Using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) deal with unhelpful thoughts that moms often experience
• Catastrophizing, Personalizing, and Overgeneralizing in motherhood
• Working through common thinking errors
• Distinguishing what is and what isn’t within our control and the “Eating a Slice of Pie” exercise
• How to deal with “kind of hating your kids”
• The power of the validation Ilyse offers in her book
• How it’s okay if a mom chooses to prioritize her job/career
• Judith Warner’s book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
• Having one’s identity reduced to “mom”
• How long mom brain lasts
• A quick and easy guided three-minute breathing exercise and meditation

Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in working with stressed moms.

She completed her bachelor’s degree at Yale University and her PhD at Rutgers. Ilyse has extensive training in cognitive behavioral therapy and is a diplomate of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.

She’s also the mom of two young boys, a role for which she received no training whatsoever. As she navigated her own personal parenting journey and worked with other moms in her practice, she realized that she had the tools—cognitive behavioral therapy strategies—to help herself and other moms face the everyday challenges of motherhood.

So she’s focused her efforts on offering strategies for managing all kinds of motherhood stresses, from how to cope when you feel like a hot mess to dealing with pressure from overzealous PTA reps to managing the pressure of meddling in-laws.

Ilyse’s writing has been featured in many outlets like The Washington Post, Psychology Today, Parents.com, Motherwell, and many others.

She injects a good deal of humor into her work as she shares some of her own parenting stresses, as she does in this episode. Ilyse’s hope is that other moms will be able to benefit from her expertise, and to learn from her mistakes.

Find Ilyse online at her website and on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.