My guest this week is Dr. Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco. She’s a clinical psychologist and author of Mom Brain: Proven Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood—And Relax Into Your New Self (affiliate link). Ilyse specializes in helping parents, moms in particular, navigate the challenge and adventure of parenting. I love how she adapts the tools of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for parents. Ilyse obviously gets parenting from the inside, and offers recommendations that you can use in your own life. As always she shares super relatable wisdom in this episode.

Topics we discussed included:

• Expectations of parenting, and of ourselves as parents
• How mundane and boring parenting can be, especially in the early years
• Feeling bad about being bored
• The modern idea of being engaged with our kids 24/7
• The idea that we can’t let our kids be bored
• The different expectations for moms vs. dads
• Jessica Grose’s new book, Screaming on the Inside (affiliate link)
• The double-edged sword of low expectations for dads
• The phenomenon of “Momfluencers” and the problems they pose
• The pernicious effects of social media comparisons
• The automatic comparisons to others that our minds often make
• Ilyse’s very kind praise for my book

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.