By Elizabeth Pantley
Parenting is a more-than-full-time job. You’re constantly busy and likely stressed from handling a million tasks from morning ’til night-and everywhere in between. What with taking care of your children, your own work and other responsibilities, you rarely have even a brief moment to take care of yourself. Healthy eating and exercise get thrown to the wayside, sleep is disrupted, and self-care seems almost impossible. While these sacrifices are done in the name of love and responsibility, all this sacrificing can eventually backfire.
Neglecting your own self-care in order to take care of others sometimes becomes internalised as a subconscious resentment of the fact you can’t get any personal time or space.
This resentment, combined with day-to-day parenting frustrations, can bubble up to the surface and cause outbursts of anger.
Human beings naturally have a shorter fuse when dealing with their own personal problems. Headaches, head cold, pregnancy symptoms, post-partum depression and other discomforts must be pushed aside in order to tend to children, run the house, and work a busy job, keeping you on the go from sun up to sun down. Regardless of all these stressors, parents must continue to move forward despite how they feel mentally, emotionally, and physically. This can put them at risk for overloading and exploding.
