One thing moms struggle with is feeling bad about their progress in becoming calm and showing up calm with their kids.

We all know we aren’t at our best when we’re stressed, overwhelmed and reactive. But knowing how to calm down in the moment isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

You’ll Learn:

1. Why you become reactive and yell, threaten or ice your kid out
2. Three steps to pause and get back to calm
3. Clues you need a Pause Break
4. What to do after you’ve reacted in a way you don’t love

I’m walking you through my 3-step process to catch yourself, pause and get back to feeling calm.

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Why Do I Still Get So Mad?

All moms experience really tough parenting moments. Moments when you’ve been stuck in what I call Mad Mom Syndrome

You know what I'm talking about.

1. Moments when your child is a bit off track and you get upset and all of a sudden you are yelling, threatening, and lecturing, followed by guilt and rushed apologies.
2. Moments you are worried that the behavior you see in the present is a predictor of the future, so you act super strict and controlling.
3. Moments when you are frustrated and say a snide or mean remark to your kid.

Then, when you have a mad mom episode and act in a way you don’t think you should, a lot of criticism, guilt, and doubt pours in. You feel bad that you aren’t calm or think you should be getting there faster.

But here’s the thing…Becoming calm is a PROCESS. It’s a PRACTICE. It’s something you work on over time. Some days it’s easy, and some days it isn’t. All of that is ok.

These types of moments are a clue that you are in your stress cycle and feeling emotionally overwhelmed.

Your brain is convinced that the circumstance is an emergency. Then, the brain activates a BIG, INTENSE STRESS RESPONSE.

You become super reactive and respond to your children with stress, anxiety, frustration or anger.

Then they escalate their stress behaviors and the next thing you know you are in a chaotic argument with your kids.

The 3 Stages of Becoming Calm

Becoming Calm is a process. It takes time. Be gentle with yourself. When you feel yourself spiraling, CATCH YOURSELF AND PAUSE. This is simple but not easy, and it comes in stages.

Stage 1 - The AFTER. When you’re first starting out, you may only catch yourself after you've yelled or gotten upset.

Stage 2 - The DURING. After a while, you’ll catch yourself while you are yelling or acting upset.

Stage 3 - The BEFORE. Eventually you start to catch yourself before you yell or act out your frustration/overwhelm. This is the goal that you’re working towards.

No matter what stage you’re in, to get out of Mad Mom Syndrome and get back to feeling calm, you need the Pause Break.

There are also 3 steps to the Pause Break:

Step 1: STOP

Don't Talk. Don't Engage. You can stop yourself at any point when you notice you are in your stress response and are seeing signs of Mad Mom Syndrome.

Step 2: DELAY

Don’t decide. Don’t act. Don't do anything about the situation (unless it’s a true emergency). Give yourself time to think and get calm.

Step 3: RESET

Actively do something to calm your stress response. During a "Reset", you will move your body, your mind or both.

Pause is where all of your personal growth happens. It’s the space where change occurs. If you only take one thing away from this episode, I hope it’s this: You can always PAUSE.

This process is what it ACTUALLY looks like when you are changing your brain and the way you show up as a parent. Be gentle with yourself, Mama. You’ve got this!

Mentioned in this Episode:

1. Episode 2: Getting to Calm with The Pause Break

Free Resources:

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn:

1. Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
2. Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
3. Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips
4. Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Become a Calm

Mama podcast. I'm Darlyn. I'm your coach, and

today I am going to talk about the process of becoming calm.

Because one of the things that I see moms struggle with is

feeling bad about their progress in becoming calm.

And, you know, they really want to show up with their kids,

like, calm and compassionate and kind and respectful and all of that,

right? But then they get frustrated with

how long it's taking, so they have this, like, mad mom

episode, and then they act in a way that they don't think they

should, and then a lot of, like, criticism and guilt and doubt pours

in, and they start thinking thoughts like, I should know better

already. This is taking so long. I'm so slow. Something's

wrong with me. And getting stuck in.

In their own head and kind of almost

making their progress even more challenging. So

those thoughts come up. Because a lot of times moms don't

really understand that becoming calm, it's actually

a process. It's a practice, and it

really is a practice in emotional management and stress

management. And it's something that you work on

over time. And like, some days, it can be really

easy because for whatever reason, you're in a good mindset. You know,

you're. You. Well, you're well rested, you have eaten well, you're looking forward

to something, and you kind of can, like, go with the flow a little bit

better. And then some days it's not easy, right?

And all of that is okay. It's okay

if some days you nail being calm and other days

you don't. So I wanna kinda normalize the process for

you. I wanted to give you just a really good

understanding of what it actually looks like when you're

changing your brain and showing up differently as a parent. And

I have watched this in myself and then, of course, with my clients,

and really noticing the process

that almost every individual goes through now,

how long it takes or how intense it is kind of depends on a few

factors. I think one is just a little bit of, like, personality, but really

a lot of it has to do with how much current

stress you have in your life, and then also how much stress

you've experienced in your life, like, how much trauma

you're recovering from. I wanted to help you

understand sort of the process so that you can

give yourself a little more love and grace and

kindness when you mess up, right? When you don't show up

the way that you want to show up. Because

I always want you to, like, have the Ideas that I teach in this

podcast, I want you to know, you know, like, really great tools and really great

strategies. But I never want you to walk away and think, I'm not measuring

up, I'm not good enough. I'm screwing it up. I'm not doing it right and

getting discouraged and, you know, kind of giving up on

yourself. I don't want that. And I wanted to help you

see, kind of like, oh, I still get mad. I still yell.

I still lose my crap with my kids. And why is that?

You know, I want to help you understand why. So the biggest thing

I want you to take away from the

understanding the process of becoming calm.

The most important piece of becoming

calm is awareness. Now,

I'm going to teach you kind of how to build that awareness.

But essentially, just

noticing that you are in your stress response

is enough. So the process of becoming calm

is all about when you notice, when you become aware that

you are in a stress response, when your stress response is activated.

So calm is really that ability to calm your

stress response, to use new tools and

new strategies so that you don't, you

know, take it out on your kids. Right? Don't take all your emotions and just

dump them on them. That's what we're working on here. So before we get

too far into kind of the process, I just want to very quickly

take you through your stress response and give you a really quick

recap of how it works. Of course, stress

response is created in the brain, and

then we use our body to cope with that stress response,

right? With the stress juice that's built up your brain,

right? Its primary job is to keep you safe. And all day

long, even during sleep, your brain assesses the environment

and it interprets the events and experiences and decides, are

they safe or unsafe? Are we okay? Are we not okay? What's going on? Is

everything okay? And it's kind of scanning for

hazards sort of constantly. If you have had

a lot of hazards in your life, your brain is going to be hypervigilant.

It is going to scan for hazards, and it's going to be a little bit

more aware and alert, and it might trigger your stress response

more frequently. When your brain looks out

the environment and it decides that for whatever reason the environment is

unsafe, it sounds an alarm and it fires, floods your

brain with chemicals that activate that fight flight, stress

response. Fight flight freeze stress response. I

think of that as stress juice, okay? All of those chemicals are just stress

juice. So you all know this, right? But

I want you to think about the brain Right. So

your brain has these three parts, and this lower part is known as the

reptilian brain. And it's in charge of all the things that your

body does automatically that keep you alive, like breathing, digestion,

regulating your body temperature, your heart rate. That's that lower

reptilian brain. The center part of your brain is known as the

limbic center, and it's the part of the brain that controls how you feel about

things. I always say with little kids that they live in the limbic center

of their brain, and they're like, if it feels good, do it. If it doesn't

feel good, don't do it. It's kind of how they make decisions, because they're

not in the third part of their brain, the top section, the

prefrontal cortex, and that controls how you think

about things. So we have the center part of our brain that's, like,

how we feel about things. And then that executive function is

how we think about things. And that top part of the brain is the

brain that understands cause and effect and can think of the future and can plan

for the future and think about how other people feel and all of that.

So your amygdala, what its job is, it's like the interpreter, right?

And it's in the center of the brain, and it stands. Stands guard like a

soldier in a watchtower. And it's, you know, looking out and

trying to decide if things are safe or not. And

whenever it thinks that something's not safe, it sounds the alarm and

it sends a message to the hypothalamus, and it triggers the pituitary gland to

flood the brain with all that stress juice. All those

chemicals, adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine, all those. These

chemicals, they are intentionally

there to shut off access to thinking,

because thinking takes too much time, and the brain really wants

you to respond fast. So when people say, like, oh, my God, I

lost my mind, that's literally what's happening. Like, they don't have access

to the part of their brain that is the thinking part. So what does

this look like in practice when you're a parent, Right? It looks

like this. Your child is a bit off track. They're doing some

shenanigans, and you get upset, and all of a sudden

your reaction is, like, in a disproportionate intensity

to what the behavior is. Like, your kid is like, you know, can I have

the blue cup? I always use that example. But, you know, they're like, can I

have the blue cup? And you're like, stop asking Me for the blue cup. Like,

it's super intense, right? And you're yelling and you're threatening and

you're lecturing and all of that. Or you get super strict and super

controlling, or you start being really frustrated with your kid. You

start saying mean things. You're kind of on like a little mean rant,

or you just completely. Some people go into flight or freeze and

they emotionally check out and they just can't, you know, even respond.

All of those moments, right? That is, those are those moments that show you that

you're in your stress, your stress cycle. I almost called it stress

recycle, which sometimes that's what it feels like. Okay? So

you're in your stress cycle and you're feeling overwhelmed

and that's, you know, there's stress juice part pouring out and all of that.

Now, of course, the bummer about the brain

is that the stress response sometimes gets activated

unnecessarily, right? Your amygdala, it's like it still

thinks we're kind of surviving on an open savannah and that like,

you know, starvation is a real problem or we're constantly being threatened

by wild animals or something like that. And so it's kind of a hyper

vigilant, hyper alert part of our brain that

oftentimes gets it wrong. It triggers our stress juice.

It triggers our stress response in times when we're actually quite

safe. But our brain doesn't believe this. The whole

idea with becoming calm is about

interrupting your stress response when you aren't actually in

danger. You want to interrupt that automatic knee jerk

response and give yourself pause, right?

Space between the thing and your reaction to the thing.

Now, I am not talking about trying to, you know, not

react to actually stressful things that happen in the environment,

like a car accident or, you know, a robbery or something.

It's like, oh my gosh, I have to deal with this absolutely right where.

And you can't interrupt those kinds of processes anyways. It's actually

really hard to interrupt

the brain. And that is why becoming calm is

difficult, because you're trying to change

biology and that's hard. And so

I really want you to see that the thing that you're trying to do

with this, you know, this podcast and like listening to me and, you know,

being in my groups and programs and things like that is

becoming calm, which really means

interrupting your stress response and actually

retraining your brain so. So it doesn't activate the stress

response in the first place. The way we do this, what

I call that is catching yourself and Pausing,

this idea of catching yourself, that's that idea of

awareness. I want you to build up your awareness

and then be able to pause. Now, the tool that I

teach is called the pause break, and I've talked about it a lot

on this podcast already, so I'm not going to go all into it. But

essentially a pause break is when you stop, delay your reaction

and reset your body, mind and heart so

you actively do something, intentionally do something to

move that stress juice through, move it through your body, reset

the way you're thinking, or process the negative emotion that has come up.

Now, learning to pause, it is a

process. It does take time.

So what's the process? Right? What am I talking about?

When you first start becoming calm and going on to like

a health, a self healing journey, or the calm mama

journey. The first, in the beginning, you catch yourself

after you've yelled or gotten upset.

Now what moms oftentimes do is they get really

like beat themselves up afterwards. And I

want to offer to you that you can actually

celebrate the fact that you realize,

oh, I was just really, really upset.

So in the beginning, that's actually what you're doing is you're

catching yourself like at the end, but you're

still catching yourself. Then slowly you start

catching yourself in the middle while you

are yelling, while you are upset, while you are doing

the thing you don't want to be doing anymore as a mom, you catch yourself

and you stop and you delay and

you reset. And I always say, like, even if it's mid sentence,

right, whenever you become aware,

then that means that you are in the process of becoming

calm. Now the cool part, believe it or not, is that eventually,

most of the time, you can catch yourself before you

yell or act out your frustration or your overwhelm. And what

that means is really doing a lot of work retraining your

brain to think and feel differently about behavior or your

kids or the circumstances of your life, training your

mind to think differently so that it doesn't activate your stress response in the

first place. So in the beginning of becoming

calm, you may not notice that you were in your stress response

until after the moment has passed. It's like

your brain comes back online and you're like, holy crap, I really lost

my shit there. That's okay. I

want you to see that as being good and awareness.

And then with practice, you learn to catch yourself earlier

and earlier. If you, once you catch yourself

right, what do you do? I want you just to start looking

at like, okay, what was going on there? What was the circumstance

that was happening that triggered my stress

response. Because you're actually kind of looking for patterns here. So you

want to notice, like, what was going on. Find all the

sad, mad, scared messages that your brain sent to you that

created the sad, mad, scared feelings. Because thoughts create

feelings and feelings drive actions. You're kind of

reflecting back at like, okay, there was this thing happening. What was

I thinking about it and how was I feeling about it? And then how did

I show up? And then looking at that situation

and figuring out, okay, so this thing was happening.

When could I have paused? So you're kind of like,

I don't know if it's a, like a police officer or what, but you're looking

back and you're like, okay, let's assess and figure out what happened here.

And then in this process, I really want you to be gentle with

yourself because. And be neutral. And what you're doing is you're

just building awareness and building this ability to reflect

on yourself. This piece that I'm talking about right now,

this is what we do a lot. In my calm mama community, in

the community that I lead, I spend a lot of time

with moms going back to a moment that didn't go well.

And we go back and figure out what was their brain telling them?

Why were they so reactive? How did they respond?

How could they have thought differently, showed up differently, felt

differently? We, like, fine tune the process.

The cool thing, parenthetically, is we also do this for your kids. I

teach you how to go back to. To a moment. We process your

thoughts and feelings about it. But we also go back and we're like, okay, what

was going on for the kid? Why didn't they want to eat dinner? Why

did they say that weird thing to the babysitter? Why did they, you know,

whatever it is, we're actually spending time reflecting

and looking at what was going on for the kid. It's pretty cool. But for

today, we're talking about moms, right? And so what you're working

on with this awareness and reflection

is looking back and saying, okay,

how can I think differently, feel differently, act

differently? You practice learning how to

not think of those things, those behaviors, those circumstances as a problem

so you don't get stuck in that stress spiral in the first place. So

that's a lot of the work is like, you kind of need to blow up

a bunch of times in the process with

this idea of, let's reflect and see where we need to fine

tune for you. You can do this on your own

if you Know you're not in my programs. You can

just go back and reflect and be like, okay, what was the circumstance? What was

I thinking about it? What did I make that mean? Why did I think it

was a problem? How was I feeling about it? And now looking

back and going, when could I have interrupted my stress response?

Now, of course, sometimes you're gonna catch yourself in the middle, right?

There's gonna be a clue that you need a pause break. Like,

yelling, saying mean things, making threats, you know, rescuing your

kids, like, problem solving for them, bribing,

you know, being too rough with their body or just giving in, like, whatever,

fine. Like, feeling extremely checked out and

tired, shutting down. Any of that is just a

clue to you that you're in the middle of a stress spiral, right? You're in

the middle of that mad mom syndrome, and you can catch yourself.

So I always say, like, catch yourself and pause.

That's the pause break. Stop mid sentence if you have to, and use

one of the reset strategies that I teach in episodes 8, 9, and

10. There is so much gold in those episodes.

I really walk you through exactly what to do during a

pause break to reset your body, reset your heart,

like, your feelings, and reset your mind, which is your thoughts. So

if you're struggling with kind of that process

of once you pause, like, knowing what to do to get your nervous system

back online and kind of like, calm yourself, go back and listen to

those episodes because they're that good, I want you to even go, now just stop

this one and go to that one. If you are able to catch yourself

and pause and reset right in the moment, I really want you to

celebrate that. And I don't see moms celebrating themselves. They

oftentimes go back and are like, oh, I still kind of yelled at

him. And, you know, I grabbed her toy too roughly, and I tossed

it. And you kind of reflect back on, like, all the things you did, quote,

unquote wrong, instead of going, but you know what's cool is that

I stopped, I caught myself, I reset

myself, and I came back. And sometimes you guys, you come back and you're

still, like, quite angry or upset, and you have to pause again.

And that's fine. Okay? So the good news is that getting

to calm, it gets easier and faster. So

over time, this is the best thing. Over time,

you're going to start to notice the physical cues

of your stress response before it even gets triggered. Or

you'll notice your thoughts are starting to spiral into negative

spaces. And you can pause and reset even before you

Act. You'll do a reset strategy, but

it won't be as obvious. I actually am gonna tell this story really quick because

I'm remembering this client I had a long time ago. She

was a spanker. She spanked her kids. She really didn't wanna hit them anymore.

And I was teaching her how to pause and reset,

right? How to do the pause break. This was like 10 years ago, you guys.

And she said, yeah. So what I do is

I grab a spoon and I go, like a wooden spoon. And I go. And

I start smacking them. And I know some of you are like. But, like,

I also wanna normalize. Like, this is stuff that happens in families.

Like, if you've done this, like, just know you're not

alone. But we're working on it, right? It's not something we wanna continue,

right? That's why you go get a coach. Cause you don't wanna show up that

way. She was like, what do I do? And I said, okay, I want you

to just take that spirit spoon you want to hit with it. Just hit

the table or the countertop instead. So she would grab the

spoon and she would just, like, bang it on the, you know, on the tabletop

or the counter. A lot of times it was in the kitchen, and she's like,

yeah, it's going good. You know, I haven't. I haven't hit my kids

with it, you know, but they're still, you know, they're still afraid whenever I

get the spoon out. And I was like, okay. Like, okay, so let's just not

to get the spoon out anymore. Now I just want you to clap your hands.

Like, when you feel that urge to hit them, just

go. And she goes. She does it. You know, she comes back

the next week and she's like, okay. You know, the thing is, though, my kids

are still, like, really, really scared. And I was like,

yes. But less. Less

scared because they're not now feeling worried about getting

their body hit, right? And the parent was also

making repair and going back and learning how to do the connection tool and things

like that. But what I want you to take away from this story

is that it was a process. She had to take

the one thing that she wanted to do and hit her kid with it

instead. She just used that thing and hit the table and got those big

feelings out through her body. Then she was able to drop the spoon and

then use it with her hands. And then eventually she was

able just to go, right, and not use her

hands at all. And so that's the process

we're just trying to move further and further

away from that reactivity and becoming less and less

reactive and celebrating the less

reactivity as we go along. Of course,

wherever you are, I really want you to celebrate it. And if

you are able to catch yourself and coach yourself to

calm, like you're doing amazing. It really just like be like, yeah.

Or if you can see yourself in the stories that I'm sharing and seeing, like,

oh yeah, I used to like really lose my shit, you know, like, okay,

great, celebrate that and then go help another mama.

Honestly, because we, we. I'm so tired of moms feeling like

crap. It's normal. It's normal to get upset. It's normal not to do, know

what to do with our big feelings. The process of

becoming calm is really this process of

using, of, you know, learning how to reset ourselves when

we get upset and train ourselves to not get upset in the first place as

much as we can. There's no perfect here. There's no

perfect at all. When you first start this process

of becoming calm, you might not be able to pause at all. Like honestly,

it might only be like a short second or two and then you're like. And

then you go right back in and you find yourself just, you know, still kind

of like yelling at your kids or being physical or whatever it is. And I

just want you to know like, that's okay. One second, two

seconds, that's a little tiny bit

of pausing that you are teaching

your brain. Okay? It's okay to do this. It's okay

to pause, delay and reset even if it's just for a second, even if

it's for two seconds, even if you still write, go back in that same place.

Just catching yourself as often as you can is the good

news, is that eventually your stress response

won't be activated by misbehavior. It won't be

activated by running late. It won't be activated by your

kids big feelings or other people's opinions. You're going to have

this true deep lasting

calm inside of you and it's possible

and you just keep pausing in order to get there.

So some of the obstacles that I see as a life and parent coach to

calming and ourselves is one self doubt, just not

believing you can. Kids not leaving you alone long enough to pause.

I'll have to do a podcast episode on how to teach your kids to let

you pause. Sometimes it's really hard to pause because your kids

big feelings overwhelm you. You kind of feel swallowed by the

intensity of their emotion. Sometimes you feel like it's hard to pause

because your, the partner, your partner's actions, they feel

like they're going to underline your, undermine your progress. You kind of feel more intense

about like, I got to stay engaged. And you kind of stay kind

of in it longer because you don't trust your partner. Worrying about

time, worrying about other people's thoughts and feelings, people pleasing,

getting trapped in negative thought spirals and not getting, not knowing how

to get out of those. These are some of the things that come up for

people. But these obstacles, they aren't, they

don't make, make it impossible for you to become calm. Like,

there's always a way to overcome these obstacles.

So I'm going to give you a couple of like, strategies to

overcome these obstacles. They're kind of generic

strategies, but I think that they'll be really helpful for you. The

first one is just recommitting to your goal, like writing it out

every day I'm becoming a calm mama, or I'm willing

to take excellent care of myself and just deciding every

day that you are doing it, committing and then

prioritizing that goal of calm,

choosing being calm over everything else.

For a really long time, I had this mantra. I made it up before I

knew what mantras were, but I had this sentence that I would say, I'm

choosing peace and harmony over stress and

perfection. And I would recite that to myself

every day, multiple times a day. And I would

choose peace and harmony over stress and perfection around being on

time, screen time, rules, school,

pleasing other people, having a perfectly clean house, responding to

text messages, gourmet meals, like any, I just drop

my standards a ton in order to emotionally

manage myself. And the cool part is that when you're

calm, all these other things actually get easier to get done. So

calm first, prioritizing being calm. I'm

choosing being calm over stress and perfection. Another thing to

do is just let your kids know that you're working on it and apologizing when

you aren't calm. Just be like, you know what, kids? I lost my temper. I

was in my stress cycle. I was in my big feelings cycle. And I'm sorry.

And I'm working on it and I love you guys and I'm getting better.

The other thing I want you to do is start preventing that stress buildup by

moving your body most days. I don't mean like get all fit. I don't

care about fitness. I just really want you to take 20 minutes, dance

around the kitchen, jump up and down, go for a Walk, like,

moving the stress juice through your body is huge. And

if you miss a week, you don't do it. Whatever, just fine. Who cares? Just

start again. Okay. A really great strategy to

build up your ability to calm yourself is by doing some form of

journaling or thoughtwork every day. And this clears out

some of that emotional buildup. Like, we have our stress juice buildup

that has to come through our body and then we have our thoughts and feelings

stress juice that has to come out through words, journaling

or thought work. I have, like, sometimes I think about

journaling is sometimes not journaling. And it's just like

sitting quiet in the sun or laying down on the ground and like connecting to

parts of my body. That's a form of thought work, right?

Connecting with my body, Getting support, huge. Letting your

partner, your family, your friends that just telling them about your goal

and asking them for encouragement and help and saying,

hey, guess what? I'm seeing this podcast and I'd love

your support and help. And then invest in your journey.

Prioritize doing these things, getting help around

the house if you need it, or finding a babysitter or joining a gym or

asking for a massage. Whatever kind of where you're at

in your life that you know, like what you need, you

matter and your happiness is worth investing in. So you can

prioritize your well being by

investing in things that help you on your journey to become calm.

All right, mamas, I will see you guys all next week.