Overstimulation & Motherhood Go Hand-In-Hand. Here’s How To Ease It.

When did someone take life’s remote and turn the volume all the way up? Because my son’s list of questions, the dog licking her paws, and the random sportscaster yelling on the TV are all deafening sometimes. Ever since I had my son, it feels like my brain just cannot possibly take any more sensory input by the end of the day — everyone be quiet and no touchy the mama. If you also feel like overstimulation and motherhood go hand in hand, you aren’t alone.

“This is a lived reality for so many women — especially mothers — navigating chronic overstimulation, invisible labor, and nervous system overload in a world that often expects them to power through,” says Sabrina Ritchie, an integrative psychiatric nurse practitioner. “There’s a real neurobiological explanation here, and it’s not just ‘mom rage’ or being dramatic.”

So, what gives? And is there a way I can hit mute?

How does overstimulation work in the brain?

We all know what overstimulation feels like: that out-of-body, incredibly irritable and anxious sensation that overwhelms. But what’s really happening in our nervous systems to make us feel this way? It starts in your amygdala.

“The amygdala is your brain’s smoke detector. In a calm system, it helps flag legitimate threats. But in a chronically stressed or sleep-deprived brain, it becomes hypervigilant, labeling every minor disruption — noise, clutter, chaos — as a potential danger. Cue the panic, rage, or shutdown,” Ritchie says.

When this happens frequently, it can weaken your vagal tone, i.e., make it harder for your vagus nerve to do its job and get you out of fight or flight. In short, the more often you get overstimulated, the easier it is for it to happen next time. Or, “you stay stuck in fight-or-flight long after the stressor has passed,” Ritchie says. “It’s a physiological response, and when it happens over and over again, it rewires the brain into a reactive state.”

Does having kids make us more susceptible to overstimulation?

“Having kids makes our nervous systems more susceptible to overwhelm because the demands on our bodies not only increase, but become constant and feel urgent,” says Kelsey Mizell, licensed professional counselor and co-founder at The MotherLoad Collective LLC, an online support space for mothers and parents. “Taking care of another human being and all their needs is a responsibility that never ends, making the need for rest necessary, but hard to achieve.”

Mizell explains that most of us equate rest with sleeping or self-care, but it’s actually much more than that: “the ability to have coffee on your own in the morning, or to choose what music you want to listen to in the car, or pause to really think about what you want to eat. But when we add in kids, all of these moments quickly become hijacked by others’ needs and become more intense: a crying baby waking you up, a toddler wanting to listen to ‘Baby Shark’ for the 10th time, or a hungry pack of kids all wanting different foods for dinner.”

When our brains feel this overwhelmed, they go into flight or freeze, Mizell says. Our bodies try to shut down or escape for just a moment to get a reprieve. In that state, any and all information our senses perceive feels, to the brain, like a demand or a threat to rest, and the dysregulation amplifies.

It isn’t just our lifestyles that change after having children, but our brain’s actual structure. “Research using MRI imaging shows measurable reductions in gray matter in regions involved in emotional processing and social cognition after giving birth. These changes enhance our ability to attune to our babies’ needs, but they also increase our sensitivity to emotional and environmental cues,” adds Ritchie. That means we’re more alert and reactive to our baby’s cries, and also everything else in our environment. When you take chronic sleep deprivation and the constant emotional labor involved in parenting, well, it’s easy to see how we get here.

Perimenopause can also worsen overstimulation.

Is there something perimenopause makes better? The jury’s still out. Anyway, Ritchie says it’s not uncommon for your stress tolerance to “tank” in your late 30s and 40s. As our estrogen and progesterone levels begin to fluctuate, so too do the neurotransmitters they affect — serotonin, dopamine, and GABA, which all play important roles in regulating our moods, patience, and inhibition.

“This is why you may feel anxious for no reason, snap more easily, or feel overstimulated by things you used to brush off. Estrogen also affects auditory processing and sensory sensitivity, which means sound quite literally feels louder during hormone shifts,” she says.

How can you ease overstimulation?

Stress is inevitable but becoming overwhelmed is preventable, Mizell says. Her best tip is to create “moments of space and calm” throughout your day. Maybe that’s claiming some time just for yourself to sit and do something you want “because you want to do it, not because you need to,” she says. Maybe you take one unnecessary thing off your to-do list today and move it to next week or delegate it, but get some time back where you can. Therapy can also be a big help, she says.

Ritchie encourages “daily micro-resets,” and says they’re a science-backed tool to help your body “shift out of a stress state.” Pick something from this list to try when you’re feeling overstimulated:

• Bilateral stimulation: These activities alternate stimulation between sides of the body. It could be listening to music that alternates between headphones, or simply going on a walk.
• Somatic grounding: Essentially, touch grass; orient yourself to your physical environment. Hold an ice cube or try some breathwork. “These techniques regulate the vagus nerve, reduce cortisol, and improve your ability to stay calm under pressure,” says Ritchie.

Lastly, try giving yourself permission to not get it right all the time when parenting. “You don’t have to be endlessly patient, eternally present, or grateful for every moment,” says Ritchie. “You’re allowed to want quiet, to need a break, to not answer another question. When we drop the perfectionism and tune into what our bodies need, real change happens.”