Is Mom Brain Real? The Science Behind Brain Fog in Motherhood with Hannah Keeley from the Mom Brain Makeover | Ep. 125

0:00Before you had a baby, your brain's number one priority is to keep you alive. After you have a baby, your brain's number one priority is keep your kids alive. Now that it has to keep your children alive, your filtering system drops so you can hear any potential threat. Now, that makes so much sense. Right. Right. Because now we have to hear if there's a car coming and our toddler could run out. Now we have to sense like there's an energy shift in one of our kids because maybe something happened at school like she was bullied and no one notices. but you, we call this like mother's intuition, but it's actually because you're no longer filtering out the environment like you were before.

0:43You're picking up on all the signals. Hello and welcome mom friend. I'm Layla, the host of the Learning to Mom podcast. You and I are going to be great mom friends. I know it. Now this is the podcast where you get your first time mom questions answered. Here on the Learning to Mom podcast, we discuss the challenges of motherhood, but we don't just stop there complaining about it. Here, you'll be encouraged and supported to overcome the hard with the right tools while finding that motherhood is full of fun, joy, and peace. Now, I must admit, we do tend to lean a little bit crunchy, a little bit more holistic.

1:23So if that's your vibe, I think you're going to love it here. Each expert guest comes with their own perspective and background, so please note that the content presented in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

1:43Hi, Hannah. Welcome to the Learning to Mom podcast. Oh my gosh. I am so excited to be here. It is going to be a party, so let's do this thing. Starting right off the bat, this should be an easy question for you, But why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what all you do? Because I know it's a lot. Okay, so I'm a mom for seven kids, but they're all grown up. They're like 20s, 30s. So I used to be a behavior therapist, one of the top researchers in MomBrain. I have the only university for moms that works around MomBrain called Mom Master University. And I feel like if you help a mom, if you can take a mom out of stress, overwhelm, anxiety, frustration.

2:22If you can take a mom out of that and put her in a place where she's happy and joyful and she's productive and operating at the top of their game, you have changed an entire legacy. So that's why, yeah, I love helping moms. I'm glad I'm here to help the moms. Well, I know you're going to do just that. So I'm so excited to get to talk about mom brain, as you just talked about how you were one of the top researchers in mom brain. Something that we hear a lot about. We kind of have our own understandings of it because obviously we're all living through it. But can we just start with what actually is it?

2:58Yeah. It's not just a term we throw around. I know it's something we joke around. You know, we joke about it. We kind of, oh, mom brain moment. Right. It's always like the default. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's actually a lot of science around this. This is what I didn't know. Let me tell you about what mom brain looked like in me. if you can deal with some raw, dirty, unfiltered stuff here. That's our favorite stuff. Okay. So here I am. I think I had two kids at the time. And I was like, my life sucks so much. It's like I had this image of what I was going to be like as a mom. I'd be like happy and play with my kids.

3:33And, you know, the whole thing. I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be a good mom. And here it was like we had no money, house cluttered. I had gained weight. I was like sick all the time. I had allergies. and the worst part of it all was the anxiety and the depression. And here I was a behavior therapist. Okay. I quit work to stay with my kids. And I was like, what in the world? I can't even help myself. Like my specialty was helping people with their behavior. And here I am like life's a total crap hole. And I'm just like barely getting by horrible depression, like black depression where I didn't want to get out of it.

4:17Or there's my two default depression, anxiety, or this crippling anxiety where it felt like something was just sitting on my chest. And I just had, honestly, I had a mental breakdown. I was walking in my room with a load of laundry and I was like, I was in my twenties. I'm in my fifties now. I was so young to look so old. and I caught a glimpse of myself as like dead mom walking and I just I lost it like I dropped the laundry fell down on the floor in the laundry bawling like ugly cry where you don't know snot from tears and you're falling and I'm praying to God please help me I don't like this life I wasn't showing up for my kids I was showing up for myself my husband and I wanted I needed a miracle.

5:00I just need a miracle. I couldn't continue like that. And here I am crying out to God and I hear this voice inside me. And this is exactly what I heard. Get up and fold your laundry. And I did not want to do that. I wanted to like have a miracle. I wanted there to be a knock at the doors. You know, God just told me to come over here and give you a$75 ,000 shot. Crazy. I wanted something like that. But I realized my clever strategies up to that point had not worked for me. So I was going to do something even crazier and follow direction. Here's why I'm not just sharing this to tell you about me.

5:40I'm sharing this to tell every mom about themselves right now. the strategy to get you out of where you are to where you want to be will be 100 % the most counterintuitive step you'll ever take. I did not want to fold my laundry. I wanted it to be folded miraculously. I did not want to clean up my house. I wanted to just be clean. I did not want to get out of debt. I just wanted to be paid off. And I did something crazy that day and I got up and I folded my dang laundry. And I'm not going to say that was the miracle that created the transformation, but that was the day that the miracle was birthed.

6:18And I said, I'm going to do what's in front of me to get where I want to go. And one thing I started doing, I didn't just take all of the neurological strategies and the therapies that I learned, but I also started diving into mom brain. Like what's wrong with me? And so as I started researching mom brain, I realized my brain changed. The things that worked for me will no longer work for me. And at the time, there were no resources. So I had to dive in, learn about the mom brain, learn how it happens, how I process information. Because you can look at an MRI of a woman's brain before and after she has a baby.

6:54And there's a 4 % loss of gray matter. You actually lose your brain. So when these moms are saying that these kids are making me lose my mind. Yep, that's what they did. They made you lose your mind. And now what do we do? I just want to tell every mom this. It's not you. It's your brain. If you've tried day planners and the budgeting software and that like, come on, there's a reason it's not working. It wasn't designed to work with you. There can be a thousand five-star testimonials, but guess what? Probably none of those people have mom brain. So it's okay. If you're the kind of person who likes to prepare, to learn, to understand the why behind what you do as a mom, then you're going to love the mom club on Patreon.

7:41Inside, you'll find deeper conversations, bonus episodes, and a book club where we learn and grow together, not from judgment, but from the deep desire we have to be the best mom, wife, and friend we can be. The mom club on Patreon is for the moms who want to feel confident in their choices, not pressured by them, who want more of the Learning to Mom podcast, who want to be surrounded by like-minded moms. Sign up at learningtomompodcast.com slash join. And of course, that's in the episode show notes below for you. I cannot wait to become real mom friends inside. So getting into that, that's something that I was so excited to talk to you about today was the gray matter.

8:20Can we get into that? What is that? What does that mean? Okay. All right. I'm going to break it down super simple for you. Does your phone ever get janky? like so okay so so here i am especially because i have the oldest version all right here's the deal sometimes i'll be on my phone i'm like nothing's loading up i can't see this and one of my kids will be like mom can i see your phone real quick and they're like holy crap mom how many apps do you have open they're like swipe swipe swipe swipe and that's what happens to your brain so before you had a baby your brain's number one priority keep you alive after you have a baby your brain's number one priority is keep your kids alive so there's actually three changes that happen in your brain you have neural noise you have a negative cognitive bias and you also neglect now let me break that down for you because your moms are like oh my god she's reading my mail neural noise have you ever felt just overstimulated like it's just too loud almost all the time that's why it's silent in my house.

9:20I want to go silent as the other, not with the kids silent because I can't handle anymore. Okay. All right. So you're talking about neural noise. So this like confusion, overstimulation, at least anxiety, but what is happening in your brain? So before your brain filtered out a lot of stuff in your surroundings to keep you alive now that it has to keep your children alive, your filtering system drops so you can hear any potential threat. Now, that makes so much sense. Right. Right. Because now we have to hear if there's a car coming and our toddler could run out. Now we have to sense like there's an energy shift in one of our kids because maybe something happened at school like she was bullied and no one notices.

10:06But you we call this like mother's intuition. But it's actually because you're no longer filtering out the environment like you were before. You're picking up on all the signals. It's not necessarily like our senses being heightened. It's just that we're doing it at a larger volume. Well, it's okay. So it's not like your senses are heightened. It's like the environment is no longer filtered. So before you had a kid, you filtered out extra noise in the parking lot when you're at Walmart because your brain wasn't trying to keep your kid alive. You're not going to go run out in front of traffic like fool, right?

10:44Your two-year-old might. Perfect example. I walked into one of my friends was having a dinner party. It was me and my husband, Blair. I walk in and I started pushing like knives away from the edge of the counter. There's no kids there. This is an adult party. But watch mom brain. You always have mom brain. It does not go back. So good news, bad news, because our mom brain actually helps us. And so I'm pushing it away. And my husband's like, what are you doing? I'm like, childproofing their kitchen for no children. But my brain said, look at that. My brain said, listen to that. My brain said, observe what's out there.

11:22Now all of this bombarding is happening to your brain and you have to filter so much. That's why you feel overstimulated. Yeah. Makes so much sense. That's why you crave quiet and dark. But that's not all. What was the second one? Okay. The second thing is negative cognitive bias. Now, here's the cool thing. The mom brain has an extraordinary imagination, but we use it to create the worst case scenarios. Yeah. Like we can imagine our kid falling out of their crib. We can imagine careening off a bridge into the ocean and all of our kids. I'm just like, you're thinking it. I'm just saying that these things go through our minds.

12:01One time my husband and I, this was years and years ago. We watched this movie on alien abduction, Layla. Okay. So we go to bed. He rolls over and falls asleep. This is so embarrassing. I was up till 2.45 in the morning. My brain is, okay, when and if aliens invade, how do I get all the kids out? So I'm devising a freaking escape route when aliens invade to take my children. So I'm, okay, I'll stick the baby down the front of my shirt, tied up. I'll put the toddler on my back. We have that ladder. I can put that ladder out. We get the kids down. They go first so that I can be abducted. No, but wait, what if they fall at 2.45 in the morning?

12:39I'm thinking, what the hell's wrong? I have lost it. But that's that negative kind of device. What your brain is doing is called rehearsing. So those are our intrusive thoughts or is that different? Okay, we can call them intrusive thoughts or we can call it our brain rehearsing every possible event so we're prepared. Okay. Yeah, I think I resonate with that one. Remember the goal of your brain. What's the goal of the mom brain? Keep the kids alive, right? So any potential threat, we're going to create a whole scenario around it so that we are mentally prepared when it happens. I feel like this is just such a great episode to be like, hey, honey, I need you to listen to this because you're going to get some really good insight into my brain.

13:21Okay. The third is neglect. So you know how everyone's girl, you need to take a day off. You need to take care of you. you need to let other people help you okay who's gonna do it don't you hate that when people are like you need to take a day off okay so who's gonna make food the laundry does not actually get off the piles and jump into the drawers who does this so because our brain is wired to make sure our kids are okay it's going to push you so far down the totem pole i call it totem pole syndrome and now we're carrying the weight of the world and we get mad and we get so frustrated and we'll either attack it or hide from it or try to change it.

14:01And then we just feel like no matter what, nothing helps. But when you start learning how to love yourself more, if you start learning how to say, you know what, I'm okay right now. It may not be okay, but I'm okay right now. And I always tell moms this, you're starting right now. I believe Layla, people are listening to this And they're like, something new is being birthed in me, a new self-concept. I'm not broken. I'm not messed up. I am exactly the way I should be. God made me perfect for my job here. My kids were intended for me. I am enough right now. And when you're in the environment where you're looking around at the messy house and you're seeing the insufficient funds and you're frustrated at your husband because he's not doing stuff, I want everyone to just think you're looking at your past.

14:49That's just the results of your past. And it's okay. You're brand new today. So your future's not going to look like this. It's just miraculous. When you start to change you, everything changes. Have you been putting off swapping detox and free cleaning supplies because you don't have the energy to research their ingredients to make sure they're legitimately clean? Nor the time or the money to find one that actually works? Well, if that's you, I got your absolute freaking back. Let me introduce you to Truly Free Home. my ride or die ever since finding them about three years ago. They are not another company slapping a green leaf on the label to make you think they're safe.

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16:08and because you're a listener of the learning to mom podcast i have an amazing deal for you to get 30 off which is a freaking steal so if you go to the episode show notes i have a specific link for you to use and a discount code for you that will give you 30 off all right go check it out now before you forget so good so how do we start changing ourselves okay all right let's talk about that. Okay. The first thing you have to do, and I'm actually going to make this so simple for you. It doesn't have to be hard. First of all, can we just decide it's not going to be hard? I need every mom to hear this.

16:45Working harder just makes you tired. It does. Working harder does not work. And I know you've probably heard work smarter, not harder. Here's the deal for mom brain. Working smarter does not help. So I'm not going to work harder. I'm not even going to work smarter. What I help moms do is work higher. Like when there's winds coming at them and the eagle knows I'm not going to fight this. I'm going to just rise above it and use the wind to now soar higher. So what I help moms do is like, don't try to change the adversity. Let's just leverage the adversity and work with our brains and work higher.

17:19It is so powerful. I believe you can get better results in just 10 months of working higher than you could in 10 years working harder. I totally believe that. But the first thing you have to do, and I make it super simple, number one, interrupt. So you have to interrupt the mom brain or else you're stuck in this internal spiral and it's like negative, self-deprecating. I can't do anything. I'm not enough. Oh my gosh, I'm so sick of this. So we have to interrupt that. Now, when I first started to work with my mom brain, again, there was nothing out there. So I'm like, I can't do anything. I'm a loser.

17:52I'm a failure. So I had to interrupt it. Now, you can't interrupt a thought with a thought. because it's on the same playing field. So you have to have some external stimulation to interrupt an internal pattern. This is kind of funny, but I recommend this for moms. We actually like give all of our moms who come to our university, we give them a whistle. Okay. So I got a whistle, like a simple coaching whistle to wear around my neck. And every time I would feel, I don't know what anxiety feels like for you, but anxiety felt like my jaw got tight. tight my chest felt tight my brows would furrow I would feel tighter or maybe you feel something in the pit of your stomach maybe your breathing is more shallow but when I would feel that so frustrated I would blow the whistle and that was enough external stimuli to bam interrupt the pattern and sometimes if you have a watch that has an hourly chime set an hourly chime and that chime goes off and you're in less oh what was I thinking about oh my gosh I was thinking like I'll never get the laundry folded.

18:51Like stop, stop, stop, stop. So you have to have something that interrupts. All right. Now after you interrupt, that opens the mom brain just enough and just long enough to insert step two, which is imagine. So interrupt and then imagine. All right. When you imagine, you're going to say, what was I thinking about? Is that helping me? Probably not. What can I imagine now that is good? That is powerful. Maybe something you're grateful for. Maybe something really good that's happening that day. Maybe something that I freaking got a shower. You can imagine something good. There is always something to be grateful for.

19:30And here's the deal. Gratitude and anxiety cannot sit at the same table. Anxiety is just like an anesthetized word for fear, really, because we don't want to say fear. But gratitude and fear cannot sit at the same table. So when you turn your imagination to gratitude, you know what? I showed up today. I was able to pay that bill. So what if I can't pay the next one? I'm able to pay that one. You know what? We have food, something there, something to be grateful for. And then insert that imagination and let your mom brain kind of put in that crockpot, like meditate on that. Let that cook for a little while.

20:05But that's not enough because your brain's so trained to go back to negativity. Now we need to do number three, which is implement. so take one action just remember like when I was on the floor balling in my laundry like I couldn't declutter my house I couldn't make a meal I couldn't meal prep but I could fold one load of laundry and that like if you can implement one action one routine you're gonna tell your brain it's more than just folding a load of laundry drink a glass of water I did something really pause for myself, a drink, a glass of water, like one action. But what you're doing is you're training your brain, the reward system.

20:49So you stimulate the reward system of your brain. And now what the mom brain says is, I did a good job. Yay, I can do it again. So when you get these three, interrupt, imagine and implement, you've already set your path on to success. You've already, you're already creating momentum. So what's, I guess, the difference between, I know that they're connected, but could you speak into the mom like brain fog? Oh, absolutely. That's okay. So with all of the neural noise going on, you get in this place where it just all kind of is at a low roar, right? And now you're not processing anything. So you walk in a room, you don't know why you walked in there.

21:35Literally, I came in this morning, okay, because mom brain doesn't go away. And I was like, hey, honey, you know what? He's what? I went, oh, my God, I totally forgot. I literally walked in the room to tell him something. Now, that's mom fog. But guess what else my brain was thinking from the bathroom to come into the kitchen? A thousand other things. That's such a rapid pace. I'm not even conscious of it. And so I forget. It's not that you forgot. So many other things are vying for your attention. so don't dump on yourself because you have mom fog it's okay there's a lot of contributing factors to that but if you understand like my biggest message to moms is you're not broken nothing's wrong with you you're okay babe obviously related to this topic but i know that you're the person to ask so when we think of back to mom fog specifically i guess i was under the impression that maybe if we like, it was because due to like deficiencies.

22:33So that's a myth. Interrupting this week's episode real quick for this week's segment of MomMail. If you're new here, this is the part of the show where I answer a listener submitted situation or scenario. Basically, you write in your tricky situation and I give you advice only a real mom friend would give. Here's the email we're responding to this week. Hey, Layla, thanks for being a mom friend and for making the podcast. It's really my favorite podcast. I recently found it, but I'm going back through and binging all the other episodes too. I only wish I knew about this podcast in my pregnancy, but I'm re-listening to your season one all about pregnancy and birth right now, so I'll be good to go when we're ready for number two.

23:15Okay, so my question is how to not feel like I'm always failing at something in motherhood. I just really feel like I'm running a never-ending race of laundry, meals, play dates, snacks, introducing solids making food at home but I don't do any of it extremely well I just feel like I'm treading water please help me mom friend oh my goodness oh this is so dang relatable um so on that you are not alone I think most of us regardless if you're a stay-at-home mom or a working mom or a stay-at-home mom working mom whatever you are I think we all can feel like we're treading water at some at times. And I'm so sorry.

24:00I do have some, I guess, pieces of advice that have helped me get out of a state of treading water because I typically feel like when I'm treading water, it's because I'm on my way to burnout. So I would recommend in the search bar of the podcast app when you're done listening to this episode, type in like learning to mom burnout and listen to my past episode on that 10 out of 10 recommend. I've just noticed that like when I really feel like I'm treading water, which actually recently I was having a very good conversation with a friend of mine about this because I felt like I was treading water.

24:41And I took the tips that I learned in that episode and have applied it. And the biggest one that comes to mind is really simplifying my life and saying no quite a bit. I have noticed that when I start feeling like I'm treading water, it's because I've overcommitted myself. It's typically not because like, oh, we have so much laundry or like, oh, this meal is so hard. It's because I'm being stretched in a thousand directions. And it's typically for things that aren't 100 % necessary. And although they could be great things, right? Like I'm given an opportunity to speak at an event or I was invited to lead this church group.

25:23Like there could be really great, awesome things. But if it's not a necessity right now, don't do it because I'm going to be like, that's one of the early signs of like, oh my gosh, I'm just treading water. I'm struggling. I can't breathe. This is so hard. Like you're on your way to burn out my mom friend. So I do not want you to get there. I want to encourage you to say no to some things and start simplifying. That means probably some really simple spaghetti and meatball and veggies as a side for dinner. That means turning down some playdates for a few weeks. That means saying no to the weekend plans that is going to stress you out for a while.

26:07It's not a forever thing, but it's just like, okay, what can we really cut down on? What can I say no to? And I know that's hard. It's like a muscle. You have to kind of practice saying no before it becomes like easy. But start saying no to things because you're on your way to burnout. I hate to say it. I'm so sorry. But that's the truth. At least that's like the biggest sign to me when I start feeling that way. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I know what's next. So I really got to cut back because you obviously don't want to be, You don't have time as a mom to be burnt out. You got to keep going. So let's try to find some enjoyment back into motherhood.

26:44And I would also recommend that you listen to my episode that I did a few weeks back. That's like 11 things that I do to actually help me enjoy being a stay-at-home mom. I don't know what your season of life is, but I think some tips that I share in there will be applicable to you, whatever you do for work, whether that be traditional or if you're a stay-at-home mom or a working stay-at-home mom or whatever. I do think those tips are going to help you as well. So I hope that was helpful. Thank you so much for writing in. Know that you are definitely not alone in this. Now, if you're looking for advice, email me at learningtomompodcast.mommail at gmail.com with the subject line, MomMail.