The 5-Minute Reset Every Overwhelmed Mother Needs This Summer

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1:03One of the biggest things I've learned over the last few years is that feeling calmer, more patient or less overwhelmed in motherhood doesn't have to require a complete life overhaul. Welcome, it is me, your host Zoe. It is time for another Monday Motherkind moment. Sometimes the biggest shifts come from just a few intentional minutes each day. So in this moment, I'm sharing some of the most powerful science-backed tools I've learned to help regulate your nervous system, complete the stress cycle and quieten that inner critic. They're simple practices that have genuinely changed how I experience motherhood and they're especially helpful during seasons like the summer holidays that we are in the thick of right now when the mental load can feel even heavier and these are just some of the tools that I teach inside five minute mother kind which is my five minute 21 day audio course you just listen for five minutes a day and it can completely reset how you feel the first three days are free to give you a taste for it so you'll find that link in the show notes below I really hope the next few minutes leave you feeling a little bit lighter and just with one simple tool that you can start today.

2:26I think there are five ways that in just five minutes away you can genuinely shift how you feel and how you show up and I'm going to talk you through those now. So the first one is about regulating your nervous system. If you know me, if you know Mother Kind, if you read the book, I talk about this a lot because it was genuinely so motherhood and life changing for me when I realised that when we're stressed, overwhelmed or overstimulated, our nervous system goes into fight, flight, freeze or fawn. And in that state, everything feels harder. I remember the first time I experienced this, everyone was screaming at me.

3:03I was exhausted. I was at the end of my tether and I have this overwhelming desire to just bolt out the room. I felt so much shame at that reaction until I learned about the stress response. And so many parenting books, you know, talk about being the steady ship, staying calm. What they fail to mention is how hard that is to do if you get hijacked by the stress response, which by the way, everyone does. So every time you get overwhelmed or overstimulated, basically most of the time that we're with our children, your nervous system responds in one of four ways. I'll talk you through them now. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

3:41So I'd notice how when the girls were climbing on me, I would want to push them off and run away. That's flight. When they'd scream and fight, I'd instantly feel a rush of rage. That kind of just wanting to fight back. That's fight. When they asked me for the hundredth time for more screen time and I'd want to give in just to make them quiet, that is fawn. Or how if in a particularly intense meltdown, especially with my eldest, if it just felt too much, I've talked about this a lot, it would almost feel like I was dissociating. That is freeze, where we almost freeze, like rub it in a headlight.

4:20And again, realising there is nothing wrong with me for these reactions, and there's nothing wrong with you. You're just a human with a nervous system. so we all have these different stress responses as well and something that blows my mind is that how you were wired to handle stress growing up is often where you'll go to now in your most stressful situation so if as a kid you used to run away to your room a lot when things got too much you likely now when things get too much with your kids find yourself wanting to run to your room or run to the toilet and lock the door so we all have a different window of tolerance now in five minutes a day, and I teach this in 5 Minute Motherkind, you can absolutely learn to regulate and expand what's known as your window of tolerance through these moments.

5:07The best way to do it is breath. Essentially, the moment you realise you're in a stress response, you're 90 % out of it, because it is about the awareness. It's like turning off that alarm part of your body and turning on the calm part of your body. And breath is the most effective way to do that. So simple box breath, which is four in, hold for four, four out, hold for four. And you do that in a loop or one that I love, which is the straw breath. So you're breathing in, do it with me now. And then you're piercing your lips as if you're breathing through a straw or drinking through a straw and then breathing out through pierced lips for as long as you possibly can.

5:45Now I am telling you, I've been doing this for two, three years now, and I honestly feel like I have a new nervous system, I do not get the stress responses that I used to. My window of tolerance is so much bigger. You really can start this today. I teach you exactly how to do it in five minute mother kind in just five minutes a day. It's unreal. Okay. The other thing linked to stress is how to complete the stress cycle. So I used to think that I was burning out in motherhood, you know, juggling everything, spinning all the plates because I was taking on too much. I was too stressed. And in a way that was true, but also not true.

6:25Because what really causes burnout is when we don't release the stress. It's called completing the stress cycle. We can actually take on quite a lot of stress as humans, but we have to release it. It's like wiping the table at the end of the day and then putting the new dishes on tomorrow. The equivalent is we just keep piling dishes on dishes on dishes on dishes. If we don't wipe the metaphorical table, complete the stress cycle, release the stress, that is when we burn out. I love this analogy of the sponge. So imagine the stress is the water, you're the sponge, you're absorbing the stress of everyone around you, of everything you're holding, everything that's going on, and you can only absorb so much.

7:06You have to wring out the stress so that you can go on and carry on doing it the next day. Well, wringing out that sponge is completing the stress cycle. And what blows my mind about this and the reason I'm so passionate about it because it's really simple to do. The scientifically proven ways to release the stress cycle take five, three to five minutes. Again, I teach it all in five minute mother kind. You want to be shaking your body. You want to be making noises, kind of groans or screams. I love doing that one, by the way, in the car when I'm parked near no one. It really does complete the stress cycle.

7:41Hugging someone that you love, doing a short five minute guided meditation. There are so many simple ways that you can complete the stress cycle. I do this every single day now and despite being busier than ever with work and everything else, I haven't burned out in four years. It was my last big burnout because I have discovered completing the stress cycle. So I feel like I'm on such a mission for us all to start doing this. I teach it in five minute mother kind. So it is very simple. And I promise you, I've had so many messages of people saying, Zoe, I started doing this. I haven't burned out.

8:17You know, I feel miles from burnout. So completing the stress cycle is really, really, really simple and really, really important. This message is brought to you by Avocado Mattress. When you're shopping for a mattress, you can spend hours reading reviews and scrolling through photos. But the only way to truly know if a mattress is right for you is to feel it for yourself. That's why Avocado invites you to come lie down. Every Avocado mattress is got certified organic, assembled in our California facility with organic cotton, wool, and latex. No polyurethane foams, no fiberglass, certified made safe and EWG verified.

8:56It's a difference you can feel. So curl up. Try any of our Avocado mattresses in person at an Avocado mattress store or 600 premier retail locations nationwide. Find out which of our five comfort levels is right for you. Because buying a mattress shouldn't be a guessing game. And there's no one size fits all when it comes to better sleep. Find your comfort. Come lie down at Avocado. Shop the Labor Day sale now and get up to 20 % off at AvocadoGreenMattress.com or select retailers nationwide. That's AvocadoGreenMattress.com to get up to 20 % off. AvocadoGreenMattress.com the other way that i think just five minutes can completely change your experience of motherhood is what happens between your ears because the reality is life isn't as it is life is as we see it it's as our internal dialogue narrates it so the truth is that if you have an inner critic which i do and i know so many of us do that part of us that says you're not doing well enough you're failing, you can't cope, you're dropping too many balls.

10:01That's your inner critic. That's not actually the reality. The reality is you are doing so much better than you think you are. There's a phenomenon called the negativity bias, which essentially means that you are wired, we are all wired to focus on what is wrong, not on what is right. So if we can learn to see what we're doing right, if we can learn to not listen to those critical shame and guilt inducing thoughts, if we can learn to replace them with neutral or maybe even positive thoughts, it changes everything. It changes your stress response. It changes how you feel in your body. It changes how you show up.

10:42And one of the biggest motivations for me changing my inner voice is that we know that the inner voice of the caregiver has a direct impact on the inner voice your children develop. So I desperately want my girls to have internalised kind coaches between their ears. And so that is what I try to develop for myself. Because when you are kinder to yourself, when you become an inner coach, not an inner bully to yourself, it's so much easier to take a breath before you snap. It's so much easier to be regulated and calmer. It really does matter. And actually in my book, Mother Kind, I made this the second chapter.

11:23I called it get on your own side because the pace and the pressure of being a mom in 2025 is already so much. And yet what most of us do is we make it twice as hard by deciding that we're failing, that we're not good enough that we can't do it. So I call it hard squared. It's really, really, really important and powerful. And it doesn't just impact your motherhood this. If you can learn to change that inner voice, it changes everything. It changes how you show up at work. It changes how you show up in your relationship. There are so many studies that I've read, you know, hundreds of studies that I've about the power of having a compassionate internal voice.

12:04The benefits are across the board, especially physically. You wouldn't think that, would you? But it really impacts with the mind-body connection, how we think really impacts our health as well. So in just five minutes a day, less than five minutes a day, you can absolutely begin to rewire how you talk to yourself. The first step is spotting a negative or critical thought. And then challenging it and perhaps just thinking I'm not listening to that today even if it were true I'm not going to listen to that today the next step might be replacing it with a neutral or kind of thought and over time as you do this you really really can begin to rewire your relationship with yourself and that inner voice you can absolutely do it in just a couple of minutes a day and again I teach you how to do it in five minutes mother kind the other thing and the one of the last pillars I want to talk to you about is this idea of so many of us feeling lost in motherhood you know we give to our jobs we give to our partners we give to our children we give to our homes we give to logistics we give to our friends and our family and we can start to feel like a shell

13:15that was the episode I hoped you loved it if you did please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time