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Why Moms Are Wired to Worry More (Pt. 2 with Dr. Risa Weisberg) · That Mom

• Maria Woods: To That Mom, the podcast where we explore finding more joy and more meaning in the beautiful chaos of motherhood. I'm your host Maria, and I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back. Today we jump right back in with part two with Dr. Weisberg, talking about anxiety, identity, and becoming the person you truly want to be. Welcome back, Dr. Risa Weisberg to That Mom. Yeah, great. ⁓ I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about something that I think affects a decent number of moms, which is anxiety. and I think you have an interesting way of talking about anxiety and its role. So I'd love to kind of talk through that with you. Sure. So I mean all emotions have a purpose and that's why most cottons and animals experience the primary emotions, right? We see models in animals that look just like depression, that look just like anxiety. Like these are not just even human experiences, but they're certainly universal human experiences. And they're there and they haven't been, you know, evolutionarily kind of bred away because they're actually adaptive and necessary. Right? So anxiety keeps us safe. It's our alarm system. It's what tells us that there's threat or danger and we better activate To do something to save ourselves. And so when I'm working with people with really high anxiety and they have the thought, like, I just wish I was never anxious, it's actually like, well, you probably don't actually wish you were never anxious, right? Like you'd probably be in a lot of danger if you never felt anxious. Or you at least won't get anything done, right? Like we need that pressure sometimes of deadlines, right? We need a little bit of anxiety in order to keep us safe, keep us motivated, keep us going. I work really well under a deadline, so I know. I know sometimes that benefits me. Yeah, it does most people, right? People who have really low anxiety tend to have a harder time kind of, you know, doing the things that are important for their future selves, right? Bringing it all back around. ⁓ so it serves an important purpose. ⁓ part of what happens to us that makes it feel so uncomfortable is evolutionarily what we needed in order to keep us safe was very physical. Right, we needed to we needed that fight or flight system that you probably learned about back in high school to kick in because that's how we kept ourselves safe. We were either fought back, a predator, or we ran away from it. And so when we start getting really anxious and our that system is triggered, you know, our heart starts pounding really fast. We get hot and flushed, we maybe get, you know, a little lightheaded or dizzy, we maybe get short of breath, and that's because like we have all of this adrenaline coursing through our system preparing us to run away or fight back, which is great when the anxiety is there because like you and your child are stepping off a curb and you look up and there's a truck coming. Like you want that adrenaline. You need that. But when the anxiety is like I have a deadline tomorrow, you know, sitting around at home with your heart racing feels really uncomfortable and kind of the wrong thing at the wrong time. So it's part of why we don't necessarily enjoy the experience of anxiety now, because it kind of ha the way it manifests itself doesn't always fit what our threats and dangers are. the reason, too, that moms I think are so prone to first of all, we just know that there's higher rates of higher anxiety in women than there are in men. That's just a biological difference to some extent. but when we become moms during pregnancy, and even postpartum, our brains actually go through a number of changes. And there have been studies done looking at the brains of moms versus the brains of women of the same age who never had children and they look different. And one of the big things that changes during pregnancy and postpartum is that the areas of our brain that are that pay attention, that are alert and scanning and hypervigilant and look for danger. And the areas of our brain that trigger anxiety ⁓ become ⁓ those pathways become stronger and more-up. Because there's nothing evolutionarily more important for the survival of a species than keeping offspring safe. Wow. Right? So there's good reason that like moms are anxious. Like you have some most important job for the evolution of humanity. Like you've got to keep this helpless little thing safe. Right, so of course you're worrying all the time. Like you're built to do that, you're supposed to do that, and you're gonna worry about every little thing that could make life dangerous for your offspring because that's kinda evolutionarily what you're supposed to be doing. I feel like that in and of itself is very validating. Like we might have to replay this for some husbands out there, you know, like Because sometimes you do, you wonder, like, why am I doing this? But you do tend to get caught up on things or overanalyze or th you know, just put a lot of thought into every little thing. Yeah, interestingly the research on brains of dads looks more like brains of women who never had children. And you know, there's certainly lots of anxious dads and overprotective dads out there, but those changes that happen when you become a parent tend to be more biological and it's because like I mean your body knew You're becoming a parent, right? Your husband's body didn't have any clear signals that that was happening, right? And so often it is the mom who's a little bit more of the anxious one ⁓ in you know in the parenting. And that's there's good reason for that. Like that is sort of evolutionary what we're supposed to do. There's some really cool studies done in ⁓ Europe about a decade or two ago that actually show that kids who have really anxious dads ⁓ tend to be more anxious. But kids who have anxious moms, as long as dad is like not anxious and he's like an explorer and he wants to show them the world and teach them that life isn't so scary, tend to do really great and not be so they're safe but they're not anxious. And so I think for anxious for dads sometimes can look at moms and be like, ⁓ my God, stop worrying. And we can look at our husbands sometimes and be like Would you just worry a little bit more about some of us? Yes. ⁓ but if you are fortunate enough to have like mom and dad in a situation raising kids together, you may actually like want to lean into how different you are because it might turn out best for your kids anyway. Yeah, well that gives us a whole new perspective on appreciating each other. Exactly. That's amazing. checking my notes here, ⁓ one thing I think we talked a little bit about this, the psychology of someday and kind of delayed happiness. we talked about anxiety is useful information. ⁓ ⁓ so I think one thing that would be fascinating to talk about with you is identity. So I think well, I don't know if it's you can tell me if is it midlife where we question identity as women? Is it because we're mothers that we're questioning identity? I feel like that's a theme for me personally. Is this something the science supports and that you've seen in your work? Yeah, I mean, identity is such a multi-layered complex concept. When I think of identity, I often think of like self schema, ⁓ which is really just like the psychological term for how we think about and learn about who we are in the world. And research shows that our self schema gets set pretty well in early childhood. So that there is this piece of who we think we are that by the time we're like in grade school, some of it is pretty well established. That's fascinating. Yeah, also as a parent is fascinating, right? And thinking about the messages that you send to your kids as well. Because you know, we learn about who we are in part by social comparison, right? So like basic things, like I learned I was short pretty early in life because all my peers were taller. Same. My twin sister actually is six inches taller than me. ⁓ wow. So that's great. So you were twins, right? Yeah. And that probably was how like people are like, ⁓ she's the short twin. So you learn that. That's very basic. ⁓ but there become other social comparators, right? Where like, you know, kids learn like how smart they are based on a like where they get placed in class, right? Are you with the fast readers? Are you in the advanced math group? We're not in the math group. And that stuff kind of sticks a little bit. ⁓ how athletic are you? Yeah, I was in part because I was the short, scrawny one, like I was always pick glass in gym class. Always. And so I learned I'm not athletic. ⁓ I'm smart, I'm short, I'm not athletic. Right? And so those become sort of pieces of who you think you are as you go through the rest of your life. ⁓ And so that's a piece of your identity that feels kind of stable unless you do something about it. Because the other way that we learn who we are is by experience. Right? And so You didn't think of yourself as a mother because you never were one before. But you had this experience of becoming a mother, and so now your identity has of course changed through that experience. And it's the same for other things, right? So and bringing this back to like behavior change and reaching those goals, right? Like trying to be a really fit eight-year-old, you know. If I still held on to this identity of like, I am not athletic, I don't like things that are physical, I am bookish, it might be really hard for me to ever get to the gym because it'd be a piece of me that was saying, Well, that's not who I am, that's not for me. Right? But part of how you change that is you start making the habit. You start saying, like, well, I really want future me to be someone who it thinks of themselves as an athlete or at least thinks of themselves as like healthy and who exercises regularly. So what would FutureMe want today me to be doing? Mm-hmm. She'd want me to go to the gym, right? So once you start kind of living for that identity that you want, you can actually change your schema. So like now I see myself kind of as a pretty athletic person. ⁓ n really only because I started making that part of my life and now I'm like, ⁓ how can I still say that I'm not when I exercise like six times a week? Like I guess I am someone who likes to exercise. Yeah. ⁓ and so you can kind of change your identity through your behavior, just like your your identity can dictate your behavior, right? You can say, well I'm someone who, you know, I'm not someone who takes chances, I am risk averse, I'm a homebody, right? And that's gonna dictate What you actually wind up choosing to do and not do, or you can take some risks and go out more and meet more people and do more things, and then start to think of yourself as this different person. So identity can be kind of multi-directional in how it impacts your behavior. So you have this huge behavior change. The way you spend your day could not be more different. before you become a parent and after you become a parent. There's this enormous piece of life that just gets dropped in and all these behaviors that come with it. So it makes sense that you're like, we're all kind of figuring out like who who are we now? Yeah. Right? I think it makes so much sense. And especially if your work or if your identity was tied into work or just who you are without children, then you bring this in. And so I think you're trying to kind of reconcile those two pieces together and I think that's where all the work in terms of what what's important to you right now comes in because it's a lot to fit on one plate or one life, one period of time where your kids are young and you might be working and mothering, then ⁓ that's where the intentionality I think comes in. Absolutely. And I think you know some of that intentionality about like once you know what's really important to you and what you value, is for yourself, but then there's also the work of figuring out What do you really value your kids, right? So, like what you want your kids to look back on their childhood and think and say about their experience, and what you want them to look at you as a parent and think and say about you as a parent, right? I think my kids are now in the early, very early twenties, and I think about this a lot. when they're talking with their peers, you know, and they're away at college and they're like, you know, mom calls, like what are they saying? Like, ⁓ my mom is, right? Mm-hmm. and I think we tell ourselves, like, at this stage when our kids are young, all sorts of scary things about that at different times. Especially when we're sometimes making the choices not to be with them, right? And those are active choices sometimes. you know, I traveled a fair amount for work. When my kids were really little, ⁓ there were times when I was away, you know, at least once a month. and definitely had this fear of my kids, you know, having this story about me not being as available as other moms were. ⁓ the town I live in has a lot of stay-at-home moms. ⁓ and a lot of their friends' moms were around most of the time. ⁓ they you know, picked them up from kindergarten every day and had play dates after school and Yeah, I was picking them up at six o'clock after the after school program, right? Yeah. And so, you know, what was their narrative gonna look like about that? And I realized what I actually wanted was my kids to feel okay, especially with them both being daughters, to one day also do the things that they want to do. Like I didn't want to raise daughters who felt like they had to put their career totally on hold in order to stay home for this time. If they want to, great, but I didn't want them to feel like they had to. ⁓ and now the narrative that they tell is often like, you know, how much they appreciate, like they see me as like this, you know, go gether who like had this big career and who did all these things and how what a great role model that was for them. And so that was what I hoped for. You don't know if that's what you're creating. ⁓ but that was that became the attempt as opposed to just Focusing on like all the other like should narratives of like the neighborhood and Yeah. Because it was a choice for you. You you chose some things to miss so that you could have a big career and so that you could set this example for your children. I think that is a really helpful way to look at it because maybe you want to be that example of a working mom, but maybe you value ⁓ let's say some fun during summer, because it's about to be summer and kids are getting out of school. So, like, you know, something I want to do is create this bucket list with my kids and you know it's gonna be hard to fit it in between working and passion projects and everything else, but I I think that could create some core memories, right? So It's also being intentional about I'm gonna take some time to do some specific things that we're gonna dream up together. And that will hopefully be the memory of the summer, not mom was working or mom was traveling, which will also happen some of this summer too. I love that. I mean, we remember the things that are salient, right? Which so we we tend to remember the things that stand out, right? When you think back on your life, you know, what we tend to remember like vacations we took, big experience days. ⁓ big events that happened, we don't tend to like have vivid memories of like the mundane, banal day-to-day experience. So when part of what you're thinking about is like how do I create these like core childhood memories for my kids? Yeah. It is actually about those kind of bucket list items. ⁓ I think what you're doing is exactly right. Cause that tends to be the things that we remember more than like You know, there was ten minutes when I was annoyed because I was bored and mom was on the phone call, right? Like, no, but they're not gonna remember that. They're really not. Yeah. ⁓ so yeah, I love I love the bucket list idea. I think it's great. Good. And I'm glad it's science backed. Excellent. Well, Risa, I could talk to you all day. You're super fascinating. Would you tell our listeners what are you working on now? What's exciting you at the moment? Sure, thanks. So ⁓ yeah right now I am I do have a small private practice as well as ⁓ a executive coaching practice where I'm working one-on-one with really people of all genders and ages, but I do especially love working with women in transition. So whether that's transition in like actually I have a lot of ⁓ patients ⁓ who are just leaving college and kind of trying to figure out about identity and what they do in the world now ⁓ or just becoming parents. ⁓ or lots of empty nest midlife transition too, which is this other big identity piece. ⁓ so I I particularly love those ⁓ transitional phases. I also am one of the ⁓ founding team members of a new AI-based digital company we're haven't yet launched yet, but our wait list is available called Future Self, ⁓ where we're building a ⁓ An app and a community around helping to support envisioning yourself as that person you want to be, like getting clarity around who you want to become in the future and figuring out how you kind of mentally rehearse who that person is and how they live so that that identity feels real to you, making it easier for you to make the day-to-day behaviors that will actually get you to be there. So it's kind of the science of manifestation. But manifestation only works if you're actually then changing your day-to-day activities to get you to this thing you want, right? And so we're trying to tie all that in together. ⁓ and that company is just called Future Self AI. and then yeah, I do some other consulting to other digital health companies right now. So it's been ⁓ a fun mix of different ⁓ different passion projects. Yeah, that's fascinating in the future self. AI sounds particularly fascinating and kind of pulling all these pieces together. It's it's been a really fun project and I'm really excited about what it looks like so far. We're in ⁓ beta testing with a very small pilot group of people right now, ⁓ but hoping to kind of launch out our ⁓ a larger test group soon. That's great. And in closing, if there was one piece of advice you could give to busy moms, what would it be? I really think it is this piece of like be okay letting something go, right? Pick what you really care about and be intentional about that and let the other stuff go, right? Like think about what am I doing that's making it harder on myself and it has to be, 'cause it's already so hard, right? Can the you know, ever we've heard this a million times, but it's hard to actually get ourselves to do it. But like, you know, let the dishes sit in the sink. ⁓ you know, miss miss the one activity that you really aren't excited about. ⁓ you know show up where you want to, how you want to, and let the rest of it go. There's no need to be amazing at everything all the time. trying to do that kind of just makes us feel pretty crappy about most things most of the time. Right. ⁓ this that's really great practical advice, I think, especially in showing up where it really matters to you. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This was a great conversation. Thank you. I really enjoyed myself. It was great chatting you. This is Maria, and you've been listening to That Mom. Thank you for being here. If this episode resonated, share it with a mom who needs it too. And if you're ready for more, your next episode is waiting. Because every conversation here is meant to empower you to live better.