Mom therapy: Here's exactly how a session might go
My caseload is full. Like, bursting at the seams. I don’t take this lightly, and I don’t say this to brag. As it turns out, moms need and benefit from therapy! And when I launched my practice in 2022 specializing in overwhelmed and burnt out moms, no one else was doing it.
Really, they’re still not, but at least word is starting to spread that maybe there are more specializations for mothers than postpartum and “women’s issues” (whatever that means).
So anyway, with a full caseload, I haven’t started a new client in a minute. But I added one recently and today we had our second session. And I want to give you a glimpse into the therapy room using this session as a guide!
*Note: absolutely no personal details about this client will be shared, including personal anecdotes or even vague references. All details will be broad in nature and applicable to all of my clients, and any mother I’d see in my office.
The first therapy session is always intake of some kind. It feels like an interview; I ask a lot of questions and get to know you as a client and as a mother and woman. Always a little awkward but I try to support you in feeling relaxed and at ease. And I learn about you - your habits, routines, and ultimately, your needs and what’s getting in the way of meeting them!
In the second therapy session, the work begins. I do first initiate a mindfulness practice, where you touch base with your physical, mental, and emotional self and see if you can put words to each. This is hard - most moms have lost touch with themselves and their own feelings beyond overwhelm and stress and sometimes rage, that they don’t know how they’re actually feeling moment to moment! So this step is important.
Then, we assess a few things, and use them to get to work:
Assess basic needs - I want to know what you consider your basic needs to feel like a human being, and how frequently are you getting them met. I take a nod from my friend millennialmomtherapist and advise clients to break their day down into thirds or fourths, and assess things like water intake, food intake, movement, sunlight, fresh air, rest, social time, alone time, medication, time with spouse, etc. Then, we prioritize them in each interval.
Assess routines - what are your routines like day to day, and where are your margins? Where do you have intervals of 10, 15, 20 minutes that are your own? In the pickup line? On your way to work? Now we want to utilize them for some of those needs.
Assess the village - what is your support network like? Who takes care of you physically and emotionally, and how can we lean into them, balancing your desperation for support and the emotional price tag that may come from their support?
Assess communication - what is communication like with your partner? What is your history with feeling emotionally safe? We explore how safe it feels to express emotion with your partner, and how to start verbalizing the overwhelm and burnout you’re feeling on a daily basis. Then, we open more doors. I advise clients to initiate a weekly meeting with their partner, starting purely with calendars. Compare availability, free time, and what’s on the schedule. Just this practice will open the door for future communication.
Then we align those assessments with your goals, and prioritize. We do deep dive eventually; I often get hints of your own childhood, relationship with your parents, etc., in these sessions, but we really need each day to feel a little bit better before we unpack your childhood trauma.
So there we have it - an example of how our work together might go! Or, it might not. Maybe you’re not sleeping and we have to start there. Maybe you recently got a divorce and we have to start there. We will start wherever you need to start. But this is a good example of how we begin to tackle motherhood overwhelm and burnout.
