Mom burnout left untreated can lead to blocked care – where do you fall on the mom burnout spectrum? 

I’ve talked in past blogs about mom burnout and the challenges of parenting. Through my work I’ve come to see that a major indicator of mom burnout (or parenting burnout in general) is blocked care.

Blocked care is probably not a term you’re familiar with. In a nutshell, it means parenting has become hard and your heart just isn’t in it anymore; you are going through the parenting motions but not feeling close or connected to your child.

This can also be described as mom burnout, or parental burnout.

Blocked care can present itself as the feeling that you’re not bonding with your baby, or that you don’t like your kids, or resenting one or more of your kids.

Sometimes blocked care presents itself as genuinely and persistently feeling like having kids ruined your life.

It’s a very difficult place to be in as a parent and there can be so much shame in our hearts when we feel that way.

No one becomes a parent with the belief that one day they’ll feel like they don’t like their kids or babies! No parent wants to feel that way.

Having kids is certainly life changing and should transform you as a person – however, you deserve to feel joy in your parenting, to trust that you are a good parent, and to feel deep down that you love, like, and have a bond with your children.

In order to help you get there, I’ve written this blog to help you understand what blocked care is, how it’s like parenting burnout, what causes blocked care, and how you can take steps to change it so you can find more joy in your parenting.

Let’s dive straight in.

What is blocked care?

I first came across the term blocked care in my professional work. Blocked care was developed as a concept by Dr. Daniel Hughes and Dr. Jonathan Baylin.

I specialize in working with children who have experienced early childhood trauma; and blocked care can frequently present in foster parents, or parents of adopted children, who experience strong feelings of disconnection from the children in their care. 

Blocked care can arise because children who have experienced early childhood traumas present with challenging behaviours that can be particularly difficult for their parents or caregivers to support. The relationship inevitably becomes stressed and tense which can result in a feeling of being “blocked” from bonding with the child. 

As a professional, and as the mother of four, to both adopted and biological children, the term blocked care has resonated deeply with me in many ways over the years, and over the course of my parenting journey, as I have personally experienced blocked care in my own parenting. 

While blocked care is commonly understood to occur between parents and their adopted or foster children, blocked care also easily occurs between parents and their biological children. 

How does blocked care affect parenting?

Feeling disconnected from your child – or feeling like you’re not bonding with them, or that you don’t like them – can lead to some parents becoming resentful toward their child, guilty about their feelings, or isolated as a result of feeling like they’re the only parent in the world who can’t feel bonded with their baby or child. 

When you’re struggling with blocked care, you can start to feel like having kids ruined your life.

I’ve worked with parents who have experienced the loneliness of prolonged blocked care – and I’ve experienced it myself as a mom. It feels awful. 

Why is understanding blocked care important?

Understanding what blocked care is, where it comes from, and why your thoughts and feelings are so intense, is very important for so many reasons, including:

• Normalizing difficult or scary emotions can help you to feel less isolated and lonely
• Understanding where these feelings are coming from can help to reduce your shame as a parent
• Feeling attuned to your own emotions can help you make changes that will reduce the feeling of disconnect between you and your child(ren)
• Finding solutions in ourselves to manage challenging behaviours in children and distressing thoughts can help us to reduce the risk of parenting burnout

Is blocked care the same thing as mom burnout?

Becoming a parent is life-changing for us all. My motherhood nature has changed over the years, and I can say with total confidence that I’m not the same person I was prior to having kids. 

There is a saying, “You don’t just birth a baby, you also birth a mother.” 

Blocked care isn’t necessarily the same thing as mom burnout – but blocked care can feel the same as mom burnout, and blocked care can also result in mom burnout. 

While not every mother experiencing mom burnout will develop blocked care, persistent feelings of burnout can lead to disconnection between a mother and her child – and this is blocked care. 

I work with mothers who are experiencing such severe mom burnout that blocked care has developed without them noticing, and these moms truly feel in their hearts that having kids ruined their life. 

To these moms, I say: you’re not alone, and we’re here for you. 

If you’re experiencing a severe mental health crisis, or thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, reach out for immediate mental health support. 

Burnout isn’t just for moms – parenting burnout happens to dads too

When parents speak of being burned out or of being at the end of their rope with their kids – it’s often because of 5 systems rooted in the brain and our nervous systems that impact feelings of burnout or blocked care. 

Depending on how these systems are working, it can lead to the experience of blocked care, mom burnout, or both.

What causes blocked care and parenting burnout?

I wish that every parent (and prospective parent) understood that there are 5 systems in our brains and nervous systems that are involved in our parenting and relationships. 

The health of these 5 parenting systems, which were written first from Dr. Dan Hughes and Dr. Jonathan Baylin, is very key in how we are experiencing connection with our children. 

These systems have roots deeply impacted by your own childhood and upbringing. 

The 5 systems can explain why certain situations trigger intense emotional reactions – often more intense than the situation seems to warrant – as well as how you make sense of your child’s behaviour, and how you find pleasure in relationships. 

A true, in-depth understanding of where your feelings are coming from can help to shift these challenging and sometimes scary feelings in a more positive and helpful direction.

No parent wants to feel hurt, angry, alone, and overwhelmed every single day of their lives with their children. 

This awareness can help you get back on track to be the parent and person you want to be, and significantly help your relationship with your kids.

I’ve personally been in blocked care, and worked through it. I work with parents in my counselling practice who have been in blocked care and come through the other side. 

You don’t have to stay stuck. 

Let’s talk about the 5 systems that affect blocked care to help ground our understanding before we move on to what can help you change the cycle. 

Also Read: Nurturing your past: the benefits of inner child healing on parenting.

What are the 5 systems that affect blocked care?

I want to start by saying, blocked care can happen to anyone. Whether you’ve had what you describe as a well-rounded and totally safe childhood, or a childhood that left you needing therapy to understand your own traumas and triggers, blocked care can hit when you least expect it.

Experiencing blocked care does not mean you are not a good parent. Struggling to bond with your baby does not make you a bad parent. All this means is that something is going on in your relationship with your baby or child, and you’ve got to understand it before you can take steps to make changes.

There isn’t anything wrong with you and you don’t have a screwed up brain – you have a brain and nervous system that has been significantly stressed and is doing the best it can to protect you.

Understanding the 5 parenting interrelated systems can help you to:

• Help you avoid developing mom burnout or blocked care
• Strengthen relationships with your children
• Improve your relationships with others, such as your spouse or partner
• Help you make sense of the inevitable highs and lows of your parenting experience

Each system relies on particular circuits and structures within the brain. Let’s break them down one at a time.

1. Approach & Avoidance Systems: Why is it hard to be physically close to my child?

Your approach system is a core motivation system. 

When it is turned on, you feel safe, open and connected to your child and want to interact closely with them. 

When oxytocin, also referred to as “the love hormone,” is released, it calms and suppresses defensive structures in the brain and promotes feelings of safety and trust with your child. 

If your approach system is turned off, your avoidance system is turned on picking up cues of threat and danger. 

It’s like your brain is saying, “Don’t approach!” or “Be wary – something may hurt you!” 

If the source of the perceived threat is coming from your child – it makes sense you don’t want to be physically close to them. 

Our own early life experiences with our own parents can heavily influence how our own approach or avoidance systems have developed. If this is something that you’re experiencing with your child(ren), explore therapeutic solutions that help you understand yourself with compassion and self-kindness. This doesn’t have to last forever! 

2. Reward System: Why am I not motivated or happy around my child?

Our reward system can be activated from many things other than parenting such as social media scrolling, food, sex, gaming, etc.

​​Dopamine is a neurotransmitter – or chemical messenger – in our brain, and it’s involved in our reward centre which motivates us to engage in certain behaviours.

Dopamine is a reward-expectant system, which means it’s released with the anticipation of the thing we want. Like, the piece of chocolate, checking our phone for messages, anticipating a big hug or smile from our kid when we walk in the room – things like that.

If we have previous experiences of certain things being pleasurable, it makes sense that we want to engage with more of that thing.

In parenting, our approach system is closely linked with our reward system.

If parenting is generally pleasurable (e.g. we have a sufficient amount of good moments of connection with our children), then our reward system is activated.

If parenting is more difficult than what you expected, or if you feel trapped or stuck, or if you feel you are constantly battling with your child… the reward system can crash.

This can put you into a defensive state, which means your approach-reward system is turned off, and your avoidant self-protective system is turned on. 

If this happens frequently, you become more at risk of experiencing blocked care.

3. Child Reading System: Why is it hard to empathise?

The child reading system is how we make sense of our child’s inner world. 

You remember when your baby would cry and sometimes (not always) you just knew what they were crying about? Or when they were toddlers and they babbled nonsense at you and your brain somehow translated that information into language? 

This is the same process as when your older child throws a tantrum for no visible reason, but sometimes (again, not always) you just get where it’s coming from.

It’s because you know your child so intimately, understand their experiences and their personalities, and you can intuit what those cries mean. In other words, you’re reading your child through the context of the moment, and your understanding of their likes and dislikes.

In the child reading system, you rely on your own experiences and your ability to empathise with others to interpret your child’s emotions and understand their inner world.

You read all of your child’s nonverbal cues, such as their tone of voice, speed at which they are speaking, body posture & gestures, facial expressions etc. to decipher whether to approach and engage, or whether you should be defensive and protective. 

This process takes place outside of conscious awareness. 

It is important to note that children also have a parent reading system where they learn to interpret your own likes and dislikes, your reactions to certain things, and can begin to predict how you’ll respond to their cues. 

If a child is able to remain open, engaged and receptive to their parents it often is easier for parents to remain open and more engaged.

4. Meaning Making System: Why do I feel like having kids ruined my life?

Stories are integral to how we understand our lives; we all make meaning out of every experience whether we are aware of it or not. 

Healthy and regulated brains tend to have more reflective, nuanced, complex, positive and hopeful stories. 

We have the capacity to hold concepts that are “but-and” (eg: “it’s been difficult but we know this won’t last forever and we’ve seen some positive changes changes”), 

In a brain that has more difficulty regulating, we may experience thoughts as “either-or” (eg: “it’s been a terrible few months; nothing has gone right and maybe nothing ever will”).

Stressed or defensive brains have simpler stories, and are more prone to negative interpretations. 

This is significant because when we have seasons of extra stress in our lives (like the newborn life stage), or our relationship with our child feels chronically stressful, we tend to make more negative interpretations about these behaviours and our reactions. 

This can increase our state of defensiveness and stress and lead to more feelings of disconnect between parents and children and being at risk for experiencing blocked care. 

5. Executive System: Why you can parent, but your heart’s not in it

Think of the parental executive system as the control tower at an airport –  it’s really important because it influences and regulates the other 4 systems. 

Your ability to focus your attention, control your impulses and regulate your emotions is dependent on your prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of the brain to develop and mature.

How well your prefrontal cortex develops in a person can be impacted by a variety of things such as chronic stress, a history of unprocessed trauma (in childhood or adulthood), and exposure to adverse childhood experiences or highly stressful early life experiences.

Each of our systems are impacted by the interactions we have with our children. And a mature parental executive system helps you understand when something isn’t working, and helps you problem-solve to change your thinking and/or your actions.  

It also helps you to continue to parent even when things are difficult and hard, instead of packing up and walking away (even if some days you might imagine doing just that).

Parenting through feeling like having kids ruined your life

What is important to know is this: your parental executive system can override your other systems.

In other words, you can train your brain to respond gently to your children even if your heart’s not in it.

It is possible to change the neural pathways in your brain by acting in ways that go against how you’re thinking.

For example, even when you feel exhausted and touched-out, you might still pick up or hug your child when they’re crying. You might not want to, but you do it anyway.

The goal isn’t to stay in an “override” function, because that is the state you are currently in and it feels terrible, isolating and is unsustainable.

Override allows you to show up for your child in the moment, but ultimately, you need more than override to experience joy and connection in parenting again.

This is where support comes in. Seeking help in the form of therapy, parenting groups, or friends who understand blocked care so that you can eventually turn on the other systems to find connection and joy in parenting, is the ultimate goal.

Related: Understanding your parenting triggers can help you understand your parenting struggles.

You’re not alone in feeling like having kids ruined your life

I want to take a moment to reflect on an example from my own life. This can help to put this topic into context, but I think it’s also important for moms like me to share these experiences, so that new moms – or moms who aren’t necessarily new to motherhood but are only just coming across these terms and struggles in their lives – understand that you are not alone at all. 

I remember sitting on my couch feeling low. My shame was deep. 

Parenting had been hard for a long time and I felt like a failure. Sitting there, I called my mom, seeking reassurance that I was having normal parenting feelings… though I didn’t like the feeling of them. 

Here’s what the conversation looked like. 

“Hey mom, remember when I was a kid, there were periods of time you didn’t like us siblings, right?”

My mom looked at me thoughtfully and replied, “No… There were times that were hard but I never didn’t like you. I was unhappy when you did things you weren’t supposed to, but those feelings didn’t stay.” 

I was dejected. I thought to myself: “What is wrong with me?” 

Through other conversations I realised my friends also didn’t seem to get it. Parenting was hard, but they didn’t seem stuck the way I did. They weren’t struggling in the same way I was. 

I hated how the relationship felt with one of my children because this was never how I imagined parenting would look or feel.

No one dreams or hopes that they will one day feel shut down, shut off, or resentful towards their child – and yet, here I was.

Then I learned about blocked care and mom burnout, and everything changed for me.

Armed with knowledge, I suddenly understood myself – and my struggles – much better. 

The way I was feeling had a name, there was a reason for these feelings I was having, and – most importantly – I discovered a way to make changes to those feelings. 

How to stop feeling like having kids ruined my life and find joy in parenting again

It doesn’t feel good to feel this way. I really get it – you want to feel positively about your children and your parenting experience. So do we all. 

And yet, the sense of emotional connection and joy in parenting can be so inexplicably elusive sometimes! But it won’t always be this way if you can understand what is going on “under the hood” in your brain, which will hopefully lead to making some shifts and changes in how you see yourself and your child. 

Blocked care is on a continuum or a spectrum

It’s important to know that blocked care is on a continuum.  

On one end of the spectrum, you can feel irritated, annoyed, or frustrated with your child and not want to be close to them momentarily. This can happen when:

• Your baby has been crying all night long and you’re exhausted
• Your baby just had a massive diaper blow-out all over your new shirt 
• Your toddler was unhappy and whiny the entire morning which grated on your nerves

In the middle of the spectrum, these feelings can persist over time: 

• Your baby is frequently very difficult to soothe 
• You have an hours-long witching hour every single night that’s making you twitchy 
• You have minimal support at home and constantly feel helpless and isolated 

On the far end of the spectrum, the experience of blocked care can develop into a problem that is both chronic and intense, for instance:

• You always feel that you are not close to your child 
• You deeply resent your child for their challenging behaviours 
• You feel deeply ashamed of your difficulty in bonding on a daily basis
• You constantly feel as if you are walking on egg-shells as a parent 

I have travelled the whole spectrum. It sucks. 

You can change blocked care: you don’t have to stay stuck

The good news is you don’t have to stay stuck. I don’t feel stuck anymore – and I haven’t for years. 

I have learned to recognize the signs of blocked care, and I know how to take proactive steps to shift my perspective and physiological states. 

I work with parents who are all in different spots on the spectrum – and 99% of them don’t know what is going on for them physiologically and internally. 

Before you know about blocked care, it just feels like chaos all the time, like stuckness and failure that never seems to end. 

But once we talk about what blocked care is, why it happens, and pinpoint our parenting triggers, parents start feeling more free. This feeling of despair that has taken over their life doesn’t get to take up residence anymore without their consent. Parents feel more hope and agency knowing there are things they can do to help themselves. 

How can I change blocked care with my child?

Education is powerful. You are not a failure as a parent or person – rather blocked care is rooted in a neurobiological state of trying to protect you.

Your brain and nervous system are doing the best they can with the current information they have – and you can help to train your brain to add more information that will help you experience parenting differently. 

Work through each of the 5 parenting systems to gain a better understanding of yourself, your child and your circumstance.

What does blocked care look like in my daily life as a mom?

Let’s walk through an example to see how this can play out in real life. 

You have a baby who is not easily soothed. He just came hardwired that way. 

You haven’t slept properly in weeks (or months) and are exhausted. Like all babies, your baby’s cry is shrill and piercing and can go on for long periods of time. 

Every time your baby cries, a threat response – part of the avoidance system in your brain – is activated. 

You try to soothe your baby, but feeding, rocking, snuggling, and diaper changing is just not cutting it (most of the time). 

Your baby is absolutely adorable, and at first your reward pathways – part of the reward system in your brain – lit up whenever you saw your baby and snuggled with him. 

But over time, because of his incessant crying, when you see your baby you are reminded of all the hard times. Your neural pathways become more negative, and your reward pathways decrease. 

Your avoidance system is activated frequently because the cries are overstimulating and there is little reprieve, you just want it all to stop. 

On top of it all, the struggle you’re having makes you feel incompetent as a mom. This is part of your meaning making system. The story you are telling yourself about yourself is negative and grim, because most of the things you try to soothe your baby seem to rarely work.

Over time, these perceived “failures” start to add up, and it starts to feel like when your baby starts to cry, it means he doesn’t like you (child reading system), and you begin to wonder if you are the trigger for your baby that makes him cry so much. 

Naturally – these scary thoughts spiral into deeper feelings of failure and shame as a mom. 

When we experience thoughts and feelings that are scary, dark, or disturbing, our sense of shame increases. When we feel ashamed, we have a hard time talking about the thoughts or feelings that we think are shameful. Such as:

• Why don’t I enjoy my newborn anymore?
• Is something wrong with me? Am I a bad mom? 
• Am I the only mother who feels this way about her baby? 
• I shouldn’t feel this way! 
• No one is going to understand what I’m feeling! 

As your shame grows, you feel more and more irritated each time your baby wants you. You continue to parent, but your heart isn’t in it anymore. 

Months go by. Your baby needs you less and less as he ages, but you don’t feel close and connected. 

You don’t want to spend much time with him, which feels confusing because he is becoming less demanding and crying less (this means your reward and approach systems are not activated sufficiently). 

This isn’t what you expected or thought parenting would be like, but you don’t know another way to be. 

You are feeling alone, stuck in these feelings, and like a failure as a mother – but remember:

• I’ve felt this way myself – so have countless other mothers around the world. 
• You are not alone in these thoughts or feelings. 
• You are a good mom who is having a hard time. 
• Things can get better.

 How to change blocked care: The questions you need to ask yourself

Here are some self-reflective question you can begin asking yourself as you work through the parenting systems: 

• Approach System: How does your child activate you wanting to be physically close and connected to them? When do you remember wanting to be physically and emotionally close and connected?
• Avoidance System: How does your child activate you not wanting to be physically close to them? How often does this happen, and for how long has it been going on?
• Reward System: Where and how do you get pleasure in your various relationships? How have you felt connection in relationships in the past?
• Child Reading System: What is the meaning that you make from your kids’ behaviour? Is it accurate? Do you feel in-tune with your child?  Are there things that you might be missing that could help bring more empathy.
• Meaning Making System: What is the story you are telling yourself as a parent when your child is dysregulated, or crying, or angry, or having difficulty being soothed? How do you feel about yourself as a parent?
• Executive System: Who do you feel deeply connected with enough to tell your story? How often does another person seek out the inner world of what you think and feel, without judgement? Do you feel in control of your parenting responses or do they feel self-protective and instinctual? Do you have tools to help regulate your body? 

When to seek help for prolonged blocked care?

Blocked care isn’t a mainstream topic yet. Because I work with children and teens who have endured trauma, I was exposed to blocked care first after learning about blocked trust, which is a state that children can enter into having relational trauma and can put parents at risk of developing blocked care.

Many of the moms I work with describe feeling ongoing feelings of mom burnout – and sometimes, mom burnout and blocked care are the same thing, or are developing into the same thing. 

I talk with families in my private counselling practice about how they have been changed from parenting, and an important theme that inevitably arises is their surprise at their own personal triggers. 

It can be very helpful to explore blocked care and mom burnout with a mental health professional who is knowledgeable in this topic. This can help to deepen your exploration of yourself, your parenting triggers, your parenting joys, and help to guide you as you make changes toward feeling more joy and less shame in your parenting. 

If you don’t have access to a mental health professional, educate yourself by seeking out other blogs like this one, and find free resources on social media, books, or podcasts.

Combat blocked care and mom burnout by connecting with mom friends who get it

You are not alone. Blocked care can happen to anyone – which is why having a crew of mom friends is so important for any mother experiencing blocked care or burnout. 

Blocked care and mom burnout exist on a spectrum, and are indicators of how long your nervous system has felt stressed or threatened. 

Your nervous system needs repetition with safety and connection to help calm it down or regulate, and this is often done using a wide variety of tools over a long period of time as you make gradual changes in your parenting or relationship styles. 

Waiting to seek help can make blocked care or burnout feel like a “trait” you’re stuck in. It starts to feel like a part of you. “This is just who I am” are not words you want to be saying to yourself every day when you feel helpless, isolated, and constantly negative. 

How to make changes: 

• Read this blog
• Explore how your childhood experiences shaped your parenting triggers
• Start asking yourself the questions I listed above during and after difficult moments 
• Seek professional help to have a guide for making these changes for you and your child(ren) 

If you have ever experienced blocked care as a parent and feel as if you’ve come out of those days, find us on social media and tell us how you did it? What helped for you? What do you recommend to others? 

Please also consider donating to Care For Women to help us help mothers who are exactly where you were then – feeling lonely and needing a hand of kindness to help them through.

And if you are a new mom who feels alone, please check out our eligibility criteria to see if you qualify for support from Care For Women. 💝

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