5 Weird Things That Happen When You’re Living in Survival Mode as a Mom — and 3 Micro Habits to Get Out

Something weird happens when you’ve been living in survival mode too long.

You still love your kids. You still get up and do the dishes and pack the snacks.

But something inside you feels different.

And no one tells you this, but… you can be a faithful, churchgoing, Jesus-loving mom — and quietly begin to resent motherhood.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through five weird things that start happening when you’re living in survival mode as a mom, and at the end I’ll give you 3 micro habits to pull yourself out — seriously, the first one will probably change the way you handle stress and triggers for the rest of your life.

This is the exact system that helped me move from resenting motherhood… to delighting in it again.

The Motherhood Struggle No One Talks About

This is one of those topics we rarely talk about because it feels shameful.

But I get messages every week (and that’s not an exaggeration) from moms who say:

“I don’t like being a mom. I feel bad even saying that… but it’s true.”

I’ve been there. I lived in survival mode for years — overstimulated, burnt out, dysregulated, snappy, disconnected, and just plain resenting motherhood altogether.

But God didn’t leave me there. And He won’t leave you there either.

If you’re a Christian mother who’s feeling burnt out and longing to be the joyful mother and wife you always imagined — without turning to expensive therapy, supplements, or constantly decluttering your home — there is hope.

1. You Stop Delighting in Your Children

I noticed this in myself when I stopped smiling at my kids. They’d come into the room and I’d just sort of… brace myself.

The Bible doesn’t tell us to simply survive motherhood. It tells us in Psalm 127:3 that children are a heritage from the Lord — a reward, not a burden.
Proverbs 23:24–25 says:

“The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.
Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.”

We are meant to rejoice in our children. To smile when they enter the room. To delight in them — not just endure them.

When you’re in survival mode, your brain isn’t registering joy because it’s focused on keeping you alive.

• The amygdala takes over, filtering everything through a lens of danger and stress.
• Oxytocin levels drop, making bonding more difficult.
• Your nervous system can’t enter a state of rest-and-digest, so you can’t experience delight — only threat.

And one of the weirdest signs this is happening is in your tone of voice…

2. Your Tone Gets Brash

Your tone of voice becomes brash. Even if you’re not yelling… you’ve sort of lost your warmth and gentleness.

There was the sweetest elderly lady that came to my house to pick up some moving boxes the other day. She so clearly had the joy of the Lord in her heart. She was so sweet and soft and gentle. Her tone was so soft and sweet and she just exuded light.

Come to find out, she not only was dealing with the stress of moving, but she was grieving the loss of her husband who recently passed away.

I could feel my heart in my throat when she told me, and she started to tear up because the loss was so fresh. She said it was so hard because he would usually be the one doing this sort of thing and she just felt lost without him.

And all I could think about was wow. This woman is going through one of the most painful experiences in life. She lost a piece of herself, and yet, she has this radiance about her.

This gentleness epitomized 1 Peter 3:4:

“…let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”

That’s who I want to be. This woman ministered to me that day and all she was doing was picking up some used moving boxes.

Of course, this comes with maturity as we grow in our walk with the Lord. But it had me thinking: I’ve gotten so much more gentle in my speech, and when I was living in a constant state of fight or flight, my tone became brash.

All business. So serious all the time. Because that’s how I felt inside — on edge all the time.

Survival mode strips your gentleness. Chronic stress raises cortisol, which lowers your ability to access the parasympathetic nervous system. Your voice changes because your vagus nerve controls vocal tone — when it’s dysregulated, your tone is flat, harsh, or robotic.

Think about how you’d speak to a friend’s child — that sweet, soft tone. Is that how you speak to your children? It is when you aren’t living in survival mode. And it’s what thriving sounds like.

3. Relationship Building Becomes an Afterthought

I started interpreting every interruption as a personal offense.

If the toddler spilled something, it felt like the end of the world. If someone needed help, it felt like they were stealing from me — stealing my time, my sanity.

My husband would try to tell me something funny or random during the chaos of dinner, and I’d just respond flatly — “Oh yeah? Didja…” while distracted with the task at hand.

No warmth. No spark. Just functional survival — because again, that’s how I felt: everything was urgent except the thing that actually mattered, which is building relationships.

This is one of the enemy’s oldest tactics — fracturing families with apathy and irritability. Biblically, we’re called to live in love and build one another up.

From a nervous system standpoint, this is also tied to our window of tolerance. When we’re outside that window, connection feels threatening. We shift from relational to transactional.

Ironically, connection is what helps regulation. So think about how you spoke when you were dating — try that, and see how that makes him light up. Have a little excitement in your voice and give some banter back. And remember: your family is never an interruption.

4. You Start Assuming the Worst

Survival mode warps your perception of your reality and you become a pessimist, a hypochondriac, and a prophet of doom.

Do you remember that lady I was telling you about? Her name was Juanita, by the way.

Juanita had a bit of a cry for a minute as she was talking about her late husband, but then as she was helping load up the boxes, she said:

“It’s just such a blessing to even have a house these days — I’m just so grateful to have a home to go to.”

Discernment like this can’t happen when you’re living in fight or flight. You’re not calm enough to discern — so you just react. Slowly, everything feels like the end of the world, or at the very least, an inconvenience.

Your amygdala is on high alert. Your hippocampus is foggy. Cortisol clouds your ability to assess danger accurately. And spiritually, when we’re disconnected from the peace of God, we start walking by fear instead of faith.

5. You Start to Lose Your Personality

You lose your spunk. Your playfulness. The very things that made you feel like you.

Before I healed my nervous system, I remember thinking one day: Why would anyone like me? What do I have to offer?

I wasn’t funny anymore. I wasn’t playful. And I started thinking about all my qualities I used to have — qualities people used to love about me.

People used to gravitate toward me and I quickly made friends — and I thought I had lost that.

But really, those traits were just buried under the mounds of stress I was living under. Once I climbed my way out, they started to return. The fog lifted and I started becoming the woman my husband fell in love with.

My mom community started growing again. I was making friends at the park, the library, church, Bible studies — even the grocery store again.

Survival mode makes you forget the softness you once had. Not because you aren’t that person anymore — but because your body and brain are just barely surviving.

You’re not broken. You’re just burnt out.

When you’re under chronic stress, the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for creativity and personality — goes offline. But as your nervous system heals, those parts begin to light up again. It’s not gone. It’s just dormant. The good news is that God designed our bodies to heal.

3 Micro Habits to Get Out of Survival Mode

There’s a way to rewire the whole landscape of your brain and repattern the chronic stress response your nervous system has been living in.

Your body may have been in survival mode for a long time, and you may have lost some of your best qualities — but the Lord is gracious, and He can restore those years quickly.

Joel 2:25 says:

“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…”

Though the verse speaks specifically of locust destruction, it reveals something timeless about the character of God: He restores.

You cannot be a joyful mom if your thoughts are joyless. You cannot be a peaceful homemaker if your internal world is a war zone. You cannot respond with love if you’re feeding resentment, frustration, and fear.

But here’s the good news: you can change what you dwell on.

1. The Philippians 4:8 Method

Philippians 4:8 says:

“…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Memorize this verse. Write it down. Highlight the 8 thought filters: true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellence, praiseworthy.

Take the issue at hand and run it through each filter.

This process distracts your brain from spiraling, helps deactivate fight-or-flight, and points you back to humility and grace.

2. Smile Every Time Your Children or Husband Walk into the Room

Even if it’s “fake,” smiling signals safety to your brain and releases feel-good neurotransmitters. Over time, it rewires your emotional baseline, making joy your default state again.

3. Give One Genuine Praise Per Day to Each Family Member

This turns your heart toward your family, not against them. It strengthens bonds and changes the way you see your loved ones — and yourself.

When Burnout Isn’t the End of the Story

These work. They do. You just have to actually do them.

Your warmth will come back. Your delight will come back. Not all at once, but enough to start enjoying motherhood again.

You don’t have to stay stuck in survival mode. In my free workshop, I help you learn how become the peaceful, present, joyful mother you were always meant to be.