7 “Self-Care” Habits That Actually Kept Me Overstimulated as a Christian Mother

If you’re a Christian mother who is doing “everything right” — you’re reading the books, listening to the podcasts, saying the affirmations, taking the supplements, getting the morning routine together — and yet you still feel overstimulated, fragile, reactive… like the smallest thing can send you into a spiral…

I want you to consider something that is both relieving and confronting:

Some of what we’ve been calling “self-care”… is actually causing overstimulation.

And when your nervous system is already living in fight-or-flight, more “good habits” can keep you in chronic stress.

I’m going to share 7 self-care habits that kept me overstimulated when I was healing from nervous system dysfunction— not because they’re inherently ‘bad’, not because they can’t be helpful for someone else — but because for me, they were reinforcing the very stress loops I was trying to escape.

Self Care Habits That Kept Me Stuck

1) Listening to podcasts constantly “to feel motivated”

Because I wasn’t actually seeking truth. I was seeking comfort. And there’s a difference that will cost you years of your life if you let it.

I used to think constant input meant I was being intentional.

I had something playing all the time — and I told myself it was because I wanted to learn. I wanted to grow. I wanted to be encouraged.

But Scripture warns us about this exact trap: “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7, ESV).

That was me. Always consuming. Never arriving.

When you’re dysregulated, your brain treats constant stimulation like a coping mechanism. It becomes noise that drowns out the very stillness where God actually speaks.

But stillness and intentional focus is where regulation happens.

If you never let your mind be still long enough to come down, your body never gets a chance to learn safety.

And if you relate to that — if silence makes you feel edgy or uncomfortable — the next habit is going to explain why so many mothers can have a journaling habit, but never come to any sort of lasting peace, any real breakthrough, or any sort of transformation.

2) Journaling by venting it all out

Traditional journaling often strengthens the very neural pathways you’re trying to escape. Instead of processing stress or trauma—you’re rehearsing it.

Confession: I have at least seven half-filled journals in a drawer somewhere.

Beautiful ones. The kind thick pages and inspiring covers that made me feel like the kind of woman who journals.

And I’d start each one with such hope. Such intention.

“This time,” I’d tell myself, “this time I’m really going to become a journaling woman.

And so… I’d journal.

The same frustrations. The same spirals. The same “Why do I keep doing this?” entries that somehow never led to me actually stop doing this.

Most women I know have tried journaling. Most have a drawer just like mine.

And we tell ourselves we’re just “not consistent enough” or “too busy” or “not the journaling type.”

But that’s not why we actually quit.

We quit because somewhere deep down, we realize we’re not actually getting anywhere.

We’re just… documenting. Circling. Rehearsing the very thoughts we’re trying to escape.

And nobody ever told us there was a different way to do it.

Here’s the problem:

Traditional journaling often becomes:
“Let me just write down everything that’s going wrong.”

It sounds helpful. It feels cathartic.

But neurologically, when you vent on paper your brain doesn’t say,
“Oh good, we got this out.”

It says,
“Oh this is important — let’s wire it in.”

Because your brain does not change through venting — it changes through retraining old destructive thought patterns.

And that was the shift for me.

I stopped using journaling as a place to rehearse the identity I was trying to escape…
and I started using it as a practice to rehearse the identity God was actually forming in me.

So I started using the Becoming Journaling Method, where you’re not just journaling. You’re rewiring.

You’re not just writing about your day. You’re rehearsing the woman you are becoming.

You’re not just dumping feelings. You’re rerouting the path your brain takes every time life gets hard.

I have a video where I go into more detail on this method of journaling – I have it linked here: “Becoming Journaling Method.”

Let me get into one specific thing that I was writing in my journal that was keeping me stuck and it has to do with the specific words I was writing down. Because it turns out, you can have the right method and still be using the wrong words. Words that were actually working against me. Words that made me feel worse every single time I wrote them – some call them affirmations, but they felt more like accusations.

3) Saying affirmations I didn’t actually believe 

Your brain does not care if a word is good or biblical. Your brain cares whether that word is safe. And that’s why your affirmations might be making you worse.

I used to hear people say, “Just speak life. Just declare truth. Say your affirmations.”

So I tried.

“I am calm.”
“I am patient.”
“I am kind.”

And instead of feeling encouraged, they all just sort of made me mad.

Because those words weren’t landing as truth — they were just a reminder of how far off from calm, or patient, or kind I was.

This is why when you try to put in your journal “I am calm”… you feel the complete opposite – internally seething at the audacity of the sentence itself.

For whatever reason these words have such a strong association to what you don’t want to do or be or have. They feel fake. They’re telling you that you aren’t already these things because you feel the complete opposite in the moment and they act as an obvious reminder that you aren’t “there” yet.

If “calm” reminds you of all the times you weren’t calm…
If “patient” reminds you of all the times you snapped…
If “kind” reminds you of a standard you’re not meeting…
…your brain will resist them.

So the goal isn’t to force yourself to say the “right” affirmations or copy somebody else’s affirmations.

The goal is to find the right words that your brain actually believes is possible for you.

Let’s take the word “calm” for example — instead of focusing on the word calm, focus on what the picture of calm actually looks like to you.

Maybe that’s peaceful, or nurturing, or gentle, or sweet.

Instead of patient — maybe the word ‘steadfast’ paints the same picture without the backburner resistance.

For me, it was “nurturing.” When I wrote “I am nurturing” something in my chest loosened. Because nurture felt possible. Nurturing felt like something I could actually grow into, rather than something I was perpetually failing at. 

When I pictured “nurturing,” I saw the way I instinctively smoothed my daughter’s hair when she was upset, or snuggled my son in my embrace when he got hurt. I’d already done nurturing. I knew what it looked like. I can be nurturing. I was designed for nurture. That gave me hope. I knew the path forward. 

Whereas “calm” just showed me a highlight reel of every time I wasn’t calm. 

Hope for Moms

Here’s the thing, you might be here because you’re tired of reacting in ways that don’t match the woman you know you are in Christ — snapping, spiraling, shutting down — and you’re exhausted from the gap between who you want to be and how you actually show up when the pressure hits.

Maybe you feel stuck in the same patterns of overwhelm, mom anger, guilt, and discouragement, even though you’re praying, trying, and genuinely longing to renew your mind in a biblical way that actually works in real life.

Maybe you’ve caught glimpses of her — the calm, rooted, joyful, confident woman you’re becoming — but you don’t know how to hold onto her consistently when your nervous system is fried and the day falls apart.

If any of that feels uncomfortably familiar, you’re not alone.

For so many moms, this overwhelm isn’t about effort or discipline — it’s because their body has been living in a constant state of panic. Stuck in fight-or-flight. Already maxed out before the day even begins. That was me. And real change didn’t come from a few breathing exercises or positive affirmations — it came from learning a full system that helped calm my nervous system, retrain my mind, and change how I actually responded in real life.

That’s why I created my free workshop, From Survival Mode to Peace-Filled Homemaking in 7 Days.

Inside this workshop, I walk you through the exact process I used to calm my nervous system, break out of fight-or-flight, and begin responding differently — not perfectly, but consistently — even when life still felt full and demanding. I’ll show you why willpower and insight alone aren’t enough, and what actually creates lasting change from the inside out.

For many women, it’s the moment they finally realize, “Oh… this is why nothing else has worked.”
You can sign up using the link below.

4) Self-help books 

My bookshelf was full of answers I wasn’t using. And I kept buying more books because that felt like progress—like I was doing something.

There was a season where I read self-help the way some people doomscroll.

Not because I was curious — but because I was desperate.

I wasn’t reading to enjoy wisdom. I was reading to locate the missing piece that would finally fix me.

And here’s what happens when you’re dysregulated:

More information becomes more pressure.

Because every new book adds:

• another framework you’re failing to implement
• another “thing” you should be doing
• another reason you feel behind

It’s like you’re carrying a mental clipboard around your home all day:

Am I doing this right?
Am I regulating right?
Am I consistent enough?

And the irony is — that internal monitoring is its own form of stress.

When I was in this season of life, I just wanted answers. I wanted someone to tell me exactly what to do. I thought if I could just find the right book, the right method, the right expert—I’d finally be free.

But the problem wasn’t that I hadn’t found the right information yet. The problem was that I was using information as a substitute for actually doing the work.

Once I finally committed to one clear, repeatable process—that’s when I was finally able to heal from chronic stress and overstimulation.

And that’s what I provide now in my free workshop: a clear, repeatable process for women to follow step by step to get out of this spiral.

So now, I still read. But I keep a mix of non-fiction and fiction because fiction makes me slow down. It moves my brain from problem-solving into something lighter—into wonder, and into the kind of fanciful and free imagination that doesn’t demand anything from me.

And speaking of “healthy habits” that secretly function like stress… we have to talk about the ones that are praised as discipline.

5) High intensity workouts, cold plunges, saunas

I thought I was building resilience. Turns out, I was just shocking my nervous system without regulating it and calling it wellness.

Let me be clear: I love these things. I still enjoy them.

But when I was living with nervous system dysfunction, I didn’t understand this concept:

Even positive stress is still stress.

High intensity workouts raise cortisol.
Cold plunges spike adrenaline.
Saunas are an added stressor on the body.

Again — these can be intentional stressors that do wonders for building resilience, increasing stress tolerance, and improving recovery capacity…when you’re regulated.

But if your baseline is already fight-or-flight, they can keep you in a constant state of stress.

And what happens is you start confusing intensity with healing.

You feel “alive” after the workout — but you’re not necessarily more regulated, you’ve just spiked your cortisol.

You feel “clear” after a cold plunge — but that doesn’t mean your nervous system is actually in a more secure state.

For me, they made me feel in control of how I was feeling in the moment—made me feel like I was doing something in the right direction—but they were just keeping me in survival mode because my body wasn’t ready for that kind of stress… yet.

Not until I healed my nervous system dysfunction.

6) Toxic Positivity 

Next, the most socially acceptable form of self-harm is pretending you’re fine and gaslighting yourself. 

One of the “self-care” habits that kept me overstimulated was trying to manage my emotions by overriding them. Not regulating them. Not processing them with God.

Smiling through it.
Quoting something at myself.
Telling myself I “shouldn’t feel that way.”

And when people talk about toxic positivity, what they usually mean is this:

Emotional or spiritual bypassing: being told to suppress grief, rush healing, override pain with platitudes, or perform “faith” in a way that silences the body and the heart.

That is damaging. It creates guilt, shame, and isolation.

Scripture never asks us to deny pain. The Psalms are full of lament. Jesus wept. Paul spoke openly about despair and pressure beyond his strength.

Biblical faith doesn’t rush grief or silence sorrow — it brings suffering into the presence of God and allows it to be transformed there.

Here’s where what I teach in my videos, my free workshop and in depth in my course is fundamentally different:

When we rewire our brain and retrain our neural pathways we do not dismiss emotions. We teach our brain and thus our nervous system how to experience intense and complex emotions without being overtaken by them.

When I say, “your body learned this response for a reason,” I mean that your nervous system adapted to real situations where it didn’t feel safe for whatever reason.

So instead of correcting emotions or pushing past them, we slow the body down first and help it recognize: this moment is not the same as the past.

And if it’s something that is actually happening in the moment, I teach the students in my course to stay regulated enough to respond in those moments with clarity and wisdom, rather than reacting from fear, overwhelm, or old survival patterns.

We don’t override pain with positive thinking— We regulate first, so the body is no longer stuck in survival mode.

Only after safety is established do we begin retraining the brain — not to rewrite reality, but to stop reliving past wounds in the present moment.

Another core piece of what I teach is this: you can show up as the most grounded, gentle, Christ-like version of yourself even when your circumstances do not change.

We don’t wait for everything to be resolved before learning how to respond differently during intense emotional situations.

This means: having feelings of grief without becoming consumed by it, naming injustice without living in a constant state of fight/flight because of it, responding with clarity and dignity instead of reacting from old wounds.

7) Supplement and protocol merry-go-round

The most exhausting kind of self-care is the kind that keeps you chasing relief. And the supplement industry is counting on you never finding it.

This one requires a certain delicacy, because I hold a genuine conviction that certain supplements and protocols may prove themselves very supportive in their proper season.

So if you’re doing something that’s actually helping you — please, don’t change a thing on my account.

I’m merely documenting what happened to me.

I knew something was “off” and I spent thousands of dollars chasing relief as a burned-out Christian mother. Thousands of dollars on supplements, detoxes, gadgets, therapies, blood tests, hair analysis tests—the list could really go on—only to end up more tired, frustrated, and confused.

Maybe you’ve felt it too. That ache that something must be missing—something in your diet, some secret supplement, some tool that would finally fix you.

Each new protocol gave me hope like, “maybe this will finally be the answer.”

That whole cycle kept me overstimulated because it kept my brain in a permanent posture of scanning.

Scanning my symptoms.
Scanning my moods.
my energy levels.
Scanning the internet for the next missing piece.

Even when something helped a little, it trained my mind to stay hyper-focused on what was wrong.

eventually I had to face the truth:

So many of us mothers are wasting time, money, and emotional energy chasing surface level fixes. And the longer we chase, the deeper we sink into discouragement thinking “nothing will work for me.”

But what finally changed things was realizing the root issue wasn’t a nutrient deficiency.

It was in my brain.

Which brings me to the thing that ties all 7 of these habits together.

The Truth That Changed Everything

Here’s the truth: none of those habits could fully help me because the real problem wasn’t a lack of motivation, or a lack of information, or a lack of supplements.

It was that my nervous system was stuck in survival mode.

And when your nervous system is stuck there, you can turn anything into dysregulation:

Podcasts become a way to avoid silence.
Journaling becomes rehearsing fear.
Affirmations become shame.
Books become pressure.

And this is why so many Christian mothers feel like they’re “doing everything” and still can’t access peace.

Because your body has been living in a constant state of panic.
Stuck in fight-or-flight.
Already maxed out before the day even begins.

Because after I finally figured out what actually works — after I calmed my own nervous system, retrained my own brain, and changed how I actually showed up in real life — I built a program specifically for Christian mothers living in survival mode. You can join using the link below.

What Was Actually Missing

So yes — these were all technically “self-care habits.”

But they kept me overstimulated.

Not because they’re inherently problematic — but because in my case, they were a distraction from the actual work: learning safety, regulation, and biblical mind renewal that holds up when real life gets real messy.

And if you read this and felt that uncomfortable flicker of recognition — that “oh dear, I’m doing several of these and I’m still drowning too” feeling — I want you to know it doesn’t mean you’re failing.

It means you’re finally seeing the pattern.

And if you’d like me to walk you through the exact process step-by-step, that’s why I created my free workshop. The link is below.

It’s always such a joy to have you here — I’ll see you next time.