Quiet Confessions Ep 8: Not Failing, Just Fried

In this episode of Quiet Confessions, Chelsea hits record in the middle of burnout. No polished advice, no metaphors, just truth. From traumaversary season and the chaos of summer parenting to adding a new puppy into an already overstimulated household, this is a moment of real-time exhaustion and radical honesty.

If your house feels loud, your patience is paper-thin, and you're wondering if you’re the only one barely hanging on, this episode is a gentle reminder: you’re not failing, you’re fried, and sometimes surviving is the win.

🔊 Soundbites:

• “I don’t have a lesson. I just needed to say this out loud while I’m in it.”
• “I’m not failing. I’m fried. There’s a difference.”
• “My tank is empty. My patience is see-through. But I’m still here.”
• “It’s not a lack of gratitude. It’s a lack of capacity.”
• “Cereal for dinner is self-care. So is hiding in the bathroom.”
• “Some days, surviving is the accomplishment.”
• “You have permission to not have it together. Signed, Chelsea.”

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Burnout doesn’t always come with a breakdown—it often shows up in the daily noise, overstimulation, and constant demands.
  
  
• Traumaversaries are real: the body remembers trauma before the brain does.
  
  
• Parenting during summer break—especially with neurodivergent kids—can feel like a sensory obstacle course.
  
  
• Adding a puppy (especially while parenting and managing trauma) is both joyful and overwhelming.
  
  
• Burnout in parents often includes guilt, shame, brain fog, and emotional fatigue—not laziness.
  
  
• “Lowering the bar” can be a form of self-care and survival.
  
  
• There’s value in simply naming the hard things—even without fixing them. 

Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:03)
Hey, happy Thursday! Welcome to another mini episode of Quiet Confessions. It's me coming to you from the middle of what I can only describe as full-on burnout. Yeah, there's no grand theme today other than burnout So, if you're here and you want to sit with me, that's great. That's awesome.

cause you know, I'm just gonna say the quiet part out loud, in terms of all the thoughts that are going through my brain right now. ⁓ and mostly that is I'm really, really tired. Like, like soul tired, like full body, full soul, full everything tired.

And I don't have any inspirational takeaways or like tips or anything for this episode. It's this honestly, this is just me letting it out in the form of a podcast. ⁓ so if you're feeling crispy and stretched thin, ⁓ like butter over too much bread, if you know, know, ⁓ welcome, you are not alone.

and neither am I. I think what's hitting me so hard right now is just the amount of everything. Everything that's all happening at the same time. So we've talked about this over the last couple of weeks. I'm in what I call Traumaversary Season.

It's this big stretch, ⁓ months on end, where my body starts remembering things before my brain does, and when my brain catches up, yeah, it's party. It's a party up in here. they just hit hard and fast and remind me of all of the ways that I've changed in the last three years.

things I survived, things I am still coping with. There's a lot I'm still coping with, but there's a lot of grief and trauma and just not being comfortable in my skin. And even when I'm not actively thinking about those events, those specific trauma events, like it's like my nervous system just knows.

It just knows there's like this low level hum of like unease and a weight that's sitting on me. A perfect example, a week ago, I was having a really, really hard day and I couldn't figure out why. And then at, I think it was 2 p.m.

On that day, I had a flashback. looked at the clock and I had a flashback and I realized that it was in that moment that I had had my postpartum hemorrhage at home. I don't know if I already mentioned that in last week's episode or not, but that's just, that's just an example. Like these things, they like live in me and then all of a sudden I realize my brain catches up with my body and it's, it's exhausting. ⁓

Yeah, and then of course, it's summer vacation! Which, if you're in a neuro sparkly household like mine, you already know there is no relaxing, there is no slow, easy living, ⁓ Pinterest version that

you know, highlight reel you see. That's not happening at my house. ⁓ I have a nine-year-old and a three-year-old both pretty, most of the time, most of the summer home at the same time. My nine-year-old does have some summer camps during the day for a couple of weeks, but most of the time it's just us. There is no quiet. There is no break.

There is some semblance of a structure when I'm having a good day, but most of the time, no. I have a boredom bag of bargain items that I picked up from Michael's. And when I hear them say I'm bored or when they're arguing with each other, I say, go to the boredom bag and pick something to do because mama can't.

So yeah, every day is kind of a sensory and stimuli obstacle course. ⁓ the kids are constantly at each other's throats or completely just in love with each other. There is no in-between. ⁓ with the three-year-old, the meltdowns. the meltdowns. the meltdowns.

My husband and I did not know how good we had it with our older daughter when she was younger. It was hard. ⁓ It was hard and I had my own challenges then too, those second children, they're built different. ⁓ meltdowns, noise constantly.

Somebody always saying they're hungry. Not even necessarily asking for a snack. Mom, I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Okay. Is there a question attached to that? And even then it's like, dude, we just ate breakfast. We just ate breakfast. Can you like wait an hour and have a snack? And then we're just going to have lunch and then like, ⁓ food all the time. All the time. yeah. So.

Yeah. God forbid the wifi goes down. That did happen a couple of weeks ago, but, um, I will just say thank goodness for movies and nap time when it happens. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's a little messy. It's a little messy. It's my mess. And

I certainly wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, but it's... it's chaos over here. And because my life apparently needed one more layer of unpredictability and noise, I kind of teased this a few confessions ago that we were making a decision that was kind of a big one and things changed and shifted, but we ultimately ended up

in the same general destination, we got a puppy! Because of course we did! ⁓ We have a five-year-old dog named Tucker who we love, love, love, ⁓ and he needed a buddy. He needed a buddy to play with. The girls needed somebody to throw all of their love and energy at. And I'm...

I'm disabled, so I'm home. I can't work. So I am able to be here for a puppy. And so we did our research. I'm not going to go into the whole story because there are lots of side quests on the journey to the puppy that we brought home on Saturday. His name is Dozer, although we call him...

almost anything but Dozer. We call him Dozer, like the Dozers in Fraggle Rock, or Doosie Doo, or Do-Do, or Dozy, or Doosie. But Dozer, oh my god, he's adorable. He is adorable, truly. Like, he's got antenna ears, he's got one that sticks up and one that flops over. He is...

an absolute love bug. He just wants to be in your lap and he wants to be snuggling with you and he came up from Texas and we drove to New York to meet the I don't know meet all the dogs. They made all kinds of stops this

This program, I don't know, we got him, we adopted him through Texas Roundup Animal Alliance. ⁓ You should check them out if you haven't. They actually just took in a bunch of rescues from surrounding areas because of the absolutely devastating flooding that ⁓ happened there. But we love them. We love Dozer. ⁓ And yeah, he's

sweet as pie, but he's also teething and pooping and peeing in the house. We're working on it. We're working on it. ⁓ And keeping mostly my husband, but also me awake every single night. It genuinely feels like being back in the newborn stage, except this time the newborn.

growls. He doesn't even growl, really. He doesn't growl or bark. just, I don't know. He's got his own little language and trips over his feet and tries to eat our food, but yeah.

And that brings being in like the newborn phase again, brings about its own stuff because I wasn't able to participate and my husband was super burned out. And again, I'm not able to participate at night ⁓ for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I take medication to sleep and I'm a zombie. I don't know what I do at night and my husband is super burned out. So yeah, it's kind of like we've gone back in time a little bit.

Yes, he brings so much joy. it's, it's so regulating when I'm sitting in the recliner and I have a blanket on my lap and he's just snuggled up, taking a little nap, like the weight of him and feeling him breathe and feeling his heartbeat. Like I did not anticipate how emotionally regulating that was going to be, but he, yeah.

with the potty training especially and finding out this morning that he has some medical needs that while they are very common and easily treatable, they're still disgusting. Yeah, it's kind of tipped me over the edge from barely managing to absolutely maxed out. Like they're, yeah. And I know, I know that...

It's just, this is a moment and this is a phase and we'll get through it, but woo! It's like every single part of my entire nervous system is on high alert. There's never quiet. There's never recovery time. There's no alone time ever. I go to bed exhausted and I wake up tired.

I forget what I'm saying while I'm saying it. I forget what I was doing while I'm doing it. I walk into a room and I have no idea why I'm in there. ⁓ I have kind of just given up and literally if I have to interact with people, whether it's on the phone or in person, I lead the conversation with, I have super brain fog right now, so please excuse my...

conversational skills, but ugh, yeah, it's just, I'm totally, my tank is empty. My tank is completely empty, but I guess I also wanted to take a few minutes and talk about like what burnout feels like for me, like right now in real time, because sometimes saying it out loud helps. For me at least.

But so yeah, like, I don't know. Right now, I literally have a hard time finishing sentences or completing a thought. ⁓ I'm really good at communicating that with my husband and with my kids. ⁓ But yeah, I don't know a better way to describe it. I literally cannot form a thought and then that thought cannot come out verbally.

I'm getting irritated super easily. ⁓ My patience, it was thin before and it is, ⁓ it's see-through right now. ⁓ I'm crying over lots of things. I cried because Dozer peed on the floor. That wasn't my fault. ⁓ I cried.

because he had an accident in his crate and that also was well okay that one might have been my fault ⁓ I volunteered to take the night shift and I definitely shouldn't have because I was not I was not functioning I was a zombie but yeah I constantly feel like I should be doing more and that I'm not good enough I'm not a good enough mom I'm not a good enough

like pet mom, I'm not a good enough spouse, not, I just, feel like I'm not doing enough and I'm not good enough. ⁓ I'm almost always touched out and that makes me really, really sad. My, the puppy and my three year old and my nine year old, to be completely honest with you, just want to be on me all the time. And I communicate, I'm like, I need space. I just need space. ⁓

Yeah, and I'm like wondering all the time, like, I doing anything right? Can I do anything right? cause let's be honest. I mean, the overarching overarching theme here is guilt. feel guilt and shame.

I like I'm not present enough. I'm not fun enough. I never felt like the fun one. I'm not making summer exciting and magical. I'm not soaking, soaking in these days with my kids. Like I feel like I should, but I'm really, really, really, really, really trying to remember that I'm not failing. I'm fried. I am.

fried to a crisp. It's not lack of motivation. It's not lack of gratitude. It's not anything. It's literally a lack of capacity. I do not have the capacity. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I, again, I don't have an inspiring message to end this confession with. I'm sorry if this was a downer. ⁓

I don't have a metaphor that makes it all make sense. don't know. Sometimes I have a way with words. Today I don't. ⁓ But you know what? If you're in a similar season or situation, if everything feels really loud and really hard and really constant, that could be inappropriate. That's where my brain is. ⁓

I don't mean it that way. What I mean is, I see you. I see you. ⁓ If your nervous system is shutting down or going into overdrive, if you're hiding in the bathroom, if you're just trying to breathe, know, cereal for dinner is an okay thing. That is an, I actually love cereal for dinner and the kids do too. ⁓ And

Mount laundry on your on the end of your bed or on that chair in the corner is not going anywhere. It's fine. It's clean. I'm saying that to you while also trying to remind myself of that. So and speaking of which, I just got an alert that my dryer is done. So yeah, I've got to go get that. So just know that you're not alone.

We're not alone, we're not failing. Some days surviving is literally the accomplishment. Like, that is the goal. And sometimes self-care is not a bath or a walk, it's just letting things be. Letting the mess be.

and you get to it when you get to it. yeah, you don't, this doesn't need to be a lesson. It's not a lesson for you. It's not a lesson for me. We're just, we're just gonna get through it. We're gonna get through it together. Even if the puppy, even if the puppy poops on the floor, I don't wanna do that again. I don't wanna do that again.

thanks for sitting with me. Thanks for letting me vent. This absolutely was not polished at all. And again, hopefully my air conditioner, I can clean that up in post. But yeah, these are just things I needed to say out loud while I'm in it, because burnout is hard. Burnout while parenting is hard. And adding a puppy and traumaversaries and everything.

my god. I don't know. I'm in this moment right now, I'm giving myself permission to not have it together. And if you need that permission, you have it. Here it is. I'm signed Chelsea. You have that permission. So hide in the bathroom, lower the bar. That is care. That is self-care. Sometimes. And then when you're in a better place...

go get a massage, take a bubble bath. But yeah, I'll be back next Thursday with more words or maybe less, I don't know. We'll see. Hopefully next time it's... I'll have happier things to report, but until then, be kind to yourself and I will try to do the same.