Healing While Parenting: When You Don’t Have Time for Yourself

The kids need dinner. There’s laundry piling up. Work deadlines loom. And somewhere in all of this, you’re supposed to find time for your own mental health? It feels impossible, yet you know something needs to change – not just for your sake, but for the children watching and learning from your example.

At Televero Health, we work with many parents caught in this seemingly impossible situation. They come to us knowing they need support but feeling they can barely find time to shower, let alone engage in traditional therapy or self-care practices. What they discover is that while the parenting season creates genuine constraints, healing doesn’t always require the time and space most mental health approaches assume. There are pathways to growth that work within rather than despite the realities of raising children.

Maybe you recognize this struggle yourself. Maybe you’ve thought about getting help for anxiety, depression, trauma, or other challenges, but can’t imagine how to fit it into days already overflowing with responsibilities. Maybe you’ve tried traditional approaches only to find them incompatible with parenting demands. Maybe you feel guilty even thinking about your own needs when your children require so much. Maybe you worry that focusing on your healing would somehow take from your kids, even as you recognize that your wellbeing directly affects them.

This dilemma isn’t just about time management or setting priorities. It reflects the genuine structural challenges many parents face – particularly those raising children without adequate support systems, financial resources, or flexibility. When basic needs like sleep are already compromised, when multiple responsibilities compete for limited energy, when children have needs that can’t simply be postponed, traditional mental health approaches can feel not just difficult but impossible to implement.

Yet the need for parental wellbeing remains crucial – not separate from good parenting but essential to it. Children don’t need perfect parents, but they do need parents who can regulate their own emotions, set healthy boundaries, model authentic self-care, and demonstrate that adults too can grow and heal from difficulties. Your mental health doesn’t compete with your children’s wellbeing; it forms the foundation from which your capacity to nurture them emerges.

We see parents navigate this territory in many different ways. Some find approaches to healing that integrate with rather than separate from parenting activities. Others discover that even very brief but consistent practices can create meaningful change over time. Many learn to recognize and use “micro-moments” throughout the day rather than waiting for extended periods that rarely materialize. Most importantly, they develop more compassionate and realistic expectations about what healing looks like during the parenting season.

If you’re struggling to address your own mental health while raising children, know that while the constraints are real, possibilities exist that don’t require choosing between your wellbeing and your parenting responsibilities. Approaches that work with rather than despite the realities of this demanding season. Pathways that recognize and honor the genuine limitations you face while still creating meaningful opportunities for growth and healing.

In therapy, we help parents develop these more compatible approaches through several strategies. First, by acknowledging the real constraints they face without judgment or minimization, recognizing that standard mental health advice often assumes resources and flexibility many parents simply don’t have. Then, by identifying their specific mental health needs and priorities, focusing limited time and energy where it will make the most difference. Finally, by developing approaches that work within their actual circumstances rather than requiring conditions that don’t currently exist.

These approaches might include healing-oriented routines that can be integrated into existing parenting activities rather than requiring separate time. Or very brief but consistent practices that can be implemented even within busy schedules. Or therapeutic conversations that can happen in shorter, more frequent segments rather than traditional weekly sessions. Or approaches that focus on small, manageable changes in daily interactions rather than major overhauls that require resources not currently available.

What many parents discover through these more integrated approaches is that meaningful healing doesn’t always require the time and space most mental health models assume. That small, consistent changes often create more sustainable growth than dramatic but unsustainable efforts. That healing can happen not just despite but sometimes through the parenting journey itself – as you model for your children the very skills and capacities you’re working to develop.

They also discover that self-compassion – while often in short supply for parents – is essential to this process. Not the self-indulgence our culture sometimes misidentifies as self-care, but the genuine recognition that you’re doing incredibly demanding work with limited resources. That perfect parenting is an impossible standard that helps neither you nor your children. That your needs matter not in opposition to your children’s needs but as an essential aspect of creating the stable, regulated presence they depend on for their own wellbeing.

This self-compassion extends to recognizing that healing while parenting typically follows different timelines and patterns than healing might in other life seasons. Progress often happens in smaller increments over longer periods. Setbacks are normal when sleep deprivation or intense parenting phases temporarily deplete resources. Growth becomes visible not primarily through dramatic breakthroughs but through gradually increasing capacity to respond rather than react, to set appropriate boundaries, to model healthy emotional regulation even during challenging moments.

Most importantly, many parents discover that focusing on their own wellbeing isn’t selfish but essential – not just for themselves but for the children who are watching and learning from their example. Children don’t need parents who sacrifice everything for them; they need parents who demonstrate that adults too can acknowledge struggles, seek appropriate support, and grow through difficulties. That self-care isn’t self-indulgence but necessary maintenance of the internal resources that make nurturing others possible. That mental health challenges aren’t shameful secrets but normal human experiences that can be addressed with appropriate help.

Because the truth is, while the parenting season creates genuine constraints on traditional mental health approaches, it also offers unique opportunities for growth and healing. The chance to practice emotional regulation in real-world contexts rather than just theoretical exercises. The motivation that comes from wanting to break intergenerational patterns for your children’s sake. The daily opportunities to implement small but meaningful changes in how you respond to stress, set boundaries, or communicate needs. These aren’t consolation prizes for the therapy you can’t access; they’re powerful contexts for growth that can create lasting change exactly because they’re embedded in your actual life rather than separate from it.

Ready to explore approaches to healing that work within rather than despite your parenting reality? Start here.