• Helping moms manage their own back-to-school anxiety

    We’ve all seen those back-to-school ads: kids look depressed while moms look positively gleeful, happily dancing through the aisles of an office supply store as they lob pencils and glue into their carts. But in reality, moms are often anxious at back-to-school time. They worry about everything from how they’ll get everything on the school supply list to how their…

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  • The importance of paying attention to your “emotional bandwith”

    In this week’s New York Times Parenting newsletter, writer Jessica Grose explains her decision not to have another child. She employs the term “emotional bandwith,” noting that she didn’t have the emotional bandwith (what I’d define as capacity to effectively cope emotionally; she defines it as “patience” and “humanity”) for a third kid. I talk to my mom patients about…

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  • How to be a baseball mom (or a soccer mom, or a lacrosse mom…)

    I was a musical theater nerd growing up, but thanks to my husband’s genes my kid is all about sports. I’m slowly trying to adjust to this world of far-away tournaments and brown knee stains that never come out in the wash. I’m learning to cope with the feelings that arise when your kid is in the midst of a…

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  • Traveling for spring break? Here are tips for managing vacation stress.

    Here’s a hard lesson I had to learn when I first became a parent: “Vacation” is not synonymous with “relaxation.” If you’re looking for a low-stress, relaxing vacation, you’re not going to find it if you’re traveling with young kids. Vacations can actually be more anxiety-provoking than routine weeks at home. When we’re away from home, we don’t have control…

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  • A somewhat less purpose-driven life

    In 2003, my friend and I, both singers, staged what we described as our farewell concert, a final cabaret-style show before we hung up our vocal pipes for good. I was 24 years old. Prior to that show, I had devoted the better part of my life to singing and musical theater. But as the start of psychology graduate school…

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  • Teaching parents to evaluate risk

    I love this piece from On Parenting, written by the terrific Jessica Leahy. In it, she discusses how parents often overestimate the risk of something terrible happening to their children based on how outrageous current media coverage of that thing happens to be. She stresses the importance of teaching parents to evaluate risk. I often talk to parents about this,…

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Mom Brain Book
mom brain

Proven Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood—and Relax into Your New Self

About Me

I’m Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco, Ph.D., aka DrCBTMom. DrCBTMom.com combines the expert advice of a self-help book with the warmth and readability of a mommy blog.
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