Catherine Divaris Interview on Why Modern Mothers Feel Exhausted Doing Everything Right
- May 18
- 4 min read
Catherine Divaris is a Mental Health Occupational Therapist by training, Emotional Regulation Coach, and founder of Mind/Mom Potential, empowering individuals and organizations to build mental resilience, master emotional and nervous system regulation, and perform effectively in high-demand environments.
Catherine Divaris, Mental Health Occupational Therapist
Why does it feel like you’re failing at work and motherhood at the same time… even when you’re doing everything “right”?
There’s a quiet tension many women carry. You’re in one place, but your mind is elsewhere. At work, you’re thinking about home. At home, you’re thinking about work. There’s a sense of never fully arriving anywhere.
What often goes unseen is the mental load. The constant tracking, anticipating, remembering. It doesn’t turn off. It follows you through the entire day.
Over time, your attention gets pulled in too many directions. You start to feel scattered, stretched thin. That feeling of “I’m failing” creeps in.
But what’s really happening is overload. You’re holding more than your system can comfortably sustain on your own. When that happens, everything starts to feel heavier. Focus, patience, even joy.
What actually happens in a woman’s nervous system during maternity leave, and why can returning to work feel so unexpectedly overwhelming?
We tend to speak about maternity leave as if it’s a pause. But for many women, it’s one of the most demanding periods they will ever go through.
You are recovering physically, adjusting hormonally, and at the same time becoming deeply attuned to another human being. Your system becomes more alert, more responsive, more vigilant.
There’s depth and connection in that experience, but also a steady level of output that doesn’t get acknowledged.
So when you return to work, you are not returning from rest. You are returning from a period of continuous output, often without full recovery. Then you’re expected to move straight back into productivity. That’s where the overwhelm shows up. There’s no real transition between those two worlds.
From your experience as an occupational therapist, what are companies missing when it comes to what new mothers actually need in order to function and perform well at work?
Many organizations focus on performance without considering capacity. Motherhood changes how energy is distributed. Sleep is different. Attention is divided. There’s a constant background awareness running alongside everything else. Around 1 in 5 women experience postpartum depression or anxiety, and even without a clinical diagnosis, many are navigating reduced sleep and increased cognitive load for months.
At the same time, expectations at work often stay the same.That gap creates pressure. Women feel like they’re constantly trying to catch up to a version of themselves that no longer exists in the same way.
When companies begin to recognize capacity, the conversation shifts. Flexibility, pacing, and support start to matter in a more practical way. People tend to stay more engaged when they feel understood. They’re able to contribute more consistently over time.
You speak a lot about real-time regulation. What are some of the tools or practices you teach that women can actually use in the moment when things feel overwhelming?
In moments of overwhelm, the body is often the first to speak. There is a tightening, a quickening, a sense that everything is happening all at once. In those moments, the entry point is physical.
So we begin with something immediate. Slowing the breath. Feeling the ground. Bringing attention back to something physical and present. It’s subtle, but it creates a shift. A small pocket of space inside the experience.
I also pay close attention to the environment someone is operating in. Many women are navigating constant sensory input. Noise, clutter, competing demands. It’s not just the workload, it’s the atmosphere around it. When that is reduced, even slightly, the system begins to settle.
When things feel like too much, the mind tends to spiral. Helping clients stay with the moment, while still taking a next step, can be enough to shift their state.
Often, the shift is not in removing the difficulty, but in changing the relationship to it. Allowing both things to be true. This is hard. I can still move. This is something we build over time. Through repetition, in the middle of real life.
How have your own experiences with occupational therapy, IVF, and motherhood shaped the way you support your clients today?
There is a difference between understanding something conceptually and living it. My clinical training gave me a framework. It taught me how to observe, assess, and support. But my personal experiences changed how I apply that knowledge.
Moving countries, going through IVF, becoming a mother, building a business alongside all of it. Those experiences bring you face to face with your abilities in a very real way. They bring you into direct contact with your limits. Your capacity shifts. Your priorities shift. What you can hold on a given day is not always predictable.
So the question I return to in my work is simple, but often overlooked. What is actually available to you right now?
From there, the work becomes more grounded. Sometimes it means adjusting expectations. Sometimes it means creating more support. Sometimes it means simplifying what’s already there. Because sustainable change doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from working with the reality of where you are. When that happens, something shifts. Not just in what you do, but in how you experience your life.
This is the work I guide women through inside my CALM Container framework and workshops. Because my mission is simple. To bring awareness to the fact that mental health is not an add-on, it’s the internal scaffolding that allows us to function at our highest potential.
Support the system. Lead the moment. Come back to CALM.
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