More Supermoms Popping Pills to Keep Up

In these early years of the 21^st century, an alarming number of women are feeling completely overwhelmed as they juggle the roles of mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, career woman, friend, community member, party hostess, housecleaner, chef, and more. According to a recent MSNBC article, an increasing number of women are now resorting to taking prescription drugs to help them deal with the pressure.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 7.5 million women currently admit to using prescription drugs for non-medical reasons such as extra energy or relief from stress. And more than half of them are getting the drugs from family and friends.

If you asked these superwomen to describe their to-do lists, they would promptly and methodically tell you what they “have to” do. They “have to” do everything from packing the kids’ lunches in the early morning to folding the clean laundry 18 hours later. But psychologist Talia Witkowski pointed out that women themselves are often the ones choosing to hold themselves to higher standards than anyone else. She explained, “Women load their lives with so much that they get in over their heads, and some turn to prescription pills to cope.”

Someone once told me that if the mother of the family isn’t happy, then no one is happy. How would society shift if women worked to make their families happy by primarily making themselves happy? As Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.”

Rather than resorting to unhealthy strategies for working even harder, we could instead choose to complete a rigorous self-assessment (possibly with the help of an outside party) to identify what we want to drop from our lives – starting with our own desire to be perfect! Instead of finding new ways to do too much, we can find new ways to let go in order to reach a happier point of balance.

DrDebBrown.com