by Joanna Venditti posted in Parenting

Sometimes you realize you are doing something that you think is helping a situation, when in fact it's making it worse and you're exhausting yourself in the process. This is what happened to me recently, which was having terrifying results.
My husband threw his back out, and it had a ripple effect on me and our kids. Our twins had a weeklong war phase with one another, which was beginning to have a physical impact on me.
I was overexerting all of my energy, physically pulling our twins away from one another, and going into mommy-referee mode. I was repeatedly trying to discipline my kids with phrases like ?What do you say to your sister"?, ?Say sorry.?, ?Everly, Mia, tell your sister you?re sorry?.
For whatever reason, our girls were not getting along and we all had to endure shrieking, tantrums and zero naps, (for anybody!). Before I knew it, I was experiencing random chest pains and anxiety in full force. I later realized how much of these chest pains were stress-induced, and mini panic attacks.

Things began to wind down the following week; Starting with one much-needed good night?s sleep. I wasn?t about to write off the entire week to recharge because of last weeks? spiral of events, (last time I checked, I?m still a mother of four), but I did make a mental note to take it easy and where there?s time, allow myself a glass of wine.
Though this week was a lot calmer than the last, there was still the usual bickering - only th...