When you can’t go on
About exhaustion, shame, and the moment you raised your voice. This page is not for your child — it is for you.
This topic rarely gets spoken about. It comes up in almost every counseling conversation nonetheless: the exhaustion that will not go away. The guilt towards the siblings. The friendships that have grown quieter. And the moment when you raised your voice yourself and felt terrible about it afterwards.
That does not make you a bad parent. It makes you a person who has carried more than one person can carry, for a long time.
What helps in such moments is not grand concepts but small, practiced actions — for the minute when it tips over, and for the hour afterwards.
Three things for the acute moment
None of these resolves the situation. All of them buy you the seconds you need.
Three breaths
Breathe out longer than in. This is not esoterics but the fastest way to signal to your own nervous system that there is no danger to life.
An anchor sentence
An inner sentence you prepare in advance. “This is hard right now, and it will pass.” It holds you — and outwardly you say as little as possible in that moment.
The repair moment
Afterwards what counts is not that nothing happened, but that you come back. A short sentence, a hand, an offer. Connection can be restored.
The Eltern-Kind-Kur is a legal entitlement, not a favour
A preventive or rehabilitation stay for mothers and fathers (§§ 24 and 41 SGB V, the German Social Code Book V) has to be approved by the health insurance fund if it is medically necessary — your child comes along and pays nothing, and for you it is 10 € a day. You do not have to fill in the application on your own: the roughly 1,300 counselling offices of the Müttergenesungswerk (the German charity for mothers’ convalescence) help with it free of charge. If it is refused, the same applies as everywhere: one month to file an objection.
There is no British counterpart to the Eltern-Kind-Kur. What the UK has instead is Carer’s Allowance: £86.45 a week in 2026/27, if you provide at least 35 hours of care a week, your own earnings stay at or below £204 a week after tax, National Insurance and expenses, and your child already receives DLA at the middle or highest care rate, PIP daily living, or Child Disability Payment at the middle or highest care rate. In Scotland the same thing is called Carer Support Payment and comes with the Scottish Carer Supplement on top. Beyond that, short breaks are arranged through your local authority. The details, with the current rates →
Status: August 2026. Law, amounts and procedures change — in the UK, benefit rates are normally uprated every April. What applies at the time of your application is what counts; please check it with the office responsible.
If you are a single parent
Much of what is written here assumes a second adult. Three things that work without a partner as well: Verhinderungspflege (substitute care) may also be provided by a neighbour, a friend or a home care service, not only by family. A familienentlastender Dienst (family relief service) provides care by the hour, paid from the Entlastungsbetrag (relief amount). And the Eltern-Kind-Kur (a German parent-and-child preventive or rehabilitation stay) is made expressly for this: your child comes along.
Read on in the Mika Guide
The Parents' Emergency Kit in the Mika Guide is entirely free and consists of seven short impulses — also available to listen to.
First aid: three breaths
The basic technique for the acute moment — short enough that you will actually use it.
Your anchor sentence
An inner sentence that holds you when everything outside is loud.
The repair moment
How to find your way back to connection after the storm — without long explanations.
Shame and self-forgiveness
When you raised your voice yourself: why shame is part of it, and how things go on.
When it happens in the supermarket
Enduring the looks — and two sentences that defuse the situation.
The family crisis plan
A plan everyone knows: early signs, roles, contacts.
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And what if your child is exhausted?
When a child spends more strength on adapting than it has, month after month, what autistic people themselves call “autistic burnout” can set in: abilities that were there before disappear for a while; the threshold for sensory input drops; speaking becomes harder; the withdrawal becomes total. From the outside this looks like laziness or defiance, and often it begins with a child no longer going to school in the morning. What helps then is not more pressure, but less.
When the exhaustion stays
If the exhaustion no longer lifts, if you feel permanently empty or dark thoughts arrive: speak to your doctor. That is not failure but the same sensible step you would take for your child.
In acute crises in Germany, emergency services 112 · after-hours medical on-call service 116 117 · Telefonseelsorge is available around the clock, free and anonymous, on 0800 111 0 111 or 0800 111 0 222.
Would you like to talk about it?
You do not have to sort this out alone. A conversation that is about you for once is sometimes the beginning.