Breaking Free from Mom Guilt
Feeling overwhelmed by the unattainable expectations we place on ourselves as mothers? You’re not alone. Learn how to break the mom guilt cycle by focusing on self-care, creating positive internal dialogue, and finding balance in our lives.
How can combatting mom guilt lead to better parenting and healthier families? In this episode, I share proven strategies and resources to help you on your journey, including our supportive Facebook community, wide range of memberships, and our formfitonline.com website. Let’s come together, embrace the present moment, and leave the mom guilt behind as we raise healthy humans!
Did our parents have mom guilt?
I think we all deal with mom guilt, but I wonder if our mom’s had this same mom guilt? Were they feeling, I’m not doing enough for my child? Or do you think it’s our newer generations plight, with social media. Much of the guilt we have is from our internal dialogue. This is what we are thinking, not what anyone else is saying about us. It’s how we internalize everything and how we feel, based on who we thought we’d be, where we thought we’d be, how we thought we would parent. Or what we see occurring with the Pinterest mom, these expectations that we have of ourselves and how we are not living up to it. This is all an internal dialogue with yourself.
Guilt is a core emotion governing social behavior by promoting compliance with social norms or self-imposed standards. We tend to be more impacted by the guilt affecting others than affecting ourselves. This is why it is so hard for us, when it comes to mom guilt, to feel like we have to continue to do for others and we push ourselves aside. We’re not doing anything for ourselves. We have put, you know, like I’ve got to get all these things done. I have to be the perfect mom, the perfect wife, the perfect friend, the perfect daughter, but I can’t be perfect for me right now. It’s time to start thinking about all of this differently.
The Physical Response of Mom Guilt
If we are struggling with mom guilt, on not only an emotional level, but this also creates a physical response within our body. By feeling mom guilt, you are creating a stress to your body and your body is going into a fight or flight mode. Whether you like it or not, it’s creating a fight or flight response in our body. This in turn requires self-care to help cortisol levels down. We begin this cycle of feeling mom guilt, go into fight or flight, cortisol levels go up and then we have to work to bring it back down.
Yet, how do we get our cortisol levels back down? We’ve got to practice self-care, eat right, exercise, or meditate and do things we enjoy. We’ve got to bring those stress levels down. Yet when we do that, we’re caring for ourselves and therefore we’re not doing for everyone else. Here comes the mom guilt again. Instead, we do, do, do for everyone else, and then we deal with the parasympathetic response all over again. It’s this vicious cycle that we’ve gotten ourselves into.
Two Types of Mom Guilt
If we think of self-expectations, there’s two types of mom guilt you might be dealing with.
- It’s either self-expectations the way you feel you’re handling things
- or the way others feel you’re handling things.
And even though, the way others feel you’re handling things are usually how you feel they think rather than actually how they think. But I wanted to still separate it into these two, because I think this is where most of the mom guilt occurs.
How to get out of the Mom Guilt Cycle
We are trying to be great parents, be great mothers. Many of us are working as well, which is not something generations prior to us had to do. Now we are working full time. We’re taking care of our children, and for some of us we might be homeschooling our children as well. We are also the person that cleans the house, takes the kids to all of their activities, and even joins the PTA.
You can’t do it all. You’re not going to be able to do it all. What I want you to start to do is find a couple of things that you can be amazing at and do those. This about something you enjoy doing, because here is where self-care is going to work with the self-expectation.
Think about something you enjoy doing right now and see how you can incorporate your children into it as well. I love to read, so when my kids were smaller, I would read to them every night. Once they got older, we would read quietly in the same room and it became a cozy thing we would do together. It provided me with the self-care I needed, while also spending quality time with them. You don’t have to always be doing the exciting things. Think back to a fond memory you had as a child. It probably was something fairly simple.
What is one or two things that you can do that is going to bring you joy, do with your children, and provide you some self-care. Do not pick something that brings them joy that doesn’t also bring you joy. You’ve got to make sure that it is specific to what brings you joy to provide you self-care while nurturing them in some way.
Understanding expectations
In regard to the second one being others expectations, this is what you feel that they are saying.
- First, make sure that you communicate with whoever you’re feeling this guilt with, to ensure that you know you’re not misinterpreting what is being said.
- Second, look at what their love language is and try to figure out what you can do for them to speak their love language.
Example: If your child’s love language is touch, you can put your hand on their knee while they talk and show them that you see them, and you hear them. That’s going to fill their cup because that’s their love language. It’s also going to make you feel less guilt because you’re going to see that connection, because you’re now speaking their love language.
If you can work on your guilt by practicing this, it does not mean that you’re trying to get rid of the guilt. What you’re trying to do is work on what can I do to fill my cup while nurturing my children, and then how can I speak to them that I know will resonate with them through their love language. By doing this, this will naturally allow you to feel less guilt because you’re going to be providing yourself that self-care that we all need while also nurturing them. Nurturing them, creating a better connection or a better bond with them during that time, which will in turn help to ease that mom guilt.
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