How to handle momguilt

When do You feel guilty?
When do You feel that terrible mom-guilt which makes your stomach clutch?
Do you have any control over it or when momguilt comes it just takes you over?

Let’s examine momguilt a bit closer.

What is MOMGUILT?

When you google it, you’ll find that “momguilt is a name given to the feelings of guilt and shame some people feel when they don't live up to their own or others' expectations in their role as a parent. It's like an internal dialogue that tells you you're failing as a caregiver.” I would refine it to->

Momguilt is feeling, when a MOM feels she doesn’t live up to her own or other’s expectations and she feels she’s failing.

Because… we always talk about MOMGUILT and never about dadguilt. Interesting, isn’t it?

It’s not because dads wouldn’t feel guilty at all or there wouldn’t be amazing dads who want to do parenting right… it’s just simply because that immense expectation pile is rather on moms.

AND we moms are deeply socialized in many ways which are rather a burden in motherhood which is also worth to dig in deeper.

So the 2 main reasons why momguilt can hit so hard:

  1. We moms face a trillion different expectations how to do everything RIGHT, so it’s quite easy to think we fail somewhere when we can’t comply with all those (many times conflicting) expectations

  2. We moms are socialized to care for others, to serve others, to please others, to be selfless and put ourselves always behind, so it’s quite easy to think we’re doing something wrong when we would take care of ourselves, would have selftime, would nurture our career…

Number one step towards handling momguilt is having this awareness that this all is deeply wired in us.

There is nothing wrong with you. You just want to do it “right”. But sometimes it can be so HARD especially when you’re so hard on yourself. So let’s see what momguilt can be about… (feel free to adjust this list according to when and where you feel momguilt)

You feel momguilt when:

  • you’re constantly questioning yourself and your choices

  • you feel you’re not good enough

  • you think you’re a failure

  • you’re doing something wrong, something you shouldn’t (choosing daycare, nanny, having selftime or girls’ night…)

  • you miss your old life

  • you’re impatient with your child

  • you can’t bond

  • you can’t/ don’t want to breastfeed

  • you don’t give enough attention to each child

  • you raise your voice…

(and this list is not exhaustive)

So momguilt is always about having an IDEAL in your head how you should do things… versus what you are doing/ you have done. And you’re making yourself WRONG, a failure.

Good news.

It’s all in your head.

You get to decide what’s good and bad.

You get to decide what to label as “failure”

You get to decide how hard you’re on yourself, whether you beat yourself up.

Let me help you -> Beating yourself up is NEVER a good choice. You can work on yourself, learn emotional management, how to be confident… sure yessssss do that, that’s what I’m also teaching my clients. BUT the “beating yourself up, having momguilt and feeling you’re not good enough so need to change” part is totally not necessary.

It can be difficult to see what’s preconditioning and socialization and what’s what you truly want (see my previous blogpost). It’s totally worth though to examine these when you feel like sh*t and you’re saying a lot of “I should, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t have…” stuff to yourself.

You can feel guilty about anything and everything when you tell yourself you’re doing someting WRONG and you aren’t GOOD ENOUGH.

The 2 most common things which triggered momguilt in my clients were:

  1. Work related - “I wanna go back to work but feel guilty leaving my child in daycare” “I can’t be efficient anymore in work because I’m always thinking of my baby” “I can’t be a good mom and a good employee at the same time” “I want to continue building my business but hiring a nanny who would take care of my baby doesn’t feel right”

  2. Self-time related - “I shouldn’t hire a nanny so that I can just go to a massage” ““ I should be rather with my kids now” “They miss me now, I shouldn’t have left” “I just can’t have selftime now she’s just so tiny” “I’m not a good enough mom”

Both are in line with what we’ve discussed before. It’s based on socialization and the expectations.
Good knews is that you get to overview wha't’s going on in your brain and see which expectations are genuine and want to keep them and which ones are based on socialization and you would rather just overwrite them.

Watch out for SHOULDs, SHOULDN’T (HAVE)s.

How to handle momguilt?

  1. Accept that feeling momguilt is part of motherhood (based on all above) and don’t make a fuss about it but don’t believe those guilty thoughts (ignore) . You just wanna do this right and when you think you fail you’ll feel momguilt. Examine your thoughts closer, what do you tell yourself.. and decide to have your own back, don’t beat yourself up just go on… Use mantras which can help: “I’m doing my best” “I’m enough” “I’m their world” “I' was chosen to be their mama”

  2. Awareness. Watch closely your brain. What’s triggering for you? When do you feel guilty? When you know where it comes from and you see the nature of guilt it won’t have that much power over you. You can simply talk back to those thoughts (“you’re not right, I’m a good mom, I’m not a failure, It won’t ruin our bonding…”)

  3. Change it. When you see what caused you feel momguilt you can also change it to a more empowering feeling. It can be empowerement, confidence, calm, peace, joy… Choose to think more empowering thoughts about the same situation and see the momguilt melt away… (Example: you put your baby in daycare because you return to work and you think T1: “I’m a terrible mother for choosing my job” immeadiately you feel guilty… what if you would choose to think: T2:”I’m a great rolemodel for my kids to make these decisions” or T3:”It’s going to be all right I’ll be more balanced and he’ll be in a good place”… ) Play with different thoughts and see what FEELS right.

I want to end with: Momguilt has zero upside.

It won’t make you a better mother and your kids won’t get a better mother just bacause you feel guilty over …. (fill in the blank)

When momguilt would creep in, just remind yourself that you’re doing your best and feeling guilty wouldn’t help anyone. Noone benefits when you feel guilty.
You face so much expectations and you wanna do everything right. But you’re a human. With human basic needs, a finite nervous system capacity so eventually it’s inevitable that you do something “wrong” and not perfectly. So what?

It doesn’t matter what you do “wrong", what exactly happens.

What matters is what you tell to yourself, what YOU make it mean.

Momguilt when not handled properly can totally kill your experience in motherhood making you question every decision and even your worth, it undermines your self confidence. Remind yourself: Momguilt has zero upside.

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