The Therapy Edit - On 5 ways to feel comforted

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

On this solo episode of The Therapy Edit Anna considers the importance of mothering the mother and offers 5 ideas on how mothers can mother themselves in the absence of the opportunity to be mothered by someone else.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi everyone. I hope you're okay. I am going to speak to you today about five ways to mother yourself. I did a little post on Instagram, a short video. And I was in a little bit. in the kitchen and I was cradling my three-year-old. Now, she hasn't wanted to be picked up and held like that for a long time, but it took me back to those kind of early months where, you know, babies just don't want to be put down and you were trying to juggle. I think I was trying to sort breakfast out for the boys. And I just, oh, it was just tiring. The kids had been ill.

I wasn't feeling 100%. And it was one of those moments where you think, oh, my goodness, I just feel like I would love a parent come, an adult come and step in right now, but you realize that you are that only adult, you are the only parent there and you have no choice but to get on with it. And what I said in that post was that we are mothers, we are strong, we are vulnerable, we need mothering to, strong and vulnerable. They seem so contradictory, don't they? But we are both those things.

are incredibly strong. I think you can probably look over your own motherhood, your own life and think of those times that you journey through that there was every fibre of your being was like, I cannot, I cannot do this and yet you did. So we are, we are so strong. We are also incredibly vulnerable. We have all of those feelings. We, we don't, I think I just thought when I had kids, the happiness and the joy and the privilege would be enough so that I wouldn't feel the the fear and the anxiety and the irritability and the anger and the you know just feeling claustrophobic sometimes in my own life and I don't know why I just had this fantasy that those those feelings wouldn't really be there and of course we're people we're moms we're humans we're going to

have all these different kinds of feelings and sometimes we just feel vulnerable we just feel young we feel like there's that little girl inside of us who just wants someone to swoop in and step in and take over and help out and say the words that we need to hear. And I know that there are so many times that you crave that and that is not there. That is not there around you. There is no one, maybe in that moment that you can call, maybe you don't know where to turn, maybe you don't have support, maybe you're just too tired to even access some of those friendships or conversations that would be helpful.

So what can we do in those moments? that little girl inside of us needs mothering where we need mothering. We need mothering. We are daughters. We are young. We are grown up. We are all of these things. We are vulnerable. We are strong and we need mothering. It's not a weakness. It's that as humans we all need looking after sometimes. So how can we mother ourselves in those times where we don't have anyone on to mother us where we we crave that but it's not there for whatever reason be it's circumstantial or you just find it really hard to access that so i'm going to give you five ways to mother yourself number one know what mothering means to you when i shared about this on uh on instagram you know

some of the messages i got back where anna i didn't have a good mother i didn't have a mother who taught me how to nurture myself or i don't have a mother or my mother's past or the mothering that I experienced is not something I want to replicate for my kids or myself. So start thinking about what does it mean to be mothered? What is that archetype? What is that that archetype of the mother? You know, the caring, the nurturing, the patient, the strong. Think about friendships and relationships you have in which someone, even though they are not your mother,

has been mothering to you. It might be the mum on the school run that noticed that you were not yourself, the one that asked if you were okay twice. It might be someone in your younger years who just gave you that extra care. It might be even just a personality trait of someone in your life who just goes that little bit extra

or who just feels really sincere. think about what does it mean to be mothered your own experience aside what is it that you want to offer your children as a mother that gentleness that caring that nurturing that that loving discipline those healthy boundaries that meet their needs and respect them what does mothering mean to you know that think about that ponderate number two how can you discipline yourself not in an authoritarian way, but we mother ourselves through respect and knowledge of the limits of boundaries. I think sometimes we can parent ourselves in our head, so thinking about that little girl in you, we can parent ourselves in that shaming way. What's wrong with you for goodness

sake? Why are you finding this so hard? Buck up. Get on with it. You know, how are you disciplining yourself? Are you doing it in an authoritarian, shaming way? And what might it be like to mother yourself in the way that you're disciplining yourself? Because discipline really is often doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do when you don't want to do it. It's about meeting needs, sometimes going beyond wants and likes. So start to become aware of how you discipline yourself. And I think that, you know, the term discipline can have really negative connotations, can't it, especially if we've experienced that kind of authoritarian discipline or like the shaming kind of discipline when actually it's about recognizing what are your needs, are your needs different to your wants? Sometimes do you do something, do you need to do something that you don't want to do because you need to do it.

And with our children, my kids don't necessarily want to brush their teeth every day. I know that that is something that we need to do, that they actually need, regardless of what they want. So that mothering discipline, it would be nurturing, it would be unconditional, it would be in that unconditional awareness of needs in a respectful way. It would be firm. It would be wanting what's best, even if it means placing boundaries or doing things that you don't want to do. My mothering, my mothering discipline might say, Anna, enough of the Netflix now. You're tired. I've got a big day tomorrow. Let's go to bed. I might not want to go to bed in that moment, but actually that mothering discipline is saying, I'm looking at the bigger picture. I'm zooming

out. I know what you need. So how can we get, how can we make that happen? So mothering yourself in the way that you approach self-discipline. Number three, mothering yourself in the way that you speak to yourself. What does it sound like again in that? Is it authoritarian? Is it critical? Is it bullying even? How would you speak to your children? Often we seek to speak to our children in a firm, gentle way, knowing that bigger picture, compassionate, considerate, intentional. How can you mother yourself in the way that you speak to yourself in the moments? You need that grounding voice. For me, in a moment perhaps where parenting has gone all wonky, everything was a mess, I might have shouted, that critical internal dialogue might say, for goodness sake, Anna, this is what, you, and I might

go into those feelings of failure and that, just kind of throwing petrol on the, on the fire of guilt, how might I mother myself in that moment, in the way that I'm speaking to myself, I might say, oh dear, that didn't go well, did it? That wasn't really what we wanted. What can we get you, what do you need in order to be able to get a little bit more breathing space so that you have some more resources so that that might not happen again today? It's not judgmental. It's not critical. It's accepting what's happened and finding a way forward. Number four, how can you mother yourself in the way that you treat yourself? If my children were ill or tired, I'd want to meet their needs and respect their limited resources. Are you doing that in the way

that you set your expectations for yourself? How are you treating yourself? What would an ideal way we'd make sure that our children were nourished, fed, hydrated and rested? How can you mother yourself so that you're ensuring the same for you? Number five is knowing your limits,

mother yourself by respecting your limits, knowing when to seek support. You know, we wouldn't set our children tasks that were completely out of their, realm of understanding or ability. We don't want to set them up to fail. I wouldn't give my three-year-old, my seven-year-old's homework, for example. So how can we mother ourselves and the expectations that we're placing upon ourselves so that we're not setting ourselves up to fail? Know your limits and know when you need to lean on others. We know when we know that when allowing our children to

explore and try is good and healthy and good for them. But we also know sometimes we need to step in and help out. Are we doing that for ourselves? Are we mothering ourselves in the way that we place the expectations upon ourselves? So there are some ways to mother yourself. And I hope that they've been helpful. And I hope that as you've pondered this, perhaps you might start to notice and find even more ways. We are mothers, we need mothering too, by others and by ourselves. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe or review because it makes a massive difference to how many people it can reach. You can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my three

books, Mind Over Mother, Know Your Worth, and my new book. The Little Book of Calm for new mums, grounding words for the highs, the lows and the moments in between. It's a little book. You don't need to read it from front to back. You just pick whatever emotion resonates to find a mantra, a tip and some supportive words to bring comfort and clarity. You can also find all my resources, guides and videos, all with the sole focus of supporting your emotional and mental well-being as a mum. They are all £12 and you can find them on anamatha.com. I look forward to speaking with you. stay.