The Therapy Edit - On 6 hurdles to being the mum you want to be

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

In this Monday solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna reads aloud from her new book, Raising A Happier Mother: How to Find Balance, Feel Good and See Your Children Flourish as a Result.This reading offers advice for overcoming six common hurdles that prevent us from being the mothers we want to be.

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. Hope you're well. I am going to be sharing a little bit of my new book with you. In this book, so it's called Raising a Happier Mother, it's out really, really soon. Don't forget to pre-order it. it's all about dismantling that fantasy of the mother that we have often in our minds that we are trying so hard to attain to. It's also just about recognizing that we often have so many tools and so much knowledge when it comes to parenting. I've got so many books. I'm just looking at them on my shelf. So many incredible parenting books. But when we are burnt out when we are depleted, when we're stressed, when we're anxious, we actually cannot psychologically. we cannot access the helpful advice because we're in stress mode. So the whole premise of this book is that to be the mom that we can be, we need to start dismantling this fantasy that weighs so heavily on our shoulders

that we're often comparing ourselves to. And we need to stop finding ways to be okay ourselves because it is really hard to anchor our children. When we are feeling ancholess, it is really hard to address. Approach things and respond in a way. that we want to when we are just in fight or flight depleted. So this episode today I'm going to read out six hurdles to being the mum we want to be. And in the book, I go into each one of these hurdles in real depth and you will get loads and loads of tools, loads of insight, loads of

ways to address these things. But I just wanted to highlight them to you. I wanted to show you how much these things really impacts our motherhood and why just so you can start to become aware of them because actually even recognising what they are and the part that they play in your life as soon as you start having awareness you start having choice this is the amazing thing about awareness I did a coaching course recently I worked with a group of moms and it's called the motherhood reset and so much of the course was actually just bringing awareness to the things that were impacting them and getting in the way and depleting them and stopping them from getting what they needed. And that awareness itself just opens the opportunity for decisions,

making decisions and being more intentional about the things that we do and the things that we think. So that's what the idea of this episode is just to draw your attention to some of the things that get in the way so that you start noticing the decisions that are there for you and start maybe thinking of how you might want to equip yourself so that you can remove some of these hurdles that can rob us so much. So number one, guilt. Good old guilt. Guilt, the good, the bad and the ugly I've written. When we feel guilty, we are less likely to feel deserving of support and help even from ourselves. Isn't that true? When you feel

bad, you're more likely to move towards behaviours that are less kind, maybe even punishing. guilt is a strong consequence of the motherhood fantasy because when we fail to meet our ideal this is often followed by a feeling of badness failure or not enoughness reflect on that for a moment all those shoulds that you have popping into your head when you're responding to your kids in a certain way

I should be more patient I should be finding this easier all that guilt it's often followed by that feeling of badness that failure I'm not good enough When we feel these things, we are more likely to sabotage opportunities in order to deny our needs or invalidate our feelings due to the sense of needing to put right or wrong through punishment. This is why often when we don't address guilt, we start moving to that self-punishment, that self-criticism. So in the book, we explore a new way of dealing with guilt that frees us up to move on from it quickly. They might actually even just totally eliminate it in certain parts of our lives.

But I want you to know this, mum guilt doesn't need to be a part of the motherhood job description, causing you to strive towards that exhausting motherhood fantasy. It's true, isn't it? Often, the further we feel from that fantasy of motherhood that we have in our heads, the further away we feel from those shoulds, the more we strive towards them. You know, I've failed, therefore I'm going to have to try harder. So a resource that you might want to access before the book comes out is the mum guilt session, which is a workshop on my website that's there. for you, all about mum guilt with some tools. The second one is anger and irritability. With all the juggling challenges of parenting, irritation and feelings of anger can really sit close to the surface, can't they? Lots of mum saying they're feeling more irritable or more angry than ever. When we are consistently striving and pushing ourselves

towards our motherhood fantasy, we quickly become depleted and less able to navigate stress and challenging moments. That overwhelm finds you in fight-or-flight stress mode, your emotions become harder to regulate to calm yourself and spur out uncontrolled sideways perhaps they bubble over in shouting in sniping remarks

you know we don't like it when we feel like this so the book shines a massive spotlight on those things that you can do to help yourself I've also got the overwhelm and burnout workshop on my website if this one feels like an urgent thing for you and you're like yeah it's the anger and the irritability that is impacting my parenting at the moment. Number three, comparison and judgment have a massive place in how we are as a parent. I don't know about you, but I tend to be

my own harshest critic and have historically expected other people to judge me as stringently as I judge myself. If you find yourself comparing your choices, decisions and outcomes with others, you may also discover that comparison has you pushing harder towards that motherhood fantasy and making statements about how well or not you're doing. So again, the book has lots of insights. But there are some great podcast episodes on the therapy. I look back to the one that I did with Vicki Patterson, a more recent one on comparison.

Comparison is to the motherhood fantasy, like a candle flame is to an oil spill. There are ways to harness certain aspects of comparison, actually to our advantage. Use them to our advantage to motivate us in a really healthy and good way. to disempower the ones that are actually really hindering us. Number four, loneliness and disconnection. This really impacts our motherhood too, doesn't it? We can feel totally lonely regardless of who is around us. Loneliness can leave us feeling unsupported and this can be exacerbated

by that motherhood fantasy. For example, if we believe that we should not worry about our own needs or that our children should be enough for us, we shouldn't need anything beyond them. Or perhaps we feel that we should be able to meet all of our needs ourselves. You can find yourself feeling lonely and disconnected. If the opposite to loneliness and disconnection is vulnerability and connection, how can we seek more of these things in our lives? Especially, this will be true for people, especially with social anxiety or people that have been hurt in the past.

Sometimes moving towards others prompts feelings of anxiety or fear. And the book addresses that. But I also have, what do I have? I have the social anxiety workshop on my, my website and also one about finding your village. Where can you find your village? Where is this flipping village when you look around and you can't see it? So there's one on that as well. Number five, fear and anxiety. You know I talk about anxiety a lot because it really, really robs us of peace and presence in motherhood. So this is one of the hurdles as well. Fear and anxiety,

if you find that fear and anxiety, the background buzzed your motherhood, this might be because of the motherhood fantasy you've held. Maybe you believe that you must always be able to protect your child from bad things happening, or it might be that trauma you've experienced has left you, hypervigilant. You might find yourself wanting to control things and struggle with uncertainty. So the book has a lot of insight and tools to address it. Those waves of anxiety and fear will come, but there are ways to ensure that you don't feel like you're drowning within them. Isn't that what we want? We cannot control other thoughts that come into our mind, but there are ways to navigate them that free us up a little bit. And finally, the final hurdle that I address in the book is overwhelm and exhaustion.

Do you often find yourself tired, overwhelmed or burn out? I'm not just talking about rough nights with the kids, but when exhaustion drags on, rest and slowness seem hard to come by and burnout lingers. When we are pushing to live up to that motherhood fantasy, we can so easily buy into the narrative that to be acceptable to the world and loving to our family, we must always be productive and busy. In the book, I turn your understanding of rest and any error of, don't worry I've got this upon its head. If slowing down or stopping feels like a guilt-tarnished indulgence, well, the book will help shift and change that. And what do I have? I have that over on a burn out soap session. That might be a really good one to listen to if this feels like an urgent thing that

you want to address. So there are some hurdles to be aware of. guilt, anger and irritability, comparison and judgment, loneliness and disconnection, fear and anxiety and overwhelm and exhaustion, all of those things really just challenge our day-to-day parenting and the enjoyment that we can get within it and the balance that we can find that is there for us if we can address these things. So hopefully that's given you a little bit of insight but also a bit of a taster into what the book raising a happy. your mother is going to be addressing for you. So don't forget to pre-order that. I can't wait for you to have it in your hands. Thank you so much for listening. Please do take a moment to

subscribe, rate and review as it really helps get these words out to benefit more juggling parents like us. And head to anamatha.com to find my resources on everything from health anxiety to people pleasing, starting at only £20. And finally, don't forget to pre-order my new book. raising a happier mother, how to find balance, feel good and see your children flourish as a result. I can't wait for you to have that. Take care and we'll chat soon.