The Therapy Edit - On how to deal with conflicting motherhood emotions

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

In this solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna shares a question from a listener about how as mums we can manage the conflicting emotions of motherhood.We hope you enjoy. x

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. So today I have a question that has come to me from one of you guys and I'm going to answer it as the episode today. So the question is, Anna, I really struggle with all these conflicting feelings. in motherhood help. So I think first of all, just the fact that we even try and make sense of the feelings that we have. You know, I find it really helpful to think about the feelings in motherhood as love being the foundation. Love is a foundation. I'm sure there should be a song about this if there isn't already. Love is like that foundation. Love is like the floor.

Think about the room that you're in at the minute or you might be in a car. This doesn't really work. But I'm in a room. I'm in my living room right now. And I'm looking at the floor and I'm thinking love is the floor of my relationship with my kids. It's that foundation that everything else in this room is sat upon the sofa, the table, the chair, my desk, everything is sat upon. All these different things are sat upon the floor, that foundation of love. Now, I can move things around. You know, the kids always chucking the cushions on the floor. Now, everything on this is ever changing. It's always moving. It's always changing and moving. But the floor, the floor, it stays the same. Now, I think that can really help us when we are trying

to analyze these conflicting emotions in motherhood and think, what does this mean that I'm feeling overwhelmed? But I also love my child. What does this feel that I'm grateful for them? But I flipping need some space sometimes. And we can judge ourselves. When we think actually the foundation that is there, that constant is love, all of those other, all of those other feelings of those things that kind of dance upon them. So I think sometimes the first challenge is that we judge ourselves for conflicting feelings. The second is that somehow we seem to have learned that we should always feel one way or another. And I spoke, I went on the Dirty Mother Packer podcast and spoke with Anna Whitehouse and Polly on there about this duality of feelings. How

we can just feel so many different things at once and often we just judge ourselves so harshly for having complex conflicting feelings. I want you to have a think for a moment about what other relationships do you have in your life that isn't complex? Is there someone that you know, someone that you know well and you only like everything about them? You only like everything about them. You only like everything about their relationship. They always please you. They always are enjoyable to be around. They don't have any toxic traits. They don't have any irritations. They never get anything wrong. They never are too noisy that triggers you. This is what I have a lot in my household is that there's just, you know, the noise, ah, the noise. So nothing ever irritates

you. Now, I love my husband, but we annoy each other. We get it wrong. We mess up. we misunderstand each other we argue sometimes i don't know it's almost that we have different expectations on ourselves with our children isn't it that we should just always feel loving now i just think there is something going on when we are expecting ourselves to feel one linear unchanging feeling almost constantly like that isn't human relationship if there is someone that you love and know very well and you just think they're just 100% wonderful then let's question whether you really know them well at all. So now this feeling of conflicting emotions, it's called maternal ambivalence and it is just

ambivalence is the makeup of human relationship, conflicting different feelings, different reactions is the makeup of true human relationship. And if you know someone through and through and you don't have ambivalent feelings towards them, you probably don't really know them very well at all. Now I wrote this little post and I'm going to read it to you. Motherhood. I want to hold them tight. I want to run for the hills. I want to dance and sing and seek silence. I have never felt so fulfilled. I have never felt so thinly stretched. I'm bursting with love and self-doubt and excitement and fear. I value the moments and I wish them away. I speak softly and gently and I scream into pillows and I shout.

I read parenting books. I try hard and I fail often. I have high standards and I cut corners. I to hug and a party. I want to be left alone, but I am lonely. I am confident and I question myself. I am calm and grounded and anxious and scared. I am compassionate and generous and selfish and resentful. I am accepting and grateful and incredibly stubborn. I am wired and I think fast and I am oh, so tired. So conflicting. So conflicting. The feelings. the states, the emotions that we feel. Now, I was thinking the other day, just all the conflicting things about myself, I am super organized, but I seem to lose my car keys in the car. And I am so happy standing on a stage talking to a load of mum's about worth, but then, you know, the small talk

bit, the milling around, I am so deeply uncomfortable. And, you know, we are contradictions. Are you a contradiction. Think about the contradicting parts of you. I am thoughtful and compassionate and I am flipping stubborn as hell sometimes. You know, I can be empathetic and I can be selfish. You know, we are in and of ourselves contradictions and you're not faking being any of those things. Like they're all true about you in different contexts. And I think that's exactly the same about our feelings around motherhood is that they're complex because so are we. They are multi-layered because so are we. It doesn't need to be that one is true and not the other. So yes, love is conflicting. Yes, feelings in motherhood are conflicting. And to my lovely listener who said, Anna, I really struggle with all

the conflicting emotions in motherhood, struggle to make sense of them. And I think instead of trying to make sense of them. What we can do to help ourselves is to suspend judgment, is to know that love is the foundation that is there. Everything else is moving around. Everything else is just a response to what is going on, a human response, multi-layered because you are human, not because you are confusing, although it may sometimes feel confusing. But this is the nature of being human. Conflicting emotions is the nature of human relationship. The relationships that you have that seem simple and straightforward, always, that you feel the same thing towards always, they are probably not the deep ones.

They are probably not the ones in which you are doing life together. The ones in which you feel you can rock up and be where you are and who you are in that moment, the ones in which that person is able to let you see something of themselves. That is not being conflicting. That is not being an imposter. It is not being messy. It is just being human. So suspend judgment on all of those conflicting feelings.

Just notice them. It can be really helpful to say, you know what, I'm feeling really overwhelmed and that is okay. Have you ever been to see a film and one minute you're laughing and one minute you're bawling your eyes out. And it's just, you're just responding to what is going on in that moment. Something in you is just simply responding to what is going on in that moment. It doesn't mean that you're all sad. It doesn't mean that you're all happy. What is happening is just connecting with a certain part and drawing out a certain emotion

with you from you in that moment. It's the same with motherhood. Yet we just seem to judge ourselves so harshly and are so tempted to analyze some of these feelings that we feel, but actually moving towards a place of acceptance, moving towards the knowledge that feeling overwhelmed, feeling rageful, feeling irritated and not statements of your love. They sit and move on top of that because you are having a response to a human relationship and human contact. So there we go. You might struggle with these conflicting feelings, but instead of wrestling with them, What about trying to accept them? 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 Ove and 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 month. They are all 12 pounds and you can find them on anamatha.com. I look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you.