The Therapy Edit - On ‘I love my kids, but…’

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

In this sole episode of The Therapy Edit Anna examines how love can coexist alongside a whole host of histories and mysteries and pasts and complexities and what this means for the compassion that we show ourselves when we're finding things hard.

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 well. Today I have a little solo episode for you. I'm going to talk about love and the love that we have for our children. Now, I normally write some notes. But for this episode, I'm not writing any notes. I'm actually going to read out something that I wrote on a Instagram post the other day. I was thinking about love. I was thinking about how often we caveat, don't we? We caveat those times that we say, oh my gosh, today is being so hard or I'm finding one of my kids so tricky or challenging or I'm bored of motherhood at the moment or this is

relentless or whatever we say that has this kind of honest, vulnerable element to it. How often do we then caveat that with this kind of cascade of small print that says, but I love my kids, but I'm so grateful and I'm so thankful that I get to be a mom and it's a real privilege. And it's that acknowledgement and that recognition that we feel we need to state every single time we express something that is perhaps more of the challenging side of motherhood, the messy side of motherhood, the slog of motherhood. And I think, you know, why do we do this? I think, first of all, that we often have this fear, that our love will be questioned, that our gratitude

at being a mum, which is, of course, an incredible privilege. You know, harder than I ever thought it would be more challenging than I ever thought it would be to my core is taking me to the very edge of myself, but it is also an absolute privilege. And perhaps we fear that to be honest about some of the harder, messier, complicated, painful sides of motherhood means that our love and our commitment and our gratitude and the acknowledgement of the privilege is somehow brought into question. You know, I said in this post, I was like, I love him. It's a picture of me against my husband's chest, right? I love him. Yeah? But I love him, but sometimes we misunderstand each other. Sometimes we upset each other. Sometimes we need space from one another.

we need to work on things. Sometimes we find each other tough to be around. Sometimes our own toxic traits hurt the other person. We all have toxic traits by the way. No matter how much therapy or self-improvement work we have done. We all have those things. We carry with us a whole host of histories and mysteries and past and complexities and we bring all of those into our relationships. Now, I love my husband, but all of the above. We misunderstand each other. We upset each other. We need space. We need to work on things. We find each other tough to be around. And sometimes all of those things together. Now, how come then when I say, I love my children, I somehow place this expectation, this pressure on myself, that I wouldn't feel.

those things, that we wouldn't misunderstand each other, that we wouldn't upset each other sometimes, that we wouldn't need space from each other, that we wouldn't need to work on things or find each other hard to be around. Because to feel all those things isn't being an ungrateful mom, an unloving mom, a less capable mom. It's just being a human mom. because that is the complexity and truth of all human relationship. I think because we love our children. We expect ourselves sometimes to feel good things all the time. Now, what a tall order.

When have you ever in life gone any significant amount of time feeling good things all the time? There's always many different emotions that dance in and out of our lives and our minds and our hearts from day to day from minute to minute from second to second even. You know, motherhood for me is one minute. I think, man, this is the most incredible thing I have ever done the next minute I'm there thinking I need space. This is the hardest thing I have ever done. Now, when I talk about my husband and perhaps I'm talking honestly to a friend, maybe we've had a bit of a falling out or a misunderstanding, I talk about that. I don't then necessarily feel a need to follow it up with all of this cascade of caveats. Because we accept that love is

complex and feelings can absolutely sometimes feel conflicting. We can love someone and not feel loving towards them. We can love someone and not necessarily like them in that moment. And that is the nature of relationships. Yet when it comes to our kids, we can pressure ourselves to feel a set way all the time. And as I said, it's not only a high standard. It's not human. Now, I want you to think of love as being the stage, a big stage, you know, maybe a theater or a music event. Love is the stage. Now, emotions and feelings are all of those things that kind of dance upon the stage. But love is that foundation, regardless of what show or band is playing in that day what whether it's still whether it's being clean whether it's got a huge

amount of activity whether the show is in full swing love is the stage the stage remains the same the stage is the solid thing we know that love is that stage for our children the the way that we feel and then all those other emotions they dance upon it and our feelings are a response to moments feelings are a response to moments and a challenge rather than statements about how much or how deeply we love one another. And I think that's so often where the guilt and the shame comes in is that we know we love our children, but then we get all these other feelings and we believe that they are statements about the validity and the depth of our love when feelings merely responses

to what's going on in front of us. And love is that stage, it is that foundation. I shame myself, the less I feel guilt, the less I question my love because of the other conflicting emotions that seem to arise, the more that I'm able to focus on how I'm behaving because of them, right? Does that make sense? So the less I am shaming myself, perhaps for the boredom or the irritability or the snappiness, the less I'm shaming myself for those things, because shame keeps us stuck. We're just guilting ourselves. We can't really do much

when we're just guilting ourselves. So the less I shame myself for the conflicting emotions that arise, the more I can focus my attention, maybe later on, maybe not in that minute, on how I behave because of them. Now, I know I love my kids,

but sometimes I don't act lovingly. I know I love my kids, but sometimes I do things. I behave in a way that does not, make them feel loved in that second. And the more I spiral into a whole of guilt, the more we spiral into that place of just guilting ourselves, thinking we're rubbish, thinking we're not good enough, thinking we're not deserving, the less we're able to explore our behavior and debrief with ourselves as challenging moments. Now, listen to the podcast that I did with Dr. Becky Goodinside.

So it's a couple of, you know, it'll be a few episodes that you have to scroll down a little bit and she talks about the most important thing that she wants to share, which is working on repair. So it's so much harder to repair those moments with our children when we're just feeling rubbish. Because we need to be able to look at it objectively, don't we? We need to be able to explore it. You know, we're all just trying to do the best we can with what we have and what we know. Feelings are not statements of our love. They are just indicators.

and love looks like many different things and it feels like many different things and sometimes it is conflicting. So I invite you just to see those caveats that we always fall into. I invite you to recognize them and to acknowledge where perhaps you are guilting yourself for feeling as a human feels that you can love someone and feel a bit bored, that you can just be so grateful for someone, but they're never going to meet all your social needs, that you can really recognize your privilege for having them in your life. But sometimes you wind each other up and you need space. And that's not failure that. That's, that's relationship. That's human. That's, that's motherhood. So there we go. There are some little reflections and I hope are helpful to relieve some

that guilt to relieve some of that shame. 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 Mom's 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.