We’ve all been there tired, stressed, a never-ending list of things to do, no time to do them and a lot of the time we may not even be sure if what we were doing, we’ve even been doing right.
Motherhood can be lonely, exhausting, frightening, and very frustrating.
It stands to reason that we will feel frustrated, even angry at times.
Why do we get stressed and frustrated?
Sometimes it’s because we are expected to operate as a single unit as we did before motherhood which can take a toll on our emotional health and can cause to have our emotions all over the place.
To do all the things we did before motherhood, plus all the extra washing and ironing and cooking and cleaning. With the same ease as before. With no more time than before. On a lot less sleep than before. With children to care for as well!
And we are expected to seamlessly switch between roles without having time to mentally change out of each uniform into the next.
Sometimes it’s because no matter how much we plan, children are unpredictable and don’t understand the pressures of time or money. (And you don’t really want them to either) but we cannot factor the multitude of possibilities into the preparation to leave the house by 7:30AM.
Time poverty is common for a lot of people not just mums.
But the other major frustration I’ve witnessed over the last 13 years of clinical practice, is mums experiencing a sense of deprivation or loss in other areas too. Namely money and love.
And the thing is when we became a mum our control over these decreased.
Granted it varied significantly for each mum, but at least one area would have been reduced and in some cases all three, and sometimes, significantly.
As humans we like control and hate uncertainty, so this perfect storm of day-to-day uncertainty is what I believe cause the escalation of anxiety, low mood, AND frustration in mums.
This ‘mum stress’ is like temperature.
You need to regulate your temperature otherwise whenever you walk into a hot room, it won’t take long for you start to boil.
If you are cooler to start with, you will take longer to warm up.
So, how to reduce our mum stress, to reduce the likelihood of us hitting boiling point and getting frustrated and saying or doing something we regret later. I have also wrote additional guide if you feel like your energy is depleting, here are 4 powerful steps to help gain your energy back.
As this has been such an issue for so many mums, I’ve worked with over the years I’ve created the Shouty Mum to Mindful Mum guide. You can download your copy here.
https://www.tinawright.net/shoutytomindfulmumguide
And to help start our journey with regulating mum stress I’m going to be going Live every Sunday evening at 8pm UTC in this group, Good Enough Mum and you’re all invited.
It’s a space to have a rant about anything that’s come up in the group or in your life that week and then I’ll either help to reframe it, teach a skill, or lead a mindfulness practice to help us all reset for the coming week. It will be called ‘RANT and RESET’.
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