#30: Breaking Free From Mom Guilt

TRANSCRIPT – edited for clarity

INTRO: Hi again, fellow moms. Welcome back to Episode 30 of Doing Things On Purpose, the podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose. I’m Suri Stahel.

Breaking free from ‘Mom Guilt’

This week, I wanted to talk about breaking free from mom guilt. So what prompted this specific topic was a series of talks that I attended in the past week.

One online with Dr. Kristin Neff, who is a specialist in self compassion. And then two days ago, I attended a talk by Dr. Gabor Maté on his new book called The Myth of Normal.

What really struck me was the idea that as women, we feel like we have to carry the burden of the world on our shoulders and it affects us, it affects us physically, mentally.

And, apparently, there has been more instances of women getting sick with cancer and neurological diseases as we age compared to men.

So it’s not something environmental, it’s something within that’s affecting us physically. So the summary of it, for me, is that we need to learn to take care of ourselves.

Mom guilt is, of course, very subjective. Different moms can feel guilty about different things. But in general, I’d like to explore some ideas that you could consider to start letting go of that burden of mom guilt. And seeing the work that we do in a more empowering and hopefully joyous light.

1. Reframe and don’t internalise your guilt

So the first one is about reframing your idea of mom guilt and not internalizing that guilt.

Guilt, according to Dr. Kristin Neff is about feeling bad about something we’ve done wrong, and it can be very useful and informative.

It gives us information about how we want to be as a better human. It helps us consider the wellbeing of not just ourselves, but also those around us.

And that’s a wonderful thing, but we have to be careful not to tie that with our sense of self worth or our sense of self esteem, meaning that we can see that it is all right to be human.

It’s all right to fail, to make mistakes and feel guilty over it. But that doesn’t mean that you as a person are bad. Or that you’re broken because there’s nothing wrong with any of us. We’re just doing our best and we always have a chance to try again. And that’s the beauty of our work. We can keep growing into it.

2. You already know how to be compassionate and loving – tap into it.

Number two is something that I’ve heard from a lot of moms when they say intellectually, they know how they want to behave, when their child or their partner is triggering them or when things just don’t go their way.

They know the kind of person they want to be or even the words they want to say.

But in the moment in the heat of the moment, they’re not able to respond that way. And so one suggestion is to remember that you already have the capacity for that compassion within you.

The tip is to think about the people or the things that you already feel naturally compassionate towards.

It could be how you feel about your pets or how you feel about your neighbor’s cute baby. Tap into that feeling.

• How does that really feel inside of your body and what kind of words do you use?
• What kind of thoughts and beliefs do you think?
• Oftentimes with people that we have a high level of compassion for, we’re very forgiving.

And then think about how we are behaving towards people in our lives that we wish we were more compassionate with, but we just can’t muster that up. Just being conscious of the difference.

And then choosing to invite more of that loving feeling that we naturally have for something, and transferring that to that person or that thing that we wished we had more compassion for.

Always include yourself in it too.

The practice is just expanding that circle of compassion. Include your difficult child in it, your perhaps lazy husband (in your eyes) in it, your parents in law or your parents who are always telling you you’re doing something wrong… whatever it is that you are struggling with.

Can you extend that to those people as well? Can you believe in the best in them?

That they’re just looking at it from their eyes and you don’t have to take in all of those things. It’s their stuff.

3. Focus your energy on “your stuff”

And the third thing is to focus your energy on yourself and what’s within your circle of control.

Because oftentimes we moms, get overwhelmed. We use up our energy to serve other people and I’m guilty of that too.

But there’s a difference between falling into that default, and choosing to check in with yourself.

• Am I doing too much?
• What can I let go of?
• What is my business and what is other people’s business?

So the invitation here is trusting that just you modeling your own healthy way of dealing with stresses in life or being patient, or whatever it is – that modeling that is enough to serve those around you.

There’s no need to fix other people.

What would it even feel like if you just let them take that journey by themselves? Of course, offering help, if it’s asked of you and if it’s within your capacity to help.

In focusing your energy on yourself – it’s actually an invitation to slow down, to reconnect with yourself, whether it’s through mindful practices like meditation, yoga, journaling, sitting at the beach or in nature. Anything at all that gets you back in touch with your inner self.

So that you can feel what’s going on for you. What do I need to take care of?

And know that the more you practice noticing while allowing all of that to ‘just be’, the more you grow that muscle of non-reactivity, the more you can be compassionate.

Because life has both good things and bad things.

It’s not really a life when we try to avoid all the heartache, all the discomfort that comes from growth. Because we are always evolving, and those around us too.

💎 What we’re trying to cultivate is that resilience to move in this complex world with more groundedness. That we don’t get so easily dysregulated and upset by the things happening around us.

💎 This is about having both self-awareness, and other awareness. What is my stuff and what are other people’s stuff?

The funny thing is the more you start to let go of controlling other people and telling them what to do, I find the more those people rise up to the occasion. Because we all sense what needs to happen.

And sometimes somebody telling us what to do is actually causing us to rebel.

So just work on cultivating that ‘calmer you’ as a baseline for yourself. And when you fail, don’t beat yourself up about it.

Just notice, embrace being human. Remember that you can always get better. You can always course correct, backpedal, apologize, and try again next time.

Every mistake you make is an opportunity to model self compassion for your kids.

This idea is also echoed by Dr. Gabor Maté, who said that one of the most protective things we can do as women to maintain our resilience against physical disease and neurological disorders as we age, is when we can:

• Acknowledge our tendency to be carers and nurturers of society.
• Choose to reconnect with who we are as an individual person, separate from those that we care for.
• Learn to set healthy boundaries for ourselves by learning the art of saying “NO.”

And to me, “no” isn’t a bad word because when you say no, it means you’re actually saying yes to other things.

• Maybe that’s saying yes to you.
• Saying yes to trusting in the power of others to co-create a life with you – when they’re given that space to determine what their life could look like, while you do the same.

Summary

I hope this has been helpful for you. Just a recap on how not to get hung up on your mom guilt:

1. Reframe it and don’t internalize it to mean there’s something wrong with you.
2. Trust that you already have that loving and compassionate feeling within you and tap into the people and things that you naturally feel that for.
3. Focus your energy on yourself and what’s within your circle of control.

Practice ‘self-awareness’ and ‘other-awareness.’

OUTRO: That’s all I have for you today.

💗 If you’re looking for personal support from me, go to suristahel.com/offerings.

For this podcast episode, the transcript will be available at suristahel.com/30, the number 30 for this episode. And as usual, if you want to connect on social, You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

Thanks again for making the time to listen in with me, Suri. This is Doing Things On Purpose, and I’ll catch you again next time.