The mark of motherhood...
Guilt around not being a good enough mother, not being calm enough/using the right discipline techniques, giving them the right (read: best/eye wateringly expensive or difficult to get hold of) food/bedding/clothing/shoes/education/toys/holidays/after school clubs/vitamins etc etc
Feeling that you can’t cope with your child.
Guilt around not wanting to play with your child.
Lacking the energy to play another game of pretend or be sympathetic to yet more whining/shouting or even crying.
This stuff is exhausting. Especially when you add months/years of minimal and broken sleep along with the responsibility (worry) of a precious little person who is constantly finding new ways to put themselves in danger.
Plus disappointment, frustration, resentment and guilt around your career (or deafening lack of it); the hours you work or can’t work and difficulty finding training or work that fits around your life now. And as a 21st century mother of young children, you NEED a career right?! Cue losing your whole sense of self/identity and having no idea where to find it again if like most, you set it down for a second while pushing out/having a baby cut out of you.
Then add that to issues with your partner - the stuff above and crazy mum hormones don’t always allow you to be the person you were before - Cue bitch from hell PMS, massive resentment around sharing responsibilities and time away from those responsibilities, yes, EVEN if that’s to go to work!
And then there’s all the other day to day annoyances: the mess, the pets, the endless cooking, the awful online food shop (which should be easier but you dread it more than real shopping and no one knows why), the mess, the mess. Oh and fucking Covid, obviously.
Some of this is my own stuff - can you tell 🤣
This stuff is all normal - to some degree. It’s hard and we’d be robots to not feel it. Talking therapies can help you off-load and couples therapies can help you and your partner re-negotiate now that your lives are so different.
Lots of my clients come with all of this, and that’s hard enough but add pre-motherhood anxiety or trauma to the mix and it can make it unbearable. They don’t know where to start with sorting their emotions out because it’s not clear what the main problem is - there’s just too much going on in their lives that's difficult… Talking will help off-load some but often there’s a real and legitimate fear of opening up when you need to keep functioning for your family. Better to keep it all locked up and soldier on…
That’s where Cognitive Hypnotherapy differs from just talking. Our conscious, logical brains can only take us so far - we can often work through problems with the help of a different perspective or a sympathetic ear but if the issue is at the emotional, subconscious level, you need help at that level. Cognitive Hypnotherapy allows your subconscious to lead you to the root of the issues and helps to ‘reframe’ or change the emotions at that level, leaving your mind free to recreate a new, better path.
I can’t make your children tidy up, or make them sleep but I can help with your ability to cope, your anxiety and the guilt as well as help you build clarity and vision around where you want to head now.
Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash