Guilt In Motherhood: Why It Appears And How To Manage It Emotionally
Being a mother is not an easy task, it involves learning through experiences and knowing how to adapt it to our other roles.
Guilt appears as a common feeling in women, especially when they are mothers, since this role entails great responsibility, wanting to perform it as best as possible, and it is normal that the desired expectations are not always met or achieved.
Therefore, so that this guilt affects the mother and her child as little as possible, it is important that she learns to accept, knowing that this feeling does not make her a worse mother and that there is no correct way to act. Allow yourself to live the experience of being a mother that you want, since this is the only way to be happy and form a healthy and safe bond with your baby.
In this article We better explain why guilt appears in mothers and what effects it generatesalso showing some recommendations so that you can face it better and reduce its intensity.
Being a mother is a role that society has assumed as habitual and the idea is promoted that all women should and can do it. Being a frequent occurrence, motherhood can be seen as an easy activity, but far from being the case, being a mother involves a series of difficulties, contradictions, pleasant thoughts and emotions, but also unpleasant ones that can alter our state, such as fear, frustration , uncertainty or guilt.
The role of motherhood is understood as intrinsic, as something that every woman should know how to do for the simple fact of being a woman and many times the difficulty, responsibility and complications that the task of having and caring for a child entails are not considered and taken into account. Added to this lack of vision of difficulty, it is also conceived as obvious that the woman will always know how to act more correctly and that she must do so, always looking for the baby first.
This thought is in the woman before she has her child and intensifies with the birth of the child, also being reinforced by the general belief of society. The thought that your behavior must always be the best, that you must always know how to act, and that you must always put your child before all other needs. They are beliefs that are difficult to always fulfill and that on many occasions come into contradiction with others, thus generating the aforementioned feeling of guilt.
Guilt will arise in mothers when they realize that it is really impossible to be a model mother and fulfill all the beliefs and expectations that they had set, when thoughts appear in their mind that contradict the thought that they should have and believe that they are doing something. wrong and should correct and act better for their own benefit and for the people around them.
It is common to think that to do something well we have to focus only on that and forget everything else.but in this case to achieve a better long-term performance and a better status of the woman, it is better that she does not leave aside other functions and remember that she also has other roles as a woman, a daughter and the most important one as an individual person.
Since it is difficult (if not impossible) to meet all the expectations we have of what a good mother should be, thoughts such as: “I am not good enough as a mother”, “I don’t know how to do it well” will appear in women. “I feel tired”, “I could do better”… We see that they are very general thoughts and that they are linked and depend on many behaviors and actions.
Why does this feeling of guilt appear?
The feeling of guilt appears when we believe that we are not doing something well and we think that we could do it better. Even Sometimes it is not only a belief originated in individual self-esteem; We may feel judged by others and this fact also gives us a feeling of guilt.
In relation to motherhood, guilt is a fairly common feeling, since there will always be a better way to act or proceed, you can always be more patient, more understanding, more loving, more responsible… always focusing on the negative aspects. The level of self-demand is very high, always wanting to do the best possible so that our child has the best.
One of the biggest contradictions comes when the mother realizes that she also needs to rest, disconnect… In short, dedicate time to yourself. This feeling causes her guilt to arise, since she will believe that she is failing to fulfill the task of being a mother and that she is selfish for preferring to dedicate time to herself instead of the baby.
In this way we see how, for guilt to appear, it is not necessary for the mother to actually act badly or do something wrong, but rather emerges from expectations and wanting to make everything perfect. Therefore, it is not an indicator of bad behavior in the mother. That is to say, it is common for the mother to be acting well, doing well, but she feels guilty.
Thus, there is a social imaginary, a belief about what it means to be a mother and how one should act, which is really what ends up generating guilt. Many times one way of acting is not better than another, but will depend on which one best adapts to the way of doing things of each mother or family.
How does guilt affect motherhood?
This feeling of guilt will have a negative effect on the mother, since she will not let her act as she really would or If you choose to do what you would like to do, your state of discomfort will increase, making you feel more guilty and a worse mother.. Similarly, it will also affect the relationship between the baby and the mother, because the mother’s constant self-blame will create a barrier between the two that will make it difficult to create a secure bond or attachment.
That is to say, it may be that by feeling bad for not acting as is theoretically the best way, the relationship with the child is more harmed, having a greater impact on him than if the mother simply acted as she feels. So we see how guilt is disablingaffecting our behavior and how we relate to others, the mother can become nullified, transmitting that feeling to the child and leaving aside what is really important, thus altering the ability to connect with him.
How to deal with the feeling of guilt?
A point that is very relevant to remember is that there are many ways to act as a mother, all of which are equally valid. It is impossible for there to be a single correct way of acting, since each person is different and, therefore, each of us will need different things to be well. Children are different, mothers are different, families are different so the way they act can also be different.
So, let’s see how we can reduce this feeling of guilt that harms us in our role as mothers, ourselves and our relationship with the baby.
1. Be aware of how I am feeling
Many times we feel bad, unwell, but We do not stop to understand what causes us this evil, which is what prevents us from being well.. It is essential to identify the thoughts that generate the feeling of guilt in order to be able to confront them and reduce them.
2. Normalize guilt
Since guilt is another feeling that appears in different facets of our lives, sometimes being functional and telling us that we must change and improve and other times harming us and not letting us be ourselves.. Therefore, as a mother we must assume that this feeling is very likely to appear, but we should not give it greater importance, if we see that we are not really doing anything wrong, we will try to accept it, learning to live with it and this will be the way in which we will achieve that this decreases.
Being a mother is something we learn through experience, making mistakes and rectifying them, adapting to different circumstances and our baby. Thus, we once again see how acting in one way or another will depend on each person’s situation and experience, and we cannot blame ourselves for not doing it in a specific way. There is no manual on how to be a good mother, it is something that we will learn and model throughout motherhood.
Related article: “The 13 types of learning: what are they?”
4. There is time for everything
Each person has different roles, all of them being compatible with each other, being able to adapt to each other to be able to perform them all. In addition, Being a mother does not mean losing other functions.you can continue working, meet your friends, go out with your partner or dedicate time to yourself, doing what you like, since this is a good way to recharge your batteries and recover energy.
We cannot properly satisfy our baby’s needs if we do not have our own covered, if we do not rest, if we do not take care of ourselves and if we do not have time for ourselves.
5. Choose how you want to act as a mother
It is normal that the people around us want to give us advice, since they have surely gone through the experience of being a mother and want to help us, but as we have seen, sometimes the way of doing things that they suggest is not what we would do. Therefore, it is good to listen to all the recommendations to get ideas and know different ways to proceed, but the one who has the final decision on how to act is you.
Don’t feel guilty for acting the way you feel because it is the only way to feel good about yourself and take better care of your child.
6. Express how you feel
Many times we understand that if we feel guilty it is because we have done something wrong or that it is strange to feel that way, we are not good mothers. But if we share these thoughts and feelings with other people, especially with other women who are mothers, we will realize that this feeling of guilt is common, reassuring us and helping us understand that we are not worse for having it.
