One of the primary goals of many parents today is to parent from a calm place – perhaps you grew up with parents who struggled to manage their anger, and the impact of those early years has you swearing you’ll do it differently. Mom rage does not fit with our ideal image of parenting – we envision a nurturing, peaceful environment for our children, yet find ourselves snapping more often than we’d like to admit, leaving us feeling ashamed. The journey of motherhood is filled with expectations, and the pressure to parent perfectly can be overwhelming.
We want to be different, we want to stop cycles and as a parent today we have access to infinite information, and driven by a deep need to “get it right” or do things perfectly with our kids, we over research every topic on parenting. We have all the scripts, give all the choices, hold boundaries, learn how to validate big feelings – – but despite knowing all of this expert wisdom, and despite our best intentions, certain triggers provoke automatic reactions that happen SO fast, and don’t reflect our values. When mom rage pops up out of the blue, it can feel scary – so many of us feel most comfortable when we are in control – and these moments feel very out of control.
Mom rage often stems from a combination of factors: unrealistic societal expectations around mothering, exhaustion, overwhelming responsibilities, isolation and the relentless pressure to do it all and be present and appreciate it all. Our mom range triggers are unique to each of us – maybe it’s dealing with mess, kids not listening or pushing back, fear around injury, or the chaos and overstimulation from the sensory overload – mom rage can bubble up unexpectedly.
The thing is, being calm at all times isn’t really the goal. Yes, we want to feel more in control of our big feelings, yes, we don’t want to scare our kids, yes – collectively we have a responsibility to learn how to better self-regulate – but we DO get to feel angry. We DO get to feel annoyed. We DO get to feel overwhelmed, overstimulated, frustrated – you name it. And it’s ok to let our kids see our emotional range – in appropriate ways.
Women are socialized to take up less space, to be quiet, to be agreeable, to be all things soft and sweet. So part of the puzzle is learning that anger is healthy and normal and required to live authentically – to resist the made up image of the “perfect mother” who is endlessly patient, sweet, agreeable, self sacrificing and all things “sugar and spice”. Anger or mom rage IS the appropriate emotion in lots of situations, and the more we build our comfort in expressing it, in safe and healthy ways, the less it bubbles over in ways we later regret.
How to begin building your tools for self-regulation
1. Understand shame and begin to shift your negative self-talk
2. Give yourself the gift of therapy
Your triggers come from a place, and you may need some healing there. Many of our clients work through mom rage with our specialized mom therapy team – it’s one of the most common pain points we hear about.
HOW CAN THERAPY HELP WITH MOM RAGE?
- The first step is to explore your unique triggers to get a sense of what exactly tends to be hard for you to tolerate. Even just this – recognizing triggers – allows you to anticipate them, which can be a game changer. For example, when I can talk to myself before the morning rush out the door to daycare, and anticipate that my child will fight me on getting into the car seat like he almost always does, I’m less likely to slip into mom rage mode or be short with him when he plays the “stiff as a board” game, refusing to put his bum down. (PS, this stage doesn’t last forever, promise). Our tolerance is higher when we see the trigger coming, when we’re not surprised.
- Next, we need to grow your skills in emotion regulation. Understanding how your nervous system operates and learning to work with it and find ways to self soothe is a critical part of reducing mom rage. There are SO many ways to self-regulate – and it’s important to see this work as a practice – it takes time and repeated exposure to this kind of skill building for it to be readily available to us and support us in managing our mom rage day to day.
- To get started with in the moment practices and strategies, we love this resource Steady Parents
3. Prioritize YOU
4. And guess what most of our parents never did when they yelled…apologized.
How to find the right therapist for you
Navigating the intense feelings that come up in motherhood is work best done in connection. At Whole Family Psychotherapy, our team of certified perinatal therapists are all parents themselves – we have been where you are, and we know how to support you to feel better. Reach out to our team by clicking Get Started below, and our intake team will help match you with a therapist who can help
