019: Navigating Mom Guilt (Part 2)
This is part 2 of talking about mom guilt, so if you missed part 1, go back to episode 18 and start there. In this episode we'll go through tips and tricks for reducing mom guilt.
You are definitely not alone in experiencing mom guilt, and everything we learn in The Working Mom Happiness Method lends itself towards reducing feelings of mom guilt!
Here's the link to the Harvard study on working moms: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/kids-of-working-moms-grow-into-happy-adults
To check out The Working Mom Happiness Method coaching course, visit my website at https://www.womensbestlifeuniversity.com/working-mom-happiness-method
Learn more about The Working Mom Happiness Method course here!
To join The Working Mom Happiness Method Facebook group click here.
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Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.
Hello, okay, this is part two of the mom guilt episode. If you didn't listen to the last episode, which is part one, I recommend going back and starting there because we're just going to jump right in where we left off, I'm just splitting these up to try to keep the episodes short and sweet, because I know we're all busy. So we left off just talking about some facts to consider when thinking about mom guilt that could help with a mindset change. So the next thing that I wanted to talk about in that category is that working fewer hours because your mom is okay, even if you want to progress in your career. So the old cliche, work smarter, not harder is really a thing. It's a cliche, because it's really, really true. And we're going to talk about a lot more of this when we get into the career development section. And I think that's going to be a couple of different episodes too, because I have a lot to say there. But setting boundaries, learning how to value yourself enough to set boundaries at work is a game changer. When it comes to confidence at work. Creating enough time to be strategic and thoughtful, makes you a better performer at work. So it's not working around the clock is not what makes you a great performer at work, there's a lot of pressure to do that, certainly, and a lot of us have gotten a lot of praise for doing that throughout our careers. And and there are times in our careers where you know, we're we're going to do that. And there are times in our careers where we can't do that. And both of those are completely okay. But I promise you can set boundaries at work and continue to grow your career by being very thoughtful and strategic about it. And I could talk about that for another hour or so I'm not going to because we're going to cover that in a later episode. But it is absolutely okay to set boundaries and take care of yourself and work fewer hours because you're a mom. All right. I mean, I this is probably stating the obvious when I say fewer hours, I don't mean work fewer hours than what you're getting paid for. Right? I mean, doing it in a way that aligns with what you're getting paid for and is correct at your job. But there are conversations that we can have. And most of us who are achievers working in full time roles are working more than 40 hours. Anyway, there's a lot of pressure on there's a lot of pressure there. I know with a lot of the women I've coached and used to be with me too. So it is absolutely okay, you have permission to do that. And it can be a game changer with relieving the mom guilt to give yourself a little bit more time in the morning or the evening with your kids. And it can help you get that 15 minutes in that we talked about in the last episode. It's okay to prioritize your career over your kids. Let's talk about this one a little bit more. I mentioned it in the last episode. Men do this their whole lives. And most don't feel guilty about it. I'm not saying men don't have any guilt, but most don't feel the anywhere near the level of guilt that, that we feel society has taught us that we're not supposed to prioritize our career over our kids. And it is absolutely 100% Okay, we don't have to live the way that society taught us to live. And you can be an amazing mom and have a great relationship with your kids while prioritizing your career over your kids. So I just it's just so true. And I just want us all to give ourselves permission to do that. It also sets a great example for our kids. I'll link that Harvard study in here again that I linked in the last episode that showed a bunch of benefits that both
sons and daughters get from seeing their mom working. One of the benefits, especially as it relates to sons who see their moms working, is that they grew up to be better, more supportive spouses for a working wife, the ones who watch their mom's work. And so like I said, I'll link it, you can read all about it in that study. But it's, it's a really important one. And it's okay for this to ebb and flow. And when I say prioritize your career over your kids, doesn't mean you love your job more than you love your kids. And there are always going to be things where your kids come first, even when you're in that mode of of career mode and career pushing, prioritizing your kid your career over your kids. It's not that I think a lot of people get scared when I went on their values list, I give them permission to put career above kids, it's about phases in life. What energizes you what makes you happy? And being really, really honest with yourself? Do you want to spend more time with your kids because you actually want to? Or do you want to spend more time with your kids because you feel like you should, those are very different things. Some people do, and some people don't. And both are okay, and both are in the range of normal. It's really just getting down to what it is you want how you want to spend your time. And then you can absolutely make it work where you can be a great mom and spend more time at work. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the career development. Or if you want to go deeper on that. You can always work with me one on one message me, I'd be happy to work with you on just that one aspect of it. Because it's, it's, it's a big one to unravel. It's a tricky one. The next thing to consider is that trying to do more to relieve guilt makes things worse and not better. So it's classic, we feel bad that we're not seeing our kids. So on the weekends, we fill our time with Kid things, and then we're exhausted because we didn't spend any time with ourselves. That's not the way it works. In the last episode, I pointed out that what really matters is what we're really what our kids really notice is how we are when we're with them when we are there, how do we show up. And if we are there, and we are resentful and exhausted because we didn't take any care of ourselves when we were working all week, and then we're spending the entire weekend with them. That's not how we want to show up, we're going to be short and snippy and impatient and tired, and they're going to see that, and that's going to be their experience with us. So it's really, really important to not try to counteract your guilt with doing more. And that's the same at the job really at anything. When we're feeling guilty. It can be on a lot of times it can be a sign of burnout, when you definitely want to do less. But just be mindful of that. Are you trying to do too much? Because you feel guilty? And really, how are you coming across with the kids because of that, okay, it's a good thing to be aware of. Guilt definitely gets in the way of being present as well. So when we are showing up with our kids, we want to be fully present and listening and not when they're saying things making it about us if they're making a comment about oh, I wish you were there for this or I wish you could have seen this. It's not about if we're sitting there feeling bad and letting that hurt us and making it about us we're not fully present and listening with them, which this is a very hard thing to do. Like we've all done this. I'm not there's no judgment. You know, if you have done this a bunch of times I've done this a bunch of times, it's just really about the awareness. Right. It's about the awareness of that and working on it. Just continuing baby stepping chipping away at this stuff is so important. So now we're going to shift over into some tactics for reducing the guilt and the shame. So number one, we've talked about this many times throughout the course of the program, if you've been following along from the beginning, feel the feelings in your body. So when you really have a guilty moment come up if your your child says something that makes you feel so bad, about maybe the way you parented them, or you missed an event or something like that, you really got to sit and feel the feelings and process the feelings. So this is the perfect time to go to that quiet place. Sit down close your eyes start to breathe and feel what's going on with me. What am I feeling? Try to name the feeling if you can try to feel where do you feel it in your body? And remember, try to use that logic we talked about in the last episode, asking yourself, did I really do something wrong? What were my intentions? Is there something I need to learn from this or not? Is this just one of those instances of completely useless guilt? Okay, but stop and feel the feelings in your body.
Replacing the negative thought with a positive one. We've talked a lot about this, but this is subconscious programming. Right? So instead of if the negative thought is I feel so bad with how much time I'm spending at work and not seeing the kids catch it awarenesses that say Oh, I did that that was a negative thought related to mom guilt and replace it with If this job provides so many financial opportunities for our family, it creates opportunities for our kids or whatever resonates with you, this job allows me to spend time on myself, which is going to make me a better mom, something positive that you really feel is true that resonates. Catch it and replace it, do that over and over and over again. And you'll reprogram that subconscious mind. And eventually, you'll feel much less guilt. Let go of perfection in all areas of life. Okay, we've talked about this, and we've touched on this before, right? Perfectionism is rooted in insecurity, always, every single time, anytime we're trying to be perfect at something, we're afraid of what somebody is going to think of us, it's an insecurity based thing. And we've all struggled with this, we've all dealt with this is really, really normal. But the reality is your value and your worth has nothing to do with getting things perfectly including being a mother. So the perfection aspect really, really plays so strongly here, do less focus on quality, not quantity. I've talked about that already a lot. So I think you get the picture there. Be okay with being a good enough parent, this is also letting go of perfection, that I have a lot of thoughts related to this. I mean, the first one is we just set way too high of expectations and standards for ourselves. And we're comparing ourselves to other people who we don't even really know what their actual lives look like, right? We see these women on Instagram or on social media that looked like they're the most perfect moms. And they're doing those beautiful events for all of the holidays, and they're making the food and their house is decorated. And there's so much fun. And you know, they're moving Elf on the Shelf in such creative ways. And we're really judging and we're comparing ourselves. But reality is we have no idea what that woman's life is actually like, she might be miserable, she might be more miserable than you are, you have no clue, she might have an abusive partner, she might have an eating disorder, like you have no clue how good of a mom she is, or is not based on what you're seeing she's doing on posting on social media, right. So we just have to do what works the best for us. And know that that's okay. And that's good enough. I mean, being a good enough parent. The other thing that I think is really, really important here and that I love, and I follow this woman on Instagram, she's fabulous. If you don't follow her, I think her Instagram handle is Dr. Becky at good inside. If you just search like something like Dr. Becky at good insight on Instagram, she'll pop up because she has like a million followers. But
I love her whole philosophy that what we're striving for is not happy kids, we all say I just want my child to be happy, I just want my child to be happy. That's not what we should be striving for. So she's asking us to reshift this common phrase, this common mindset, I just want my child to be happy and shifted over to I want my child to be able to process and deal with negative emotions and tough situations in a healthy way. That is going to be an adult, who is when when they head into adulthood much more ready to face the world. And remember, as we talked about before, and one of my four keys to happiness that we talked about in the very first episode of the podcast, and that we work on in the working mom happiness method is one of them is that happiness does not equal feeling good and happy all the time. Right happiness is learning how to handle and process all of our feelings, including the ones that don't feel good, the ones that feel bad. And so what we're doing as parents, is where we feel like we put all this pressure on ourselves to help our children avoid negative feelings and avoid hard situations. But that is not what we want to do. We really want to allow them to experience tough emotions and negative feelings. And just be there for them. Allow them to feel the feeling without trying to fix it. Because that's how they're gonna learn to be somebody who knows how to process and handle hard and negative emotions, difficult situations. So what does that look like if you've never heard of this concept before and don't and don't worry, there's nothing wrong if you haven't. And if you have been trying to fix all the things for your child, that's really normal. That's what society has taught us. So there's no need to beat yourself up. I know all this stuff, and I still go on autopilot and try to fix things and have to remind myself that's not my job. I need to let them feel the feelings but what it looks like is if your child tells you that they're having a negative or a hard experience, really genuinely all you do, I mean you ask about it, you ask questions about it and you just say I am really sorry, that sounds really difficult. That sounds like it would be really hard. Really difficult and you just sit with them. You just allow them to feel the feelings if they need to cry. Let them cry. I mean, I, I watch all these reality TV shows, I love reality TV and one pattern that I've really been noticing lately I've been watching selling sunset, and I've been watching the ultimatum on Netflix. These are like the most cheesiest of reality, but I love but a pattern I've been seeing is they keep telling each other don't cry when somebody cries, don't don't cry, don't get upset. That's like the worst thing we could tell another human. If you're with another human, whoever it is your child or friend, spouse, whatever, and they start to cry, the worst thing you can say is Don't cry. Because we're teaching them to repress and suppress their emotions, instead of actually feeling them, the best thing that you can say is, please let it out cry, I'm here for you, and just sit with them. And that includes our kids. And so I consider all of this as part of being a good enough parent. If we don't, we're not striving for happy kids with perfect lives who never feel bad. We're striving for just sitting with them. And it's so hard because our instincts are to protect and fix them at all costs. That's not what we want to do. And I'm working learning this and working on this as well. So that's accepting that giving permission for that is a big part of it. Okay, next major tactic for helping to reduce the mom guilt and the shame. Ask for help or pay for help. I know I say this so many times throughout the program, ask for help pay for help, you are worth that you don't have to do this all on your own. And we tell ourselves that we do we, you know, we have this thing where we just think, oh, it would be so silly to pay for an extra hour of health help an extra hour of childcare. So I can exercise in the morning, or an extra hour of childcare. So I can watch my show, right? These things are so important for our mental health and showing up as the mother that we want to be that we really are worth it as silly or as extravagant as it sounds to hire a cleaning company. Pay for extra childcare, ask somebody for help, have our husband change his work schedule or partner, spouse or whoever it is changed their work schedule. So you can do something that you need to take care of yourself, even if you feel like it's your job, to do all of those things. So good classic example that I've been working on with this is
after we get home from trips, I am really exhausted, always, almost always. And my husband is not he has like this endless amount of energy. So he'll start cleaning up and unpacking, as soon as we get home from a trip. And all I want to do is just get on the bed and veg because I'm exhausted. And I will start to automatically feel guilty because I have that subconscious program. I've done a lot of work on it. But it still pops up for me that oh, he's doing all those things. I should be doing all those things. I should be the one cleaning up and unpacking and doing all those things. But I'm tired. And I'm just laying here on the bed while he does them. And it's a perfect example of I catch it, I have the awareness and I say, No, he has the energy to do that. It's fine. If he does that he wants to do that. Right. I'm not asking him to do that. I'm not making him do that he's choosing to doing to do it. And like just stop instead of getting up and helping I just continue and to lay there, we actually have a joke about it. Because I'll joke and say stop doing that you're making me feel guilty. And he knows what it means he knows all this stuff. And he'll say, Nope, you're worth it. Just sit there. This isn't about you. And so it's not even asking for help or paying for help. It's allowing help in it's allowing others to do things and believing you're worth taking a break while they do something. Okay, that's huge. It's, I cannot stress it enough. Okay, stop comparing yourself to other moms. You never know what's really going on. I mentioned that before. You don't know when you see those other moms or you hear stories you don't know, you'll never know what's really going on in their life, it may be a lot worse than yours, you have no idea. So just remind yourself that. And if you're watching moms that make you feel bad on social media or TV, stop, unfollow them, really it's such an important thing for your mental health. If there's somebody you're watching, that triggers you stop watching them because they're that as you watch it, it's just deepening your subconscious program feeling guilt and shame about who you are as a mom. And then I really recommend distancing yourself from moms who aren't real about mother about motherhood and its challenges. There there, there are the rare people who just genuinely absolutely love every aspect of being a mom, but I'm telling you, they are so so rare and you'll know them like you'll know your friend who just really really loves being a mom. But most most women don't. Most don't and what you'll find is when you're real about it, other moms will be real about it. But if you You have a group or a circle of mom friends. And they're not talking about the negative side of it, I actually don't think that's the healthiest group, especially if you're struggling with mom guilt, you need to feel like you're not alone. And you need a supportive community who can empathize with you. And it doesn't mean that you're like, you know, bashing motherhood, or bashing husbands or, you know, I know a lot of talk can go that way. And it can go really negative, but it's just more being real, like keeping it real about what's hard and what you're struggling with. And, and I would distance yourself from moms who are making you feel like there's something wrong with you if you're struggling because we all are struggling. We all are, it's very real, consistent, healthy habits, reduce guilt and shame feelings and increase confidence in who you are. So the five major healthy habit non negotiables just keep coming back. They impact all aspects of life, which is why I start with them early on in the program. So as a reminder, those are drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, moving your body, eating foods that make you feel good meaning foods that make you feel good overall in life, getting all good nutrition, but you know, having your things that you really love as well, and stress management. So meditation, feeling your feelings, all these lots of things that we've been talking about. When you're really feeling in it like a mom guilt, right? Check in with the five things is there, one that you're lacking in are there multiple that you're lacking in and just start from the top, just go fill up your water bottle, start drinking your water, go down the thing and know that feelings pass, this too shall pass. Right? I actually have that tattooed on my arm to remind myself as humans, our feelings changed so drastically our to our day to day, week to week, and those remembering that that's part of stress management. But really staying serious about those five non negotiables are really going to help you with the guilt and shame piece as well. All right, what else do we want to talk about here? Living your values. Spend your time according to your values, not according to how other people might judge you. This is just massive. It's why we started with it in the various in the second episode, but in module one of the program, you really really need to take a step back and have
a serious and deliberate thought. And hopefully you've already done this, if you've been following the program long, you've already done this, you have your list of values, and you might tweak it based on something I've said here, right. That's why that best life master plan is dynamic. And it continues to change because your values change with when you learn different things. When different things occur in your life, different stages and phases of life, your values change. But make sure you have sat down and gotten very deliberate about where you want to spend your time. What do you value most of this phase in your life and that you have those in priority order and that you have yourself at the top. And every time mom guilt comes up or a decision about how to spend your time comes up, you can go back and look at the priority order of those values and see where does it fit. And that's going to help you make your decision every time and as long as you're spending your time in the ways that are aligned with your values for the most part. You're going to feel good in life and you're going to feel less guilt and that values list helps give you permission and to reduce the guilt. Okay. Okay, good. We're right at about the 20 minute mark. I'm just wrapping up with what I wanted to cover. Let's just do a quick recap. Number one is you haven't done anything wrong to feel guilt or shame about that's what we talked about in the first part of this in episode. Sorry, not episode one. But in the part one thank you. I couldn't find the words. In part one of the mom guilt we talked about. You haven't done anything wrong to feel guilt or shame. So really check in with yourself there when you're starting to feel it. Have you really done anything wrong. Do you need to behavior correction or not? Guilt and shame don't serve you well, there's no value to feeling that way. And there are detriments. There's no upside to the guilt and shame. And there is there are a lot of downsides. We've talked about them. Your kids don't care as much and aren't as impacted as much as you think they are. Living in line with your values and giving yourself permission to do so is key. Okay, so your homework is just a mental one. It's to start paying attention to guilty feelings and being more mindful in response to them in all the ways that we've just discussed in this episode. So thanks as always for listening. And if you want to go deeper in any of these areas, please reach out to me I'd be happy to talk to you we can work together in a one on one or in a group if your company is interested in that I work with companies would love to do that. Either way, reach out to me on Instagram or on my website. Women's best life university with Instagram is at Katy Blommer And you can find links to both of those in the show notes. And as always, if you're getting something out of this podcast, please do leave a review leave positive comments like or subscribe depending on where you're listening to it because that helps it find more people. Alright, thanks. I'll talk to you in the next episode
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