Managing expectations as a mother

“‘Why do I feel that I am not present enough? What is the standard?’ Doing that kind of inquiry is really important. When it comes to limiting beliefs around mothering and around career in this space, for me, it always comes back to asking the question of: What is the standard?”

Yara Heary @lifeafterbirthpsychology

For the most part, limits provide a framework that helps everyone move through the day more fluidly, and with less friction. But on this episode of My New Life, we discuss limiting beliefs — beliefs that interfere with our own wellbeing and that of our family. 

A big one is the notion that we can “have it all”. For parents who work outside the home, this can compound the pressure we already feel to be in more than one place at a time. And for parents who work inside the home, the line between family and professional needs gets easily blurred. Leaving everyone wondering: Am I a good enough fill-in-the-blank… parent? employee? boss?

Psychologist and motherhood coach Yara Heary knows this dance all too well, and she’s here to help us explore how these limiting beliefs show up for us, because being aware of these thoughts is the first step toward changing them. You can find Yara @lifeafterbirthpsychology.

Transcript:

Examples of common limiting beliefs

Jessica: So what are some of the limiting beliefs that some of your clients have? 

Yara: I work with mothers specifically, and in that space, one of the things that I hear a lot, are beliefs around worthiness, so things like “I don’t earn enough income, so I can’t put my kids in child care,” or “I am not valuable enough to spend time or money on my own needs and my own desires.” those are the sorts of things that I hear quite a lot, and I think that if we internalize those kinds of beliefs, it makes it really difficult for us to access joy and to access self-compassion.

Jessica: How do we get clear about what our own limiting beliefs are? 

Yara: One of the things that I really encourage people to do is when you are feeling distressed, when you’re in your mothering and everything is feeling really overwhelmed, and one of the signs of that for me is that I get in a space where I just feel burnt out, so I’m feeling like I really want to escape, like I just want to get away, and that’s the big sign for me that I’m depleted, overwhelmed, burnt out. And when that happens, I start to check in with myself about, Well, what are the things that have happened that have led me to be here?  And when I start to do that kind of discovery, it always leads me back to a place where I say, ‘Well, what is the thinking that happened that allowed me to for example, not express my need or not set a boundary,”

What are the thoughts that happened and often for me, the ones that really show up for me are that concern about being a present enough mother. For example, allowing myself to pull back from work, which I think is required sometimes as well, but maybe doing it to an extent that is more than I need to be doing in order to meet my own needs and checking in with that, with the thoughts that sort of arise in the background there. So really what we’re talking about here is self-reflection, so really taking time to really analyze those thoughts and behaviors that are leading us into that place where we are now feeling overwhelmed or depleted, and really, like I said, paying attention to those times where we feel stacked or we feel anxious, or maybe there’s fear or guilt. Shame is another really big one, so tuning into shame stories always gives us an idea about what the limiting belief is that may be present there.

And as part of that self-reflection, journaling is a really wonderful option and that’s something that I don’t use as often as I’d like to use, but when I do use it it’s always because things are not going well for me, so being able to do that in that time allows me to really expand on the thinking in a different way than I would do if it was just in my mind.

Being present as a parent

Jessica: I want to double-click on something that you said, you talked about one of your limiting beliefs is that you were not a present enough parent. I think I heard you say that, and maybe I heard you say that because I wanted to hear you say that, because that is one of my worries: That my mind is on work when I’m at home, and then sometimes my mind is on the kids when I’m at work. But often times I do get swept up in the adult work, I find it really actually stimulating. I love this company, I love what we’re doing, and then I’m like, wait a second, am I being present enough to my kids? Because I can still feel that churning going in the back of my mind about solving work problem. What do you say to this? 

Yara: The interesting thing about this is that even women who I’ve worked with who do not have paid work still have this feeling. It really speaks to the possibility that there is an ideal that we all are holding onto, which is maybe unattainable, if you’re not in full-time work and you’re in full-time care, like some full-time paid work rather, I’d say, and you’re in full-time care work with your children, that is all encompassing, but also there is so much else that needs to be done within that too, like no one is just minding their children, people are running a household, and all the parts that go along with that, and even within that, people still can feel like they are not present enough and so the question is, “Why do I feel that I am not present enough? What is the standard?” And I think doing that kind of inquiry is really important, what is the standard of a good enough mother. And I think for me, when it comes to limiting beliefs around mothering and around career in this space, for me, it always comes back to asking the question of what is the standard? 

What is the standard that I’m holding for myself? And where has it come from? So for many people, they may say, well, a good enough mother is someone who’s able to remain calm all the time around their children. Right, that’s unrealistic. That’s unrealistic. It’s actually just impossible. We’re not robots, we’re humans. So if we have these standards that are unattainable, not only are they limiting us in terms of our human expression and in our humanity, but they’re also going to be a source of continued feelings of failure and shame and guilt, it can make us feel anxious, it can make us feel low in our mood. 

Can we have it all?

Jessica: What about this concept that we can have it all? 

Yara: I love that you’ve asked that, I love love love that you asked that. And I cannot remember who it was that originally said this particular thing, but I believe that you can have it all, but not all at the same time, and that has been such a breath of fresh air for me to really hold on to that because I am someone who before having children, if I wanted something in my life, I just went and did it and I would work as hard as I needed to get that done. And so for me, my experience of becoming a mother and losing some of that autonomy to the responsibility of motherhood, and as well of understanding that if I want to show up in my highest capacity as a mother, it does mean putting some things on hold, that idea that I can still have the things that I want, but that there is a time for each of those things, has been really powerful for me.

And it’s something that I often talk about with women who have just become new mothers, so for the first time, because that’s the first time they may be experiencing that kind of phenomena, so saying to them, at different stages in your mothering journey, you’ll be able to have more contact with multiple things at the same time, but in the early stages where there is so much need and so much dependency, it means that some things do have to be put on hold, and I love that even just the idea of saying “It’s on hold, it’s not gone we haven’t said good-bye to parts of our lives completely. It just means that there needs to be a little bit of a slowing down at some point,” and then we can connect back with that again. One of the things that’s really useful to think about when we are thinking about the idea of having it all is, what does it all mean?

Jessica: I think a lot of parents worry that they’re going to lose their edge if they choose to, they have the option to choose to be at home with the children. They’re worried. So tell me about these trade-offs and how that’s evolved for you.

Yara: Sure. Before I went into being back in my business, it was really important for me to still be engaged in some way with the content of my business or the content of my work. So even thinking about it in that perspective, if I can’t be in my business running my business, seeing clients, running workshops, being on podcasts or whatever, how else can I be in touch with that part of me that really thrives on learning about psychological concepts and things like that, or about business and stuff… Well, okay, some of how I can do that is by remaining engaged with other people in this industry in some way, it also involves potentially doing short trainings that fit in with raising children, it involves maybe keeping on top of latest research and things like that by reading books and articles and stuff. So how can I still be in contact with that part of me without getting so deeply into that that then it becomes actually really challenging for me to show up as a mother.

Jessica: One more question on this. Achievement. So there’s also this notion of getting credit and getting achievement when you are working outside the home and you oftentimes the credit doesn’t come to you as quickly when you’re working in the home. And so talk to me about that process of letting go of that ego place of wanting credit, wanting achievement, wanting to be recognized.

Yara: Yeah, I think that this is so tough, and I’m so glad that you raised it. I’m sort of seven years into my mothering journey, and it is absolutely still present for me, and I think that… I have a podcast where I talk to mothers who work in the space of supporting other mothers throughout their mothering journey, and for some of those women that I have spoken to, they have teenage children, they have children who are now adults themselves, and it still is a thing that exists for them, and I think that we need to understand that the reason that that exists is because of our socialization. We have been socialized to really feed off the reinforcement that we receive externally to ourselves. And I think a part of that also comes from the fact that belonging is so important for us as humans and for our survival, everything back to when we’re babies, belonging is key for us to survive, if we don’t belong, we cannot survive.

Just knowing that that is something that exists for you is something for us to just sit with, the discomfort that we experience when we have a day and we feel like we’ve gotten nothing done. I feel like I have those days every single time I am with my kids. Later on, if I go back and go through a list and actually write down, I’m like, Wow, I’ve actually done a lot of things, but none of them feel meaningful because what is meaningful and what is considered achievement and of value is not necessarily the stuff that I’m doing in the home. And I think that some of that… Well, a lot of that actually comes back to again, socialization, but from the perspective of we’re living in a system which is very patriarchal and very capitalist, and the work of mothers isn’t valued, the care-taking work of mothers is not valued and is not seen as economically important as politically important, all of the rest of it, when the truth of it is, is that it is almost the most important work that can be done, because we are creating the next generation of people.

So I think it’s really important for us to understand some of the background there, so that we can use that in our own self-talk when we’re noticing that’s happening.

Jessica: I went to my daughter’s performance today, and I was like, getting so many things done at work, and then I get to the performance, get the car parked, get in there just in time, and then I sit and I’m like Being. And I’m just watching her and I’m watching the kids. It’s a sweet performance. I’m a little bit bored. I love watching my daughter from afar, but there’s so many kids, it’s kind of hard to see her face all the time, and so it reminded me about so much of parenthood as being rather than that dopamine, that positive reinforcement you get from getting things done and from completing projects and being creative and having a solution, and so it’s just… It’s a totally different also, way of being…

Yara: It’s the long game, isn’t it? 

Jessica: Yeah, it’s the long game and it can be a hard shift for a lot of people. I want to get into a couple of questions that we got. This mom shares her experience with us, and I just want to play this for you and get your reaction.

Making time purposeful

Caller 1: I find it difficult that the most time I spend with my children, it just seems to be in a rush in the morning, rushing to get ready for the day, and then in the afternoon transitioning back from work into home life and rushing to get dinner on the table and rushing the baby off to sleep and then the toddler, it just seems like the time that we get together is unsettled and moving towards something else rather than just sort of purposeful.

Yara: I think that one of the ways that we can work with that, and I also really want to recognize that this answer is laden with privilege as well, that I’m going to provide, and I’ll talk a bit more about that as well. But I think one of the ways that we can support ourselves in slowing down and to have more intentional time is to actually think about what do we have going on in our day and how can we be really intentional about the time we spend with our children, even if it’s just in small pockets of time, and the reason why I say that I know that that’s privileged is because obviously there are many mothers around the world who have to work for example, long hours in order to support their families, whether they are single mothers or not, so I really want to recognize that and say how awful it is to be in those situations.

But even within that, one of the things from a or psychological or intervention perspective that I often talk about with our clients is around creating what I call special time, and it’s talked about a lot in different parenting ideologies, but creating special time, which is it can be 10 minutes worth of time with each child that you spend one-on-one doing something that is just completely directed by them, and where you are not on your phone, we’re trying really hard to put thoughts away for later that we may have that are outside of what is happening in this moment. And you can even spend some time with your kids before starting that, where you just really front-load that so really explaining what special time is, how long it’s going to be for.

If it’s going to be ideally one child at a time, and thinking about then brainstorming how you will either get care for the other child or what you can set the other child up with when you’re doing that. I think also in a fast-paced world that we live in is thinking about where can we have ritual for connection with our children, and this is where that special time is one of them, but the other one is, can there be a ritual created in the morning before there is a parting… Can there be a ritual created in the night before there is a parting, because going to bed is a parting. Thinking about those things as those special moments that are short-lived, but powerful.

Jessica: Yeah, and speaking of attachment, I have something that I want to play for you, which is a question from a listener.

Caller 2: So I work grave yards for 12 hours. I leave around 6:45 PM. My nine-year-old is okay, he knows that I’m going to work but my two and a half it’s so hard to leave him every time he says no no and he’ll stand at the window when I leave and then he’ll cry and then I can’t look…

Yara: Yeah, that’s really tough. And this morning, I had a very similar situation as well, my son is in primary school, he’s in year two, and my daughter is in kindergarten, and it’s her first time in a structured kind of environment and she’s been fine and very excited about going there… She’s quite used to this school because we’ve been going there for a while with my son, but on this morning, she really didn’t want me to go, and so what that meant for me was a lot of holding space to listen to those emotions and then also recognizing when it got to a time where I had to leave because I was coming to have a chat with you, and really holding the boundary on that, but one of the things that we can do there is if we can’t hold space for the feelings of our children in the moment, which actually often happens, especially when we have multiple children because there are multiple needs at the same time, is returning and circling back to listen to the needs later on. In fact, I said to my daughter this morning, last night she was really distressed, I was trying to deal with my son and support him with his reading from school, and so I couldn’t give her what she wanted, which was just time literally to listen to her cry. And so this morning, I said to her when we were parting for school, I remembered that and I said, “You know, last night, I really didn’t have the time to listen to your tears did I?”

And she was like, No. And I said, “I’ve got lots of time for you this afternoon when I see you after school, we can sit together and you can tell me all about the feelings, but I need you to hold on to them for a little bit longer,” and that was just the reality of it, for me, we can’t always be… We’re not always in a position where we can listen to the tears, but we can circle back and come back, and a lot of that to me, that’s a process of rupture and repair. There was a rupture last night, I have intention to repair, and I speak to her about that intention to repair. And so for a mother in the same situation as this one who rang and left that message, reminding them that when they come back, there is an opportunity for a repair. So rupture is frequent in parent-child relationships, and it’s something that we can’t avoid. And so just keeping in mind that you always have the power of repair, which means coming back and bringing it up this morning, you were really upset and mama had to go because I had to go to work.

Tell me about how that felt for you. The other way that we can do that is actually through play, so in this special time that I spoke about earlier, is offering up role play situations where maybe they are the mother and they’re leaving you and you’re the one that’s crying and really upset that gives them power, and it also gives them an opportunity to actually work through the process that happened in the morning. As you said earlier, you know so much of parenting is just about presence, and so being the regulated adult who can be there to listen to and help regulate the feelings and emotions and nervous system state of our children.

Jessica: Yeah, there are so many demands on us as parents, and so thank you for framing that rupture as an opportunity to create even more connection later.

Yara: Absolutely.

Jessica: It’s been wonderful having you with us. Thank you so much, Yara.

Yara: Thank you so much. It’s been lovely, really lovely.

You can find Yara Heary at Life After Birth Psychology. Here are my takeaways from the conversation:

1. I discussed with Yara a limiting belief I often have: I’m not a present enough parent. Yara encouraged me to look at the standard to which I’m measuring my worth as a mother. Where did that standard come from? What is enough? This goes for any of the limiting beliefs we have.
2. Yara ascribes to the notion that you can have it all, but not all at the same time. There are seasons when one or another role is going to take priority. Give yourself permission to settle into the current role, knowing that there will come a time when you can switch hats.
3. The early stages of parenthood come with huge amounts of need and dependency. Give yourself permission to slow down, and while you may need to put other responsibilities on hold, those parts of your life can take center stage again at a later date. In the meantime, keep learning about your other passions so that you’re prepared when that day comes.
4. When caring for young children, it can often feel like you haven’t “achieved” much. But that comes down to what we perceive as meaningful. If you write down all that you’ve ticked off in a day, it may be easier to re-evaluate those tasks as meaningful, valuable care-taking. 
5. If you’re working outside the home and finding the separation painful, focus on 10 minutes of special time with your child each day. This is a time where the phone is out of reach and you’re following your child’s lead. If your child has trouble saying goodbye when you leave for work, talk about this special ritual you will have, when it will happen and what it will look like. 
6. Rupture is frequent in parent-child relationships, and it’s something that we can’t avoid. Keep in mind that you always have the power of repair, which means circling back: “You were really upset and mama had to go because I had to go to work. Tell me about how that felt for you.” Play is a great way to repair too. Play out what your child experienced with favorite toys and talk about what that toy might be feeling.

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