Can we break free from the suffocating grip of societal expectations and transform the shame of motherhood into a source of strength? In this episode of "Motherhood from the Brain," we explore the unspoken struggles moms face, particularly the emotion of shame.
Society's portrayal of motherhood as an effortless, instinctive role is not just unrealistic; it's harmful. We dig into how these pressures lead to feelings of inadequacy and isolation, impacting both mothers and their children.
We'll uncover how social media perpetuates impossible standards, making it even harder for moms to seek the support they need.
By rejecting these societal pressures, we can redefine what it means to be successful in parenting—because success is subjective and unique to each individual's journey.
We also dive deep into the nature of shame, breaking down how it's driven by our internal beliefs rather than our inherent worth. Using relatable examples like public defecation and parental guilt, we illustrate how different thought patterns lead to different emotional responses.
Curiosity rather than avoidance is key—by investigating and challenging our thoughts, we can transform shame into an opportunity for personal growth and stronger relationships.
Tune in to gain valuable tools for navigating the complex landscape of motherhood and fostering a deeper connection with your preteen.
Don't miss out on this insightful conversation that promises to shift your perspective and empower your parenting journey.
Can we break free from the suffocating grip of societal expectations and transform the shame of motherhood into a source of strength? In this episode of "Motherhood from the Brain," we explore the unspoken struggles moms face, particularly the emotion of shame.
Society's portrayal of motherhood as an effortless, instinctive role is not just unrealistic; it's harmful. We dig into how these pressures lead to feelings of inadequacy and isolation, impacting both mothers and their children.
We'll uncover how social media perpetuates impossible standards, making it even harder for moms to seek the support they need.
By rejecting these societal pressures, we can redefine what it means to be successful in parenting—because success is subjective and unique to each individual's journey.
We also dive deep into the nature of shame, breaking down how it's driven by our internal beliefs rather than our inherent worth. Using relatable examples like public defecation and parental guilt, we illustrate how different thought patterns lead to different emotional responses.
Curiosity rather than avoidance is key—by investigating and challenging our thoughts, we can transform shame into an opportunity for personal growth and stronger relationships.
Tune in to gain valuable tools for navigating the complex landscape of motherhood and fostering a deeper connection with your preteen.
Don't miss out on this insightful conversation that promises to shift your perspective and empower your parenting journey.
3 Steps to Reduce Yelling So That Your Preteen Feels Safe to Come To You, Not Fearful.
https://masteryourownwellbeing.com/3steps
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Motherhood from the Brain, a podcast guiding moms of preteen girls on how to navigate emotional challenges that are not addressed in school. We share real stories, expert advice and brain-based methods for handling tough moments. Discover insights to create a deeper connection with your preteen and improve your motherhood journey. Let's tackle the uncharted territory of parenting together, hosted by professional, certified coach, esther Babazi.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the Motherhood and the Brain podcast, episode number 26. And the Brain podcast, episode number 26. I just want to say that I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or any other licensed mental health professional. On this podcast, motherhood and the Brain, I just share what is working for me in my life, what is helping me improve my life, my mental, physical and emotional well-being, in the hope that at least someone out there takes something that has helped me and improve their own lives and the lives of their preteen. In today's episode, I'm going to discuss the silent struggle of motherhood, aka shame, the emotion of shame.
Speaker 2:
Motherhood is often portrayed as the most natural and instinctive role a woman can do woman can do In our society. It is perpetuated that raising a child should come effortlessly to women, as they possess an innate ability to nurture and guide new human beings who have their own unique brain and agency. However, what I have found is that this expectation is not only unrealistic but can also be harmful. It puts pressure on mothers to feel ashamed when they struggle, leading to isolation and unnecessary suffering for both themselves and their children both themselves and their children. Many mothers hesitate to seek help or admit their difficulties because of the belief that they should instinctively know how to raise children. This assumption is flawed, like I said, because, just like any other complex skill, motherhood is not something we are inherently born knowing how to do. In traditional school curricula, we are not taught how to nurture or educate another human being. Yet when we struggle, we are made to feel as though there is something wrong with us. As though there is something wrong with us. This pervasive shame prevents mothers from seeking the support and knowledge they need, accelerating their struggle and impacting their children's well-being.
Speaker 2:
From an evolutionary standpoint, shame is a universal fear that is rooted in fear. Shame is an emotion that is rooted in fear. Many years ago, millennia ago, mothers feared that not raising a good child quote unquote a good child had consequences for the child and the mother themselves the fear of not being a part of the societal ideal of motherhood and failing to meet cultural expectations. If a mother feels that she is not living up to these societal expectations, she fears isolation and rejection. This fear manifests itself as a painful sense of unworthiness, the feeling of being unwanted or unacceptable. As a mom, shame is an overwhelming sensation that can consume you when you worry that something undesirable about your motherhood skills is about to be exposed or has been exposed. As human beings, we crave connection and support, making the avoidance of isolation a powerful motivator For moms, this craving for connection can be particularly intense as we seek validation and acceptance within our communities.
Speaker 2:
Our survival as a species has long depended on forming strong bonds and working together in groups or tribes. In the early stages of evolution, people who were part of a united group were more likely to survive and reproduce. Tribes and groups provided protection against predators, protection against neighboring tribes if they attacked, and tribes and groups facilitated hunting and gathering, and they allowed for the sharing of resources and knowledge. Living in groups and tribes also enabled the development of advanced communication and cooperation skills, and over time these skills have become more refined, leading to the complex social structures that we see in our society today. So this deep-seated need for connection and community is why social exclusion can be so psychologically and emotionally painful, especially for women mothers.
Speaker 2:
Shame, just like all other emotions, serves a crucial evolutionary purpose it was designed to keep us in line and maintain our relationships with others by redirecting our attention to behaviors that might lead to exclusion from the tribe or the group. For mothers, shame acts or acted as an internal warning system alerting us when our actions might jeopardize our social connections within our families or community, or group or tribe. However, the problems arise when women or mothers we misunderstand and internalize shame, when we confuse shame with our identity as people or as mothers. So, instead of recognizing shame as a signal or information from our brain, many of us, we let it define who we are. This misinterpretation can lead to a range of negative outcomes, including depression, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, and all these things affect the way we relate or interact with our children, the way we relate or interact with our children. When we see shame as a reflection of our worth, rather than temporary emotional state, it becomes a source of deep psychological distress.
Speaker 2:
Shame traps us into a cycle of comparison and impossible standards. Today's social media makes this worse by showing pictures of perfect families and effortless motherhood. Just take a quick scroll on Instagram or TikTok or even Facebook, and you can see how we don't measure up to those women on those apps. You might think I'm not patient enough, I'm not organized enough, I'm not loving enough, and this demand for perfection will make you feel like you can never catch up to or never succeed. And just to be clear, success in parenting is like a mirage. It's like a mirage. I don't think we will ever achieve it, because success means different things to different people. So that is why, when we compare ourselves, we end up suffering, because we are different people with different needs and different understandings and different cultural upbringings and everything. So we will never be the same. So when we compare ourselves, we keep failing. So how do we break the cycle of shame in motherhood?
Speaker 2:
When you feel shame, when you feel ashamed, it means that you consciously or unconsciously agree to the set standard of whatever is leading you to feel shame. Let me repeat, this is very important when you feel ashamed, it means that you consciously or unconsciously agree to the set standard, to society's set standard of whatever it is that is leading you to feel ashamed. In society, there are both written and unwritten rules that may lead us to feel shame, depending on what we think about those rules. And there are some rules that are good for society. We do not want people to have sex in public. People to have sex in public. I would not like to go and have a long call or defecate in public. I would not or even pee in public. I don't want to walk around in the nude in public, like in these situations like this. I think, in my humble opinion, I think that shame is good. In my humble opinion, I think that shame is good and I agree with that societal standard. I agree with it that it is okay that we have these rules where we don't go around having sex in public, where we don't go around undressing and walking in the nude in public, where we do not defecate in public like all these things. So my thoughts about that I agree with those set rules.
Speaker 2:
But when you feel shame for other things, then you need to look at what you are thinking. Other things, then you need to look at what you are thinking. Just like anything else, shame is an emotion and what we think about or the sentences in our heads lead us to feel a certain way. So when you feel shame, it means you are thinking something. Shame comes from your thoughts. So instead of viewing shame as a reflection of your worth, it is time to get curious about what you are thinking. What is it that you are thinking that is leading you to feel shame? Let me give an example. There are people who defecate in public. Their thoughts about that are okay. They don't feel shame because of what they think. They think it is okay to go and defecate in the public and they do not have feelings of shame about that. This is what I mean. There are people who, okay, I haven't seen people walk in the nude, I have not seen any, but I have seen they have been. Like when you walk around in certain areas, in the parks and stuff and people difficult there, and those people have the way they think does not lead them to shame. That is why they are able to do that.
Speaker 2:
So every time you feel ashamed, you have to go back to what it is that you're thinking, and sometimes I like to say that what we are thinking sometimes flies under the radar. It is not, at least for me. This is my personal experience. Not all the time do I catch what I'm thinking immediately. I need to go back and think what is going on. But when I feel shame, sometimes I have to sit down and write Like the thought, download the thought dump I talked about in one of the episodes, just to see what is really causing me to feel ashamed, because not all the time the thought will be available to you. You need to do a little digging to find it. So, when you feel ashamed, take a literal pause and check with yourself. What are you thinking? What are you thinking, what are you believing? Because a belief is a thought that we have been thinking over a long time, that it is now automatic. It does not even appear as a thought anymore. It is something that we think that we should be doing. So take a pause and see what comes up for you.
Speaker 2:
Shame makes us want to hide. Shame makes us avoid others and retreat from situations where we might be judged or criticized. This desire to hide away is to protect ourselves from further emotional pain and rejection is to protect ourselves from further emotional pain and rejection. The thing is, when we hide, when we feel ashamed and we hide, we miss out on experiences. We miss out on relationships and chances to grow or improve, and avoiding situations that might lead us to shame makes our fears and anxieties worse over time About the said situation. They become worse over time, and hiding from the things that lead us to shame can prevent us from learning and investigating about our thoughts, about what is leading us to shame, about our thoughts about what is leading us to shame, and this reinforces our feeling of shame, making it even harder to overcome Shame.
Speaker 2:
I know this sounds very complicated, but when you do something, when you feel shame, you want to hide. You feel small. You feel like you want to hide. You feel small. You feel like you want to at least my personal experience. I feel like I want to dissolve in my body. I want the ground to open up so I get swallowed in the ground. I have to get away from whatever that is leading me to feel shame. I want to get away, and what that does is it prevents me from investigating and getting curious and learning. Like, what is this about? Because I am too focused on running away and getting away, I don't learn anything. I don't investigate my thinking. I don't question my thinking to see whether what I'm thinking is helping me or not, because I want this to get over and done with. I want it to disappear.
Speaker 2:
But when we become curious about our thoughts that lead us to feel ashamed, our thoughts that lead us to feel ashamed, we learn and make positive changes. Instead of avoiding situations that cause us shame, we can approach them with an open mind and question them and pull them apart and see what is it that we are believing and this will lessen the anxiety and fear. Curiosity about our shame encourages us to explore and understand the root cause of our shame. When we seek to understand why we feel ashamed, we can address the underlying issues more effectively. So let me give an example.
Speaker 2:
You come home from work and, I don't know, your 11 year old gives you attitude Instead of getting started on the homework. She's giving you attitude and before you know it, you are yelling at her. And because you have yelled, you feel ashamed because you yelled at her. And when you feel ashamed, most likely you will walk away, go maybe in some room or in your room, or you will disconnect with her, or you will attempt to do something to cover up this feeling of shame. You do not remain in your shame. You do not become curious because you think you're a horrible mother and this just compounds the feeling of shame, the feeling of unworthy. You start to doubt your parenting skills, like the spiral continues. But when you become curious, okay, I yelled, but does that mean I'm a bad mother or horrible mother? Maybe you think that good moms don't yell at their kids, but is this true? What if good mothers? I'm saying good in quotes, because we don't know what a good mother is and a bad mother is. So good is in quotes.
Speaker 2:
So what if it's possible that good mothers sometimes lose their temper? What happened right before I yelled? Okay, I'm exhausted, I'm trying to put dinner together while I help my child with homework, and she won't budge. She's giving me attitude, she's arguing with me. So I lost my temper and now I feel ashamed. So I lost my temper and now I feel ashamed. What if it is okay that any human being who is exhausted is prone to yelling? What if it's possible that any human being who is exhausted, had a full day, a long day, is trying to make dinner and do stuff, has a human moment and yells? What if that does not define you? What if that does not mean anything? What if it is possible that that has nothing to do with your worth as a mom? It is just something that happened and it is okay. Like you have to be curious, you have to become curious. I like to become curious, and when you become curious and see that you just had a human moment, then you will understand that even if society says that good mothers aka good mothers should not yell at their kids. Maybe that is not true. Maybe you're human. You had a human moment and yelled, but you are going to do better next time. A human moment and yelled, but you are going to do better next time. It's not that you set out on purpose to yell, it just happened because you're exhausted.
Speaker 2:
Many of us do not have emotional regulation skills. Like we don't know how to regulate ourselves. We think that our kids' behavior leads us to yell because we are just piecing this together. We never learned anything about this. We are learning it in the school of life and that does not mean you are failing in society's eyes. Try doing that the next time you do something. The next time you do something.
Speaker 2:
I have. Just recently, before the end of the school year, my child had a gymnastics final presentation thing and we have this app where we're supposed to log in and follow up on the updates and information about that activity, and I have had trouble logging. They made a new app. We had an old app that they discontinued and we downloaded a new app and I have had trouble logging. Made a new app. We had an old app that they discontinued and we downloaded a new app and I have had trouble logging in the new app and the people who run the gymnastics activity are not even available. I try to contact them to tell them I'm having trouble logging in, but I never received any answers. So I have been depending on my workmate. She is logging in the app and she's been like feeding me information, but I had not seen her for a while so I didn't know that they had set a date for the end of end of school year final gymnastics presentation. So I had no idea and turns out my child did not go to the gymnastics end of your presentation because I did not get the information.
Speaker 2:
I did not know there was anything like that and of course my brain immediately, immediately, went to you are a horrible mother. That is where my brain went and I sat my daughter down and I told her did you know today was the final presentation, like end of school year presentation for gymnastics? And of course she didn't know because she did not follow, follow. I don't know the information. Maybe they gave, I don't know. And she said she did not know and she she felt a little bad but she got over it very quickly. So yes, I apologize. I told her, you know, I I didn't know, because I can't log in the app and the person who normally gives me updates. I have not seen her for like three weeks. So I did not know and I went back. I sat I was like does this make me a horrible mother? Does this because I felt ashamed? And I was thinking I'm a horrible mom, I feel ashamed. Maybe she had a role in there. Sometimes they have these roles that they do. So I was thinking I'm a horrible mom, I feel ashamed. Maybe she had a role in there. Sometimes they have these roles that they do. So I was like maybe she had a role. Now she didn't show up.
Speaker 2:
My brain was in a spiral and I was like brain, I see and I understand what you're doing. Nobody wants to be a bad mother. Nobody wants to come across as a bad mother, and this happened. There's nothing we can do about this, and this does not mean I'm a bad mother. I simply forgot, not even forgot.
Speaker 2:
I did not know there was a date. First of all, it was on another day. It was not on the same day that they have the gymnastics. It was on another day. It was not on the same day that they have the gymnastics, it was on another day. So I was like, brain, this does not mean I'm a horrible mother, this does not mean I'm failing. My child does not even care. She moved on very fast. I told her, like did you know today was? And she was like, oh my God, now I missed. And like she moved on to the next thing, like she did not make it a big deal the way my brain did.
Speaker 2:
So I was able to become curious whether not becoming aware of a date makes me a bad mother, and I refused to believe that my brain presented it to me. I was like no, no, brain, I am not believing that. I did not know and what I'm going to do is work on my. I'll find somebody to help me. I just have to go down there and speak to one of the people who are in the committee to see whether they can help me log in in the app. But that does not mean I am a bad mother or horrible mother or whatever the brain says. Okay, so the next time you feel ashamed and your brain wants you to hide because you forgot something, no, just become curious whether that really means you're a bad mother. Today, my audio is I don't know is a little weird because I'm using some equipment that I have not been using before, so I apologize for that. Thank you, everybody for listening. Talk to you again. Have a nice day, everyone. Bye for now.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Your time means the world to us. If you found this episode valuable, we would be immensely grateful if you could spare a moment to visit Apple Podcasts and share your thoughts through a review. Your feedback plays a vital role in helping fellow moms discover our podcast and enrich their own motherhood experiences. Take care and bye for now.
