Loosing Yourself to Motherhood
Have you lost yourself to motherhood? You don’t know what you like anymore or you can’t remember how to be happy like you were before kids? You remember you used to be a person who laughed easily or was chill and laid back, but now you are not.
Instead you find yourself physically busy, but mentally bored. You might find yourself resentful that your spouse gets to go to work or see adults kid free. Maybe you find yourself staying up at night because you do not want tomorrow to come. Another day of the same old, same old.
Benefits of Finding Yourself Again
What if you could find yourself again. You could come up with something to be excited about getting out of bed in the morning for. Or love seeing your husband instead of feeling resentful. That unease feeling can go away.
All replaced with joy, peace of mind, and happiness. You could be your own person again rather than just a mom and/or wife. Incorporate things you love mixed into being a mom. Discover the type of mom you love being rather than the one you feel you should be.
You shouldn’t find yourself again for your family’s sake, but it does benefit them as well. Most women find as they find themselves, they are happier and more paitent. This is a benefit that trickles down to your kiddos. If mama is more patient, she is less likely to snap at them or sit scrolling on her phone, etc.
How to Find Yourself Again
1. Empowering Questions
Your brain is wired to find the negative in the world and protect you from it. Have you noticed this? Husband asks how your day was and you tell him all the things that went wrong. Or someone gives you a compliment and you think about how they don’t really know you. Maybe you even respond with, “Boy have I got you fooled.”
Your brain is also wired to search for the pink elephant. What happens if I say don’t think about a purple bunny? You immediately picture a purple bunny. Another example of this is if you decide it’s time to buy a house. All of a sudden you start noticing for sale signs in people’s yards. Yesterday you didn’t notice them and now they are everywhere.
So your brain is wired to look for the negative and to confirm what it is thinking about. What if you take this information and use it to your advantage. Come up with empowering questions instead of the natural ones your brain does.
For example, instead of thinking about how you can’t do this another day, you could ask what do I want to do with my day today. Now the brain is looking the things you want to do.
As moms you are often socialized to put other people’s needs first. You loose the muscle of desire and dreams. Empowering questions can help you rebuild these muscles. It isn’t that you are ignoring other’s needs, you are just adding your own needs back into the mix. A perfectly healthy thing to do.
2. Observe Yourself and Thoughts
What are you spending your time doing and thinking about? Is that what you want to spend your time on? Remember you may be physically busy, but you may find you have lots of time to think about things. Are you using that time to your advantage?
I know that I often find myself thinking about how annoying it is that I am stuck under a sleeping baby. Why do I want to think about that? I didn’t find it helpful. Instead I may want to meal plan in my head or think of ways to find time for my hobbies, etc.
Or are you observing that you spend a lot of time on your phone, reading a book, or binging Netflix? None of those activities are bad, but is is what you want to do?
But remember to just observe yourself. Please don’t judge yourself for your thoughts or behaviors. You need awareness if you want to change them and judgement pushes awareness away. Think of it as watching yourself in a movie. You are just curious what the character is doing and why.
3. Stand Up for Yourself
As you become more aware of yourself and start to know what you want, stand up for yourself sometimes. I find this easiest if you start small. When someone asks what do you want for dinner, simply answer that question truthfully. Or someone asks if you want to do a play date? A group of people ask for your input on something, give them your sincere opinion on the matter.
Little by little it will become natural to be honest about what you want and to know what you want. It is even okay if you say one thing and another choice is made. Just get good at being honest in what you want. With yourself and others. You may even find it relieves some tension in relationships.
4. Love Yourself
Love on yourself. How do you treat yourself. It is very common for people treat themselves harsher than they do other people. Would you talk to your daughter the way you talk to yourself? Would you allow your child to say the things you say to yourself to someone else? If not, then stop it.
How would you respond to your child who just made a mistake or didn’t do it the way you thought it should be done? My guess is you wouldn’t call them names and belittle them. So don’t do that to yourself.
A tactical tip: everytime you say something mean to yourself then you say something nice to yourself too. For example: this morning I thought I look like a two ton tilly. When I realized that I thought that, I could intentionally think that my body has gotten me through some hard times in the last six years. Thank you body.
If you have started on this process and you feel stuck, let’s chat! Book a free 30 minute consultation call where I can help you move through the process.
Until Next Time
-Keira
