None of us is perfect. Not your kids, and not you. We all mess up, lose our cool and act in ways we aren’t proud of. It’s normal to feel guilty after you blow up on your kid, but there is a path back to connection. It starts with learning how to forgive yourself.
You’ll Learn:
When moms come to me worried that they’re messing up or traumatizing their kids, it’s often because of a few isolated experiences of them losing themselves in an angry moment and acting in a way that they don't love, like shaming their kid, name calling, being threatening, acting in a way that causes fear and pain for their child. Afterward, they feel this overwhelming regret, guilt, and fear that they have done permanent damage.
But these isolated moments don’t define you as a mom. The only thing you need to do now is attune and repair. This idea is so simple, so beautiful, and absolutely true.
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When you have a rupture with your kid and you show up in a way that doesn't feel good, or you end up not connecting with them when they're doing a bid for connection, and they feel hurt and sad, you probably feel really bad. It feels existentially wrong when we cause our children pain.
You had a big feeling cycle, you weren’t calm and emotionally regulated, and mama had a meltdown.
After this happens, it’s normal to feel yucky. It’s also important to have a conversation with your child to reconnect and repair the relationship. When you repair, you’re helping your child make sense of what happened when you yelled, shamed or otherwise caused them fear or pain. It helps them to understand that the way you acted wasn’t about them. It was about you.
But before you do this, you need to deal with your guilt. If you go into the conversation feeling like a monster or like something must be wrong with you, your kid is going to feel like they have to convince you that you’re not a monster.
You can’t rely on your child’s forgiveness to make you feel better. That’s not their job. It’s your job to deal with your guilt and shift to remorse.
Guilt can be informative. Guilt is when you realize, “I’ve done something wrong.” But when we focus only on guilt, we can feel really alone and ashamed of ourselves. It is a self-centered feeling that keeps you focused on worthlessness and self-loathing.
Guilt can keep you stuck in a destructive cycle of, “I’m a bad mom,” “I’m not good at this,” or “Something’s wrong with me.” It will keep you from actually taking action to make things right.
I’m here to tell you that you are not a bad person or a bad mom. You had a moment of overwhelm. You are a human, and you're going to have human reactions.
So rather than guilt, let’s shift toward remorse. Remorse takes it a step further to, “I have regret. I did something wrong, and I don’t like that I did it.” From this place, you can process those yucky feelings and start to make amends.
The keys to self-forgiveness are to separate the behavior from your core self and to have compassion for yourself and the feelings that led to the behavior.
When you act in a way that you don't love, you are acting that way because of your own emotional needs, because of something that's going on inside of you. The temporary overwhelm, anger, resentment or frustration that you felt and acted out is not YOU. You are not a bad person, you had a bad moment. You are a human who had a human reaction.
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