Who do you think is your worst enemy in motherhood?
Maybe it’s your spouse who parents completely opposite of you, making it hard to have any consistency in how you’re raising your children.
Maybe it’s social media which sucks your time, energy, leaves you in a fog, and only portrays a very unrealistic and fake take on the journey.
Maybe it’s other parents who are in the same phase of life as you but who appear to literally have it all together all of the time.
Maybe it’s your parents, how you were raised, the poor example that you were left with. It makes it hard to parent in a different way that you’ve never experienced.
Or maybe it’s your thoughts. Those negative thoughts about your parenting, your choices, your child’s behavior, and you as a person. The thoughts that lead you down the rabbit hole of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and despair.
My worst enemy in motherhood are my thoughts. Hands down.
Why?
Because it is so dang easy to get lost under that pile of struggle and so dang hard to find a way out.
Maybe you feel this way too.
Or maybe this happens to you and you don’t even realize it’s happening.
That’s the tricky thing about our thoughts. They are a part of you. They slide right in without you evening hearing the door open. But here they are, and they’ve made themselves at home in your mind. They’ve grabbed their cup of coffee and a comfy seat on the couch of your consciousness.
What does this look like? It looks something like this:
When your toddler skips her nap, you jump to…
“Ugh, I HAVE to have my alone time or I can’t handle today.”
“The afternoon is going to be a complete disaster because she’s tired and needs her nap.”
“Why can’t I easily get her down for a nap like my sister can with her toddler?”
“Seriously?! I can’t even get her to take a nap?”
When you read these thoughts right here on the screen it’s pretty overwhelming, and this is what our brain is doing to us throughout the day with lots of different situations.
“I can’t even go to the grocery store because my kid might have a fit; people will stare and think I’m a bad parent.”
“My three-year-old will never ditch these diapers for good, but the rest of his class is potty trained. What does that say about me?”
“Whine, whine, tantrum, tantrum. It never stops. He’s going to turn out to be a bad kid, and maybe he’s already on his way.”
“I don’t have the personality to parent such an emotional child.”
Know that the coming and going of these thoughts happens to everyone. You’re not alone in this. It happens to me too.
The good news is that you can begin to change the thoughts that come and go, and change how you respond to those thoughts. This is called “thought work.”
What I can tell you from my own personal experience is that thought work is a lot of work.
It can feel exhausting at the onset of paying attention to the thoughts that come and go because you realize just how negative your thoughts may be. But this awareness piece is critical. If you’re not aware of those negative thoughts and how they’re running – or ruining – your life, there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can change. They become the unnamed enemy.
As you become more and more aware of those thoughts that come and go, you can then accept them for what they are – thoughts – and avoid attaching any personal meaning to it. Yes, these are thoughts that come in and out, but they don’t have to have control over your life. You get to choose that.
One of the best things to do is to speak a different thought, a much more true and positive thought, to counter that “control freak” of your mind. So instead of thinking “I won’t be able to handle the afternoon without a break if my child skips her nap,” you can believe, “I can handle the afternoon with my child” or “I can easily create a break for myself even if my child skips her nap.”
See the difference there?
Working on my thoughts is an ongoing journey for me in every area of my life – motherhood, business, marriage, family life, you name it. But the work is worth it because our thoughts can have too much power over us if we let them.
If your worst enemy in motherhood is your thoughts – like it is mine, – know that it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s a way out, and you can feel in control.
