How to Enjoy Motherhood MORE | What to Do When You Miss Life Before Kids | The Mom Psychologist

0:00 this episode is for the burnt out okay aka crispy af miserable mom who feels like they're just constantly sludging through life moving from one pointless task to another never really feeling fulfilled or like they're having joy and when they find themselves feeling this way maybe a little bit of regret starts to set in maybe a little bit of nostalgia about their past life before

0:32 kids and how wonderful it was before they had children and then you start to regret being a mom and then you notice your regrets and then you start to feel like a horrible mom and the mom guilt keeps piling up because at the end of the day you love your kids more than anything right you want what's best for them and you want to be there for them but you can't help but feel burnt out and overwhelmed and miserable

1:00 in the day-to-day lives and so most importantly most importantly you're asking yourselves now like how do i get through this right how do i get through this tough season ultimately how do i find more joy in motherhood more fulfillment more contentment more presence in motherhood um well if this sounds like you okay if you can relate just know you are in the right place okay keep listening keep watching um this episode is for you i am talking to

1:29 you so uh if you don't know about me i'm trying to get into the habit of introducing myself in these episodes i'm dr jasmine i am a clinical psychologist i'm also a mom of two little girls around here we talk about positive parenting child development as well as our own mental health as parents which is so so important and the three are all interconnected with each other right so this episode is about our own mental health as moms um and just a quick

1:59 disclaimer just like all of the information that i put out online um this is just for educational purposes only okay this is not meant to substitute medical advice so please please please please please consult with your doctor okay let's hear today's question from our fellow mom uh emma hi my name is emma i have a three-year-old and a one and a half year old i'm not sure if this is the type of question that you

2:30 would be interested in addressing but i am just struggling with finding the joy in motherhood i love my children and would never want anything to happen to them but i find myself always wishing that i could go back to before i had kids and if i had known how difficult it would be i probably would choose to not have any kids um i hope that i am not alone in this

3:01 feeling and i was just wondering if you had any um advice on the matter and really just to know if other people are having similar feelings so thank you for your time and i appreciate all that you do okay so as you can tell from emma's question which i love i first want to just say shout out to you emma for raising this conversation for being honest about the way that you feel because i know how much shame can come

3:31 with acknowledging that we regret motherhood we regret becoming moms that we have gotten to a point where we feel so overwhelmed so burdened by the all of what comes with motherhood that we regret it um and that is a brave place to be to simply acknowledge it and i'm sure so many moms and parents in general out there are listening in and they're like oh my gosh me too now i feel incredibly validated if that is you and you're

3:59 watching on youtube thumbs up this video leave some comments down below so that we can all just kind of support each other through this because especially early motherhood and motherhood in general but especially i'm gonna talk to the moms who have young kids it's hard right it's exhausting um there's a whole new you that comes right there's a whole a whole new body a whole new hormones um and it could feel like you know she's got a one-year-old and a three-year-old

4:27 and oftentimes it's so easy to tell ourselves i should be feeling better now my kids are one and they're three but it's but let's not forget how much our body has gone through and how much time it takes to fully heal from all of that right from just the task of childbirth birthing in and of itself i personally had my kids back to back they are 15 months apart and it took me a long time i would say about 18 months

4:54 at least to feel back to myself 18 months from the time my youngest was born okay so there was a period of years where i did not feel like myself i was trying to find the new version of me because so much had changed in my life so suddenly right and not to mention you know what comes with early parenting or early childhood i should say is you know the tantrums of the toddler years right and trying to figure out our

5:27 parenting approach and trying to figure out you know eating and sleeping and all of the things that come with parenting in general i mean it's a lot right all the intense emotions all of these things we're getting hit with back to back right not to mention okay for the parents if you're watching this around the time it came out around the time this episode comes out live we have been parenting in a pandemic we still are parenting in a pandemic

5:54 and for this mom you know she's been a mom for three years two of those years have been spent parenting in a pandemic and we have to acknowledge that right and acknowledge what we have been through as a collective through this pandemic right and through us trying to navigate not only parenting but parenting in a pandemic which is a whole nother thing right and we have to give ourselves grace for that right um this was not easy and

6:26 we're still in it in a lot of ways right um and so let's get into some of my practical tips some of the things that i offer to this mom and all moms who can relate to emma and all moms who fundamentally want to find more joy in motherhood i'm going to preface all of this by saying this is a journey right and that we're gonna go through ups and downs we're gonna go through seasons of our life where we feel like

6:53 we got it right we're on top of things right we're doing it maybe maybe that season is like a week or maybe that season is a couple days let's be real right and then we're gonna go through other seasons where we don't feel like we're on top of it and we feel overwhelmed and everything just feels like a lot right and so i love to think of life as moving through seasons because it really honors that these things are temporary even

7:16 though in the moment it feels like it's been going on forever and that you're never going to get out of it i want to offer you to to reframe it as this is a season in motherhood that you're going through that is really really tough right now not to negate that it isn't tough but and you're gonna get through this number one tip and this is a lot easier said than done i will say and this is something that takes ongoing

7:42 work but the number one thing is to acknowledge our emotions and really dig deep i mean i'm not saying just saying you know oh i'm feeling overwhelmed right now as a mom i'm feeling anxious oh i'm regretting motherhood right dig deeper than that um it's easy for our brains just to go easy to oh yeah obviously that's me uh-huh i've i've not acknowledged my emotions okay now we can just move on to problem solving no no i'm talking about digging deep

8:10 okay and this is gonna be hard right you're gonna have to try to find a space in your day where you can sit down with yourself and reflect i am um constantly reflecting every day actually and that comes through meditating and journaling which i'm happy to do another episode on but taking time out of your busy day to have some time with you and be honest with yourself about some of the emotions that are coming up for you during this season

8:39 right what are the hardest parts of motherhood right now and how do do these hard parts make you feel right how do they impact you emotionally um so here are some kind of reflection questions that i'll offer you as things that you can take and reflect on when you have a moment to yourself and this can look like just thinking these things through you could talk to somebody that you trust about these things reach out to a therapist

9:09 journal however this looks like in terms of processing but one of the things that um that is really important to reflect on are what are the behaviors that i constantly beat myself up about right what are the things related to motherhood and you can think in general too but related to motherhood what are the things that i constantly feel guilty about doing right so what so sometimes uh for a lot of us it looks like zoning

9:38 out on social media right and then you just like you you get out of your zone and you get out of that cloud and you're like oh my gosh i just wasted so much time oh my gosh i can't believe i was on my phone in front of my kids how did i get here right and then now you're spiraling with guilt or maybe it's ruminating about work with when you're with your kids or maybe it's

9:58 getting impatient and getting frustrated in the mornings or in the evenings or whenever you commonly feel frustrated right whatever it is like what are those things that can't you constantly beat yourself up about and why what are the stories that you're making of these behaviors i will say right what are you telling yourself in these about these behaviors and what they mean okay um and where take it a step further and think about where did i hear

10:26 those stories like where did i first learn those stories um one of the things that i struggled with as a stay-at-home mom because i was a stay-at-home mom for a couple years was feeling isolated and trapped and feeling just like i was touched out and i constantly um had to be on as a mom and i didn't feel like i had another identity as just the person my other person right just who's jasmine right not

10:57 forget being a mom but who is jasmine right kind of feeling like i'm just feeling trapped and isolated right not around a lot of other parents as much as i was used to just not really being around a lot of people as much as i was used to in my before i had kids so some of the things that i am working on or processing through now as i am a busy business owner ceo mom is leaving work at work right and not

11:25 bringing work into my relationship with my kids and i will i will notice when i'm beating myself up beating myself up for ruminating about work right and ruminating about how to get ahead um and and really when i did some deeper excavation about my thoughts about work and about what it meant it was there was a lot that was with it right all right so it's very important to think about these things and think about how all of

11:55 the different areas of our life interact with each other right they're all interconnected and so what are the stories that you're telling yourself about these behaviors that you're commonly beating yourself up about some other questions that you can ask yourself as you have time to sit with yourself is what do i enjoy most about being a parent right what are the times that i experience joy right and just feeling in the moment and present and just wrapped up in what's

12:24 happening in the moment um where what do i enjoy most about being a parent and where do i feel that most joy uh and then what do i like least right i can give you some some interesting insights right what do i like most and what do i like least um how has my life changed since having kids right when i kind of think back on who i was as a person before i had kids and now where i

12:51 am now how are those people different right how how am i different and how is my life changed now that i'm a parent now that i'm a mom um and what do i specifically miss about my old life get very specific okay because often we just kind of think oh i just missed my old life but what is it get really specific about what exactly do you miss so a lot of us commonly miss having more freedom right having more

13:20 spontaneity in our life or just having feeling like we have more time um to do the things that we want to do and kind of we don't have to think about other people's needs or more specifically our kids needs right we can just go based off of what we need and what we want in that moment and we can kind of more focus on ourselves right so there's things that can come out of this because then the next question is how can i

13:51 bring those things back into my life right now that i'm a mom and things are different how can i add some of those elements back into my life how can i add more spontaneity and adventure how can i add more freedom and more sense that i have more time for myself how can i practically speaking add those things back into my life yes they are going to be completely different it's gonna look completely different than the way it was

14:17 it has to right because now we have kids to consider and how can i add those things back into my life right we have more control than we think we do so sometimes it's a matter of just being intentional and thinking about these things right um and then also on the flip side what do i need to grieve right what about my life that i miss that i might not be able to get back in the ways that i want to and and

14:44 what feelings come up for that right how how do i need to grieve and process that the ways in which my life has changed and that won't be the same that i that i miss right um and honor that right um and you know the thing about nostalgia the thing about our brains um and this is backed by research research is that when it comes to looking back on our life we're more likely our brains are more

15:10 likely to remember the positive than they are to remember the negative and this is based in survival right we don't really want to be feeling triggered all the time right and feeling stressed and unless it was a very traumatic event and then that doesn't really hold true that we can still obviously be triggered and re-triggered over and over again but a lot of the times it's easier for our brains to remember more positive moments and experiences and memories than it is

15:38 to remember some of the not so good parts and the reason that i bring this up is because it's easy for us to be in overwhelm now especially as we are parenting in a pandemic and we are dealing with the exhaustion that comes with having to do this for the last two years now um and so it's easy to look back on even pre pandemic and you know miss all of the things that and all of the ways our life was not

16:08 really honoring some of the difficult things right and so maybe you think about and have a think about in your journal or whatever about you know what were the parts of your life before kids that were hard for you then that just helps you kind of keep everything in perspective right you can kind of zoom out and look at the context of your whole life in general okay tip number two and kind of goes it goes really well with tip number one is

16:36 just giving yourself permission to feel the way that you do it's okay to feel regret it's okay to miss your old life it's okay to have a really hard time right now to be in a really hard season right now in motherhood it is all okay and so trying to as best as you can acknowledge the feelings that are coming up with you in context right again why i've been talking so much about you know the ways

17:03 in which motherhood are hard is is a lot of times the context that we're in right the ages of our little ones and the hormones that are and the changes that our body has made and parenting in a pandemic i mean all of this is context right and it's so important for us to be able to put everything that we're experiencing in context so that we can make better sense of it and we can sort things out right

17:28 because often when we are in the overwhelm it's easy to lose perspective right and so just kind of honoring all of these things and validating uh the way that you feel can be extremely powerful in helping you move forward so giving yourself permission to feel how you feel right and the reality is that everything everything in life comes with pros and cons including motherhood right nothing is going to be all good nothing is going to be all bad there's pros and cons to

17:58 everything including parenting including motherhood right the highs are really high and the lows are really low right um and that that's okay we can acknowledge the cons and that doesn't mean we're bad parents that doesn't mean we're bad moms and that we're giving our child of these horrible childhoods right it just means that we're aware and we're honoring the nuances of this all right we're honoring the context um it this makes you self-aware and it makes you honest right um so adjust

18:29 expectations of how you feel right this it can be really easy to beat ourselves up right and just to expect like i expected motherhood to be perfect i expected to feel so content and filled with joy all the time and to have all this greater meaning like i expected a lot like it's so easy to lose sight of the fantasies that we had about motherhood before we became a mom right what we envisioned our life to

18:55 be was commonly all the good things right that came with motherhood and it makes sense right when we're trying to prepare ourselves for motherhood it's easy to get wrapped up in all the fun things and picking out the new clothes and thinking about you know family pictures and all of the things right um and all of those things are beautiful right but what have to what has to commonly happen over and over again is to re is to

19:21 acknowledge the fantasies that we had about life and motherhood and um be honest with ourselves about that and acknowledge and validate like wow this is very different than how i thought my life was gonna be and that's okay right and the other thing that can be really really powerful as we just spend time in reflection is writing a letter to ourselves one of the things that is really powerful is writing a letter to our current self

19:52 as our future self so imagining yourself as an old lady maybe you're 40 mate and 40 maybe you're 60 maybe you're 70 i don't know imagine yourself at a certain age not 40 but older and you're wiser and you're that future self right you're that more the highest versions of yourself real if you will right that future self whatever that looks like for you and writing from a place

20:22 of that to your current self can be very powerful work the other thing that you can do is write to your past version of yourself right now right write a letter to the to the person that you were before you became a mom right and when you had all these fantasies right offer compassion and validation and a little bit of a heads up to what life was gonna look like those two types um can be very

20:49 very powerful the other thing is mantras right it's a you know telling yourself over and over again it's okay for me to feel the way that i do it's okay for me to be overwhelmed it's okay for me not to enjoy every part of motherhood um i i don't have to enjoy every part of motherhood in order to be a good mom okay it's i am allowed to have hard moments right just like my kids are i'm

21:14 allowed that same permission slip so kind of really readjusting your self-talk and your views about you know what this all means can be very very powerful and then tip three is to make a list of the things that you enjoy right so often when we're going through difficult seasons it's easy to kind of ruminate and think over and over and over about the things that are not going right so make a list of the things that bring you joy right if we want to

21:44 cultivate more joy we have to take action right we have to move our body towards the life that we want right a body what is it an object in motion stays in motion well we've got to get in motion so the first step to getting in motion and taking action is to write out a list a very concrete list that you can stick out on your refrigerator or put in your room or put on your phone wherever you need it of

22:09 things that bring you joy so some of the things that bring me joy are things that smell good whether that's an oil diffuser candles lotions like i love a good smell i love a good scent i also love capturing moments with photography this has really been helpful for me as a mom is just pulling out my camera pulling out my phone and capturing moments it helps me stay in the moment and then i love to look back on pictures i'm just a

22:40 huge fan so that brings me a lot of joy um even planning out you know little day trips or new places that we're gonna go and then bringing my camera and taking lots of pictures that just lights me up um journaling lights me up i journal every day that has been a real game changer in terms of my mental health and just cultivating more self-awareness and processing things that i'm going through uh audiobooks learning new things i will walk and listen to

23:10 audiobooks or podcasts um and that always lights me up puzzling art you know tapping into my creativity looking at inspiring photos like so creating mood boards or vision boards really really light me up right because it's so important to be aware of the uh images that we surround ourselves you know whether that's in social media or tv or movies um or just our phones in general so i try to be intentional and i create a lot of

23:42 vision boards being in nature the beach plants hot baths and book man that is my jam and then having like some kind of skin routine you know nail routine just keeping up with myself those things light me up and bring me joy so it you know i'm just sharing you know personally what helps me in hopes that it inspires you to kind of think about the things that light you up what brings you joy simple things right

24:10 simple treasures simple miracles that you can just be more present of be mindful of be grateful of in the moment as they are happening around you can just be really powerful so the question that i have for you is you know and the question to ask yourself is how can i add more of these things into my life right where can i schedule time for myself i often hear i'm too busy i don't have enough time

24:37 time is an interesting concept i feel like i need to do a whole another episode of that but i'm really challenging that for myself and for my community we just did a master class recently in the mom sisterhood about uh negative parenting beliefs or limiting beliefs that we have as parents and one of them is time i don't have enough of it that's a really good one to be mindful of right if you find yourself listening to these tips and you're like

25:06 i don't have time to journal i don't have time for this it's like well then do you have time to feel joy in your life do you want this and i i say that with all the love in my heart but it's really important to just kind of be mindful of some of the beliefs that we have around time and what we make time for um it's not going to be easy right and and i get it motherhood

25:31 is hard and there's so much that comes with it and um i understand right that there's so many things in our lives competing for our attention but one of the things that we have to more and more come back to is how are we filling our own cup right how are we pouring back into ourselves how are we adding more joy into our life and it's not going to be easy but the more that we can schedule these things

25:55 in the better right because if we don't schedule it in it's probably not going to happen so i literally right in my schedule go for a walk i literally write in my schedule bath and book i literally write in my schedule go paint your nails whatever it is right i have to add this to my schedule or else i will forget i will get too busy and other things will come up right so the final thing that i'll leave you with

26:20 is this idea of surrender and how we as moms can surrender as much as we can to the ebbs and flows of life and so asking ourselves where are the areas of our life that we can surrender to right um because if we're constantly fighting life we're constantly battling against the things that are happening around us and to us then we're gonna be out of flow right we're gonna feel more overwhelmed so

26:50 where can we offer a little bit more surrender right that that energy of surrender um so that we're not constantly feeling miserable um and so some reflection questions i know this episode is full of reflection questions but some of those would be you know what do i need to surrender to right now what is motherhood calling me to accept right surrendering is all about acceptance so what am i being called to accept about the way that my life is

27:22 right now what is this current season teaching me where can i find joy play fun in my life where can i add that in right where can i cultivate that more and how what advice would my future self give me right now right what do i need to hear most what would my future self tell me right now um because we often have all the answers already within us it's just about stopping long enough to get quiet

27:50 silencing ourselves so that we can hear our wisdom and how will this period of my life if we zoom out how will this period of my life fit into the grand scheme of my story right of my life story um getting that psychological distance from the our day-to-day life right where we're just like moving from task to task to task and we're just on autopilot zooming out and thinking about where does this fit in the grand scheme

28:20 of my life right what story am i gonna tell about the way this whole season went when i'm older right what lessons will i have learned in this season this is very powerful right and what we're doing essentially is shifting our mindset from oh this is horrible and overwhelming and awful and all of that to where is the lessons here right where can i learn what how does this fit into the grand scheme of my life um which are

28:49 all just powerful concepts to think about over and over again again this is a journey right and when doing this work once or a couple in a couple you know for a couple weeks or a couple months is often not enough this is life work right this is continuous work that we'll come back to again and again uh as we go through motherhood and life in general so i hope that this episode was helpful and kind of just planning some seeds of

29:14 where you can reflect a little bit more where you can give yourself a little bit more grace a little bit more acceptance where you can surrender to the parts of your life that feel really hard right now i am sending you all of my love especially to the moms out there really struggling i see you i hear you i am you right we are all doing this together make no mistake right we are all in this

29:38 together and we will get through this okay i'm here to help i think that's all i have for this episode i'll see you in the next one bye