When maternal anxiety is more than 'just anxiety'

In my 15 years experience as clinical psychologist working predominantly with Mums, the most common emotional struggle I have heard described by those Mums is that they are living with anxiety.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that nearly every single Mum I have worked with, and every Mum I have known personally, myself included, has experiened significant anxiety in the context of mothering. And for most of us that anxiety shows up in all of the other areas of our lives too, at times - friendships, intimate relationships, work, etc.

For example, most of us are worried often that we're being judged, and coming up short in those judgements - In fact, many of us are often doing the judging ourselves, by comparing ourselves to others, and feeling nearly constantly worried that we are simply not 'good enough', a huge proportion of the time: Not a good enough mother, or employee, or partner, or friend, or daughter, etc.

Many of us would also say that this anxiety is actually the only emotional challenge we live with. If not for the anxiety, many of us have a sense that we would be 'fine'. Yet at the same time, many of us believe that our experience with anxiety and worry 'is just who we are', as if anxiety is a fixed personality trait that we need to live with.

My extensive experience in supporting Mums with their anxiety would suggest that neither of these premises are true.

Firstly, as humans, we typically actually experience many more emotional struggles than just anxiety, and in my experience we often have a huge range of unconscious emotional experiences bubbling away 'under our anxiety', which we tend to 'lump together' and call 'just anxiety'.

Secondly, my clinical experience suggests to me that our anxiety is not a personality trait. We all have the potenial to live with less anxiety, or at the very least - we each have the potential to release the stranglehold that anxiety has on our lives.

And these two truths feel very related to me - Once we begin to unpick our experience of anxiety, within good therapy, we can discover that what we have been calling 'just my anxiety' actually has its roots in a variety of emotional experiences we have had in our lives, which we have not previously had an opportunity to acknowledge, feel, validate, honour and therefore release.

For example, in my work with Mum's, we often start talking about their anxiety, but very often soon end up talking about far wider topics & experiences, such as:

• Fertility challenges - grief, stress, shame & trauma

  
  

• Postnatal depression that perhaps went unsupported

  
  

• Birth-trauma that went unrecognised & therefore unsupported

  
  

• Trauma, grief or shame related to breastfeeding challenges

  
  

• Difficulty bonding with our baby, or child, and the grief, guilt and shame that can come from those experiences.

  
  

• Grief for the loss of the joyful, easy, 'natural' motherhood journey you imagined

  
  

• Grief for the child you imagined you would have, when that idea is compared to the child you actually do have - who of course is wonderful their way, but is also just so different from the child you imagined you would have

  
  

• A loud inner-critical voice, that has often been present since childhood - the one that tells so many of us that we are not 'good enough', that we do not 'do enough', that we are 'not enough' without perfectionism & constant productivity and striving

  
  

• Relationship changes & challenges after the arrival of your baby - when we lose that connection we previously had with our partner it can leave us feeling vulnerable, scared and too often like we're doing 'something wrong' in our relationship.

  
  

• Changes in identity, from 'woman' to 'mother' - this can often bring up feelings of ambivalence, grief and sadness, and therefore also guilt & shame for mothers

• Physical health recovery from pregnancy & labour, such as pelvic floor trauma

• The constant stress of holding the mental, emotional and practical load & the lack of sleep that often comes hand-in-hand with parenting - this creates a chronic load on our nervous system, and this is often interpreted as anxiety, and 'just how we are', when it is often actually more a manifestation of societal gender inequalities.

  
  

• Rage - So many of us experience rage in motherhood, and we can feel so very anxious and shameful about it. Yet, again, particularly in the context of those societal gender inequalities, our rage is often very understandable, healthy and very often justified, anger

  
  

• Perimenopause - Most of us do not realise that our hormones in our body impact on our sense of stress and anxiety to the degree that they do. Many women experience an exacerbation of their experience of anxiety in their midlife, both cognitively (experiencing more rumination, and intrisuve throughts) and physically (a racing heart more often, heart palpitation, restless legs and a wired feeling in their chest).

  
  

• Childhood emotional traumas & unprocessed childhood emotions - Often, when we become parents, this is when we really become confronted with our unprocessed emotions from our own childhood. Seeing, and trying to support, the big feelings that our child expresses, leads many of us to realise that perhaps we were not 'allowed' to express our big feelings when we were growing up, or that when we did, perhaps we were not supported with these, and perhaps we were silenced or shamed for them instead. When this was the case, visceral memories of those emotions can remain stored in our nervous system, and often are released to be felt in the here-and-now of stressful parenting.

And this list is not exhaustive - There are countless emotional experiences we have as mothers, that often get confused for 'just anxiety', and 'just who I am'.

There is also the realit, of course, that there is truly a lot to be justifiably worried about in the world right now. Sometimes our anxiety is healthy. Sometimes our anxiety keeps us safe, or our loved ones safe - this is what this emotion evolved to do for humankind, and sometimes we need to honour that, rather than think of it as a 'personality flaw'.

In the therapy that I offer, clients have an opportunity to explore their anxiety, and to unpick what else it might be, and what of it might be 'healthy' anxiety, and then safely express and process a huge range of 'pent up' emotional experiences - When clients have an opportunity to do this, they often find that their anxiety begins to spontaneously & significantly improve, without us remaining fixed on 'just the anxiety' in our therapy sessions, at all.

As you read this list above, can you see there some life experiences you also may have had, that may be underlying your experience of day-to-day anxiety, and that nagging 'never enough' feeling?

If you would like to explore any of this for yourself, I offer motherhood-specialist, compassionate-focussed psychological therapy and therapeutic coaching, both in person in Ripon, North Yorkshire, and online across the whole of the UK.

I would love to hear from you, and begin exploring with you how I can support you, to begin to release the grip that anxiety has your life, and begin to cultivate more calm, inner peace, self-trust and confdence.

If you're ready to start, why not email me today at hello@mindbodysoulpsychology.co.uk ?

I very much look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. Jenny Turner,

HCPC-registered Clinical Psychologist & Founder of Mind Body Soul Psychology

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