Fear of being a bad mother. I'm afraid of being a bad mother I'm afraid of being a bad mother

During consultations, we often face the fear of being a bad mother. This destructive feeling is hidden in many of us ... And we must resolutely refuse it. This feeling is an additional load, additional stress, uncertainty that spoils the interaction with the child. Instead, the conviction should come: “I am a wonderful mother. I am the best mother for my child!”

Women really want to do everything right. Especially when it comes to raising children ... Sometimes it seems to me that modern women are better off knowing less. After all, you read all sorts of smart books on education - and you realize how far you are from ideal!

Once it seemed to me that if I tell my friends about natural parenting, I do good. Now I know for sure that it is necessary to stubbornly remain silent until they ask. No matter what mistakes a person makes... Even on the Internet, I strive to talk more about myself than to give advice. Just describe your experience...

So sometimes I want to hint to a friend that you should not teach your baby to walk "by the handles." Or introduce complementary foods on schedule, replacing feedings. Or cleaning the apartment while the baby is sleeping...

But then I realize that if a person is ready for such information, he himself will find it on the Internet. Or ask you after seeing your example. In other cases, all these subtleties are clearly superfluous.

I am a proponent of natural parenting. But I'm about to say something that other proponents of natural parenting will kill me for. For the most part, none of this matters.

The tragic consequences caused by walking with a child in a stroller are doubtful. As well as the tragic consequences of pediatric complementary foods. And many more. But maternal self-doubt and perfectionism are not very good. Again, not a disaster. But if a woman has a fear of being a bad mother sitting inside, it is better for her to listen to sublime instructions less.

I overcame this fear when I gave my baby a pacifier. Yes, in the first months my children sucked on a pacifier! There were reasons for that, of course. But for supporters of breastfeeding and slings - it's just a nightmare! Most of her friends reacted extremely disapprovingly to this. And I had to make a conscious choice in favor of a "bad mother" instead of a "heroic mother." At some point, I allowed myself to be imperfect. And it became much easier for me.

That's what I want to say now ... Being a "bad mother" is not so scary. In fact, everyone who reads this post are wise and conscious mothers. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, right? Making mistakes is okay. Deviating from the ideal is normal. Even lashing out at children is not a global crime. The most important thing is that you are trying to be better. Try to be wise and aware. And that already makes you excellent moms. Your children are very lucky!

A woman's attitude towards her child is influenced by her early relationship with her own mother. The more warmth there was in these relationships, the easier it is to transfer the experience of love and acceptance into a relationship with your child. And vice versa. If the mother was cold, avoidant or controlling, angry, the woman involuntarily manifests this negative pattern in her relationship with the child. There is no other model.

The situation is even more complicated in the case when the rejection of the daughter was observed in several generations. The deeper the roots of this destructive pattern are, the more difficult it is to get rid of it. The main task of therapy in this case is to restore the flow of love from older women to younger ones.

In this article, I want to draw the attention of readers to such a phenomenon as a little girl playing with a doll. This experience is extremely important in shaping a little woman and preparing her for motherhood. While playing with dolls, a natural instinct manifests itself, girls learn to be mothers.

So, for example, in the book "The Unconscious Use of Her Body by a Woman", its author, Dinora Pines, cites the statement of well-known psychoanalysts H. Deutsch and T. Benedek that a girl's desire to become the same as her mother " is planned in the game and fantasy long before the real opportunity to become a mother.

Soviet psychologist, academician K.N. Kornilov in the article "On the psychology of children's play with dolls" wrote: " Having barely left the period of early childhood, having just learned to control her voluntary movements and speech, we already see that the girl begins to nurse her doll, with which she does not part even when she becomes a teenager from a child and even an adult girl, when often the last doll is replaced by the first child."

In the book of V. Hugo "Les Misérables" there is the following phrase: " A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy and just as unthinkable as a woman without children.

Below I offer an example of working with infertility that brings to light themes such as the importance of doll play, motherly love, and generational continuity in a girl's life.

Case Study

Yulia is 32 years old, she and her husband have long wanted a child, but pregnancy does not occur. Sometimes in the speech of a young woman slips the thought that she is afraid to be bad mother. All childhood memories of Yulia are colored by resentment towards her mother: "I didn't give it, I forbade it, I beat it..." These are the usual mother's actions.

And now an elderly mother lives in a state of constant dissatisfaction with life. She has only one hobby - making dolls. "You should have seen with what love she makes patterns, cuts and sews parts of future dolls, paints them, dresses up" Yulia says.

When I asked her to take the place of an imaginary mother - to be a "mother", Yulia felt that by making dolls, her mother, as it were, returns to childhood. She " plays with dolls doing something she never did as a child. Julia heard that her mother really wanted dolls as a child, "well, at least one, the most unsightly". But her mother sternly answered all requests: "No". She did not even explain to the girl why she was refusing. "Absolutely no".

Mentally, we moved into the past, 50 years ago, when Yulia's mother was a little girl.

When Julia took the place of her grandmother (mother's mother) and became a "grandmother", she felt as if her whole body was filled with something foreign, something that interfered with breathing. To my suggestion to fantasize: "What does it look like? What image comes up?", — an image of a well filled with tears appeared. This woman really had to go through a lot, and she forbade herself to cry even in childhood.

In the process of my dialogue with "grandmother" she had a desire to move the well with tears from the body to the steppe. "Let the animals drink some water, salt water is a joy for them". When the "grandmother" was freed from the well, she began to breathe deeply, "as if there was room for the lungs". Now she could see the eyes of her daughter, that little girl who desperately wanted a doll. It became easy for the grandmother, freed from the "well of tears", to say to her daughter: "Can". And the girl had a coveted toy. She rocked her plastic "daughter", combed her synthetic hair, "fed" her, played with her, admired her. On the example of a doll, the girl learned how to treat her unborn child. In her imagination, she got the experience that she lacked so much in her relationship with her mother, so that she could then transfer it to her relationship with her daughter.

When the girl played enough with the doll, she was able to grow up. She felt like a woman with a daughter, Yulia, and now she knew how to love her child.

From the look of her mother, Julia realized that she was her loves. There was such warmth in the eyes, and the lips smiled, and the mother's arms opened wide to meet Yulia. And she ran into those open arms! Mom was able to show love towards her daughter, and the daughter gratefully accepted this love.

Any information is imprinted in our brain if accompanied by strong emotions. For our psyche, it does not matter whether these events were in reality or only in the imagination.

The feeling of maternal love has become a new experience for Yulia. Now she knows what it is to love her child. But in order for new information to become familiar, it must be repeated many times. It takes time to redirect your psyche and change your attitudes.

“My daughter has a nervous tic. He was almost invisible, the girl just blinked more than usual, but I got worried. I found a good psychotherapist through my friends and made an appointment. At the first meeting, the doctor asked me to come without the child.

The therapist was young, curly and beautiful. I sat down, sighed and told her that Masha had a tic. The doctor asked if I saw any reason for them. I burst into tears and began to repeat like a clockwork that I am a bad mother and pay very little attention to my daughter. She also said that she got married after a divorce from Masha's dad, and this, probably, became a big stress for the child.

The psychologist asked me to tell about myself. I replied that I work from home, that recently I have lost 15 kg, that I feel constant weakness. At the end of the session, the therapist noticed that the first thing she should do was work with me, not with her daughter. I replied that I had no money for it. The doctor was surprised: “You were willing to pay me the same amount for the child. So you could find it for her?“ And I suddenly realized that yes, I would find it for her. And obediently signed up for the next meeting.

Food for thought

It soon became clear that my problem was that I didn’t “feed” myself, I didn’t feed myself - neither literally nor figuratively. The doctor asked me what I eat when my daughter is at school and my husband is at work. And I either forget about it altogether, or I chew something on the go, drinking juice from the bag. She asked why I cook normal meals in the evening and on weekends, but I don't do it during the day. And before I had time to come up with an answer, she said for me: “Why cook if there is no one at home?” This phrase expressed my thoughts so accurately that I burst out laughing.

We began to work on making me stop perceiving myself as a person who does not exist. I told how my mother was always busy with her personal life. In kindergarten, I was on a five-day week. In the summer with my grandmother, and when I grew up, they sent me to the camp for three shifts. I always drew well, won competitions and was considered an artistic girl. But to my mother, my talents seemed stupid, because in really important things - mathematics, chemistry, physics - I was zero without a wand. Mom was very embarrassed about this. She is still unhappy that I am sitting at home and drawing some pictures for children's books, and do not go to a normal job in a normal office.

I said that my mother and my first husband, who was much older, reproached me for not being a caring enough mother. She admitted that all four years of her life with her current husband, we have had a very bad time with sex: I am terribly ashamed to do it, because I take time and attention from my daughter! If this happens during the day, then immediately after I jump up and run to hug her, play and occupy. If at night, I rush to check if we have disturbed Machine's sleep. Why, even going to the store for my boots, I return without them, but with a hat and dresses for my daughter and shirts for my husband. I am painfully uncomfortable spending money on myself.

And this is a thought

As I said all this, I began to feel as if one heavy blanket after another was being lifted from me. And I began to see some gaps in my life. It seemed to me that everything was not so bad. That in fact I always support my daughter and am very proud of her, regardless of her studies or sports victories. I care about her health and emotional state. I realized that I have my own story. I was peculiar, but still loved by my first husband, and now I am dear to the person with whom I live. Many people like what I draw, I have a queue of customers.

These are simple thoughts, but before they sounded like this in my head: I have a lot of customers, but still I earn less than I would like. I treat my daughter, but not well enough, she still gets sick often. My husband loves me, but I give him too little in return. In the psychotherapist's office, I had the opportunity to retell in detail the life of one imperfect, but, as it turned out, very pretty girl. And the more I talked, the more I looked at myself from the outside, the more I liked the resulting image.

All for yourself

At first it seemed to me that nothing was changing. I just went to the doctor and talked non-stop about myself for an hour a week. But once I noticed that the belt does not fasten with the usual hole, I got on the scales - plus three kg! Then I suddenly got angry with the client and said that I only make three edits to the drawing. If after that he does not accept the sketch, he should look for another, more understanding artist. And to my surprise, the client agreed with the reasonableness of this condition. After a while, I found myself making love to my husband for half the night, and then fell asleep, happy, in his arms, forgetting about my daughter sleeping in the other room. And yesterday I unexpectedly signed up for a dentist: I needed it for a long time, but it was a pity for the money, it already took too much to correct my daughter's bite ... But I signed up! For myself! For your teeth, can you imagine?

And Mashka's tick passed unnoticed: either the massage and the pool played a role, or my psychotherapy sessions - now it's impossible to say for sure. I still drink juice from bags and dine on sandwiches, but my life has become much more fun than before. Now I'm even seriously thinking about buying myself a summer dress. Even two!

Recorded by Alina Farkash