"Oh God! I'm angry at my newborn baby! I’m a bad mother...” Let’s see if this is true. Why shouldn’t a young mother be afraid of negative feelings? Why is it important to stay in contact with them?
We are too afraid of our feelings. It’s as if we were once told in childhood that all good people should always be kind and cheerful, and only negative heroes can be angry and afraid. However, there is an exception to the rule: sometimes a good character is allowed “righteous anger,” but only against notorious villains.
Growing up from fairy tales, we seem to understand with our minds that the world is not so simple and unambiguous, but when it comes to our parental feelings, for some reason the division into black and white, right and wrong again turns on. Agree, everyone will say that a good mother is supposed to feel love and tenderness, well, maybe even a little anxiety. At the same time, the Mother with a capital M should under no circumstances experience jealousy, envy, irritation, disappointment, resentment and sadness towards the baby. This “black list” is not recorded anywhere, but almost everyone carries it in their own head.
Anger instead of joy in a young mother
As soon as a woman catches herself being openly angry with her long-awaited baby, she panics. What happened with me? I do not like him? He is bad? Or am I bad? (After all, good heroes are not angry with good ones, especially with those closest and dearest.) Everyone says that mother is the most loving, understanding and patient person, ready to give her life for her little blood. Yes, I’m ready, and I don’t have anyone dearer. But right now, when he screams - no, he screams non-stop for the second hour in a row - I just hate him. I'm angry that because of him I can no longer have fun with friends, and my husband goes to parties and goes skiing from the mountains alone.
It infuriates me that my child is constantly capricious, and my mother tells me on my arm how calm children my brother and I were. I wisely planned the entire maternity leave in advance so that I could manage everything; I imagined what a happy family we would be. But the baby doesn’t have any semblance of a routine, I can’t cope even half of my tasks, and from fatigue and lack of sleep everything falls out of my hands.
What is wrong with me? Why do I have such a child? Where was the happiness of motherhood that I was waiting for so lost?
Such feelings towards the baby do not fit into our culture . To share your “infuriates” and “hate” means to incur a hurricane of criticism. And the first among those who want to criticize will be our own “I”. A stern inner voice will immediately inform you that a real mother is supposed to be exclusively touched, experience tenderness and compassion, and be patient. Otherwise, why did she give birth?
But a living woman is not the heroine of myths and fairy tales; she is much more complex. She cannot, by order, feel one thing and not feel everything else. Only a robot can be given a strict program. Only a fictional character can be endowed with a one-sided set of emotions. A real person cannot be so neat, correct and sensitive to the line. At least, he can’t for long, because he quickly turns into a non-viable creature.
That is why you should not believe in fairy tales about “white and fluffy”, invariably happy, never-tiring mothers. But you need to remember that even a very tired mother can be very happy. Even when angry, she can be loving and continue to care for her baby. Despite the sadness for some lost pleasures of her past life, a woman can sincerely enjoy the first meaningful smile of her baby. Worried that her child turned over, sat up, walked, or spoke later than his peers, she can simultaneously experience maternal pride and believe that her child is the very best.
One thing is important here - to accept your right to various feelings, not to drive them away from yourself in horror, not to condemn yourself. Stop dividing your emotions into “bad” and “good”, “right” and “wrong”, “acceptable” and “unacceptable”. Once feelings have arisen, it means they have the right to life. By cutting them off, prohibiting them, a person rejects a part of himself, as if cutting off a piece from his own living flesh.
In fact, so-called “bad” feelings are only dangerous if they are not controlled by their owner.
I snap at a baby
Question:
Hello, Lyudmila! I'm kind of desperate right now. Please help me with advice. I never thought that something like this would happen to me. Yes, I heard from friends and at prenatal training school about postpartum depression, but when you hear about something theoretically, it’s one thing, but when it really hits you, it’s another. In general, I am 29 years old, 4 months ago my husband and I had a baby - a healthy, beautiful boy. She put it directly to her chest. Now everything is fine with feeding, but from time to time there are lactation crises - somehow I cope. The baby sleeps lightly, almost all the time on the chest. My husband and I live separately from our parents. In the first month they came to us and helped me. My husband seems to help too - he comes home from work, bathes me, and goes for walks on weekends. But this doesn't help me much with my condition. When a child cries, I lash out at him after a while. To prevent him from crying, I keep him constantly close to my chest. This exhausts me greatly. There are times when you feel like running away from home so as not to lash out at your child. I still snap at him and immediately blame myself for it. I hate myself like this. I feel like I'm going crazy. What to do in such a situation? Is it possible to work with such a condition? Thank you! Alina.
Answer:
Hello, Alina! Thanks for your question!
The first months after the birth of a child are undoubtedly the most difficult time, both physically and emotionally. No matter how much one prepares for childbirth, no matter how much a child is desired, any mother still faces internal metamorphoses that are more likely to frighten than inspire. I would even say that it is impossible to fully prepare for motherhood. Even if you know the theory of child care very well, something else can interfere in practice, that is, in real interaction with your own baby. Having worked a lot with pregnant and young mothers, I noticed that most often a woman is afraid of her aggressive feelings towards her child in the first year of life. A mother can punish a 2- or 3-year-old child, but what to do with a baby? It seems that it is not customary to lash out at a breastfeeding baby - after all, this is “your long-awaited child.” I would like to note right away that there are no “bad” feelings from a mother towards her baby. There are real experiences that have a reason. And these reasons can be dealt with. First of all, I would ask you, how do you relax? I mean, do you allow yourself to rest at all? What is your diet? Not for the child, but for you? To what extent do you now share childcare responsibilities with your spouse, and how much do you feel his support? Is it enough for you, or is what he does not enough for you? These are all very important questions that reveal the essence of what is happening now. As far as I understand, the baby is growing and developing normally, lactation crises (a common occurrence) do not particularly affect his physical development. That is, the external reality that surrounds you is more or less normal. Can we think then that the cause of your condition may also be the peculiarities of your habitual reaction, personality traits? For example, is the feeling of guilt that you often experience a typical reaction? How normal is it for you to react with anger, or does it rather scare you? In any case, to answer all these questions, you can really try to consult with a specialist. As my practice shows, sometimes several consultations can be enough to relieve acute feelings and find new emotional resources.
All the best to you!
Sincerely, psychologist Lyudmila Altyeva (920-23-18)
Control of feelings
The surest way to control feelings is to be aware of them. If you drive “wrong” feelings into the dark corner of the subconscious with a filthy broom, then sooner or later they will cause trouble there, and, in the end, will still break out in the most undesirable form - up to real aggression towards the child and herself.
And, on the contrary, if you take “inappropriate” feelings out into the sunny yard, get to know each other better, and regularly look after them, then they will turn into quite harmless, and sometimes useful, companions. (For example, irritation can be used as a signal that it’s time to slow down in the endless motherly chores; and if this is not possible right now, then at least feel sorry for and console yourself, and promise rest in the near future.)
A psychologist gave advice to mothers who lash out at their children
When the little angel is pissed off, start sharing anger
“When my daughter cries because of colic, I just go crazy with these screams! And after another attack, I see my daughter sleeping peacefully, I look at her and sob. I don’t understand what kind of animal I am, how can I react this way to my child’s crying? And then I hate myself!” — Yulia from St. Petersburg shares with the forum mothers. There were many such “terrible mothers,” as Yulia calls herself: under her cry from the heart, 200 comments with similar confessions appeared.
“I went through this myself,” her fellow countrywoman Ekaterina reassures her. — Literally 2 months ago I was already in a state of psychosis. I was wildly annoyed by my own child, I even shouted at him a couple of times, but he pursed his lips and began to scream even more. Then I cried with him...” Maria from Nizhny Novgorod echoes them: “Most of us have such problems, sometimes I don’t really want to live, when I can’t put her to sleep, I often fall into hysterics, shout at her, I want to hang myself for such behavior, and I don’t understand why I’m so angry in the fit of these whims, as if someone is possessing me...”
Here mothers share tips on how to deal with such a situation:
“My experienced mother suggested a way to control emotions. If I feel anger creeping in, I put the child on the bed and go out for about 5 minutes, calm down, and only then return to the child.” And here’s another recommendation: “Send your grandmother or husband to walk with the child for at least an hour, take a bath yourself, sleep or go somewhere to unwind. If there is no one nearby, and you are very angry with the child, then go into another room and catch your breath, open the window, take a breath of fresh air, calm down and return to the child - it’s okay if he screams for five minutes without you.”
Psychologist Evgeny Zinger explained that the situation when a mother is angry with her baby is completely normal for any woman, and it cannot be avoided. The situation must be considered from different positions and depending on the age of the child.
If this happens to a baby under one year old, then there are several main reasons.
“We must take into account that after giving birth, a woman’s lifestyle changes greatly. Often (if there is no nanny or maid in the family), a mother has to sacrifice many things that were very important to her in her previous, childless life: meetings with friends, work, creativity, a fitness club, self-care... And just the opportunity to go out outside and do what you want. Any person who finds himself in such conditions will undoubtedly become angry. This may not be a prison in the literal sense, but it is something similar: the restrictions that the woman has entered into seemingly consciously nevertheless cause her to internally protest. The second factor in outbursts of anger: a person who sleeps little and is tired increases his aggressiveness many times over, this has been proven by scientific experiments. Third factor. A woman is not a robot, but a living person, she also has a husband, and perhaps other children, and her own mother and father... And all this affects her mood, which is not always rosy.
Photo: vitvesti.by
If you put all this on the situation: it’s three o’clock in the morning, the woman has only slept for a couple of hours, and her “angel” is screaming and doesn’t want to calm down, although his mother has tried all the ways... The woman doesn’t understand what else she can do to stop him from crying... It is normal for a person to become angry.
“So we can say to these mommies: this doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother!”
- Of course, this is common to all mothers. In private conversations with me, many women admitted: sometimes I hate my child so much that I’m ready to fuck him; I’m ready to scream, and bloody images appear before my eyes... Moreover, after half an hour I look at him and think, how could such a thing even come into my head? This is my life, my beloved child.
- But where is the line that you cannot cross in your anger towards a child? What if mom can’t cope with her anger...
— Anger as an emotion that arises in a mother is absolutely natural, and it is normal when the child is one year old, three, or fifteen... But there is a fundamentally important point. It’s one thing to feel anger inside myself, another thing is how I express it. In this sense, the way of expressing anger must be adequate to the person with whom we are dealing. A baby is one thing, a two-year-old is another thing. The third thing is my beloved husband and the fourth is the saleswoman in the sausage department. Psychological health is precisely the ability to adequately choose ways to express oneself in accordance with the situation. In other words, it is absolutely normal to be angry with a child, but hitting him at such moments is not normal.
- Where to put this inner anger?
— The first rule: do not be ashamed of your anger, share it (share, talk with someone. - Author ), and in this case the anger will go away. For example, call a friend at this moment and pour out your indignation on her: “Listen, can you imagine, mine has been yelling for half an hour and won’t calm down!” 2-3 minutes of such sharing - and the degree of rage will subside. Second: you need to find ways to unload, free yourself from the child for a while, give yourself what you like, what you enjoy. Rest, replenish your vital resources. But how to do this, everyone has their own methods and preferences.
We asked a psychologist, in what case should a woman see a specialist? Here's what he explained:
“Children often do things that displease us, but the way we explain this to them will be different depending on the age of the child. For example, it will not work to explain something to infants by shouting or using words. The mother’s task in the infant period is to contain, that is, to place her and the child’s emotions in a “container,” in this case this means that the mother not only tolerates the child’s crying, but understands and accepts it, perceives the baby’s anger not as aggression directed against herself , but as his defensive reaction, allowing him to attract the attention of his mother.
Therefore, the most important thing here is to understand whether the mother remembers that a) she is now dealing with a child and b) how old is he? If she catches herself thinking that I’m going to “beat” him, throw something at him, this is clearly an inadequate expression of anger. Specialist help is required if a woman experiences outbursts of anger, during which she loses control.
Further. Often a mother punishes herself because the child, as she believes, feels her anger and her dissatisfaction with him. The second reason for turning to a psychologist is if she is constantly tormented by a feeling of guilt, precisely a destructive feeling of guilt that does not go away for a long time (we all feel guilt as such from time to time). Because in the end, it only makes things worse for the child.
In moments of irritation with a child, a woman should strive to understand (and since anger will interfere with this, she needs to go into another room and cool down, look at the situation from the outside) whether there is a reason to be angry with her child, or whether the woman has something in her life - happens and she just takes her frustration out on him. If there is a reason - for example, the baby is capricious, smears porridge on the table or takes half an hour to pull up his pants, and she is in a hurry somewhere - then in this situation (I emphasize, if the mother is psychologically stable!) She can keep her anger inside herself and in a fairly calm tone tell the child: “I’m angry with you now, you and I agreed on this and that, and you’re doing this and that. I’m not happy and I don’t like it at all.” She can be 300% angry, but will give the child 25% - that is, in proportion to the person she is dealing with. And it is very important that she does this. This helps the child feel the boundaries of what is permitted, what is allowed and what is not.
And if you soberly assessed yourself and the situation and saw that there is no reason for anger, if you cannot balance your anger and the child’s ability to perceive it, if you constantly feel like a bad mother, if you don’t feel anything for the child at all, or if the slightest whim causes rage and you want to hit him, then perhaps you can’t do without the help of a psychologist.
I yelled at my child, what to do: 5 ways to fix the situation
All parents have difficult days. Sometimes we look at everything our child does through a negative lens. We communicate with him in a way that hurts both of us. How can we find patience again, restore relationships and make sure everything is okay? Letidor will tell you what five actions you can take that will really help. You will see how things change within a few days.
Calm down
The first step is to get rid of the cause of your upset and calm down. When you are hurt or scared, it is natural that you will attack. But your child is not the enemy, no matter what he has done. Therefore, before you talk to your child, calm down. Try to breathe deeply, think about what happened and let yourself experience all these tears and fears. The minute you feel guilty or angry, control yourself. Don't think about why your child was wrong and you were right. Instead, just feel all the pain you feel at the moment and love yourself through it. These feelings will begin to disappear and you will no longer need anger. Now you can start choosing love.
Let go of your fear
Typically, we lash out at children because of our own fear. When you think your child is acting badly on purpose, you naturally worry. What if he behaves the same way when he grows up? Fortunately, the answer is almost always no. The child will grow up. It's natural for him to make mistakes or act childishly—his frontal lobe of the brain is still developing (and will continue to do so into his early twenties). What a child really needs in order for him to grow and change is your unconditional love and belief in his goodness.
Look at the problem through the eyes of a child
Your child is not trying to make you angry. He is only trying to satisfy his needs in the most accessible way. If he's using strategies that aren't working, figure out how to help him get his needs met more effectively. For example:
- A child who hits a younger sibling is almost always acting out of fear that the parents do not love him as much or that his territory is being invaded. Aggression is a defensive response to fear or pain;
- a demanding and irritable child will usually cry until he feels safe in your arms;
- a stubborn child typically needs more independence and the opportunity to explore his power over the world;
- A child who acts disrespectfully needs more parental attention, he wants to feel heard and respected by mom and dad.
Possible causes of failure
Many mothers find themselves thinking in horror: “I’m lashing out at my baby! That means I’m a bad mother!” However, you cannot scold yourself at this stage. First of all, you need to understand the reasons. If you look at the problem globally, there is only one reason: life has changed dramatically, and a woman cannot return everything to its place.
How to teach your baby to sleep at night without feeding
By sorting out each day of her life, the young mother will be able to note the finer details:
- Constant severe physical and psychological fatigue weakens the nerves. Not being able to get enough sleep, the woman begins to believe that now it will be like this for the rest of her life.
- Lack of time for yourself. With the advent of the baby, the young mother loses the ability to take care of herself, which is why she turns from an attractive girl into a gray mouse.
- I lose contact with my husband. With the birth of a child, the poor woman has neither time nor energy for her husband. He, realizing that his wife was immersed in new worries, continues to live in his parallel.
- The inability to agree with the baby about a break in the daily marathon forces the woman to give up and feel absolutely miserable.
- Bureaucratic procedures, which must begin immediately after discharge from the maternity hospital, add fuel to the fire, which gives rise to real nervous breakdowns.
Important! Almost every woman who gives birth for the first time experiences psychological difficulties. The current situation is not the young mother’s fault. She is a victim of circumstances who needs help.
Lack of sleep is the cause of breakdowns
