The Truth About Feelings In Motherhood

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome to the podcast. I am so happy to be here with you today. Before we dive into all things, feelings in motherhood and specifically the truth about what most moms, I think miss and get wrong, I want to start off by inviting you to call me and leave me a voice note with what you are struggling with right now. Where are you experiencing friction in motherhood? Tell me all about it. Everything. Like nothing too big, nothing too small or minor.

I know sometimes I’m coaching on, I’m so annoyed when my husband is eating all of my snacks. And I swear to you, you can get the most leverage on those little things. And other times it’s, it’s big things. I was just coaching someone inside the membership who had been married for over 25 years and husband was filing for divorce. So of course those are marriage examples, but it could be that you want help with parenting or time management or in a feeling that busy go, go, go rushed energy or you know, just really tying your emotions and goodness to your kids’ outcomes. You know, all the things we talk about here at Mom On Purpose. Anyways, what can I support you with? Call the podcast hotline. 8-333-Ask-Nat. Ask Nat. That’s 833-327-5628. And I will answer your question. If you would prefer, and I know some of you do prefer this, you can absolutely email in your question over at the [email protected].

Just make sure you give me all the information. It should be several paragraphs long so that I have enough to coach you on. Those of you who are inside the Mom On Purpose membership, you know that when someone comes on to get coached how it’s not just a one-liner, it’s giving the background, giving the context. And that’s a really important for the coaching that I’m professionally trained in. I was just sharing this on Instagram over at mom.onpurpose that I am not giving my advice and my opinion. Like very rarely do I do that. And if I do, I call it out because the coaching tools that I’m trained in are specifically designed for me to keep my opinion out of it. Now, I might share, you know, a, a story or, or even my experience or something anecdotally, but the actual coaching that I’m doing is around the tools that I’m trained in to look in your brain to help you get to a place of confidence, of peace, of clarity so that you feel better and make the best decision for you.

And that includes perfectionism, it includes parenting, it includes marriage, it includes like the work life balance and the time management and just all the topics here. So I always want to make that clear because it doesn’t matter what stage in life you are in, whether your kids are older or younger or whatnot. Of course I’m always going to use my experience as a form of, of teaching through story, but by no means does that kind of limit you to kids who are really little. We have tons of members inside the membership with older kids, adult kids. I’m coaching, you know, empty nesters often. So, any aged kid and you know, any woman who is listening who wants some support, if you’re feeling some friction in motherhood, just, you know, call me, have a chat. All right, now let’s dive into today’s topic. Oh my goodness, my friends, I am really excited to bring you this topic because I think it’s something that is so overlooked and that is how are you actually feeling?

I think if you are a high achiever or you’re anything like me, you probably spend a lot of time living in your head. And then the default is there’s no awareness of the cause of feelings. So it feels like your feelings are just happening to you like they’re caused from, you know, what people are doing or saying or not doing or not saying, or life events, worldly events, what your mother-in-law does or doesn’t do or says or doesn’t say. It can feel like your feelings are just happening to you when you live in your head because you don’t have the awareness and you’re not putting the attention on your feelings at all. And it could seem like, oh yeah, well, you know, that’s not really that important right now. Like I have some pressing things to get to. And yet you’ll probably spend a lot of time, in invested in and caring about your kids’ emotions.

It is not uncommon at all for a mom to join the Mom On Purpose, membership, go through my feelings courses, and then come out of it on the other end saying, yes, of course I feel more equipped to help my kids navigate their feelings. But really I was just blown away with how helpful this is in my own life. And that is very common because I think on default we’re just very invested in our kids’ feelings. I mean, thankfully we’re growing up in a day and age where that’s talked about a lot more than it was when you grew up. So it can seem like as long as you are helping your kids with their emotions that that’s enough. But what also is simultaneously kind of happening is there’s a lack of awareness of the disconnection that you feel from yourself, which if you haven’t actually done any sort of self coaching might sound kind of weird, but it does happen because, you will feel overly focused on others.

So you will, you know, maybe feel upset in your body, but you won’t label it that and move through that emotion. Instead, you’ll blame it on whatever you think the external cause is. So you might say to one of your girlfriends, my husband is making me so mad, or my kids are stressing me out, or my schedule is just really overwhelming me, okay? And these seem like just innocent statements, but they all point to emotions coming from something outside of you. And when you blame the circumstance for how you feel, it’s disempowering for yourself. Because if something else is to blame for your feelings, then we gotta change that other event or person in order for you to feel better. And part of my role and my professional training is to help you feel how you want to feel regardless of what is happening externally.

Now that doesn’t mean you want to feel good all the time. In fact, when tragedies happen, you want to feel grief or heartbreak, but that’s a very clean, expansive experience. The worry, the fear, the anxiety that’s layered on top of that, that’s what I kind of help you remove so that you just experience that clean pain that you actually want to be feeling. And then when tragedies aren’t happening, and it’s just like your everyday life, you probably want to feel happy, connected, present, productive when you’re doing work, but be able to kind of switch between the emotional hats based on the actual hats that you are wearing. And most of my clients, and I can so relate to this, don’t do this, they wear one hat really well, usually it’s like the doer hat, the get it done hat, and that energy carries over into everything so that you’re pushing through the day without a pause, ending up kind of exhausted, even if you might not say that.

Feeling resentment, even if you might not say that. And there’s probably a sense of like seeking others to fix your feeling. Like you expect your husband to make you feel better, to stop making you feel so mad, or you expect your kids to behave better so that you don’t feel so stressed or you expect them to cooperate, whether it’s the evening routine or getting out the door in the morning, right? We all have those moments, but when you think, oh, they’re supposed to act in a certain way so that I can feel better, right? We’re delegating our feelings to outside of us. Now, we don’t really say that, at least I don’t, we’re just saying things like in an exasperated tone, like, gosh, my kids, if they would just do X, Y, and Z, but really needing them to do X, Y, and Z in order to feel better disempowers us.

And I think that we miss that The end of every single experience that we have is how we feel. So you have to pay attention to your feelings, otherwise you will end up chasing a feeling of happy or whatever the feeling is that you would most want to feel outside of you. You might chase it through accomplishments, I think, which is, you know, of course a default way. We’ve kind of all been conditioned and nothing against accomplishments, of course, high achiever here, hello. But I’m very clear to untie my happiness from my achievements. Now that doesn’t mean that I’m not happy when I achieve things. Yes, but I’m not dependent on the achievement in order to feel happy. I’m not thinking, okay, when my kids are in school, you know, X, y, and Z all feel this way. And even though I just want to stress, like we don’t often explicitly say it in that way, but that’s actually what’s happening because again, the end of every experience is a feeling.

So you might not say, I wish my kids would just get through a bedtime routine without fighting so that I can feel better. You most likely are not saying that, right? Because that implies you know that your thoughts create your feelings and you’re looking to them to feel better. Most often we leave that part out. But if they did just behave in this like magical unicorn way, like we want them to, and um, you go through that in your mind, how would you be feeling? You would be feeling peaceful, relaxed, connected, present, whatever the feelings are, that’s ultimately what you want. And when we rely on our kids, our spouses, our homes being a certain way, our careers, anything outside of us, we disempower ourselves just because you can’t control those things. Now, I’m all for you helping your kids learn to, um, cooperate or to do the nighttime routine or to get along even, but do that because that’s kinda mom.

You want to be. That’s what I taught inside the Mom On Purpose membership last month. It’s the masterclass. It’s one of my absolute favorites because what I’m not saying is you just don’t have any rules or boundaries or anything, but you don’t want to hang your emotional life on them. I want you to feel proud of yourself and connected and confident and present no matter how your kids behaved that day. Seriously, you can do that. And it is so freeing because it’s permission to them for them to just, you know, grow up and make mistakes and get it wrong and fail. And yes, of course there are consequences, but one of the consequences shouldn’t be that my mom is now sad or disappointed or stressed or overwhelmed, kids thinking that they caused that, right? It creates this weird dynamic where kids, of course are always going to be seeking attachment over authenticity. And so they’re going to, people please and they’re going to hide things. And um, I don’t think there’s a way we get to like perfection with this, but I do think just the awareness of it, awareness of where your feelings come from and awareness that you’re emotionally delegating on default. And it’s, it’s not your fault. It’s like how we’re trained from a very young age. Like you hurt Adrian’s feelings because you said she can’t sit with you, right? And so what we do is we want to teach our kids that there’s a kind way to behave and to socialize, yes, but not make it so that other people are dependent on them for their feelings. And so how you would do that in this way is let’s be kind, because it feels nice to be kind and saying someone can’t sit with you isn’t always kind, versus saying, you hurt so-and-so’s feelings.

And so kind of circling back to my whole point was like, it’s not your fault that you think this way, it’s the default. It’s literally how all my clients come in. It’s how I started. I’m not speaking from my ivory tower. I’m speaking so passionately about this because it changed my life forever. It, does require some work, right? Like, I still have that mama of bear instinct to want to make my kids happy, to want to make sure they fit in and succeed. And you know, I still want my husband to not chew gum all the time. Like I have those things too, but my friends being able to call it out and manage my mind around it so that I own my feelings is the game. It is the game changer. It’s what equips you to feel more empowered in your life, more connected, like, you know, my husband chewing gum.

If I can go through the process of how to feel better in my mind and know that I’m creating the feelings that I’m having, and it’s not actually coming from him chewing gum, it’s like, you know, like so much better of an experience for me because then I’m not making little comments to him. I’m not thinking he shouldn’t be this way. I’m not, you know, doing the things that I would ordinarily do if I didn’t have these tools. And so I think that where we get into trouble is that we don’t even know what we don’t know. And obviously you’re listening to this podcast, so now you do know, you do know that your feelings are so important and you are often probably seeking those feelings from things outside of you. Add to that, right? The validation that we, you know, were given growing up for “doing a good job”.

And that’s why we still to this day attach our goodness to outcomes. So like if you got good grades and you were disproportionately praised for that, then you learn to think you were good when you did a good job. The problem with that is that there are lots of times in adulthood where you and just childhood and life, right? Where you make mistakes, where you get it wrong, where you’re feeling like you’re not enough. And if you layer on top of that the perfectionism where you don’t think you’re actually good enough, because you didn’t do something, it leaves you chasing your worth, which is just, you know, like Byron Katie says like one big misunderstanding, . It’s like we have to separate out thoughts and feelings and actions and take a look at what is actually creating your feelings. So perfectionism creates emotional dependence because you only allow yourself to feel good when an outcome is a certain way.

Now, please, high achiever. Hear me? I want you to create outcomes that you want to create. I want you to excel in your work. I want you to create, I always use birthday parties. I have no idea why I’m not neurotic about birthday parties, but it just comes to my mind as like a neutral example. I want you, if you want to have a fantastic over the top birthday party for your kids, like have at it. I think people confuse perfectionism with having high standards and they’re not the same thing. And this can really be life changing. It’s like you can have high standards, I want you to have high standards, but if something goes wrong, you make a mistake, the birthday party is a bust, whatever. If you make that mean, then something negative about you, like you are a failure, you are a bad mom and you like you can’t get over it, like your feelings are negatively impacted disproportionately, then you are emotionally dependent on outcomes.

That’s the layer that I want you to get rid of. So for me, I kind of gamify it and this is how I can make sure I own my happiness. So achieving in happiness, they’re just totally different things. And I want you to untie them so that you can do the work of how to feel better. And I mean, I know you, you’re listening to this, you already know how to get it done. You get a lot of things done, you do things, you have high standards, but it’s not at your own expense. It’s not at your own emotional wellbeing. When you need a break, when you want to rest, you’re like, it’s totally fine. The house is a mess. I want to rest right now. I don’t need to earn it. You’re taking care of your own emotions. You allow yourself to feel good just because you know it’s your God-given, right?

Just imagine if more people took responsibility for how they were feeling and decided to feel happy and joyful and confident and connected, like the world would be such a better place. And you can just start with you. And I think that there’s this like additional layer for high achievers where it just kind of feels a little bit unimportant or irresponsible, but I think the opposite is true. Like your kids don’t remember all of those details. They remember how you felt, okay? Just think back to your own childhood. I remember my parents yelling. I remember when either of my parents was frustrated. I do remember when they were happy. And it’s just interesting, like, yes, you remember the vacations or the birthdays or whatever, but overall, like if you could summarize how your parents felt most of the time, like it’s not uncommon for me to coach clients and them to say like, you know, their parents were always fighting or they were disconnected or they were unhappy, or they were always worried, or they were fill in the blank.

And never once is it, you know what? I would’ve had a way better childhood if my parents just took me on more vacations. Never, right? And yet, log onto Facebook. There are all these groups about how to plan the best trip to 30 A and Disney and all the things. And sure, that’s great. I just wish too, there were other groups in equal number that talked more about like emotional wellbeing and parents showing up as the happiest version of them themselves and doing that inner work. And I think because it’s not externally validated, it’s like a harder sell. It’s like either unimportant or I’ll get to that when, but again, it’s like, think about your childhood and what you want your kids now to remember about their childhood. And I just think we underestimate how important it is for us to clean up our feelings so that we can really feel better no matter what’s going on.

I always say, I was actually just saying this to a private client, but I, I do always say it. It’s like, I cannot solve all of your challenges and I can’t prevent challenges from happening, but I can help you feel more prepared, more confident, more at peace, more connected through those challenges. And that’s it my friends. Because when you’re equipped with those skills, you can expand your life to create whatever it is you want. And when life throws challenges at you that you don’t really want, instead of feeling overwhelmed or feeling like you’re carrying so much or there’s so much pressure or anxiety or worry, you can remove all of that, those unhelpful feelings. And instead feel intentionally how you want to feel. Again, you might not want to feel happy if it’s something that you don’t want to feel happy about, but the anxiety, the worry, the frustration, the overwhelm, totally useless, not helpful at all.

So instead you might decide, okay, I want to feel disappointed about this, but I want to feel grounded. I want to feel present and I want to work through it, that my friend is like winning the lottery, it’s like the emotional lottery. And um, you know, I think of this with parenting too. It’s like I don’t want to prevent my kids from having all the challenges. I want to prepare them to navigate challenges, right? Because we can’t prevent all the challenges for our kids. We just, it just can’t. It’s impossible. But can you help prepare them so that after they’ve been with you in your home, it’s like frustration. No big deal. I know how to do that. I know how to do sadness. I know what it feels like to do disappointment, right? This is like the game. You have to start with yourself. You can’t teach something, you have no clue how to do yourself.

And so it doesn’t really matter your motivation. I mean, I want this for you because your life will be so much better. However, if your motivation is because you want to be able to equip your kids with it, I think that’s fine too. The result will end up being the same. You’ll end up applying the tools for yourself for learning just how to feel better and not so dependent on other people, your kids, your spouse, your in-laws, your family of origin, whatever the world, what’s happening outside of you. You’re not going to be so dependent on that to feel a certain way. And again, not about feeling happy all of the time, but most of the time, how do you want to feel? Do you ever think about that and think about how important that is. And right now you may have plenty awareness of how everyone else is feeling.

You might know how your kids are feeling. You might understand how your husband’s feeling. You might know how people at work are feeling, or your friends or your boss or whatever it is. But when it comes to your own emotional life, you may be living too much in your head. You may be spiraling, you may be feeling frantic, you may be having thoughts about feelings, but not actually connected to the feelings in your body. And you may not even realize how important that is. But the way that you move through your day is on a certain frequency, you’re moving through the day frantic, you’re moving through the day worry, you’re moving through the day, overwhelmed, you’re moving through the day, exhausted, you’re moving through the day, resentful. How are you moving through the day? That’s all I mean with frequency. And my job. One of my jobs as a coach is to help you become aware of that and then learn how to create the frequency the way that you want to move through the day on purpose.

Again, not pedestal in happy. Sometimes I hope you want to feel happy, other times it’s going to be a different emotion when something bad happens. It’s not going to be a positive emotion, but it’s also not going to be anxiety and worry and fear. It’s going to be something more useful like grief or heartache or sadness. So having that skillset to identify your current state of being, your frequency, the feeling through which you move through the day, and then having the tools to be able to change it intentionally. Oh my goodness, my friends. Think back to your childhood, like wouldn’t you have rather had your parents work on this themselves than take you on another vacation? I mean, you may have had parents who were really emotionally connected, so I don’t think that’s necessarily going to be, you know, landing with 100% of you. But, I can definitely speak for myself.

And I know many of my clients as well would definitely say yes. I would 100% rather have had my parents do this type of work so that, you know, I didn’t experience a childhood with parents who were always worried or always, frustrated or always fighting or whatever the case may be. And this is not an invitation to beat yourself up, my friend. You are doing an excellent job. I know. You know, we care so much about doing a good job with our kids that we sometimes forget. We’re supposed to be humans and we’re supposed to be human moms. And sometimes that means we inadvertently contribute to our kids’ challenges, which is a topic for a different day. But what I’m saying is, I don’t want you to beat yourself up with this. I want you to just decide, now is the time for me to learn how to feel better so that I have this skill that will have an amazing, incredible impact on my everyday life.

So that when something happens, it doesn’t rock me, I don’t feel overwhelmed or exhausted or the pressure and I’m not carrying so much, I’m able to move through that challenge confidently connected, very grounded with useful emotions. And then from there, when it’s just an average everyday season or life or week or whatever, I can choose my top feelings and move through the day feeling how I want to feel, joyful, connected, confident, present, productive, whatever it is, you can learn those tools. Join me inside the Mom On Purpose Membership for the How to Feel Better Masterclass that I taught. It is very robust. It gives you a daily protocol for what to do to increase your frequency and feel better on a regular everyday basis, as well as the exact steps that you need to take to know how to acquire this skillset. So my beautiful friends, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to get the How to Feel Better Masterclass right now. I will see you inside.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose Membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.