005 - Mama2Mama and Mom Rage

Hi everyone, thank you for joining us for episode 5! Today we are dipping our toe into two more Mama2Mama stories with lovely women named Erica and Janelle. They both started off saying many of the things I said when I felt ashamed I wasn’t being a good mom after my brain crash.

“Everything was so hard, so overwhelming. I sat there and took it and took it, without ever asking for help. I didn’t tell any girlfriends, I didn’t tell my husband, I didn’t ask for help from anyone and the stress of my life chipped me, cracked me, and smashed me open over and over and then I felt horrible for raging out of control.”

I totally understood their hopelessness. For me having this mysterious neurological condition that left me confused, exhausted, dizzy and in pain, I worried constantly that I would be seen as a failure. What if people saw how messed up I was, how I seemed weirdly confused, or completely unable to keep track of when we needed to send snack to school on our designated day? What if my kids wouldn’t be invited for birthday parties because the moms thought I was a hot mess? I was afraid so I kept it all boxed in as best I could, and it made my suffering so much harder. For Erica and Janelle, they hid from everyone because of a different shame – they felt out of control with their temper. They both felt drawn to connect with me after watching my Facebook video in March of 2017 for some encouragement, support, and help.

Erica is a young mom with a young baby, and she said that throughout her whole life, she was calm and relaxed. The fury started to burn inside her shortly after her baby was born. She was ashamed to admit this to anyone because she said she must be the only one in the world who had rage when she should have been feeling like a gift from heaven lay on her lap. Many people are aware of Postpartum Depression, and signs include anxiety, sadness, no interest in the baby, thoughts of hurting yourself or baby. No one mentioned “rage” or feeling entirely out of control. Erica said that she would yell and then cry because she felt guilty for yelling. She suffered for months and her husband actually mentioned something to the nurse when they had a well-baby checkup, and the nurse suggested Erica see her own doctor for postpartum rage. Erica was fuming at him for revealing her secret but she told me that he couldn’t take the yelling and verbal abuse any longer, so it really saved her life that he did it.

Baby blues affects 50-85% of women and often doesn’t require extra medical attention because it is considered the 4^th trimester of a pregnancy – adjusting to life at home with a new baby while experiencing symptoms like crying, sadness, impatience. However, 1 in 7 women experience postpartum depression, and it has nothing to do with the baby blues. Post-partum depression is a mood disorder that follows typically a few weeks after giving birth and creates feelings of despair, hopelessness, scary thoughts and rage.  Everyone celebrates the cute, sweet angelic little fingers and toes, and the pediatrician checks their growth and weight, and your doctor might check your physical healing, but rarely do post-baby checkups include helping the new mama understand the emotional roller coaster of hormones, body chemistry, sleep deprivation, and fear and Erica had no idea that post partum rage was real.

Janelle had a 13 year old daughter. She was out of the baby years, out of the toddler tantrums and felt pretty confident that her child was awesome, and that it was her who had come undone. Janelle would be going along on her day, waiting for Samantha to get home from school and soon after arriving, she would find herself yelling and furious about left dishes, crumbs on the counter, shoes not put away, or a faucet that was left dripping. Janelle would explode at her daughter, slam things, and then run to her room, crying and then berating herself for being such a monster.

 

Rage is the thief of joy, and moms suffering secretly count down the hours until bedtime, days until school starts, Saturdays when their partner can step in to parenting, school trips to have a break, the college years, anything to get through. We talked about Mom guilt in our last episode, and it hits hard here because mothers love their kids and would do anything for them, they want to be the best mom they can be, and they wish they could stay calm and cool but when they erupt, they see that as evidence that they mustn’t love their kids enough, aren’t the best, and will never be the calm, happy mom of their dreams.

For both women, it was totally uncharacteristic for them to have this burning, explosive lava inside. They said they never screamed at drivers who cut them off in traffic or barked at their husbands when he said he had a great day at work before. Erica showed me her wrists that were bruised from smashing the steering wheel as she came home from getting groceries.

Rage is intense and we think we go from 0 to 60 in one second because on the surface, we can seem so calm and in control, “now sweetie, stop that,” or “that’s enough” but that calmness is an illusion because in actual fact, all day we've adding heat to our fire and that 0-60 is really the overflow from a continuous chipping away at our calm reserves.

 

Author, speaker and parenting expert Amy McCready has created Positive Parenting Solutions, a business around a breaking point in her life when she found herself yelling more than speaking to her kids and calls herself a recovering yeller. She speaks on stages all over the country because it is one of those things that we should talk about, but we just hide in shame. But did you know that rage is a symptom? It’s a symptom of a bigger problem.  Many psychologists feel that we yell at our kids because we are feeling powerlessness. That might seem strange because we are bigger, stronger, smarter and more capable, but their defiance, or stubbornness, or refusals to help or cooperate, participate or do something we ask is a trigger that reminds us we can’t actually force them to do what we want. So we use our power to try to exert control, and one vehicle to do that is yelling because it helps re-establish us as the person holding the power, not the child. Janelle mentioned that her belief from her history was that children should be obedient, and obedient children are respectful. In her life, she learned that people who didn’t follow rules were disrespectful. So, leaving shoes out, dishes out, crumbs all over, Janelle saw her child’s disobedience as disrespect and she created a negative story to explain her daughter’s disobedience. She would say, “Sam doesn’t care enough about me to put her shoes away. She is selfish to leave her mess for me to clean up.” I asked her if there was a different story that could be possible. She really struggled, but we came up with other possibilities which put responsibility on her daughter, like her short attention span, her overloaded schedule, her knowledge that Janelle will just come in and clean up no matter what. The point isn’t to find other stories to place blame, the point is that the story Janelle was creating came from a belief she had from her childhood and may not be grounded in the current situation. We talked about seeing something that needed to be changed, and making a request. We set up this exercise for her to try. When Sam comes home, Janelle will say: “Honey, would you please put your shoes in the closet when you first take them off?” Samantha will probably say yes. Then, you can calmly state the consequence. “That works for me. If I see them out of the closet I will move them to the garage and you will not be able to leave them inside anymore. So let’s practice this. Please put your shoes on and go back outside, count to 5 and come in as if it was your first time today.” Now, her teen may moan, groan, roll her eyes, but Janelle would encourage her to do a run-through of the expectation while she watched, encouraging her and commentating the whole time. Sam will better remember the request, and knows what will happen if she doesn’t complete it the next time.

Can I add a side note here?

If we as parents say our kids never clean, and we yell at our kids to clean, never really outline exactly what clean means, and then flitter around like an angry Mary Poppins cleaning up around them while grumbling, why would they clean? The cost of listening to us grumble is totally worth not having to do it. Parents, you will need to stop yourself and give them the gift of committing to a request and following through – it’s a life lesson. We will have another episode on empowering our kids with some of the life lessons like cleaning and chores another time, but for now, please use the request system, one request at a time, and outline your expectation super clearly, spell out the natural consequence if the request is ignored, and then practice it. Soon, they will know the drill and when you make the request and they say yes, they know what is to come so they will just do it or they won’t and the consequence will happen.

 

For Erica, I was a sounding board for all the things that were hard, wrong, and overwhelming for her. We had a beautiful talk, we laughed and cried and hugged quite a few times, and then I gently and lovingly asked if she was still seeing someone for her post partum rage. She exhaled and said yes, she was taking medication short term and still seeing a therapist. I told her I was proud of her and her commitment to doing her best for herself, her child and her husband. We talked about some techniques she was learning, and I will share them here as well.

-          Of course, breathing deeply from your diaphragm is key, not shallow chest breathing. In through your nose, count to three, out through your mouth, count to three. You can slowly repeat a mantra in your mind like ‘calm’, om, or ‘slow’, something that vibrates nicely in your throat.

-          You can journal it out, writing your feelings is a freeing and healthy way to release the energy that anger and rage create. You can lie down in bed and visualize a place you have been to or a place you dream of going that symbolizes total relaxation, maybe a deserted beach or a remote lakeside cabin. One mama would visualize heli-skiing alone on a beautiful sunny mountain, carving through the untouched snow. One mama’s happy place was bringing her easel, canvas and paints to a busy square in Turkey and immersing herself in the sights, sounds, smells, and energy of that vibrant city. It is your dream place. It is you happy place. You can remember something you’ve done where you were filled with joy, or you can dream of something you’ve never done and wish to do.

-          You can do something physical, like power walking, dancing, biking, something that takes focus and effort.

-          Flood yourself with happy memories with your child. Go through old photo albums, or power up your computer and watch old videos of your child when they were tiny, fumbling around and being super cute. It’s hard to remember your child was simply the light of your life when they pushing your rage buttons like whac a mole!

-          And lastly, you can reach out and connect to someone. Having someone in your life who can listen and empathize is crucial to your mental health. That may mean a friend, or in Erica’s case, it may mean a professional who helped her with her rage.

There are therapists who specialize in women and moms, and are amazing at helping you release that intense emotion in a healthier way. As always, if you feel that you are looking for a community, you are in the right place. The power of community and the feeling of belonging is a core desire for us as humans, a critical component just like food and shelter and it is fundamental to our feelings of happiness and well-being. I think about how much courage it took for these women to watch my Facebook video, deem me to be someone safe, find me and allow me into their life and say, “I have a need. I’m overwhelmed and drowning in my pain. Can you help me?” But, that inspired action was all these women needed to do to absolutely change their lives and their family’s lives. That is why being connected in a community is so important! If you are looking for a community, a wonderful, warm, inviting place to ask and share and read and offer support and get support, join us in our MamaConnects private Facebook group.  It’s free and we are designing it to be a place to find encouragement, education, and inspiration on your motherhood journey.

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