9. How to Sit with Uncomfortable Emotions in Motherhood

Do you ever feel shame or guilt as a mom for feeling negative and uncomfortable emotions tied to motherhood? If so, you're not alone!

Today on the podcast, Alyssa Carlene shares why feeling difficult emotions can be hard for mothers, what it means to sit with them, and the beauty that comes from letting ourselves feel. 

Listen to the episode to answer the following questions: 

• What are common uncomfortable emotions that mothers experience? 
• How do I process big emotions without feeling guilt or shame about them as a mom? 
• How can I let go of societal pressure and pressure from myself to only feel positively about motherhood? 
• What are solid, doable ways I can sit with tough emotions to process them? 
• How do I model emotional safety for my children? 

1. Want to join a supportive, heartfelt community with other moms who are also navigating motherhood without their mothers? Join our Facebook Group today!

2. Are you ready to build confidence and emotional resilience as a mom, even without the support of your mother? Access the free video training now: Five Steps to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother!

3. Want to chat more about what it's like to mother without your mom and get personalized support? Send Alyssa Carlene a DM on Instagram!

Transcript

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Last summer, I spent countless hours bouncing on an exercise ball in a dark room with my screaming, colicky baby. It was, without a doubt, one of the hardest seasons of my life. I was exhausted, isolated, and overwhelmed. And beneath it all, I was drowning in emotions that I didn't want to feel. Guilt, resentment, even anger. Because I wasn't just unhappy with my life, I was unhappy with my baby. This wasn't the motherhood that I had imagined. It felt unfair, it felt relentless, and I felt ashamed for feeling that way. Then one day, after developing mastitis for the second or third time that summer, I stepped into the shower and I completely broke down. A wave of rage overcame me so strong, I was honestly screaming and Crying and shaking from the pain that I experienced that entire summer. Every part of me wanted to push it away, numb it, escape it, pretend I was fine. But something in me knew that I couldn't avoid it. I couldn't avoid it anymore. If I wanted to heal, I had to feel. I had to sit with all of it, the anger, the grief, the disappointment, because that was the only way through. And it was hard. so hard, but it was also the beginning of something deeper, something more honest, and something that looked and felt a lot more like pure healing. You're listening to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother. Here, we help moms with young children who lack maternal support to overcome childhood wounds and break harmful generational patterns through the five-step Roots Framework. My name is Alyssa Carlene. I am a motherhood empowerment and generational healing coach. My mission is to help you discover the root causes of your struggles so that you can learn to regulate your emotions and create a healthy, loving home environment for your family. Please remember that my podcast content is for educational purposes only and should never replace proper medical and mental health guidance from licensed professionals. Let's get started. Before we dive in, I want to invite you to come hang out with me on Instagram at alissa.carleen.rogers. It's where I share the behind the scenes of this healing work, little encouragements for the hard days, and tools to help you feel more supported in motherhood, especially if you're doing it without your mom. I'd love to connect with you over there. Okay, here we go. After today's episode, you'll see why sitting with big emotions feels so hard, what it means to really sit with them, and the beauty of letting ourselves feel. Society has some pretty high and even unrealistic expectations for mothers. Think, moms are supposed to be so calm and nurturing and grateful, which many of us are, and we also struggle. Sometimes we're the opposite. And I believe that we feel this pressure collectively. I also know that many of us mothers were not modeled emotional safety growing up, especially when we didn't have our moms to guide us. I witnessed emotional turbulence in my home on a daily basis. It was not healthy. We were all very enmeshed. And to be honest and frank with you, it was pretty terrifying. But overall, very uncomfortable. You've probably heard the phrase, you know, walking on eggshells. That's just how I felt growing up. So fast forward to me today as a mom. Whenever I feel like a little bit of that rage or another heavy, uncomfortable emotion, my first thought is, of course, I don't like it, which I think is normal. I think we don't like to feel things like that. And my second thought is I don't want to be like my mom was. I don't want to scare my kids. And so that either leads to a couple of things that will either lead to me trying to numb it and suppress it, or sometimes I lash out and I do end up being a little bit like her. And then I feel really bad. And the difference between what my mom did or what my parents did, and again, this isn't me trying to bash on them, this is just me teaching you, is that I don't really remember a lot of apologies growing up. It just was. That was the way it was. So if I ever make a mistake or raise my voice or do something, I always try to repair it, which is a big, big deal. But this is getting beside the point. Really, what I want to talk about is why sitting with emotions feels so hard. And I think... that we have this fear that if we feel it, it's just going to swallow us, like it's going to overtake us. Because some of these emotions are deeply layered. And whenever I go to therapy and I talk to my therapist about how angry I've felt, she's like, well, just remember that anger is a secondary emotion. There's something always beneath it. And whenever I feel angry lately, I remember, okay, yeah, so what else is going on? And a lot of the time, it's fear. And fear is so big and bad. Fear is reactive. It's panic. It's all these different things. So remembering that this is hard for moms, but it's not impossible, okay? And so if we have that fear... we're not going to feel. We're going to suppress. We're going to do things to numb. And here's really what it means to sit with emotions. I want to break this down for you into something that's doable because this is what's helped me. So when you're really starting to feel like a big emotion, you want to get out of your head for a second and get into your body and notice like, where am I feeling this? I'll give you an example of just last night. I woke up, I think it was maybe after the second night waking from my baby, and I really woke up in a panic and I felt it in my head. I had developed a headache. And so I immediately went to the kitchen and I grabbed an ice pack. And can I just tell you that cold and ice and anything cool It does wonders for anxiety, for panic, for these big emotions. So I grabbed the ice pack. I got back into my bed and I told my husband, you know, I think I'm having a panic attack. And the thing about panic attacks is I think that everyone feels them differently. And I've recognized when I'm starting to have them. And a lot of the time, it's not like I'm hyperventilating or, you know, I'm screaming or not really like the panic attack I talked about in the beginning of the episode. But this was more of a mental panic attack where I really felt it in my head. And so I told my husband, you know, hey, I'm really panicking right now. And he grabbed my hands and I just held his hands and I put the ice pack on my forehead. And I started to do deep breaths. I learned box breathing a long time ago where it's in for four, out for four, in for four, out for four. And I really just tried to do that. And I even brought in my headphones and my phone and thought, hey, I could listen to a meditation or a hypnosis right now. But I knew innately that that wasn't going to help me because I was already dealing with my racing thoughts and I didn't want to hear anyone else's voice. So I needed to breathe. And then I could name it, right? So first you notice, what is it that I'm feeling? Where in my body am I feeling it? Then name it. And for me, it was panic and fear. That was my thing. But you could ask, is this sadness or anger or disappointment? And then you've just got to stay with it. This is the hard part, okay? This is the part where it's so much easier to get on Instagram. or turn on a movie or go into the kitchen and eat a ton of food and like do everything in your power to not feel it. But when you stay with it, you just have to ask yourself, can I let this thing exist without judging it or fixing it? Because eventually you'll come back down. And that's what happened last night. I breathed and I felt pretty uncomfortable. I don't even really remember how long it lasted, but I fell asleep and I went through that process. It's hard. It's really hard sometimes, but it is important that you go through those. Notice, name, and stay. Another thing you can do, you know, these other anchoring practices, I mentioned deep breathing and But there's also grounding, like touch something soft, okay? Notice five things around you. I was holding my husband's hand. That really helped me. And then let it move through. If you've got a cry or journal or shake it out, like whatever you can do to get it out of your body, that's also incredibly, incredibly helpful. So here is this beauty that I was talking about. What happens when we do let ourselves feel? These emotions, they move in and out. They move through us instead of getting stuck because stuck emotions lead to future problems. I truly believe that emotions that are stuck lead to physical pain, which I suffered with for years and years. I had migraines for years and years and years. It literally got to the point where I was having a migraine every single day until I started doing this work that they stopped and I barely have them anymore. The other thing is that we become less reactive with our kids because if we've already got emotions stuck inside, then our kid does something that's probably going to trigger that emotion. And we're breaking cycles. We're not passing down emotional suppressions. We're modeling emotional resilience, emotional safety. So here is something I would really like you to think about. Just a few questions that you can sit with, okay? And you could write it in a journal. You could just, you know, sit with it right here. But ask yourself, what emotions do I usually try to avoid? And when was the last time that I felt something deeply and then I just let it be? Another question, what do I want my children to learn about emotions from me? I love that. I love thinking ahead, thinking that, hey, you doing this work is going to make such an impact on the future generation, on your children, which is so empowering at the end of the day. And to think, hey, I just got through this panic attack or whatever it was without numbing, without a pill, without a drink, without whatever, right? You are capable. You're more capable than you realize. It's amazing. So please remember this. You're allowed to feel it all, even the messy, uncomfortable stuff. It doesn't make you a bad mom. It makes you an honest mom because that's what we all want to be. We want to be honest, We want to be kind and we want to feel. And there's a lot of messy, uncomfortable emotions in motherhood, but that's part of the beauty of it. Because if we didn't have the yucky, we wouldn't have the wonderful. So if this conversation spoke something deep to you, deep in you, come join me again on Instagram. It's where we keep these honest, heart-centered conversations going. And I share a lot more about my healing and just these tools for you because you're not alone, okay? Please join me. Send me a DM and let me know what part of today's episode resonated with you. I would love to hear from you. Don't forget, okay? Here's the three things one last time. I want you to notice what you're feeling, name the emotion, and then stay with it. You can do it. I believe in you. You are changing the world already.