Anxiety in Motherhood
“Making a decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
Motherhood and Anxiety.
Those two things seem to go hand-in-hand. Having a child amplifies all of your worries, concerns, and struggles. To have this precious little human that you are responsible for is quite frankly, terrifying. It's natural to have some anxiety around your child and to want to protect them from pain and suffering.
While some anxiety is a normal part of motherhood and life, it can become a barrier to living the life we want.
Read on to learn more about anxiety, how it can come up in motherhood and our children and how to know when to seek help.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is characterized by feelings of worry, stress, and/or fear. It can be about everyday situations or particular events. It often includes physical symptoms such as a fast heart rate, shallow breathing, tightness in our muscles, nausea or stomachache, and headaches.
Those experiencing anxiety often have persistent thoughts of their worries and/or fears and it can include images and visions of the worries and/or fears occurring. During periods of higher stress, anxiety often will increase.
Everyone experiences anxiety on some level, it’s when it starts to impact in your daily living that it can be characterized as a mental health condition.
Why Do We Experience Anxiety?
Our brain is wired for our and our children’s survival. We have an innate process to recognize threat and then to immediately respond to it. This is called our Fight-or-Flight system, also know as the Sympathetic Nervous System.
When we perceive a threat to our or our children’s wellbeing we automatically go into our Fight-or Flight system. This threat can be a physical threat or a threat towards our emotional and mental wellbeing. This sets off a chain of reactions that happens automatically and instantaneous. A set of stress hormones, including cortisol, increase which triggers our heart rate and breathing to increase, our muscles tense up and we are “ready” to take action. To stay and “fight” or run to safety, also known as “flight.” Research has also determined that a third response of “Freeze” can also occur, where we become flooded which can lead to us being immobile to respond, or “frozen.”
During this time, the part of our brain responsible for our higher level of thinking, goes “offline.” The reason for this is in a situation of a threat, we don’t have the time to think out the threat, as that can be too late. Our body needs to quickly react to keep ourselves safe.
While this system is made to ensure our survival, it can easily become “hijacked” to where we start to perceive lesser or even non-existent threats as “real” threats and we get triggered into our Fight or Flight response. If we have past experiences of trauma, we are also more likely to get triggered into this stress response system.
Those that experience a higher level of anxiety are often operating more frequently from their stress response system and this in turn can create more anxiety. It can become a never-ending cycle.
Mom Guilt and Shame
A way anxiety can come up in mothers is through mom guilt. It’s natural to worry about whether you are doing a “good” job as a mother. You want the best for your child, so it makes sense that you are going to evaluate whether you are doing “enough” to set them up for the best life. The worry around this then can often turn into guilt, as we are often comparing ourselves to impossible and perfect standards and when we don’t meet them, we feel guilty. This guilt often includes a message that we have to do more, that we need to sacrifice our own needs (and often happiness) for those of our children.
This guilt of “I’m not doing something right”, can then turn into shame, “I am not enough, I am bad”.
Guilt and shame often get easily confused for one another and it’s important to know the difference. Guilt comes up when we “do” something wrong. It’s there to help us correct our behavior in the future to do better. Shame is there is something wrong with “me.” Shame does not help us do better in the future. Shame makes us believe that we are not worthy of love.
Much of “Mom Guilt” is actually “Mom Shame.” It’s a belief that we are not “good enough” as a mother. This shame is not helpful and can become pervasive and can cycle into a state of more serious anxiety and/or depression.
Postpartum Anxiety
Anxiety comes up a lot during the postpartum time. We have this brand new baby to learn about and take care of, there is is so much unknown, not to mention the fragility of a newborn baby. It's normal to experience some worry after having a baby. When this worry starts to interfere with our daily functioning, then it can morph into Postpartum Anxiety.
Some symptoms of Postpartum Anxiety include:
persistent worrying that you can't control
racing thoughts
fear that something horrible is going to happen
disruptions in sleep and appetite
intrusive thoughts and/or images of something bad happening to your baby, yourself or your family
physical symptoms including nausea, dizziness, hot flashes, shakiness, feeling jittery, etc.
A big part of postpartum anxiety is thought to be due to the rapid fluctuation in our hormones after birth, which can increase feelings of anxiety and sadness. There is also an increased risk of Postpartum Anxiety if you have experienced anxiety in the past and/or had experiences of miscarriage, infant loss, infertility and/or a traumatic birth.
Common Reactions to Anxiety That Make it Worse
A couple of common reactions to anxiety that actually make it worse is avoidance and trying to control everything.
When we worry and/or stress about certain things, we often try to avoid it, in order to not to feel worse. While this may bring some relief in the moment, the avoidance actually creates more anxiety for the potential to then next face the stress. For example, a common fear of new mothers is around taking baby out for the first time by themselves. They worry about whether they can “handle” it, what happens if baby starts crying and they can’t soothe her, will they remember everything, can they figure out the car seat, etc. It can feel overwhelming and so it’s common to then avoid going out. However, the more they avoid going out, the more anxiety builds over the potential to go out in the future. It then becomes an on-going cycle. Avoid, feel a little better, then more anxiety, leads to more avoiding, which leads to more anxiety.
Another common reaction to anxiety is to try to control everything that is going on. We have this false belief that if we control everything around us, then we can minimize risk. The problem is, that’s it’s not possible to control everything around us. The need to control can also interfere with our relationships with our partner and children.
With our partner, it can prevent them from engaging in an equal share of the parenting responsibilities and can reduce their ability to connect and bond with their child. This often comes up when a mother feels that only she is able to properly soothe her baby, or get baby to sleep. Mom may definitely have a better understanding due to her experience and bonding with baby and this does not mean that the other parent cannot also learn and develop this bond.
When we attempt to control everything around our child, it does not allow for them to develop their own independence and to even experience any struggle. Struggle is a part of life and it provides us with an opportunity to learn and grow from it. If a parent minimizes possibility for struggles, it prevents the child from developing more resilience and perseverance. Children may also react negatively towards a parent’s control by acting out and even going behind the parents’ back to test boundaries and try to gain control back.
Anxiety in Children
Children are not immune from experience anxiety themselves. Just as adults, children can have persistent thoughts of worries and fears and everyday items and/or over a specific event or thing. Anxiety can also present as irritability and anger. Children with anxiety may often reports physical symptoms such as stomachaches or headaches. Many times, kids that experience anxiety will keep these concerns to themselves and may be more withdrawn.
Causes of anxiety are thought to be a variety of factors including our genes, family history of anxiety, and life experiences. A child that observes a parent with anxiety is more likely to also experience anxiety themselves.
When to Seek Out Help for Anxiety
If you find yourself struggling in your days due to anxiety, worry and/or stress, seeking out help is really important. There is not a threshold for "how bad" it needs to be to get support. Learning ways to cope with life stressors is not only helpful for yourself, but also for your child. Children are amazing observers and they really take in the climate of the family. When a parent is struggling, children will feel it.
It's okay to struggle, as struggling is a part of life. Modeling to your child that you are doing what you can to take care of yourself and learn new ways to cope is one of the best things you can do for your child. There is no such things as a stress-free or struggle-free life. Children need to learn tools on how to cope in a healthy manner to stress and struggle. Watching their own parents learn and model this is one of the best ways to learn.
Depending on how intense your symptoms are, there are many different ways to start to help yourself with your anxiety. Therapy of course is a great avenue. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) have both demonstrated to be helpful in treating anxiety.
Some other things that you can do to cope with anxiety include:
Exercise
Engaging in relaxation techniques, such as breathing exercises.
Mindfulness techniques, like meditation
Help is Available!
Anxiety is so difficult to experience on a daily basis and without some kind of treatment it often gets worse. You do not have to have anxiety take over your life. There is help available!
If you live in California and are interested in my therapy services to address your anxiety, please reach out! You can also check out Psychology Today for other therapists in your area that specialize with treating Anxiety, including Postpartum Anxiety.
Disclaimer: This is not a replacement for a therapeutic relationship or mental health services. This is for educational purposes only and should be in used only in conjunction in working with a licensed mental health professional. If you are in California and looking for a professional therapist feel free to use the contact me to request an appointment or search Psychology Today for local therapists in your area.
