A client recently told me being a mum made her feel crazy sometimes. I smiled to myself because of course I didn't disagree, chaos and insanity had become part of my daily routine when we went from 1 to 2. But she meant something different. She described feeling like she didn't know who she was anymore, constantly switching between having to be fun and playful, caring and understanding, a boundary-setter, a professional, and an emotionally available partner and friend.
Something clicked in me. We talk a lot about the demands on working mothers today, as we should: the lack of time, childcare costs, working from home, childhood illnesses, stretching yourself between what your employer needs, what your family needs, and maybe what you need as well.
What we don't think about enough is why this is so hard. Why do we sometimes end up feeling crazy, like we have lost who we are in all of it? Research suggests that switching between competing tasks and emotional demands is something we are actually able to do, we have the internal tools to adapt, suppress emotions, and switch between roles many times a day.
Adaptive, But Not Free
None of this is bad, it's adaptive even. But there is research evidence that switching frequently comes at a cost: adapting to new demands repeatedly is cognitively depleting and can affect our ability to self-regulate. It is possible that the amount and speed of switching for today's mothers is too steep, tipping from adaptive into overload and overwhelm.
Working demands are high. We are expected to respond to emails and messages immediately, our phones never far from our grasp. Add to that the era of intense parenting we are living through, in which mothers are required to be everything to their children: emotional container, playmate, coach, authority. Something that is a strength might end up making us feel lost and depleted.
If I'm playing make-believe with my son, I might loosen control and allow myself to feel silly and joyous for a little while. If he hurts himself during play, my brain switches to regulating my own fear and panic to assess the situation, but leaves enough permeability to still be emotionally available to soothe him. If I then receive a stressful work email, my brain tightens the regulation strings even more and switches me into an analytical problem-solving mode. When I have to switch back out of that mode two minutes later, I have already been on an emotional rollercoaster that feels too exhausting to think about. Life as a working mother contains a hundred moments like these every single day.
Why This Matters
Why is this important? Because we're not crazy. So many of my clients feel they are failing because everyone else seems to know how to do motherhood better than they are. Even the mothers on Instagram probably sometimes struggle with how hard mothering can be. Switching modes all day is hard work, even though it might look easy from the outside.
Instead of trying to be everything, see if next time you can create some space before you switch again. And somewhere in that space, you might find the person who is you, who was still there all along.
Life as a working mother contains a hundred moments like these every single day.
Sarah Emmerson
