THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I DON'T LIKE THE PERSON I'VE BECOME” | EP. 198
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Have you ever had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from. Because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
In last week's podcast episode, I was exploring the frustration we can feel as moms when our kids blow through our boundaries. And in the context of that, I shared a story about getting angry with my own son because he was always coming home past curfew once he got his license. But here's the thing.
That frustration was just one small piece of what was going on between us at the time. The full truth was, I was walking on eggshells around my son. It hadn't always been that way.
In fact, we had had a really close relationship up until his sophomore year of high school. He would tell me everything, intimate details of his life. I felt like a trusted confidant.
It felt so good to know what was going on in his mind, even if I couldn't always help. Because he was so open, even if I couldn't always fix everything, I felt like I could at least be a source of love and support for him. But then something happened and everything changed, seemingly overnight.
He became more closed off and guarded. He pushed back when I tried to remind him about his school obligations, or really anything that I thought was important for him to do. He started being more critical of me.
At first, it was okay. You kind of think, this is just normal teenage stuff, right? But it seemed to get worse over time. There were these moments we'd have where we'd get into some pretty tense fights.
And my son is smart. So he'd often say things in a way that left me feeling small. And honestly, it's stupid.
He was just so quick. And I felt so unprepared. So naturally, I would get defensive and angry.
I was confused. And I felt so sure that my son needed to hear what I was telling him. But he was shutting me out.
And the more that happened, the angrier I got. And then the angrier I got, the more my son shot down. It was literally a downward spiral.
My son started avoiding me. When we were together, he would barely look me in the eye. I was heartbroken and angry.
I love my son so much. And I couldn't understand how or why our relationship had taken such a bad turn. If I'm honest, there were days that I dreaded coming home.
Because I wasn't quite sure what I would be walking into. I felt desperate to get through to him. I tried apologizing.
I tried getting angry. I tried being calm and patient, inviting him to open up. But nothing worked.
I felt consumed by it. One day, I would be crying. The next, I would be seething with anger.
For a time, it was all I could think about. And I remember saying to myself, I don't like the person I've become. I felt like I didn't even recognize myself anymore.
I felt angry and resentful. Afraid and hurt. Honestly, I felt so unbelievably sad.
I was living in a constant state of anxiety and tension. Because it felt like things were terrible and there was no clear end in sight. I worried that I was losing my son forever.
This wasn't me. I didn't want this to be my reality. But here I was, reacting and feeling victimized and trapped.
And so sad. So powerless. So hurt but also so angry.
I didn't like the person I'd become. I wonder if you've ever felt that way. Maybe you catch yourself barking at your big kid for leaving their stuff everywhere.
But then you feel terrible for being so triggered. You start to hate the way your voice sounds even as it comes out of your mouth. Or maybe you find yourself checking your kid's grades online constantly.
Or checking their location. Even though you promised yourself you'd give them a little space. That you want to trust them.
You feel embarrassed that you can't seem to stop checking. Maybe you've started to avoid conversations with your big kid because you're afraid of their reaction. You keep waiting for that right time to talk.
But then when you do happen to catch them in a good mood, you don't want to ruin it. You feel like you have no confidence to be able to just talk to your kid. Or maybe, like me, your kid is pulling away and all you want is a little time to connect with them.
A dinner together. Or a call home from college. But the more they blow you off or just seem busy, the more you start to feel irrelevant and even a little needy.
At times you can even feel resentful that the only reason they ever seem to want to connect with you is when they need something from you. Maybe you're in the empty nest and you're feeling deeply sad. And that sadness just doesn't seem to go away.
You start to wonder if you'll ever move on. And you feel a little pathetic. Like, how did I let myself get here? I don't like who I've become.
It's such a heavy thing to admit to ourselves, isn't it? It makes us feel ashamed. We have this sense of who we want to be in our lives, whether that be more patient, more confident, more loving, able to stand up for ourselves, able to be the adult, worthy of having our kids respect us, and to want to have a strong relationship with us. But I want to share something I've learned, my friend.
If you're feeling like you don't like who you've become right now, I want to assure you that this isn't proof that you are, in fact, broken or failing. The truth is, it's simply a sign that you're hurting and feeling powerless. You can't change the situation in front of you.
And so it feels like the only answer is to change yourself. But what that often looks like is that we take all of this pain and turn it against ourselves, telling ourselves that we're the problem that we need to fix. That we need to figure out how to be better and do better to help fix the situation.
And look, believe me, I've been there. I can't tell you how many times I've laid awake at night replaying conversations, feeling this pit in my stomach, wishing I'd handled things differently, wishing I could go back in time, trying to figure out how to approach the next conversation in a more effective way. There was so much I wished that I could take back.
If only I'd known. If only I'd seen this coming. I say this to my clients all the time.
There is not one of us moms who wake up and say, I'm going to do a terrible job as a mom today. Literally, it never happens. And yet, day after day, during these challenging moments of raising and launching our kids, we can think, I am a terrible mom.
Something's gone wrong with me. I think it's a core trait of being a mom that we try our best all the time, but we don't give ourselves credit for it. We want to love our kids, and we want to support them, and we want to connect with them.
But when you lose your patience, or you raise your voice, or you just shut down, you can't help but judge yourself. This isn't who I wanted to be. As moms, we've been socialized to believe that being a good mom means being calm and selfless, patient, and emotionally regulated.
So when we feel angry or frustrated, or just emotionally exhausted, or in those moments when we say something we regret, it feels like we're failing. But I want to offer you this. When you find yourself reacting or stuck in patterns that don't align with who you want to be as a mom, or just as a woman in your life, I want to remind you that underneath these reactions, you are that loving, intentional mom.
Nothing's changed about that. All that's happening is that you're just struggling under the weight of impossible expectations and a lot of painful emotions. The truth is, your brain is comparing the reality of how you show up with the story you have in your mind about who you think you should be.
And when those two pictures don't match up, you blame yourself. It's interesting to consider that one of the mindset traps we can fall into here is the identity trap, really belief that your reactions or your emotions are mistakes. Say something about who you are as a person, rather than what you're experiencing as a human being.
You start to confuse your behavior in those triggered moments with your identity. When you react in ways you don't like, or just feel stuck in patterns that you know aren't working, your brain doesn't just interpret it as, I'm struggling with something here. Instead, it tells you, you're doing it wrong.
This isn't who you're supposed to be. You have a vision of what it looks like to be a better mom, a better person. And because you don't meet that expectation of yourself all the time, you judge yourself and tell yourself a story about what that means.
Just think about how that happens those times when your brain is stuck in that loop of replaying terrible conversations you have with your big kid. You think of all those things that you should have done differently or said differently, how you could have handled it better. You tell yourself, I know better than this.
I know I'm supposed to be patient. I know I should be giving my kids space or the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe it's that you think, I know I should be setting a boundary here or enforcing those consequences.
We've got this laundry list in our heads of what it looks like to get it right. And so often we find ourselves falling short of that. We measure how well we're doing as a mom in large part by how well we handle these situations with our kids or those stressful or challenging moments in our life.
But often we're also judging our success by things outside of us. We start looking outside of ourselves for proof that we're doing it right, that we're doing okay. We look at how our kids are behaving or how successful or happy they seem, whether our home feels organized or how other people see us, whether we have a calendar full of things that are worthy.
If all of those things line up with how we think they should look, it's like, okay, I can relax. I've done my job. I'm doing this right.
But inevitably, when life doesn't meet your expectations of how it should look, when your teen is struggling or not complying with what you've asked them to do, even when you're not as productive as you'd like to be, you compare where you are to other people and you stack all of this evidence up and you make it mean something about you. And it makes sense, right? Because we have emotions and reactions connected to how life unfolds. And it doesn't always look the way we want it to look.
The fact is, life can feel so out of your control sometimes. And in the face of all of this uncertainty, your brain panics. It looks for a way to try to find certainty and safety, to find control again.
So I want to offer that in these moments, your brain is using self-judgment as a control strategy. It's operating under the premise that if you can shame yourself enough, you'll finally get your act together. It's almost like your brain thinks that that guilt and self-criticism will push you to be that version of yourself you think you should be.
It's an attempt to motivate yourself through self-discipline. But here's the problem. That kind of motivation doesn't actually work.
Think about this. It's just like hating your body and then thinking the answer is to put yourself on a harsh, strict diet. I don't know if you've ever done this, but I remember in high school, and if I'm honest, probably also in my 20s.
I would go on these ridiculous 1400 calorie diets. I hated my body, and so I thought that the path to feeling better about myself was to get to some magic number on the scale. So I'd starve myself and essentially shame myself into doing this hard work, to restricting these calories.
And that would work for maybe a few days. But inevitably, I'd find myself eating a whole plate of brownies by the end of the week. What I was really doing was using shame and self-judgment to fuel my willpower in a way that was harsh and restrictive.
I wasn't dieting from a place of self-love and self-compassion. You might know from experience with anything you've tried to change using willpower, particularly willpower fueled by self-criticism and shame. It just doesn't last.
Shame and being harsh with yourself just isn't sustainable over the long term. Because the more deprived and judged and honestly just bad about yourself that you feel, the more your brain is going to default to seeking some kind of relief. Which in my example of dieting involved binge eating for me.
You find yourself stuck between deprivation and rebellion, between being good and failing. And either way, you're reinforcing the belief that you can't trust yourself, that you can't get it together, that you can't be successful. Just think about how this same dynamic plays out in motherhood.
When you use self-judgment as a way to try to force yourself to change, you might manage to white-knuckle your way through a few conversations. But inside, you're still carrying the same fear, frustration, resentment, and guilt. I've had clients describe it to me this way, that they're calm and patient for a while, but then it just feels like that frustration builds and builds until it explodes.
You're essentially pushing down all of these painful emotions until your brain gets to the point where it needs relief. And it gets it by letting that emotion out. So imagine what would be different if you opened yourself up to compassion instead of shame or self-judgment.
When it comes to dieting, compassion looks like making choices to care for your body in ways that are loving rather than harsh. It's the difference between thinking, I hate my body so I need to fix it, from a place of self-punishment, versus, I want to take care of myself and my body because I deserve to feel well. You might still make choices to eat differently, but those choices come from kindness, not punishment.
And then when you have a day where you inevitably go off the rails a little bit, eating more than you wanted to, instead of guilting or shaming yourself, kindness invites you to get curious and learn so that you can apply those lessons to help you be more successful in the future. Truly the same works in parenting, or honestly approaching any challenge you have in your life. When you move from shame to compassion, you start to view your emotions and reactions as invitations to understand yourself better.
Change only happens when you stop trying to punish yourself into being better and start understanding what's really driving your behavior. Because when you're caught in that harsh self-judgment, you're not learning. You're not getting curious and opening yourself up to compassion.
You're basically on the defense, trying to solve the emotions you're feeling by beating yourself up for feeling them, rather than taking the time to really understand them. Here's what's interesting. In parenting, what we typically do when we react in ways that we don't want is first we blame our kids, essentially whatever situation it is that triggered us.
But even more, we blame ourselves. So the solution feels like it needs to be some combination of fixing or changing our kids and fixing ourselves. But all of that assumes that there's actually something broken.
And stick with me here, because I get it. When you're facing a big challenge with your kid, it does feel like something's broken. But what if your reactions, and your teen's reactions for that matter, are simply a response to the way you're thinking and feeling about the circumstances of your lives? For you, that's how you're thinking and feeling about your role as a mom, and your teen's choices, and how much you want them to be safe, happy, and successful.
For your teen, their reactions are about them, their journey to figure themselves out and navigate the stressful and uncertain parts of their lives. We're all, at the end of the day, just looking to feel safe and comfortable, to make this life a little easier. But when we don't have compassion for this default response, we end up making our own lives so much more painful, so much harder.
When you react in ways that you don't want to react, you truly can feel like you're not at all in control of your reactions, or your feelings for that matter. But what's really happening is that your nervous system is trying to protect you from emotional pain. Your brain senses a threat, whether it's rejection, or loss of control, or disconnection from your kid, even loss of purpose and loneliness.
We sense this danger and our brain reacts, instantaneously. Your primitive brain is taking over before the part of your brain responsible for planning and logic can catch up. You're not actively choosing to be angry or to react harshly.
Your primitive brain is just trying to create safety. Now, it's one thing when our brains do this when we're facing a real danger. That quick, instantaneous reaction does keep us safe at times.
But when the danger you're facing is emotional, those knee-jerk reactions to your anger or anxiety don't actually make you safer. You just react. And then you end up judging your reaction and feeling ashamed.
You end up in this painful loop of feeling an emotion that triggers a reaction, and then that reaction creates regret, and that regret fuels your self-judgment, and that judgment just reinforces this sense that something's wrong. I don't like who I've become. But my friend, what breaks the cycle isn't more self-control and self-criticism.
The path to change is truly just getting curious, understanding and having compassion for what's happening in your mind, for what's creating your emotional experience right now. What if the emotions you're feeling are simply signals, invitations for you to get curious and learn? Imagine what might look different if instead of beating yourself up and shaming yourself for your feelings and your reactions, you got curious and opened yourself up to compassion. What is really underneath this emotion? Because often what you'll find is that there's fear behind your anger, in your attempts to control, and your attempt to control or fix or manage the situation in front of you is often just a response to your own anxiety, or just trying to feel safe.
And when you shut down, you're often just trying to escape feeling overwhelmed. Our emotions and reactions truly make so much sense when you understand them. But when you push against or try to push down or resist your emotions, you're essentially telling yourself that those emotions don't matter, that they're wrong or not valid.
But the truth is your feelings are always valid. They're coming from a very real and honest place. The challenge is that sometimes reacting to those emotions doesn't create what you want.
So rather than pushing these emotions down or fighting against them, shaming yourself for them, what if you could just understand them? Understand what they're trying to tell you. This is the path to emotional freedom. And this is the heart of the work we do in my Mom 2.0 coaching program.
Learning how to step out of self-judgment and into self-awareness. Understanding what's really driving your emotions and learning how to access that version of yourself who you know you want to be. That version of yourself who right now feels buried under painful emotions and the shame of not handling life better.
What if you could simply let that shame go and instead step into kindness and compassion? Beating yourself up is not the path to doing better. Instead, self-compassion and understanding is the light you can shine on your heart to discover a more intentional way forward. In those early days with my son, I was reacting to so much fear and frustration and a lot of self-judgment.
I thought that if I could just figure out how to do better myself, if I could somehow fix myself, maybe I could fix my relationship with my son. But the harder I tried to control things, to control my son, or my emotions, or the outcome of our conversations, the worse things got. It wasn't until I started getting curious about what was really happening inside me that things began to change.
And what I realized was that underneath all the anger and frustration was grief. I was grieving the loss of the relationship we used to have. I was grieving the loss of the little boy who told me everything.
Frankly, I was grieving the loss of who I thought he was, who I thought he was becoming. None of it fit what I thought it should be. And I thought it was my job to get him back on track or else risk losing him.
I had to spend some time feeling that grief without judgment, without trying to push it away. But that compassion opened me up to the possibility that all I needed to do was love my son for exactly who he was at that time. Messy, hurting, struggling, trying to find his own way.
I opened myself up to love him and myself. And this compassion gave me the emotional strength to keep the light on, to invite him to come home, to come back to himself, to get back to the person he wanted to be. It didn't happen overnight.
But that journey taught me so much about the power of love and compassion and curiosity. The truth is, I always have the power to choose who I want to be. But at that time, I first needed to understand what was really standing in my way.
It wasn't my son's choices or behavior. It wasn't the circumstances. It was my own resistance to the pain I didn't want to feel.
And once I stopped fighting those emotions and started listening to them, I realized they were invitations to help guide me back to myself. Self-compassion doesn't just change how you feel. It changes how you show up.
So if you're in that place right now, thinking, I don't like that person I've become, please hear me. You haven't lost yourself. She is still right there, underneath the fear and the frustration and the disappointment and even the shame.
And the moment you begin to look at yourself through the lens of compassion instead of judgment, you'll start to see yourself again. This is the work we do in Mom 2.0. Not to make you into someone new, but to help you come home to yourself. Until next time, my friend.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
