Loss, Anxiety, Stress, and Various Stages of Motherhood
I’d love to share some of the thoughts and observations that I have gathered over the past 3+ years of working closely with women and mothers of young children.
The experience of loss can be isolating and painful. Loss of the life we thought we would have by now, loss of something, loss of someone, loss of our own confidence and loss of our own sense of clarity.
The first concept to touch on today is “what to say and what not to say” to someone navigating loss.
There is a famous social worker and researcher named Brene Brown who’s main area of expertise is around shame and vulnerability. From her research, she shared that, "Rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with the words 'at least.' And.. "When we use 'at least,' we’re trying to paint over pain with a layer of reason or positivity. That is not empathy—it’s a way to discharge our own discomfort by minimizing someone else’s."
She also says “because the truth is, rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection."
What I would like to share with you today is that, when we have access to healthy connection with others, it is one of the most powerful ways to start healing from feelings of shame, blame, and guilt.
When I provide therapy to someone experiencing loss, these are phrases that I use frequently to help my clients process their loss at a speed and in a way that feels manageable to them:
Option 1- “Would you like to talk about it? I’d love to listen.”
Option 2 is a little bit more specific to how I work with anyone processing trauma and loss. I Offer them a stop signal like the time out gesture or a safe word like “skip” that they can use anytime in any conversation with you. This gives a shameful, confused, grieving, angry person permission to change the topic simply because they want to. And there is no threat of them being shamed, told that theyre being too sensitive, or being asked more questions past their comfort level.
Option 3- Do some of the work for them in a difficult conversation. Things like “I remember you were thinking about trying a new doctor, how is that going?”
Option 4- Listening to their struggle, summarizing what you are observing, and then ask “Did I get that right?” An example would sound like- “So your doctor is working with you to remove the endometriosis. Am I getting it right? What happens after that?”
Option 5- And a simple classic, one of my personal favorites- “That sounds exhausting.”
Let’s move along with the second topic to touch on together:
Realistic Self-Talk in Loss
Self-Compassion is a great skill to use in any hardship throughout life but I often find that the way society teaches self-compassion is like asking someone to be on step 10 when they are still on step 2. For example, it is factually true that infertility is a medical condition. However, someone who is in the depths of infertility and loss will likely not find that to be comforting. The message of “something is wrong with me” doesn’t just disappear because a statistic says so.
I would suggest that you practice acceptance to start the process of a genuine/ not forced kind of self-compassion. If you can accept that you are at a step 2 and not yet at step 10 in processing the grief and loss you are experiencing,it will give your nervous system a chance to catch up with what your logic brain already knows.
Here is what acceptance is NOT: It is not co-signing what is happening, or welcoming an undesirable outcome or tolerating any of it. It’s an intentional practice I teach in the therapy room that stops the pain from snowballing into suffering.
So, what does acceptance sound like? I would suggest that it sounds like-
Labeling the experience as “this really sucks/ this is really hard” instead of saying “what is wrong with me”?
Deciding “I am not good enough,” when the more neutral and more honest truth would be, “I can start learning that I am good enough again”.
You might say, “What if this is something I can handle even when I don’t have my confidence and all I feel is anxiety in this process?” This phrasing helps label the fear, not dismiss the reality, while also gently offering more perspective to your processing.
I recently had a session with a mom who has experienced multiple losses over the past few years. She said, ‘I know I have grief. I’m just not ready to go there yet.’ I was so proud of her for noticing that and saying it out loud. The fact that she still came to therapy that day and processed her losses in other ways was evidence that she knew she was at step 2 and that jumping to step 10 that day would have been a violation to her loss.
The goal isn’t to jump from ‘I’m not enough’ to ‘I’m amazing,’ but rather, to simply say,
-"I can experience grief without turning it into a statement about my worth or who I am."
- "I’m acknowledging that I am a person who is grieving, or a person who is feeling jealous, or a person who is angry, without that meaning something is wrong with me."
These statements lead us to the next and final topic I wanted to speak about today- the Power of Connection over Comparison and what that looks like through various motherhood journeys. I am going to use real client experiences as examples.
A client who was going through IVF shared this with me: ‘I married my husband knowing we would have to do IVF to start a family because of his previous cancer, but I am the one doing all of these shots. I am the one taking all of this medicine and going to the appointments, and now I am going to be a mom. It’s just all so trippy.’”
That feeling of ‘this is not what I imagined’ is very real even when the end result means your dreams are coming true. But all of these experiences—loss, medical procedures, unanswered prayers—they are a part of your very real lived experience. Not evidence of how you should be feeling or how you should’ve handled something.
I notice a lot in my therapy practice that people who are hurting often take information and observations straight to what that says about them as a person. This applies to all stages of life and all stages of parenting in my opinion.
1. A mom client of mine said “my husband and I talk a lot about how starting our family will be starting our legacy. It’s so exciting to think about. But what if I can’t fix all of the things that are wrong with me enough to ever feel like I can be the kind of mom my kid deserves? The clock feels like it’s ticking and I can’t start a family knowing that I have all of this anxiety and irritability.” This is a great example of how a very self-aware, well-intentioned woman was determining that her anxiousness meant something was wrong with her. So much so that she couldn’t see how much progress she was making because all she was looking for was being “perfect” for her future babies.
2. A woman I work with that has 3 small children knew she had classic mom-rage, especially in the evenings. She knew every little thing about it from her triggers to her internal dialogue to how her childhood impacted her current-day parenting. And she had decided that, because she was so very self-aware, that there should be NO reason that she was still being so ragey towards her children. And that she was obviously just a bad person and that her children deserved better than a mom who acted this way. She was doing that thing I talked about earlier. She was wanting to be on step 10 when her body was still as step 2.
3. One women told me she was pregnant in one session and told me she had a loss in the following weeks session. She did not need an “oh im so sorry” from me that day. She needed an “holy crap” and permission to be in full control of our session. She then went on to talk about her business and other stressors. Her body wanted to feel normal for a second and talk about “normal” things without the guilt that life was still moving on despite her loss.
No matter what stage of the motherhood journey my clients are on, I often sit with my them in the perspective of ‘These are facts. This is information to notice. And the facts you are facing don’t automatically equal a deep dive into what you could’ve done better or what you should have done differently to change the outcome.’
My hope is that you finish reading this knowing your grief is valid and your pace in processing the grief is yours to honor. My hope is that we all continue to choose connection over comparison, and allow yourself to be at step 2 if you’re not fully ready to be at step 10.
