We have all done it. Booked an amazing deal with Spirit Airlines, refused to pay for a carry-on bag, and was stuck with an oversized personal item. Now imagine packing a personal item for you and your 4-month-old baby.
This Christmas our little family traveled to Peru and we overpacked everything. Which, I hope is normal for a first-time mom (Can I get an Amen?). On our flight to Peru, we were one of the last to board. We walked down the aisle with our overstuffed personal items, the baby boss chair, blankets, swaddles, nursing cover in hand. As we got to our seats my heart sank to the pit of my feet. I know the saying goes stomach but it felt like my heart sank deeper. I looked at the stranger sitting in the window seat in our row and saw that her face was full of utter disappointment and disdain.
We were the people she had to sit with. A 4-month-old baby and 3 bulky backpacks. As soon as we sat down I started to feel contempt for myself. Why did I bring so much? Why didn’t I pack better? Why wasn’t I a better mother? I tried to make myself smaller. Squish Jonathan and I, invade all of Jonny’s space, let my arm go numb multiple times trying to take up less space.
Have you done something like that? Perceived or received judgment from society for doing what a mother does? Breastfeeding, comforting a crying baby, carrying a ton of stuff for your tiny human. Why do we feel shame for being mothers?
Let’s Define shame.
Brene Brown defines shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of feeling love and belonging.”
She says that Shame rears its ugly head when “something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us [feel] unworthy of connection.”
In my circumstance, I felt ashamed because I felt like I failed as a mother. I felt guilty for bringing an oversized bag. But my guilt quickly turned into shame because I felt like it dictated that I was a bad mother.
Guilt vs Shame
What’s the difference between guilt and shame? Guilt acknowledges that you did something wrong or bad. Shame leaves you feeling like you are wrong or bad.
I felt guilty for bringing a huge bag as my personal item because I didn’t pay for it. But I also felt shame because I felt I was a bad mom for not having it all together.
Guilt in my example is a good thing because I acknowledged that I did something wrong (breaking the bag policy). And it’s fixable. Next time I can buy a carry-on and I won’t feel guilty.
Shame, however, if not remedied leaves you feeling like a failure. Shame doesn’t leave room for grace or for mistakes. Shame tells us that we aren’t enough. That what we did was so unlovable that we can’t do anything to redeem ourselves.
I am a bad mother because I wasn’t picture-perfect. I am a bad mother period. How do you recover from that?
The lens of perfection perpetuates shame
I wanted to be seen and experienced as a perfect mother. You know? The type of mother you see on Instagram. The perfect outfit, small designer bag, the baby perfectly dressed in a matching or complementary outfit.
That’s what a good mother looks like right? You can laugh, it’s okay. I know it’s absurd. In that picture, where are the baby’s diapers, extra sets of clothes, food, burp cloths? Where’s the compassion for myself?
I put a ton of effort and thought into packing exactly what my baby needed. The baby boss chair was a nice to have for us parents but everything else was necessary. We were traveling since 3 am and wouldn’t get to Peru until 11 am the next day. We needed two days’ worth of clothes, diapers, formula, bottles, etc.
But the shame still crept in and I felt like I was a bad mother for having too much stuff, for being a nuance. I felt ashamed about Jonathan crying and disturbing everyone even though he hadn’t done it yet and actually didn’t do it on the flight.
I wanted to be perfect but no one can be perfect. My expectation of perfection perpetuated shame. Shame isolates us, cuts us off from love and belonging, and draws us further from God and others. Shame causes us to hide, detach, disconnect and numb out.
How do we deal with shame?
So what do we do when shame floods all our senses and leaves us in a vulnerable, compromised position? There are three things we can do with our shame.
1) We internalize Shame
I could internalize my shame and turn inward. This would only hurt me with more self-contempt and loathing. Internalizing shame causes us to sit in our pain and our perception of inadequacy. That’s what I did on this trip. I kept my shame inward and let it deep into my bones. And I struggled to fight through it.
Internalizing shame can lead to depression, feelings of inadequacy, isolation, and more. I didn’t realize how much my shame in motherhood would make me feel more depressed and isolated than my regular depression and pain. It was like becoming a mother intensified my self-contempt, my depression, and my isolation but I had to keep grudging through cause I had a literal human relying on me.
For me, internalizing shame is detrimental to my health and to Jonathan’s. So I’m working on talking about it openly so that I don’t get sucked into a black hole without a way out.
2) We Deflect Shame on to others
Sometimes when our shame is too great to bear, we deflect it onto others saying things like, “well you did this or caused this.” We channel our shame into shaming someone else. It’s so much easier if someone else is carrying our shame, correct?
This can sometimes feel like a safe option because someone else is carrying the burden, but this causes disconnection with others leaving us feeling worse for deflecting the shame and it doesn’t allow us to work through the pain. If you do this, have empathy for yourself. You were just trying to survive.
When we’re drowning our instinct is to hold onto a lifeline. Sometimes that causes our lifeline, (someone else) to drown so we can breathe. I could tell you a million stories of me deflecting shame to feel better. Be kind to yourself, acknowledge it, apologize and do better next time.
3) We disconnect & numb out
Sometimes we opt to not feel shame. Instead, we disconnect from our emotions and numb them out with our drug of choice. That could be alcohol, food, porn, comparing ourselves to others, tv/movies, video games, isolation from others, etc.
For me, I eat when I disconnect from myself. And my numbing drug is McDonald’s. When I used to fight with Jonny and it got to be too much, I’d drive to McDonald’s and order a ton of food. Then I’d drive to my favorite spot and eat and cry. So sad right? But it was my way of disconnecting and trying not to feel. Food is my comfort. Now I try to notice when I am feeling a need to eat even though I’m not hungry.
I also watch a ton of TV, especially gory, painful TV shows. When I find myself binging SVU, I ask myself if I am trying to numb my pain by watching others in pain. For me, it’s easier to feel someone else pain, fictional or true, than deal with my own pain.
Listen to your body. Sometimes it will tell you or warn you that you are going through a shame spiral. Our body carries our emotions more than we know.
Back to Our Story
Let’s address one thing before we end this blog post. The poor woman sitting next to us did not create this shame spiral within me. I couldn’t really tell what she was thinking because she had a mask on. The shame and contempt were brought on by my own feelings of inadequacy and my perception of my unpreparedness for this trip.
We can be shamed by others but in this instance, I was responsible for my shame and I ended up owning it by writing this blog post. Sitting in my middle seat, a cozy, sleepy baby in my arms, I wrote down what I was feeling, why I was feeling it, and quickly realized that I caused my shame spiral. I disconnected from Jonny and pulled inward.
I let the shame wash over me for 45 minutes as I tried to work through my emotions. I couldn’t run away from it cause I was stuck in a plane for the next 6 hours. I couldn’t go to McDonald’s or even have time alone because I was carrying my son. Being stuck on the plane helped me deal with my emotions.
What do you do with your shame?
Through this blog post we learned the difference between shame and guilt, how to recognize shame, and three ways that we deal with shame. Can you think of a time when you felt shame? How did you cope with it?
Speaking to mothers, Have you felt shame in motherhood? How can we support each other when that relentless shame attacks our sense of belonging and leaves us feeling flawed and unworthy of love. Interested in an online support group? Contact me now!
