What is the cause of Mom Rage?
You are not alone. Postpartum rage is a very real thing and it’s not your fault.
It’s that fiery feeling you get in the pit of your gut, when your heart feels like it's beating a million times a minute, it’s the moment you break and all you see is red.
Mom rage is a thing that happens to all moms, most moms don’t want to talk about it because as women we were conditioned to always be polite and calm. And if you express anger or rage you are labeled crazy.
I remember when I had first lost control of my anger with my child. I felt so ashamed, foolish, and defeated. I felt like a monster. I never wanted to be that mom that yelled. I tried so hard to prevent that from happening but I couldn’t suppress my anger and frustration any longer. There are so many other factors that play into how mom rage manifested in my daily life. Countless sleepless nights, never ending to do lists, planning and cooking meals, washing dishes, loading laundry, folding laundry, and working at a stressful job was all too much to bear.
And many times it wasn’t one incident that triggered my rage. It was the accumulation of these micro moments throughout my day that compounded up to the point where I completely lost control. Being stuck in traffic for 2 hours, while my toddler screamed and cried in the backseat because his stuffy fell on floor of the car, then driving around the block 3 times because I couldn’t find street parking, or watching my toddler dump all the toys on the floor, and then shortly after me stepping on a lego that might as well have been a rusty nail piercing right through my foot.
Anger, frustration, irritability and rage are all natural feelings. And there are no “bad feelings” there are just feelings. In accepting that, I learned to be more compassionate towards myself in those challenging and stressful moments in motherhood. It took a long journey of self-love and self-reflection to understand the underlying emotions behind my anger and irritability.
I had to ask myself the hard questions. What is really going on behind this anger and frustration? What can I control in these challenging situations with my child? What can I do to prevent these feelings from escalating?
Exploring what triggers mom rage is one step in the right direction. Giving yourself grace in the moments of feeling shame and guilt can help you understand that anger is not a bad feeling, it's just a feeling and it's okay. You are not a bad mom because you got angry at your child, you’re a good mom trying to do her best in a stressful situation. You are enough and it’s okay to not be okay sometimes.
