Stress & Emotional Safety.
Often as mothers we feel fear when our safety is at risk. This is not just physical safety - more often than not as mothers this is emotional safety. When we feel emotionally safe this means we feel love and when we don’t this fear manifests as stress in our mind and body.
The next time you feel stressed here’s what I want you to do:
Take a deep diaphragmatic breath, fill up your belly from the bottom of your lungs and breathe out emptying it all, Repeat this breathing 3 times at least.
I now want to ask yourself the following questions.
What is my stress trying to tell me? Why am I stressed?
For example: I’m running late.
Why is this making me stressed? Think on it for a moment.
For example: I worry about what people will think of me – they will see me as unreliable and not dependable, which is something I couldn’t bear being seen as.
Worrying about what others think of us can be a huge cause of stress for us as mothers and females – it challenges our emotional safety and the amount of love we feel we ‘deserve.’
Many of our stresses or ‘perceived’ stresses in our lives that get us really wound up is often when our ‘identity’ feels threatened and we worry about that people will think less of us – people would ‘LOVE’ us less – because stress at the end of the day is FEAR.
As mothers we have all constructed a personal identity and subconsciously we will do anything to stay true to it, including sacrificing our own health to maintain the health of others or working ourselves ‘to the bone’ – we can suffer burnout, overwhelm and illness just to maintain our identity.
This is common in motherhood because we want be everything to our children, our husbands and our friends and extended family. We believe that our identity is made up of our roles, and our roles are made up of our responsibilities and often our responsibilities are linked to our self – worth.
So ponder this:
When you are stressed because of an emotional response, ask yourself whether this is because you are worried about what people might think of you.
Now we are going to take away its power by asking:
What are you scared of?
Loosing love? Feeling less loved?
Now we can take back our power: Everyone makes mistakes! One of the most valuable things we can do as human beings is forgive each other. We don’t have to act a certain way for our true friends and family to love us –
Simply because they love us for who we are.
Gem x
