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I Don't Deserve My Children
I don't really know how to start, so I'm just gonna jump right in. Let's say that I am the mother of seven beautiful, wonderful, amazing, talented children including six boys and one girl. We were gonna quit after the fourth child, but we're surprised by a set of triplets There's hardly a day that goes by that I don't feel like a bad mother. I deal with guilt and self hatred almost on a daily basis because of it.
There are so many things that make me feel like a bad mom. I'm always worried about how well I'm raising my children. They're good kids. They're all well behaved, well mannered, kind, loving, compassionate, selfless, generous people. People compliment me on how sweet my children are and every time, I wonder how much credit I can take for it. Yes, I did always try to raise them to have all of those qualities, but sometimes I think I just got lucky with naturally good kids and a husband who knew how to raise them well. I don't have much confidence in myself to successfully raise them to be so great.
I constantly feel inadequate and inferior as a mother. I worry if my children get enough attention from me, if they always feel loved by me, if they ever feel neglected or if ever do overlook a need one of them has, if I can always protect them and keep them healthy, and if I'm doing anything that could damage them. I feel like I simply don't deserve them and like they need and deserve a better mother. I can't even provide them with health insurance. They're on my husband's insurance because the museum I work for doesn't make enough money to provide it's employees with benefits. If anything happens to my husband and one of my children falls I'll or is in an accident, we're up a creek without a paddle.
My husband and I are apparently prone to multiple births as our first two children were a set of fraternal twin boys, Aaron and Corbin. Today was Corbin's birthday and yesterday was Aaron's. Aaron was born just before midnight on October 20. and Corbin came just after midnight on October 21. Long story short, we didn't have much of a chance to celebrate Aaron's birthday. My dad's birthday was Friday and we had his party on Saturday. We were busy all day Sunday with Church stuff and important errands, so although he got a special dinner the night of his birthday, that wasn't enough for me to feel like he'd gotten a good enough birthday. He wanted to go to a certain store this evening and look at their elaborate Christmas decorations. They always decorate for Christmas way early and Aaron loves anything to do with Christmas, so he wanted to celebrate his birthday by take a long walk around that store, but I had to tell him that we couldn't today because it was Corbin's birthday. I promised we would tomorrow, but Corbin had to be in charge of our plans for this evening.
Now here's the thing that prompted me to come to this site tonight. Aaron was disappointed that we couldn't go to that store tonight and jealous that his brother was having a better birthday than he'd had. I felt guilty about the way Aaron's birthday turned out and I felt resentful of the situation. At that time, just for a moment, a short, short moment that I deeply regret and am ashamed of. I felt myself almost resenting Corbin for being the reason I couldn't give Aaron what he wanted for his birthday today. I didn't mean to. I couldn't control it, it just happened. It wasn't a deep resentment, it was extremely mild one and it wasn't one where I felt even the tiniest bit of hatred for Corbin. I still loved him as much as always and I didn't wish in that moment that I'd never had him or anything like that, but I can't get over the fact that even for a second, I resented my own son for something that wasn't even his fault.
A lot of people think that resentment is synonymous with hatred, but it's not. The internet defines resentment as a feeling of displeasure or indignation at a remark, act, person, etc. regarded as causing insult or injury. It's possible to feel displeased with or indignant about something or someone without hating that something or someone. I honestly have never hated one of my children. I've always loved Corbin more than I could ever express even in that one tiny moment of resentment, but I can't forgive myself for feeling that way. Even though many people misunderstand what resentment is, it's still not a feeling you're supposed to have towards your own child or children. I absolutely hate the thought of how Corbin would feel if he knew about this. He is so extremely precious to me, the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do is hurt him.
My biggest problem is that I wish I could say that this is the first time this has ever happened, but it's not. I had another very mild, unintentional moment of resentment towards my sons, Daniel and Josh once for something that would take too long to explain, but was a stupid reason to feel that way. I kind of resented Aaron tonight for being the reason I resented Corbin. I once resented my son, Mitch for making an insensitive joke about a tragedy that embarrassed me a little in front of people. Most ridiculously, I resented my son, Gage for being too awesome and making my other children feel inferior. Who resents their child for being too awesome? My resentment never lasts long. It lasts about literally one second and then it's replaced with terrible guilt and remorse. I've never hated any of them or wished them away or anything like that, but I still feel so bad about this. People tell me that it's normal to resent your children or any other loved ones at one time or another, but I don't see how it can be.
I'm a terrible, terrible mother. I hate myself so much sometimes and I know I do not deserve my children. I love them so much and I want to deserve them, but I've lost faith in myself to ever do so. What am I gonna do? How can I ever live with myself after this? How can I live with knowing I don't deserve my children? How can I deal with knowing I suck as a mother?
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If I read it right, you are awfully hard on yourself. You say your kids are good, they're healthy, they're covered by their father's insurance, etc.,and yet you continually put yourself down, are fearful, and stressed out. Well, who wouldn't be stressed, with seven kids to raise all at once !
You have a lot of anxiety going on. You ar prone to self-blame, even when unwarranted. Get into coun- seling. Get into group therapy, where you can receive both support and honest feedback from others, who will probably see you as better than you see yourself right now.
Don't just let this go, because your stress and anxiety will be picked up by the kids and affect them negatively. Indeed, you may be teaching them to feel the same way.
So, good luck and good wishes, now go and take care of this? Dr. Stephanie
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Your issue really has nothing to do with the kids. It's about you and this feeling or inadequacy and inferiority that you have. Where does it stem from? It's time to figure that out because it's ruining your life and relationships with constant neverending dread.
It's mental in nature. I'm NOT a doctor but you do seem to feel awfully depressed one moment and then very happy the next so I would look into that and what's really behind the feelings you constantly get.
Secondly, and I will be blunt with my choice of words I have seen a lot of shitty parents and you don't rank remotely close to one. You have done the best that you can possibly do with what you have for your family and kids and that's all anyone can ask of you as a parent.
Do take credit for how they turned out and the fact they are wonderful people because you set that example and went out of your way to ensure that they were. Allow yourself to be praised for that and accept it. It's a good thing and warrented people think that. Accept good instead of looking to turn things into negative.
Every parent even if they won't admit it have had resentment towards their children though fleeting especially if they've done something completely selfish or negative as your son did over not getting exactly what he wanted. He wasn't grateful.
You really can't feel guilty for not being able to provide everything they want either. You did your best with what you had in terms of money and resources. Perhaps you can arrange something special for him later but don't think you're a terrible mother because you aren't.
To reiterate really look into it perhaps with a therapist or doctor your constant inferiority and feelings of inadequacy, guilt and being depressed one moment and happy the next. It may have something to do with all of this.
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If your children are as wonderful, kind, and special as you say they are— you’re not a terrible mother. Just think about what you can do in the future for them and think about how you can love them.
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Danicus did an excellent job of answering you so I don't need to repeat the advice. Just in case you saw the verdict of neurosis and didn't want to aceept that, even I saw something in the words you used to write. Just take out the words mother, children or raising and I am left seeing:
I deal with guilt and self hatred almost on a daily basis , I'm always worried, I wonder how much credit I can take, I think I just got lucky, I don't have much confidence in myself, I constantly feel inadequate and inferior. I felt guilty, I felt resentful of the situation, I felt myself almost resenting, I'm a terrible, terrible mother. I hate myself so much sometimes, I've lost faith in myself , How can I ever live with myself, I don't deserve , I suck .
I used to have social anxiety but am healed of that, and have a couple family members with issues like depression and mental illness. So although I am no doctor, I am somewhat familiar with a few things. One that stands out and I need to mention to you is that all the things you said, started out as thoughts in your mind. No one out side of yourself has said these things about you. So the problem starts with how a person thinks. Some would teasingly call it stinking thinking but a psychologist told me it is called distorted thinking. It is when thoughts have no basis in reality. I used to have lots of distorted thinking. It is caused my social anxiety. I have since learned it is also the root cause of fears-phobias, anxieties, and many other things that all start with thoughts. So whether its called neurosis or distorted thinking, you need to be taught how to stop the distorted thinking. A secondary problem I had was a fear of people, mainly of what they would think of me, this happened mostly in church where we feel we need to be perfect to attend, not one who comes to a safe place to learn to become more like Jesus. Just so you don't feel you are being picked on, just about every living person does distorted thinking at some point in time. An example would be driving past an overturned car at side of freeway. You see that and immediately the thoughts come, "I wonder what it feels like to be strapped in upside down, then its followed by thinking the worst, of injury or death and so you picture yourself in a bad accident, badly injured, oh...what if I lost my legs, how would that change my life, I should have paid better attention and maybe I could have avoided this accident, oh if I was dead, would Jesus come to meet me at the car or would I have to travel to him, what on earth would my family do without me? The possible thoughts are plenty and you know people are doing it because of all the lookers who slow down to take in all the details and then start thinking distorted thoughts. A person with healthy thinking will notice how their thoughts got off track, laugh at themselves and say to themselves that its very unlikely to happen to them, but if they can take anything good from it, maybe it is to get serious and have a will written just in case. But at that point they stop thinking about it, just tracks and dont go back to what is spurring them to feel so bad or think so bad. The key word is dwell....they just don't dwell on it. Those who dwell on their distorted thoughts and let it go on and on without stopping it and replacing with positive thoughts, are the people who end up feeling like you. I do know there is counseling for that which could help. If you have coverage for a psychologist, I would suggest seeing one trained in CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. These Drs believe that 90% of people with mental issues or 'diseases' do not need drugs and can healed by working with them and training them regarding their thinking.
If you are afraid of seeing a Dr trained in CBT, I will share how I got over my social anxiety. One day as an 18 yr old, months from graduating, I realized I was going to be an adult and had to make adult decisions and yet I felt my anxiety was going to make it hard to function in adult life so I prayed and asked God how I could overcome this. He answered me with a step by step process, each step being a little harder for me, but do-able, just to prove that the worst I feared, was not going to happen or wasn't all that bad. It started with simply walling past strangers and smiling, no talking even. And I was terrified of doing that thinking it would encourage a person to stop and start talking to me which scared me silly. i couldn't use people I know as i already had a certain level of comfort with them. The steps got harder for me as I got to the point I was comfortable with one step. So the next was smile and say Hi. Oh for sure they'll say hi and then start talking to me I thought. The list of steps went on to where I finally end up realizing I was no longer anxious and could walk up to perfect strangers and pay them a compliment. Decades later, I read a book by a psychologist turned teacher and author and in his book, I found the same step by step process to overcome social anxiety. It was exactly what God gave me years ago. God knows what we need and it is so good that CBT trained Drs are helping many people with different versions of it based on what their particular issue is.
You can try healing doing it yourself. I do not believe you are mentally ill or need meds and that is why you can overcome this too.
I see in what you wrote, a fear of people and lack of self confidence. I know because I used to suffer both. I had a hard determination to be better and read up on what things to try and now am so glad those are things of the past.
I will also mention that your subconscious mind is a part of this being an ongoing issue. It can act like a separate person inside your awake conscious mind. What ever you say or want, it wants to make sure you get it, thinking that whatever you focus on most must be because you like it. Therefore a woman who has never been raped but fears that every minute of her day, her subconsious doesn't see right or wrong, just assumes it is something the woman wants and then makes sure she will make some bad decisions that will put her in a position where it is more likely to happen. Sounds like the reasoning of a child to me and my subconscious I often think of as my inner child. So basically you have to retrain your subconcious. To do this, every time a bad thought about yourself, a worry, a resentment, etc comes along, the moment you think it, talk to yourself, inside your head or out loud alone, and tell yourself that this is not true, so you want to stop thinking this and then replace it with a positive thought. When I did this, the unwanted thought came back in a few minutes and I had to remind myself. By the umpteenth time in just one hour of mentally telling myself it was something I wanted to stop and giving the subconscious the positive thought to replace what it has been doing, I was mentally exhausted, but you have to stick with it dear because this is the only way I know to stop how you are thinking. Each day got easier so by the end of the week, it was no longer a problem.
If you find you can't do this change on your own, you'll need to see a CBT trained mental health Dr.
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You don't suck as a mother, my mother has told me I'm fucking worthless and that she hates my sister. She has pretty much told all but one of us that we are not true men or true women.
You seem to be a great mother. But you're neurotic. Here are some of the characteristics: "A tendency toward mood disorders like anxiety and depression.
Hyper-awareness and self-consciousness of one’s mistakes and imperfections.
A propensity to dwell on the negative.
An expectation that the worst outcome in any situation is the one most likely to occur.
Highly reactive to stress and emotional upset.
Compulsive, and may play the same scenario in one’s head over and over."
You seem to be a great mother, other people have told you. You just don't believe it because you can't hold 2 beliefs simultaneously. You can't hold the belief that you suck as a mother and that you might actually be a good mother. So, you choose the one you're used to, the negative one. Its like telling an anorexic that she is too thin But they won't believe it because they believe they still need to lose weight no matter what anyone says.
A belief is a thought that you keep repeating over and over and is reenforced. Our brains look for evidence of what we already believe. You believe that you are a bad mother. So you subconsciously look for evidence to support that belief. So you take these little resentments as evidence and that you couldn't give one of the kids as good a birthday as the other one as evidence, or that your job doesn't provide insurance (this is a big one because the kids DO have health insurance but your focus is that YOU aren't the one providing it, ergo, you're a bad mother. Which is pretty extreme, so long as the kids have insurance, that's what matters.), etc. Meanwhile ignoring the people that say you're a good mother. The proof is in the pudding, you got great kids, so you're probably a great parent.
My sister is a shitty parent and it shows in her kids. One is a brat and both of them don't listen and just do what they want. So, I think you're good. While giving advice here, sometimes kids come for advice on how to deal with their parents and some of the stories are so horrible, it breaks my heart that kids have to endure such horrible abuse in their childhood.
You're so consumed by your thought that you're a bad mom, that you only see the bad and not the good. Maybe it'll take seeing some actual bad moms to help you see how good a mom you are. I'm sure there's videos out there of terrible parents. It really may help put things in perspective.
The problem is your neurosis and that's preventing you from seeing the truth. Which you replaced with your own self created truth.
You can support the belief that you're a good mother or a bad one. Its just a belief and it can be changed. Neurosis as a whole might be harder to eliminate since its such a habit. But there is plenty of evidence that you ARE a good mother. Others telling you, the kids being good kids, you love the heck out of them, etc. Seems like all those "bad mom" thoughts are just that, thoughts. There is way more actual evidence that you ARE a good mom, than a bad one.
I'm sure this low self esteem is nothing new. And a lot of us have it. But you can have low self esteem and be a good mother. It depends on what you focus on. From the sound of it, you're a great mother. You just gotta let go of that self loathing and feelings of inadequacy and think that maybe, just maybe, you are wrong about your impression of yourself as a mother and the others are right. You are looking through the lens of self doubt or self hate, so that you can't see clearly. You can't see what others see. They've been telling you all this time but you just can't see it.
A wise man told a child: There are 2 wolves that live in our hearts, "love and fear" and they are constantly battling for supremacy. The kid asks "which one wins?" The man says: "The one you feed the most." And by feeding of course, I mean, which one you focus on the most. You keep feeding the "fear of being a bad mother" wolf.
My mom is neurotic and I'd say that screwed us up. Cause my sister and I are a bit neurotic too. And it gets worse over time, so its good to nip it in the bud as soon as possible. You're a good mom but neurotic, that's the real issue. You owe it to your kids to either get help or at least acknowledge that its just in your head and that you don't have to entertain these thoughts. I think accepting that you actually are a good mom by listening to those around you will do wonders.
Thoughts are only powerful if we give them our attention. Its important to catch yourself when you start slipping into negative thought patterns. Negative thought > negative feeling >so now that you are in a negative mindset, its a lot easier to keep entertaining negative thoughts, which lead to feeling worse, so more negative thoughts can flow so you feel worse. Its a perpetuating cycle.
If you're having trouble changing your mind. Find the path of least resistance. Look at the evidence: great kids, you love the heck out of them, I assume they love you back, others tell you the kids are great, the kids are happy. Seems pretty clear to me, don't you think?
One technique to lessen resistance is this: I ask you "you think you can let go of feeling this way for a whole week? No? how about a whole day? No? how about you just let it go for ONE SECOND? Then you can have it right back if you want. Let go of feeling like you're a sucky mother for one second, then if you want, you can go back to thinking it. But just for one second, you can do that right? They will usually agree to at least try. A lot of times they think its silly that they can choose to let it go for one second and feel better. Then they figure if they can do it for a second and it felt good, they'll go for longer.
Stop beating yourself up, the kids pick up on that. Accept that maybe, just maybe, you are wrong and others are right and you actually are a good mom. The evidence proves it.
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