Ever feel like you should be “past this” already? Let’s get real about why triggers happen and how we can heal with more grace.
A few years ago, I was close to tears when I wrote this deeply personal and guilt-driven piece about yelling at my son. I knew the impact my actions were having on my son. Desperate for a change, I spoke to experts and researched solutions so I would not raise my voice at my son in anger again.
It worked. Since that time, I no longer shout at him and we have been living in perfect calm and peaceful harmony.
As if.
The reality is, I still yell. My son and I both agree I can be an “angry mum”. Most of all, I still feel the guilt about what I do (or am unable to do).
The search for the ideal mum
Most of us have a picture of an ideal mum in our heads. Often, this ideal mum is every other woman we come across on social media or in real life, and almost never ourselves. Is it telling that Ideal Mum tends to possess the quality or personality trait we find the most lacking in ourselves?
If you’re a working mum, it’s likely you believe Ideal Mum is there for her children when school finishes and turns up to every school event.
If you’re a mum who doesn’t cook, you probably think Ideal Mum cooks up amazing meals every night and has freshly baked muffins ready for the children after school.
To me, Ideal Mum is unflappable and calm all the time. When her children misbehave or push her buttons, she takes a deep breath and continues speaking to them in a steady voice. She can be firm, hold boundaries and maintain control, but without raising her voice. She doesn’t get irritated by what her children do and is able to find the humour in tense situations. When her children have all lost control, she helps to quietly guide them back to tranquillity with ease.
Normalising myths
First, the bad news: Mums who cheer their children on at every school event, mums who can cook up a storm, and most significantly for me, “zen mums” do, in fact, exist.
But here’s the good news. What you see them doing are but a snippet of who they are. They may be regularly doing the things we’d like to do, but it still doesn’t make them perfect or ideal mums.
It’s time to normalise messy, imperfect motherhood. More often than not, we miss school events because of work or burnout; dinner is often a rotation of “safe” foods and sometimes even cereal; the laundry basket filled with clean clothes to be folded is a permanent fixture of the lounge room décor; we often feel like we’re running on empty; we lose our tempers and yell at our children.
We all do these things, some more often than others, but it doesn’t mean we’re bad mums or less than ideal mums. We have no idea what we’re doing as parents most of the time, sometimes guessing and hoping for the best. None of us has it all together.
The most important thing about being a less-than-ideal mum however, is the fact we’re trying, we really want the best for our children and that we are open to becoming better.
Trauma and hurts
All of this brings me back to the point of this article. I want to stop yelling at my child. I want to be better. I am trying to be better. Yet, it still feels like I’m failing. Every time after I raise my voice at my son, after we’ve gone through the rupture-and-repair process, I tell myself “never again”.
Yet, “again” inevitably happens.
The funny thing about behaviour, and especially triggers, is that they’re often influenced by our past experiences and what we’ve been exposed to growing up. Adverse childhood experiences are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood or aspects of the child’s environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability and bond. These can in turn lead to negative behaviour problems.
I’m not saying yelling at our children or not cooking gourmet meals for them indicates some deep-seated trauma we experienced or that they’re necessarily problems we have to solve. What we do or not do could simply reflect our preferences and personalities. Yet, sometimes, our actions and triggers can in fact be a result of a hurt we’ve received and internalised.
It’s taken me years to discover this, but when I get so angry I yell at my child, it’s because that’s the model that was shown to me when I was growing up. At the same time, my son’s big emotions trigger outsized reactions from me because I was taught that emotional outbursts are inappropriate and should be dampened immediately.
Healing takes time
The thing is, changing our behaviour that is a result of past trauma takes time. Not only that, how it looks like when we heal from trauma could be the biggest myth of all.
Healing doesn’t mean erasure. Unlike a cough that goes away after medicating, we will continue to relapse into old patterns even after healing from our traumas. Healing doesn’t make triggers go away. We will never be “perfect”. Our old reactions are like highways. They’re easy to get onto even after we’ve “healed”.
For a deeper dive into why our “buttons” don’t actually disappear as we heal, listen to the full conversation on the Life in the Grey podcast, where Faith and I unpack how to navigate those unexpected triggered moments with more grace and less guilt.
Healing, however, is the ability to recognise we are on the highway sooner than we used to be. Healing is being able to more easily stop ourselves or change our behaviour than before.
As I said earlier, I have been working hard at practising the strategies to help me stop yelling at my son. I have also been trying to improve my emotional health. Learning about rupture and repair has helped me to still feel guilty, but without descending into shame.
The reality is, I still yell. My son and I both agree I can be an “angry mum”. Most of all, I still feel the guilt about what I do (or am unable to do). The difference, however, is that I don’t do it as often as I used to. Sometimes, when I’m just about to yell, there’s even a still, small voice that whispers, “Slow down. There is a different way.”
I am healing, not failing.
Tune in to the Life in the Grey podcast
Life isn’t always black and white. Life in the Grey is a Mums At The Table podcast where we explore the psychological factors that shape our relationships, be that as a parent, a partner or a peer. And don’t worry—it’s short because we ain’t got time for fluff. Expect practical takeaways that you can apply to your own life, whether it’s navigating parenting challenges or finding balance amidst life’s demands. Join us each month as we share stories, insights and reflections that encourage personal growth and foster a sense of connection in our community.
