Bad Mom Syndrome

Yesterday I had my first call with an EFT practitioner who has kindly offered his services at no charge in exchange for the practice hours he needs to get his certification. It’s a little scary bearing your soul to a stranger – even while remaining mostly anonymous - but in my case it was well worth it.

This first call was  a “getting to know you” call where we discussed what we might want to focus our sessions on. The practitioner, I’ll call him Joe for the sake of anonymity, had a lengthy background in the medical field before starting with EFT which puts me at ease. He’s probably seen just about every misery of the human condition at some point in his career. He was also very empathetic and has a sense of humor which is a huge plus in my book.

The first round of tapping was around my feelings of inadequacy as a stay at home mom. The  two main themes being resentment and guilt. You see, staying at home with my children was never my choice. It was thrust upon me by the current circumstances:

• I’m unable to work in Canada until I receive permanent residency, which as my experience with the immigration process dictates can be quite some time down the road.
• I had to give up a home based business due to my inability to get work done while tending to two children under the age of 4.

And since I didn’t choose this life I wholly resent living it which of course brings on the guilt in droves. My internal voice goes something like this:

• What kind of mother doesn’t enjoy taking care of her children? Shouldn’t mothering be my biggest joy, my reason for living?
• What kind of mother would rather work on the computer than play with her children?
• What kind of mother can’t seem to go a day without yelling at her 3 1/2 year old because he won’t eat?
• What kind of mother looks forward to the kids going to sleep so she can finally have some time to herself?

I’ll tell you what kind….. a BAD MOTHER.

It’s irritating to realize that the same things I resented my own mother for when I was growing up  - her emotional unavailability, her complete focus on her business, her constant distractedness –  I’m clearly repeating. Maybe it’s all her fault that I never learned how to be a good mother. Wouldn’t that be convenient to have no responsibility at all for any of this? : )

We started out doing Gary Craig’s “Movie Technique“. I had never tried this before. We focused on an event which encapsulated one of my failures as a mother “My child won’t eat. And I yell at him”. After a few rounds of tapping I felt calm, relaxed and almost elated. Later in the day when my son wouldn’t eat again the situation didn’t have any emotional charge for me. I saw it as almost humorous.

In future posts I’ll share more insights from that first call. I fully recommend anyone dabbling with EFT or any energy psychology method to do a session with a skilled practitioner. See my post Great Places to Find an EFT Practitioner or visit the EFT Links page.