Are you a busy mom who constantly feels like you are not doing enough for your family? In this episode of The Purpose Driven Mom Show, the focus is on “mom guilt,” especially as kids return to school after summer. Cara discusses the emotional toll of feeling unworthy and offers practical strategies on how to overcome the feelings.
Mom guilt is a common thing that many working moms who balance a lot of priorities deal with. It is normal and not something to feel ashamed to admit. It is easy to beat yourself up about taking time for yourself because of the feeling of putting everyone, including your kids first at all times. External pressures, like following other moms on social media and seeing idyllic versions of parenting can also lead to feelings of self doubt, inadequacy and being a “bad mom”.
Cara shares her ideas on how to overcome this damaging mindset and take control of how you see yourself as a parent. One of the ways to overcome these feelings is journaling your thoughts of guilt before you spiral. Ask yourself what those thoughts actually mean and what the truth is. This can help you differentiate from thoughts that are valid and important and thoughts that stem from other factors that affect your feelings about your own parenting. You are the one that controls how you see yourself, so it is important to practice healthy habits to mitigate that negativity.
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01:52 Understanding Mom Guilt
:04:30 Social Media and Parenting
08:54 Creating Social Media Boundaries
14:53 Recognizing Personal Worth
15:41 Practical Tips for Managing Mom Guilt
16:34 Cycle of Guilt and Burnout
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Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life, toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this! Welcome to the purpose of your Mom show. It’s episode 423 and today is the first day of school. My kids have just gone back to school. I am pretty excited about it all. So sad. I do miss them. We had just an absolutely incredible summer.
Cara Harvey 00:00:59 It was filled Spoiled with family time and slowing down and all these incredible things. But here we are, and the guilt is starting to, like, creep in a little bit. We’ve toyed back and forth with should we homeschool? Should we make a different type of schedule, should we do these activities? And I’m also dealing with this guilt of I have so much to get done. I have so much to do. Why am I so excited that they’re back at school? I want to talk about mom guilt today and we’re going to have a real honest conversation. Mama, listen, the mom guilt is real. I know it is. And I just want you to feel comfortable as we go into this conversation that there’s no judgment here. If you’ve ever had any of the feelings I’m going to talk about today, it doesn’t make you a bad mom. I struggle with that a lot, especially after I had my son. I had postpartum depression and anxiety and the guilt I felt because I wasn’t happy all the time was debilitating.
Cara Harvey 00:01:52 And I just want you to know that mom, guilt is real and it can really overtake your thoughts where you’re just constantly thinking about how you’re failing Let’s just talk about it today. Let’s talk about how do we deal with it, where is it coming from and how we can kind of change our narrative. Show notes. They’re going to be out of Purpose driven RomComs podcast for 23. And you can check anything out that we talk about or link over there. Now, mom, guilt is this feeling right? It’s this feeling like we’re not doing good enough. It’s this feeling that we’re selfish for wanting things. It’s that voice in your head that says you quote unquote, shouldn’t. And we have a phrase here. The purpose of your mom club is stop shooting on yourself. And if you find yourself saying, well, I should be doing this, or a good mom would be doing that, I want you to pause because there is no playbook for motherhood. There is no good mom scorecard and report that anyone is writing.
Cara Harvey 00:02:41 It’s so often just in our head, but also it can be external, which again, we’ll talk about things like work life balance, having any time for self-care, the decisions you make about parenting. Or let me tell you the story. I was just telling my husband this. If I never thought about how anybody else thought about me parenting, I wouldn’t care. So let me explain. You ever go to target and your kid is having a tantrum and you over parent. I do this all the time. If we’re at a playground, if we’re at a sport, if we’re somewhere and my kid does something, you know what? If they’re rude or they talk back or they’re having a whatever they’re doing at the moment, I immediately think it’s a reflection of me as a person and a parent. Everyone around me is judging and I will then over parent. There are some things that in my home actually don’t bother me at all, but when we get in public, I worry that other people are judging how I’m handling it and then I start getting more anxious, I get angry, I might yell, and I think, why would it bother me? This happened a lot for me this summer, when I had gotten off social media for a lot of summer, when I’m with my family, I’m with my family.
Cara Harvey 00:03:45 You know, when we’re playing a game, we’re on a trip. I, I really work hard at putting my phone away. So because we did a lot of traveling, a lot of camping, a lot of nature hikes, things like that, I wasn’t on my phone as much. And then I found that we got back from our one vacation, and I started to get on my phone more. Right? School was starting up. People were asking questions and things and watching how other people quote unquote parent. And I say it that way because it’s social media. It’s not real. Right. And I always think about this when I post something on social media, I ask myself, why am I doing this right? If it’s like on my personal page, I post mostly just pictures of my kids and things like that. The main reason I do it is I’m creating an online scrapbook that I can remember things right. I go through my photos every single day. I love the walks down memory lane, but there have been times and I’m going to be real.
Cara Harvey 00:04:30 We’re like, I might post something to brag about my kid, right? If I get to do something cool, right? We post it because we want to show off or whatever the reason is. And in the past few years, I’ve really had to catch myself because that narrative of the highlight reel, it’s damaging. And so I always ask myself now, not anymore. Why am I posting this? What’s the point? Because I know that some people will be posting things, and really, the reason they’re posting is to show this is how great I am, right? And it may not be their intent, but it is often I struggle to post things because I’ve had people say to me, like in particular with activities that I run right? If I’m hanging out with one friend, I’ve had people like, give me garbage for it. Like, oh, you didn’t invite me. And it’s like, well, you’re not entitled to an invite. Like, you’re not my friend. I’m hanging out with another friend.
Cara Harvey 00:05:16 Super dramatic seventh grade stuff. And so I actually get to the point where I don’t even post anything if I’m with someone because I’m like, I don’t even want to deal with it, right? But that started to happen for me when I got back on social media, and I saw other people hanging out over the summer. I saw other kids in different classes, I saw people having these great experiences, and I kept thinking, I’m not doing good enough. I’m not being a more present mom. I’m not doing these things for my kids. And so I said to my husband, man, if I just never worried about what anybody else thought, I’d be great. I’m going to pause to invite you to something brand new we’re doing here at 2 p.m., and that is the very first in-person, purpose driven Mom conference September 28th and 29th. I am hosting an event right here in Philadelphia that you can attend where we can be together live. The goal of this conference is to help you decide what dreams you want to work on, what goals matter to you, and to really embrace the person you are now in motherhood.
Cara Harvey 00:06:15 We’re going to spend time mapping out the end of your year, creating time blocks for you to work on these dreams and goals. And I have three incredible guest speakers coming to help you embrace and love your mom life journey and go after your goals and dreams. This event is been on my heart for years, and if you go to a purpose driven romcom slash conference, you can hear and read all about it. And I want to let you know that this event will sell out. We will be capping around 60 attendees, so as soon as it sells out, it is done. I want you to head to a purpose driven rom com slash conference, or check out the Shownotes for the link and come join us in Philadelphia. We are going to have the most incredible experience. It is in September. You have enough time to plan to make it happen, to tell a friend, we cannot wait to see you at the Purpose Driven Mom conference and have some in real life time together again. That’s September 28th and 29th, and you can go to a purpose driven Nme.com conference to learn more.
Cara Harvey 00:07:10 And so it actually stemmed from me. I just started yesterday a new certification for my life coach specialization. So I am a certified life coach. I specialize in a lot of really niche things. I’ve gone back, you know, I got my general life Coach certification, but I actually went back and I got some specialty ones. I have one in cognitive behavioral technique. I have one in something called the life story. I have one in it’s called happiness. I have one in goals. I have another one that I’m forgetting that’s like super. Oh, forgiveness. I have one in forgiveness. And now I’m going back to get a specialization certification in people pleasing because I needed it. And I find that a lot of mom guilt stems from this need to please other people, not just our kids and our family, but the people in society. So let’s talk a little bit about those pressures, right, man. Society is not set up to support moms, right? I was a school teacher, and I can’t imagine teaching now because the classroom is not set up for a parent right? I have to be here certain hours, but I still need to bring my kids places.
Cara Harvey 00:08:04 Most traditional jobs are not set up for moms, and society likes to really make us feel guilty about that. And we see it everywhere where dads don’t get as much, you know, crap about it as moms do. You know they would never. You see celebrities on the red carpet. They would never ask the male actors the things they ask the female actors. And it’s because of the societal pressure to be the perfect mom, to be able to manage my home, to be able to be a great friend, to be a great sibling or a daughter, to be this person. And I show up at the PTA and I volunteer everywhere, and I manage it all with grace, right? I am self-sacrificial, that is what society tells us we’re supposed to be as moms. And when we are not, when we are not doing those things, the mom guilt can creep in. That’s where the comparison, that’s where the social media stuff comes in. I am trying to decide for September. I’m making some goals for myself.
Cara Harvey 00:08:54 So this is going to air in September. So come at me, hit me in the DMs and let me know I’m at a purpose to Vermont. Ask me how it’s going. I really am trying to determine what social media looks like for me moving forward. This summer, I tried to take Facebook Instagram off my phone. I use them so much for work that I found I would delete the apps and then every day I was having to put the apps back on and it was just getting annoying. And so I kept them on. But TikTok, I don’t use it for my business. I use it purely for enjoyment. But I’m wondering, do I need to create parameters? We just have this whole conversation in the purpose of her mom club yesterday about September goals, and I was thinking like what parameters do I want to create on social media? I think it might be like how often I go on what apps I use, because it really does impact me, and it makes me feel really guilty about how I’m not stacking up against these people.
Cara Harvey 00:09:36 That one. Let’s be real, I don’t even care about. Right? The amount of people that I have friends with on Facebook, and I’m just talking to my personal page. I’m not even talking about the business stuff. We’ll get to that in a second. But just my personal, like, I don’t know, most of them in real life. Right? There are people I know in social media and they’re not people, even if I know them in real life that are in my inner circle. Why are we still feeling guilty about not keeping up with people that we don’t actually care about? And maybe you do. Maybe they’re your real life people. Do they actually care about you? My therapist said this to me because I was struggling with some guilt around something. And this person, they weren’t nice to me. And my therapist said to me, why do you care so much about somebody who clearly does not care about you? And I was like, oh, right. I think that it’s very easy to get sucked into the mom guilt around social media.
Cara Harvey 00:10:19 And so I just want you to find if you find yourself on somebody page for a long time, if you find yourself comparing their house to your house, whether it’s, again, an influencer person or it’s someone you know in real life, unfollow them. There are buttons all over social media. I’ve started to do this where I just unfollow people. I don’t even want to see them in my feed because they trigger this guilt response. You don’t need them in your life. If you can stay in your bubble and not worry so much about social media, not worry so much about culture expectations, that’s half the battle. The other half is that internal, right? The values that you have, you know, I know that again, I love therapy. I talked about this with my therapist. She’s like, how much are you doing? Is trying to make up for the childhood you wish you had. And I was like, ooh, ouch. Again, that hurts. But it’s true that guilt of I didn’t have these things.
Cara Harvey 00:11:05 I didn’t feel like my parents supported me in these ways. So I overcompensate with my kids is real, and then it makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. I feel like one of the struggles I have is a recovering right. There’s no such thing as a recovered people pleaser. You’re always in a state of recovering as a recovering people pleaser. Is that feeling of it’s never enough. It’s never good enough. So what I want you to do, let’s get a little practical, is when I started this little journal I have that I started for myself yesterday because I found myself in like an anxiety spiral. When you’re starting to feel these thoughts of it’s not good enough, I want you to write them down. Okay? So I want you to write down the thought, what is it? You know, I feel guilty because I’m going to the gym instead of coming home to hang out with my family. I feel guilty because I’m not taking my kid on these amazing trips. I feel guilty because I’m not able to volunteer at the PTA at my kid’s school.
Cara Harvey 00:11:55 Whatever that thought is, write the actual thought down, and then I want you to ask yourself, what am I making it mean? Like, what am I making it mean? I am making mean that if I don’t volunteer at the PTA like I am a not involved parent and everyone thinks I don’t care about my kids. Okay, what’s the truth? None of that is the truth. None of that is the truth at all. If I’m choosing not to get involved in my school’s PTA, it’s because I’m busy. It’s because I have other things on prioritizing. I volunteer other places, or also I just don’t want to. And that is valid. I just want you to know that. And I say this with the grain of salt of I love to volunteer. Like I told my husband, if I wasn’t working and I love my job, I love what I get to do, I’m blessed and I am thrilled and thank you for listening and everything I do. I love it, I don’t, I’ve never not worked since I was 12 years old and I started babysitting.
Cara Harvey 00:12:40 I’ve never not had a job so I like don’t know how to do that, but if I didn’t have to work I would be a professional volunteer. I would volunteer all over the place. I love it actually. I had to work with my therapist on talking through how to say no to stuff when volunteer opportunities come up for me as sports and stuff start because I just love it. But if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it. And I think we feel this guilt like we’re supposed to do things because we see other people doing them. So I just want to encourage you to ask yourself, like what happened? What am I making it mean? What is the truth? And then I want you to rewrite this statement. This is the one of the new things I’m doing with what’s the new thought? Right. The new thought is I will show up in ways that are priorities for me and my family when it comes to volunteering. So I do volunteer. I’m a Girl Scout leader.
Cara Harvey 00:13:22 I volunteer on the service committee at my daughter’s cheer gym. I say yes to things because I enjoy them. I don’t go to the things. I don’t go to the meetings, but all volunteer at the book fair if I, you know, because that fits my schedule better. But I’m not doing it all the time. I want you to know that you can make choices. So what is that new statement you want? Because the mom guilt impact is real, okay. There’s an emotional toll that it plays on us. The anxiety, the stress, the depression of never being good enough, not being able to do it. I’m failing my family. I’m failing my work. I’m failing my kids. It’s real. And it does impact your mental health because you go down these thoughts spirals of I’m not doing good enough and I need to do more, but I don’t have time to do more and I feel guilty. Why can’t I manage my time better? This person knows how to manage their time.
Cara Harvey 00:14:06 You see what I’m saying? It’s just this cycle over and over and over. It also has an impact on the way you have relationships with people, right? Again, I just shared that story. How I parent differently when I’m around other people. It can impact your friendships, how you show up to connect with people you know, if you’re like, oh, I feel like I should know more of the parents at school. So I’m going to do all these things. But maybe you’re not showing up as your authentic self because you just want people to like you. The mom guilt is very tied into people pleasing, right? And I just want to remind you of this thing I heard in my training this morning is that you are inherently worthy, okay? You don’t need to earn any sort of worthiness. You just need to affirm your worthiness. It’s already inside of you. And I think if you’re somebody who struggles with that, like I have and still do, is if I don’t show up in this way to perform, I’m not valued.
Cara Harvey 00:14:53 Right. Like that’s been my narrative most of my life. If I don’t do things for others, if I don’t show up in a certain way, I am not valuable, right? That’s the thought that I lived with, and I’ve had to remind myself I am worthy right? For me, I’m a Christian, like God has called me and he has made me worthy. And I need that reminder like it’s in here. I just have to remind myself because it really can impact your mental health when you don’t feel like you’re worthy. And that guilt is all together with that. I want to chat with you now, and invite you to grab one of my top free resources that have been downloaded almost 4000 times, and this is my ultimate weekly planning checklist. If you are ready to go into your week feeling less frazzled and more in control, this checklist is for you. It’s going to help you set up your week, save time running around, and plan out all the time you need for you, your goals, your family, your business, the whole thing.
Cara Harvey 00:15:41 It’s the exact same checklist that we use in the Purpose Driven Mom Club every Sunday. And not only do I give you the checklist of what to follow to plan your week, but I will give you a Trello board if you want to use Trello with it. Absolutely free with a video tutorial, it is going to take you less than 30 minutes a week to plan the week and save you hours. If you want to go and snag this checklist, you can go to a purpose driven Mom Competition Checklist and it’ll be there absolutely free for you. Again, go to a purpose driven mom. Competition checklist and get your copy. And also, there’s an impact on your productivity, your self-care. If you’re feeling guilty about doing anything for yourself, well, then you’re not going to do it. It’s going to interfere with your health, right? I’m not taking care of myself. I’m not meal prepping. I’m not exercising or moving my bodies. I’m not reading personal growth books. I’m not listening to the right podcast that that’ll fill me up.
Cara Harvey 00:16:34 I’m not taking care of me. So now I’m burnt out. I’m burnt out and I’m exhausted. But now I feel guilty because I’m exhausted. But I’m exhausted because I’m not. You see the cycle, right? It just goes and goes. So like, what do we do? Let’s get practical. Let’s talk about the mom guilt. I just want you to know you’re not alone. That even though I’m going to sit here and talk to you about this today, I still struggle with it. It’s still real for me. Again, my kids went back to school, and I sat here and I wanted to have my coffee this morning before I got started with my meetings. And I was scrolled my phone and the guilt started to seep in and I was like, oh, I have this time where they’re at school and I’ve been complaining all summer. That I don’t have enough time to work. And now I have time to work. And I’m just sitting here with my coffee. No, I am permitted to just exist as a person and do not have to be productive all the time.
Cara Harvey 00:17:17 But there are some strategies I can use to help with the mango. I gave you the one about kind of journaling through your thoughts, right? I also want you to set some really realistic expectations for the season of life that you’re in. I had a call with one of my Purpose Driven Mom club members. Right now she’s in a very busy season of life, and she keeps adding goals more and more and more. And I’m like, hey, let’s pause. Let’s say maybe this doesn’t make sense. We have our conference coming up in a few weeks. So excited. So much work that has to get done. I need to set realistic goals and expectations for what I can do during this time. Okay, I can’t show up 100% in every area of my life. We talk those glass and rubber balls. Some things have to fall. Having those realistic expectations will allow me to actually have less guilt. Okay, it helps me let go of the perfectionism. I have to show up perfectly. I have to do everything all the time.
Cara Harvey 00:17:59 If I can let that go, if I can say to myself, you are enough, you have showed up enough, you have done enough. When I get to the end of the night, one of the things I do is I plan for tomorrow, right? I’ll plan my foods. I’ll plan like my tasks. I go through my planning system that I have right, and I always end the day looking at my list and a few things could happen. One is I could say, look at all the things you didn’t do. But instead I end with what we call a to do list. I look at all the things I did do and I say, hey, great job showing up. I’m really proud of you. And when I’m struggling with this mindset, one of the things I recommend you do is get something physical, right? Like you can get little pompoms or post-it notes or whatever you want, and every task you’ve done off your list, like put the little pom pom in the jar and say, great job every time.
Cara Harvey 00:18:37 Great job. Hey, way to show up today. That’s a phrase I use for myself that helps me deal with perfectionism and guilt. Way to show up. I’m proud of you for doing this. I’m proud of you for showing up. I think that’s really key and it’s important. And I also want to encourage you to build a network. You know, we talk about this purpose driven mom.com/club. The club is here. And if you don’t have an online community or an in-person support system, you need one. It talks you down. Sometimes I just need people to process with and to talk things down with, and it is good to be around people who are real. If you notice that you’re around these, like, more quote unquote Stepford people who they seem like everything’s together and they never talk about any struggles that they have and they’re just doing great. Make sure you also are around people who are real. Me and my friends will talk about what we’re struggling with when it comes to parenting. We talk about finance struggles.
Cara Harvey 00:19:22 We talk about business struggles. It’s not that you just want to be a Debbie Downer and complaining all the time, but you want to be around people who are also being real, and that helps. And I also, I said it twice already. Therapy I love therapy. I noticed this summer when I had not been able to get to church and therapy. It was like this perfect storm for not using the channels that I know. Like that helped me get out of the guilt. So for me, I pray about it. I ask God for guidance, and I go to therapy and I get help so that I can process through some of these things. I’m struggling and having someone externally help is amazing. I mentioned that to Dallas, but I also just want to kind of pull you into some gratitude. Really helps with the guilt. If you get to the end of the night and you ask your kids, what was your favorite thing that we did together today, they’re going to pull things out of you.
Cara Harvey 00:20:05 You’re seeing there’s a commercial used to go around and it had like a mom, and she was thinking about all the things that were wrong. The kids had cake for breakfast. I had to, you know, struggle to get my kid in the car seat. I had yelled whatever. And then it had the kids version. The dad came home and was like, how was your day with mommy? And it was like, mommy gave me extra kisses in the car seat, right? We got to eat cake for breakfast, you know? And it was thinking it through their experience. I also recommend a gratitude journal to help you shift from guilt to joy every day. Ask yourself, how did I show up today and how am I proud of myself? We don’t have to do this, but it will really help you change your mindset. I just want to encourage you, you know, September, we’re about to hit the end of the year. Like all of it’s about to just like compound on us moms of ways.
Cara Harvey 00:20:46 We have to show up experiences we’re supposed to give our kids, things we have to plan for the holidays. It’s all here. Take a breath and ask yourself what is actually important to me? What is the areas that I want to focus on, and how can I sit in gratitude there and not compare myself and beat myself up for what I’m not doing? I want you to come check out the show notes. It’s a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 23. Come, let’s hang out. Let’s have a discussion. Find me on Instagram at A purpose Driven Mom. Oh, and if you want some more tips on how you can get yourself kind of planned for the week, DM me over on Instagram the word Weekly Checklist. I’ll send you the weekly checklist I use that has you putting your goals in first and getting rid of the guilt. Have a wonderful day and I’ll chat with you soon. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcast, hit that five star and leave a review and a rating.
Cara Harvey 00:21:41 That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an Make sure you come over and tag me at a Purpose Driven Mom on Instagram and share it with your friends. The best way for us to get this message out there of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality, is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.
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