Mum, You Don’t Have to go at this Alone.
For many mothers asking for help stirs an uncomfortable feeling. However, if a friend was in need, we wouldn’t hesitate to lend a hand.
Before becoming a mother, I would happily help others out. I did it in my personal life and work life. Whereas asking for help wasn’t something I did. I have always been independent and felt like I should do things on my own. I can remember teachers saying on parent-teacher night I should ask for more help. At the time this confused me. Doing things on my own was praised by adults. I remember being called “Miss Independent” a lot so it kind of became a badge of honor.
After becoming a mother it’s still hard to ask for help. I’m sure many mothers have a similar experience when it comes to drawing on the village around us. Even simple favors or taking a friend up on an offer of help can make many mothers feel anxious. We then can be filled with fear that we’re asking too much. For me, I fear people would get annoyed or feel inconvenienced by my request for help. My worst-case scenario is that asking for help will create distance between me and the other person. I know these thoughts may not make sense to everyone and it may not seem like a huge problem. In fact, I can see there are benefits to this way of being.
When there’s a lot to do, people trust you to get on with it and execute tasks; you become a ‘go-to’ person. Colleagues become surprised and impressed at what you produce but to you this is normal. There are probably many times where you wore yourself thin, but the acknowledgement you get for productivity probably reinforced going at it alone. When you’re afraid to ask for help you learn how to get on with things quickly.
However, since becoming a mother I’ve learnt one important thing about this idea of going at it alone; It doesn’t work in motherhood. We cannot possibly take on this 24/7 role solo. Plus, our time is no longer our own, so we can’t always devote ourselves to things like we used to.
In addition to individual experiences from our upbringing, there can be bigger contextual factors that influence our adoption of the ‘going at it alone’ ideal.
Societal notions influence our idea of motherhood long before we have children. The ‘good mother myth’ refers to a social and cultural ideal that says mothers should be endlessly kind, patient, caring, and puts others before herself. This notion feeds the fear about asking for help nicely. For example, mothers would avoid asking for help and feel pressure to go at it alone in order to be seen as a ‘good mother’. The rule can become ‘If I ask for little then others don’t have a reason to worry about me” or
“If I look like I’m coping, then I'll appear 'put together' and like I’m a good mum’.
Aspiring to the ‘good mother’ ideology has been associated with negative health outcomes including higher levels of stress (Wall, 2010), anxiety and lower parental self-efficacy (Henderson et al., 2016), depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction (Rizzo et al., 2013), and parental burnout (Meeussen & Van-Laar, 2018).
So there are individual and societal factors that influence how we see help seeking behaviours. However, that doesn’t mean we’re helpless in flipping the script on this story.
I want to invite you to consider the opposite notion of ‘going at it together’.
Going at it together means we lessen the load but more importantly we can seek solace in motherhood. Although asking for help may feel vulnerable, this could be a short-term discomfort for a long-term gain. A strong trusted connection grows from the interaction of giving and asking for help. Still today the idea of asking for help and being vulnerable scares me but I must let go of the story that “I’ll be inconveniencing them”.
As a psychologist I know this thinking pattern formed for a combination of reasons and that it served to protect me from things I feared, however now I can see it probably cost me things. It meant that I was viewing normal parts of a relationship, like asking for help, as threatening which long term can prevent me from getting what I need and blocking others from getting close to me.
Through my work with mothers, I’m noticing how common this thinking pattern can be. It manifests itself in different ways. For example, mothers feel pressure to be in control the whole time, only asking for help if desperate. Many mothers wear a social mask to show that everything is ok, and try to portray that they love all parts of mothering even though it is not the truth.
This mismatch between reality and expectations of yourself in motherhood causes distress and feelings of guilt and shame.
Let me remind you that every mum everywhere finds mothering hard, and we all have moments where we don’t want to do it, and we lose our sh*t. However, the experience of mothering gets better when you embrace the notion that you don’t have to go at it alone because normalising how hard it is can lessen the intensity of those hard moments.
Recently I was in a bind and needed help with a school pick up. I was clicking into the ‘go at it alone mode’ and started coming up with a MacGyver-like solution to my problem. Then I reached out to a friend who was more than happy to help. What a relief.
After this experience, I remember thinking and feeling a few things. Firstly, a deep appreciation for having a wonderful friend. Secondly, people are not always inconvenienced when you ask them for help, so that theory is somewhat busted. I say ‘somewhat’ for now because busting our mental theories about life takes practice and much repetition. Lastly, I learned you don’t have to go at it alone, carrying the load together makes the load much lighter!
Thanks to some honest mothers around me and the mothers I have the honor of working with, I am reminded often that we all need help, and we strengthen our connection when we allow others into our world.
If you’re having trouble asking for help, I encourage you to push through and ask. Perhaps start with a small request and see what happens.
I also encourage you to get curious about where your beliefs about asking for help come from.
Asking for help can build connections between you and others, you’ll find people want to help because they love you and they love your family. Let people in and trust that you’re not inconveniencing them. Let them love on you.
Dianne Casotti
Registered Psychologist
** If after reading this article you feel you may benefit from professional help, please see your General Practitioner and see a mental health professional.
Key points
- Asking for help can be difficult for many mothers because we may think we need to look ‘put together’.
- Asking for help can conjure up fears of inconveniencing people. Start with a small request for help and see what happens.
- If asking for help is hard get curious about where this belief came from.
- We often have a fear that asking for help inconveniences others yet would drop everything to help a friend.
References
Henderson, A. C., Harmon, S. M., & Newman, H. (2016). The price mothers pay, even when they are not buying it: Mental health consequences of idealised motherhood. Sex Roles, 74(1), 512–526. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0534-5. Meeussen, L., & Van-Laar, C. (2018). Feeling pressure to be a perfect mother relates to parental burnout and career ambitions. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(2113), https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2018.02113. Rizzo, K. M., Schiffrin, H. H., & Liss, M. (2013). Insight into the parenthood paradox: Mental health outcomes of intensive motherhood. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 22(1), 614–620. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-012-9615-z. Wall, G. (2010). Mothers’ experiences with intensive parenting and brain development discourse. Women’s Studies International Forum, 33(3), 253–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. wsif.2010.02.019
