81. "I'm Such a Mess": Why One Mistake Ruins Your Whole Day as a Mom
As a mother, think about the last really shitty thing you said to yourself…
Maybe it was a fleeting thought, or maybe it was loud and grumpy and unrelentingly critical. Now imagine if you had said those exact words out loud to your favorite person - your best friend, your child, the sweetest grandparent you've ever known.
Can you feel that anguish? That immediate recoil of I would never?
And yet so many of us carry on this way with ourselves every day. The criticism, the impossible standards, the running commentary that sounds nothing like how we'd speak to someone we care about. It's exhausting. And it's making it harder to regulate your emotions, show up for your kids the way you want to, and move through your day without that constant weight of self-judgment.
"See, Loser, You Suck": How One Broken Mug Triggers All-Day Self-Criticism
When I sat down with Lisa Danahy - MS in Yoga Therapy and BA in Psychology, and author of Creating Calm in Your Classroom - for Episode 81 of Chill Like a Mother, she named something I see in burnt-out mothers constantly: the hypervigilance that comes from negative self-talk.
Lisa described how this shows up in her own life: "You do something - I did it this morning, I dropped a cup and broke it - and immediately I said to myself, 'See, loser, you suck.' And then I become hypervigilant the entire day, looking for everywhere else that I am a loser and suck."
It's such a perfect example of how one moment snowballs:
That first critical thought goes unchallenged
Your nervous system shifts into protection mode
You're not just dealing with the broken mug anymore - you're now cataloging every mistake, every imperfection, every way you're not measuring up
Your body starts searching for evidence to confirm the story that something's wrong with you
The way you snapped at breakfast. The screen time that was supposed to be limited. The permission slip still sitting unsigned. The craft you promised three days ago. All of it becomes proof that you're failing.
And this stress state? It impacts everything. How you parent. How you respond to your partner. How you show up in your own life. Because when you're hypervigilant about your own flaws, it's really hard to access the kind of regulated, grounded presence that parenting asks of you.
Ask Yourself One Question: Is That Actually True?
Lisa and I both sat with this for a moment - that wave of grief that washes over you when you realize you'd never speak to someone you love the way you speak to yourself. I think we're actually regulating ourselves through that communication all day long, whether we know it or not. We're constantly moving towards or away from our own sense of okayness.
So what do you do instead? Lisa offered something brilliantly simple: ask yourself if it's actually true.
"I love to ask myself this when I start to have that negative self-talk. Is there another time that I've done something and it didn't end up this way?" she explained. "If that's true, then what I'm saying about myself is not true. I'm not stupid because there's lots of times I'm smart."
Think about all the times you didn't drop the mug versus the one time (or handful of times) you did. That's evidence too.
This isn't toxic positivity. This isn't pretending everything's fine when it's not. This is giving yourself the same grace you'd extend to literally anyone else - by checking the story against reality. And when you start asking "is that really true?" you start to feel more comfortable asking it more often. It becomes a practice, a pattern, a way of catching yourself before you spiral into that hypervigilant state.
Your Kids Feel Your Stress (Even When You're Hiding It)
One of the most powerful parts of my conversation with Lisa was about how we try to protect our children from our stress, but end up doing the opposite.
This exact scenario happened to me that very morning. My kids were supposed to go to camp so I could meet a client - it was winter break, and we were running behind. I could feel the frenetic energy building in me, probably on the verge of losing my shit. And then I said something to my 10-year-old that surprised both of us: "I am mad because you won't have this consequence, but I will."
He looked at me confused. "What's the big deal? Why do we have to hurry?"
When we got there on time (because we had that conversation at home), he said, "See mom, we got here on time." And I realized - he needed to know the why behind my stress.
"We tend to not tell them when we have a deadline, when we have something really important that matters to us. We tend to protect them," Lisa said. "But what we're really doing is setting them up. We're setting them up to carry the burden with us without the luxury of knowing what the hell the burden is."
Here's the thing: we don't do this on purpose. Most of us were raised by a generation of over-sharers, by codependent mothers or emotionally unavailable dads. We learned early that we either shouldn't share our struggles at all, or we should share just enough to not traumatize our kids. We're trying so hard not to burden them that we've swung too far in the other direction.
But what are we actually protecting them from?
Your kids can feel your tension. They can sense when you're stressed, when you're overwhelmed, when something is off. And when they don't know why, they fill in the blanks - usually with stories about themselves, about being bad or difficult or too much.
There's actual science behind this: research shows that kids become clingier and more dysregulated when their mothers are exhausted or stressed, because their nervous systems literally sense a threat. It's biology. And as mothers, we end up carrying not just our own stress but also the weight of knowing our stress is stressing them out. (If you want to dive deeper into this dynamic, listen to one of my first episodes with Rachel Rose where we talk about the pressure mothers face to set the emotional tone in the house.)
But when you tell them - age-appropriately, developmentally-appropriately - what's actually going on? Things can shifts.
If this is something that feels important to you, you could try something like:
"I'm feeling stressed because I have an important meeting and I'm worried about being late."
"I'm frustrated because I didn't sleep well and my patience is shorter today."
"I'm feeling overwhelmed right now because I have a lot to do, and it's making me feel snappy."
You give them context. You model emotional honesty. You show them that adults have feelings and struggles too, and that naming them is how we navigate them.
Lisa reflected on this with such honesty: "I wish I had known back then how unfair it is because I was constantly pushing my children to be in my world without fully letting them into my world."
Pound Your Chest Like a Gorilla: The Regulation Tool That Actually Works
This is where the conversation shifted to something that felt immediately useful. Lisa shared a regulation tool that requires nothing except you - no apps, no expensive programs, no perfectly curated self-care routine.
When a kid (or you) is having a big feeling moment, instead of trying to talk through it or label it or explain it away, what if you just matched the energy with movement?
Lisa described it perfectly: "I'm gonna go up to them and start doing this [vibration motion]. And as I'm doing this, I'm gonna say, 'You wanna join me? Come on, let's do this.' So I'm working to regulate myself around this discomfort. At the same time, I'm giving you a model of how to move this energy."
Pounding on your chest like a gorilla. Being thunder and lightning. Becoming a turtle in its shell. These aren't silly games - they're actually nervous system regulation tools that work because they bypass the thinking brain and go straight to the body. The energy dissipates instead of getting stuck.
She shared a social media clip of a little kid who just let himself cry intensely for about seven seconds, then shook it off and went back to his day. That's regulation. That's allowing the feeling, expressing the energy, and letting it move through instead of holding onto it.
When I imagined using this with my own kids - the pounding, the gorilla energy, the play - I could feel how it would shift things. "It's like my head is clear. It's like, I don't even know what I was mad about," I told her. Because that's what happens when you stop trying to solve everything with words and just move the energy.
This Isn't About Being Perfect - It's About Catching Yourself
None of this is about being perfect. None of this is about never having negative thoughts or never getting stressed or never yelling at your kids in the morning rush. It's about building a practice of self-compassion, catching yourself when negative self-talk starts, questioning the story your inner critic is telling, and giving yourself - and your kids - regulation tools that actually work in real life.
Lisa's reminder about being a "calm, assertive, loving pack leader" stuck with me. Calm doesn't mean emotionless. Assertive doesn't mean rigid. Loving doesn't mean permissive. It means you're regulated enough to hold space for the chaos, clear enough to communicate what's actually happening, and consistent enough that everyone feels safe.
And it starts with how you talk to yourself.
Because if you're spending your days calling yourself a loser, looking for evidence that you're not enough, carrying tension that your kids can feel but can't understand - it's going to be hard for any parenting strategy to make a real difference.
But if you can catch yourself? Ask "is that actually true?" Pound on your chest when you need to move some energy through? Tell your kids "I'm stressed about my meeting today" instead of trying to hold it all in?
That's when things shift. That's when you stop smothering yourself with criticism and start actually supporting yourself through the messy, beautiful reality of motherhood.
Want to hear the full conversation with Lisa Danahy? Listen to Episode 81 of Chill Like a Mother.
What's the last shitty thing you said to yourself?
Drop it in the comments - shame hides in the dark, and we're bringing it into the light together.
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