If you’re a mom, you likely know the feeling: Mom Rage – heart racing, muscles tight, the tension in your shoulders, trying to catch your breath and stop yourself, and then it happens – you yell at your kids again. You promised yourself today would be different, and yet here you are. You never wanted to be an angry mom and have never been an angry person before, yet here you are. You feel defeated and are just trying to get this anger under control because you love your babies so much.
As a therapist who works with moms, I know this mom because I am her, and I work with moms like her every day in my private practice.
So what is Mom Rage?
What this work has taught me to be true is that mom rage is not an anger problem; it is an anxiety, overstimulation, mental load, and lack of support problem. Anger is our most protective and helpful emotion (even though it doesn’t always feel like it). It keeps us alive, helps us survive, and communicates to our body that something isn’t right.
Anger is also like an iceberg.
The tip of the iceberg that we see is the anger on the surface, that moment of frustration. Underneath the surface of the water is the mass of the iceberg—the lack of sleep, the unmet needs, surviving on coffee and goldfish, the overstimulation of toys and TV and kids giggling, the overwhelm and loneliness of it all.
Think about it: You yell at your kid as they try to run out into the parking lot at Target, but it is not you yelling because you’re angry. Anger is protective. You yell because, at that moment, your anxiety was triggered, and you were scared. You know they could have gotten hit by a car, and something happening to your baby is the last thing any momma wants. Anger was looking out for you and that adventurous little one eager to head into the store.
3 Tips to Cope with Mom Rage
Understand Your Rage
I like to use a 1 to 10 scale to help us identify our emotions. Think of 1-3 times you feel calm, relaxed, and collected. 4-6 is when you start to feel big feelings (cue anxiety, frustration, overstimulation). Things are building but still manageable. 7 is the tipping point that spills us over into 8-10, territory we always want to avoid. When our emotions escalate to 8-10, we react rather than respond to situations, lose the ability to regulate our emotions, and can find ourselves yelling, even though we don’t want to. Use this scale to check in with yourself throughout the day and ensure you keep things manageable.
Incorporate Preventative Strategies
These are the most essential and beneficial interventions, yet the least utilized. We want to intervene before we need to. Think about these as the moments you take a deep breath in the bathroom – before you need that deep breath. Consider these strategies as investments in yourself and your mental health to keep big emotions at bay and help you start your day at a “4” or below. This can include drinking water since we are always dehydrated, eating more than leftover goldfish, investing in yourself by walking in the morning or drinking your coffee alone in peace. At the same time, working as a team with your partner is still hot if you can.
At the Moment Strategies
Use these when emotions have risen to six or higher. This can include things like putting the baby in the stroller and going for a walk so you get a sensory break and don’t feel as touched out, putting in a pair of earplugs so you can still hear your toddler but turn down the volume in your ears and reduce overstimulation, taking a break in the bathroom as you put your back against a wall, closing your eyes, and practicing breathing techniques like square breathing.
Bonus Tip: Apologies
Despite our best efforts, none of us are perfect. We will lose our cool sometimes—and I’m here to tell you that it is okay that you do. The best thing to do in those moments is to take a moment to gather yourself, regulate your emotions, reflect on what happened, and then apologize to your kids. Apologizing is a powerful tool for connection. It shows our kids that adults make mistakes, too, normalizes taking accountability, and models repairing relationships.
No matter what, mama, remember that you are not alone and never the only one struggling with this. Motherhood is challenging in ways we could have never imagined, and many of us are learning (or re-learning) how to regulate our emotions in motherhood. Practice makes progress, and know that doing your best is good enough.
