We need a certain level of functioning anxiety in our lives to warn us of danger. The fight or flight system has served us well since the evolution of man, enabling us to run from the lion looming in the shadows or to fight the Neanderthal whore from the cave next door for stealing your man. Fast forward into the 21st century, the age of social media and selfies and anxiety has a very different place in society.
So many of us, under the fear of being judged and the pressure of the need to be perfect, feel that we are coming up short and social media is fueling that fire. When we scroll down our news feeds, we are met with beautiful images of beautiful people, living beautiful lives and we fall into the trap of judging that they are all happier than us. Now I’m sure these wonderful moments of happiness aren’t staged, I’m merely suggesting that they are just that; brief moments of beauty in an otherwise pretty normal life. We all have them, when our make up went right that day, or the baby hasn’t messed up their hair as soon as we brushed it – it’s natural that we want to immortalise these moments and share them with the world but are we in danger of reinforcing that cycle of judgement if we only ever share the good stuff?
I’ve always felt pretty inferior, I’ve had no real reason to but I have. Throughout school I worried about what I said, how I looked, how liked I was, very rarely was it about how well I was doing. It was more about the social pecking order for me, than learning which is a sad realisation. In work, I worried if I was good enough for that promotion, could I really do it. In parenting, holy Jesus Christ I haven’t got a clue what I am doing and I’m not really loving this but everyone on Facebook and Instagram looks like they are having a ball and are winning mum of the year awards daily with their homemade knitted booties and routinely 7pm bedtimes.
A lot of the problem I feel, comes from this need to share; advice, opinions, and recommendations on the ‘right way’ to do things. I’ll speak about parenting because this world of judgement surrounding parenting was not something I was mentally prepared for.
There is so much advice thrown at us from all angles when we are expecting a baby or are already a parent and with that comes judgement if you aren’t doing things a certain way, whether it’s about breastfeeding, bottle feeding, co sleeping, immunisations, baby led weaning, baby wearing, milestones, or bed time routines – the list is endless and I am amazed at how the millions of women who gave birth before the Information Age must have coped, because we seem to be a generation of conflicted (and sometimes unsolicited) advice. Advice which we never would have access to just 50 years ago.
There is a clear need for advice about subjects like SIDS. The reduction in the loss of babies and infants since the recommended guidelines have been introduced is astonishing and long may the stats continue to improve. On the flip side of that, when I have had conversations with women I know or complete strangers who want to talk about breastfeeding, those who make flippant statements like “oh isn’t it such a shame you couldn’t do it” or “everyone can breastfeed” in an annoyingly condescending tone, it makes me feel inadequate and a bit shit. Shit that you feel like you know what’s best for me and my baby and inadequate as a mother, that I probably agree.
I unsuccessfully tried to breastfeed Elwood for 4 days – it didn’t work for us, I feel sad that I didn’t get to experience breastfeeding but he is thriving despite being formula fed, in honesty I was relieved to remove the pressure of trying to breastfeed when we decided to switch to formula feeding. This is something that I surprised myself with as I had been quite adamant during my pregnancy to be able to feed him myself.
My point being that it isn’t a competition, one of my best friends has breastfed all three of her babies and I am in complete awe of her, a few of my other friends had no interest in even trying to breastfeed and I salute them for the confidence they took in their decision. Then there’s the unsure ones, like me, who tried to soak up all of the advice available and be really liberal with it but felt crushed under the weight of expectation.
This principal carrys over into so many decisions we make as mums and dads. I jar fed Elwood for a few months (gasps of horror can be heard all around the baby puréeing community) it wasn’t through lack of trying, he hated lumps. I made a few different meals, stacked them up in freezer, feeling like a proper grown up housewife, all for him to spit it out in disgust. I was judged by a few friends for this, they didn’t say it directly to me of course, but I found it hard to hear nonetheless. Which is crap because those women were meant to be empowering me through my mental health challenges since becoming a mum, not picking holes in my choice to feed my baby food from a jar.
I try and limit my usage of social media these days because it can make me very anxious. I look at the photos and read the posts and find myself getting very irritated, at nothing in particular and everything all at once. I begin comparing myself to others, I look at their houses and then I look around my own house and criticise what we have and plan to change it. I look at photos of new mums who have snapped back into their size 8 jeans, and feel a pang of sadness of when I look down at my soft covered in stripes. I look at their cars, their holidays, their relationships and then I end up going to bed anxious, wound up and pissed off at life.
Truth is, I have a lovely life, I feel blessed a lot of the time. We have the gift of a healthy child. I worked hard before having Elwood to earn enough money to save for us to buy our house, we have a nice car, we go on holiday to nice places. There are sadly lots of people that don’t have all the things we have, who live with adversity of all kinds but I still find myself diving into that pool of comparison, wanting to feel like I’m a winner but painfully always liking myself a little less.
What I need to sometimes remind myself of, is that there might be people out there that look at my life like that, like I’ve got my shit together (not since I’ve started this blog though eh, now everyone knows I’m mad!) I’ve had people say to me that they can’t believe I struggle with anxiety, because my life looks sorted. It’s amazing how we form these preconceived ideas of what a persons life is like. I think it goes to show that we are much better at sharing the highs than sharing the low’s.
I was a judger and I hated it. It’s really limited me both personally and at work. At work I judged my own abilities whenever a good opportunity to grow was presented to me, I’d rather be the shrinking violet than the centre of attention in any room. I felt like a fraud, like I didn’t really belong there. Personally speaking, judging how other people viewed me has meant that I have shyed away from investing in potentially fantastic friendships because I felt I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, nice enough, or didn’t fit in, my judgement of what other people thought of me was an awful habit. My thinking was very black and white.
So I do my best not to judge anymore. It’s not flawless, I’m only human but I already feel a huge weight has been lifted. I am choosing to not compare, to not put myself in running contention of who’s life is better, who is a better mum, who is prettier, I am just going to let you do you and I’ll do me ❤️
The Indecisive Mum 