Self-Compassion: For Moms

Stress-Management Series Overview

This post is part of our stress management series, designed to empower mothers and caregivers with practical tools for mental wellness. Each blog offers actionable strategies to reduce anxiety, build resilience, and invest in self-care, aligning with our spring focus on personal growth and development. Explore more at LAH Counselling to support your journey.

Understanding Self-Compassion for moms

Self-Compassion. What is it? Why is it important? In Canada, 54% of parents living with children under 15 reported that their stress levels worsened since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 43% of Canadians without children (Statistics Canada, Canadian Social Survey – COVID-19 and Well-being, April–June 2021). Self-compassion is a vital mental health tool for managing parenting stress by lowering anxiety and building emotional resilience. Self-compassion can be hard to understand, so we’ll use an exercise to help grasp it. 

Imagine a good friend comes to you after a rough day of parenting. She shares that she yelled at her kids and feels like a bad mom. Do you tell her she is a terrible mom? Of course not. You extend compassion. You empathize with her(“I’ve been there”) and reassure her (“Yelling once doesn’t make you a bad mom.”) You provide comfort by giving her a hug, a smile, and a joke about your little house gremlins. Self-compassion is about being that supportive friend to yourself. 

Parenting stress can leave you feeling guilty or drained, but self-compassion offers relief. It doesn’t matter if it's a burned dinner. It is never helpful to chastise yourself, so today we will explore self-compassion and learn about three practical tools to incorporate into your life to reduce suffering and get back to enjoying those house gremlins.

The Power of Self-Compassion in Parenting

As moms, we want to give our children everything. And we would too. But we can’t give them what we don’t have. Because we tend to prioritize everyone else’s well-being over our own, our tanks run low, we lose our cool, and we yell. Self-compassion, a key self-care tool, helps to fill us up. Research indicates that self-compassion can reduce anxiety by 30% in parents under high stress, enabling mothers to better manage guilt and emotional strain (Neff & Germer, Mindful Self-Compassion study, 2012). Self-compassion emphasizes being kind to ourselves, remaining mindful, and acknowledging our shared humanity. It is during moments of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering that we need to direct that compassion to ourselves, whether it’s guilt over a missed school event or frustration after a long day. Below, we’ll explore three tools to practice self-compassion in these moments. Before that, let’s review the 3 main components of self-compassion.

1. Kindness Instead of Judgment: As described above, self-compassion is about offering the same warmth and support to ourselves that we do to others. In tough moments, don’t berate yourself when your toddler’s tantrum pushes you to yell. Challenge thoughts like ‘I’m a bad mom,’ acknowledge your efforts, and forgive imperfections. Replacing judgment with kindness can help moms reduce guilt and anxiety. Self-kindness is just the start; self-compassion also builds connection.

2. Common humanity instead of isolation: Beyond kindness, self-compassion connects us to others. Like when you told your friend, ‘I’ve yelled at my kids too,’ you offered a connection through a shared struggle. When we feel overwhelmed, juggling school runs and work deadlines, acknowledging we are not alone connects us to the common human experience, promoting a sense of belonging. Lastly, in addition to helping us feel connected, self-compassion anchors us in the present. 

3. Mindfulness instead of over-identification: Mindfulness is all about being aware of our experience in the moment. Instead of over-identifying with thoughts like ‘I’m a terrible mom’, pause for a 10-second breath, acknowledge the guilt without judgment (‘I’m feeling guilty that I yelled’). This can help moms stay present, supporting mental health and anxiety relief, instead of losing valuable time stuck in rumination.

   
   

Letting Go of Judgments

There is a concept in Buddhism that expectations are the root of all suffering. Judgments, rooted in expectations, cause distress when reality doesn’t align. This can lead to feelings of frustration, sadness, or even anger. We feel upset when kids don’t appreciate our efforts, or tantrums disrupt our day.

 If you experience thoughts like, “My kids are so ungrateful,” or “Why can’t they just cooperate?” then you are creating your own suffering through unrealistic expectations. You expect your kids to behave a certain way, and when they don’t, you suffer. 

This self-care practice helps us release the habit of judging. Mindfulness practices, a core part of self-compassion, reduce parenting stress by 25% in mothers (Journal of Family Psychology, 2020). Instead of judging: “I shouldn’t have done that,” we observe to understand: “I yelled because they weren’t listening,” or “I'm agitated because I haven’t had my coffee”. Too often, we feel resentment because we are doing things for others but do not receive the gratitude we expect. While still teaching gratitude, self-compassion frees you from resentment when your kids act like kids.

This practice fosters self-kindness by reducing self-judgment and mindfulness by staying present with your emotions.

Exercise: Practice once daily for one week, noticing when you expect gratitude (e.g., after baking treats). If your child doesn’t say thank you, pause and say to yourself, ‘I’m letting go of this expectation. ’ When they express gratitude, write down the moment and savour the joy.

It is striking how readily mothers recognize the suffering in others, yet when it comes to our own well-being, how often do we pause to acknowledge that we are suffering and in need of comfort?

Recall comforting your friend, meeting her with empathy, rather than dismissal.

Comforting Your Own Suffering

The natural sequence when we recognize someone suffering is to give them our attention along with comfort. Whether that’s an arm around the shoulder or a warm tea, we don’t ignore our friend’s suffering, we face it head-on and make it our duty to alleviate the pain of someone we love. 

What if we treated ourselves like someone we loved? 

Exercise: Next time, a toddler’s (or teen’s) tantrum tests your patience take a beat and think: ‘I’m suffering. I need care.’ Take a 1-minute break to drink some water and grab your noise-reducing headphones to turn down the volume on your screaming angels, fostering self-kindness by validating your pain and mindfulness by staying present. Recognize that all kids are unruly at times and that all moms occasionally feel overstimulated. Create a sense of connection and belonging by reflecting on the common humanity of all moms.

Reframing Negative Self-Talk

The mom friend who came to us was engaging in something called “negative self-talk”. Self-talk, as it sounds, refers to the way we speak to ourselves. Without intentional efforts, self-talk can sound much like how we were spoken to as children, often quite negatively. Harsh self-talk fuels stress, but mindfulness-based self-compassion can reduce it by 20% in parents (Neff, 2018). One way we can be compassionate to ourselves is to be mindful of our self-talk and, if necessary, change it. 

If you went to a loved one feeling guilty for yelling at your child, how would you feel if instead of reassuring you, they doubled down? ‘Bad mom? You’re the worst mom ever. How COULD you do that?’ You’d feel worse, with strained trust and heightened tension.

Exercise: Once a day for one week, when a negative thought arises, take three slow, deep breaths and observe the thought. Then, reframe it. When we catch ourselves labelling ourselves as a ‘bad mom,’ try saying, ‘All moms struggle. Parenting is hard but I am trying.’ Kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness all rolled into one neat little package: Self-compassion.

Embrace Self-Compassion for a Resilient You

Self-compassion eases parenting stress and guilt, helping you thrive with practical tools. This self-care practice empowers you to nurture yourself as lovingly as you do your kids. From letting go of expectations to reframing negative thoughts, mindfulness, self-kindness and common humanity are three components that make self-compassion accessible.

Some of us struggle with self-compassion due to a lack of compassion in our childhoods.

Exercise: If self-compassion feels hard, mindfully note negative self-talk (e.g., ‘I can’t do anything right’), reframe it (‘I’m learning compassion despite my past’), and, kindly comfort yourself: ‘It wasn’t fair I did not receive compassion.’ Connect to the common humanity: ‘Like me, many moms missed out on childhood compassion.’ 

To strengthen your self-compassion skills, practice regularly—ideally daily. With consistent effort, it becomes effortless over time.

If you find that you continue to struggle with self-compassion, you may benefit from one on one counselling where your therapist can provided tailored guidance and support as you unlearn unsupportive ways of responding and replacing them with more functional behaviours. Want to know how LAH Counselling can help? Book your free 15-minute consultation today.