Mom guilt has become a cultural epidemic for the modern mom. It’s widespread and expected as something that comes with the territory. But what if there was another way to navigate motherhood without so much mom guilt? That’s what I’m offering—how to overcome mom guilt from the inside out.

9 Ways To Overcome Mom Guilt

From my experience as a mom and as a professionally trained life coach, coaching thousands of clients, I have 9 ways to share with you that will reduce feeling mom guilt, and help you manage it when it comes up.

1. Normalize and accept mom guilt.

This seems counterintuitive but it’s not. From a place of accepting how you feel, you can change it. What we often want to do is resist it and think “oh no this shouldn’t be happening” but that only adds resistance which often makes the mom guilt worse.

The next time you feel mom guilt, acknowledge it and normalize it. Say this to yourself, “I’m feeling mom guilt right now and that’s okay. I can do this feeling. Nothing has gone wrong.” By acknowledging it and accepting it, you give yourself validation for your experience without judging it.

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2. Find the thoughts causing the guilt.

Guilt is an emotion caused from the thinking “I’m doing something bad.” When you experience mom guilt, find the specific thought you’re thinking that’s creating the guilt.

For example, if you feel mom guilt for too much screen time, the thought you’re thinking might be something like, “I shouldn’t be letting my kids have so much screen time and because I do, I’m a bad mom.”

Identifying the exact thought you’re thinking will empower you because you’ll get separation (space) from the thought. You’ll start to see that you are not your thoughts and that this thought is entirely optional.

This is the work we do inside Grow You of identifying thoughts that aren’t helpful and changing them so you can have a more empowering mindset to show up as the mom you want to be.

3. Embrace your humanness.

While it’s healthy and aspirational to want to “get it right” as a mom, taken too far, it’s toxic. Expecting yourself to be perfect and feeling mom guilt for anything short of that ignores your humanness.

You are a human mom, of course (as we all are!). We’re not robots. We’re supposed to make mistakes and get it all wrong. We’re supposed to be half mess and half amazing. This doesn’t mean we don’t care or don’t try, it means we’re gentle and forgiving to ourselves when we fall flat on our faces.

Here’s the mantra I love to use for myself and my clients: “I’m a human mom, not a robot mom.” This helps me remember my humanness in the moment.

4. Decide what to think on purpose.

Mom guilt is often the default response our brain comes up with automatically, and yet, it doesn’t have to be what we intentionally decide to think.

When you manage your mind, this means 1) looking at your current (default) thoughts, questioning them, and 2) choosing on purpose what you want to think instead.

To do this, choose any area where you experience mom guilt and decide on purpose if that’s how you want to think and feel about it.

For example, if you feel mom guilt every time you leave for a work trip on default, you can change your thinking about it. You can think a thought like, “I want to go on this work trip and my kids are getting the exact experience they’re supposed to have with me as their mom.” The key is to find a thought that feels true and good to you. Then practice the better feeling thought.

Download my free Empowered Mom Kit and get 4 videos + 4 worksheets that show you how to do this.

5. Give yourself permission to not feel mom guilt.

If you’ve been in the habit of feeling mom guilt often then it’s likely your body will want to fight to feel this way even if consciously you know there’s another option (to think and feel differently).

Bringing this to your awareness is the solution. Give yourself permission to feel GOOD. To not feel mom guilt if and when you don’t want to. Did you know you can just do that? You can simply decide you’re done with mom guilt and that you can be an amazing, attentive, human mom who makes mistakes and that is good enough? I promise this is available to you when you manage your mind.

Tell yourself that mom guilt is optional. It may be the option your brain goes to on default, but just like you trained it to do that (albeit unconsciously), you can train it to think differently. Permission granted to let get of mom guilt without making it mean something bad about you.

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6. Join a supportive community for moms.

Having friends and family as a support system is really helpful during motherhood (and any other season of life, as we’re all social beings!).

Yet, these friendships and relationships aren’t meant to be professional support. For example, you likely have a doctor who you have a physician-patient relationship with. You may have worked with a therapist, where you were the client as well. This is what it’s like to have a coach or expert who you go to that can help you navigate modern challenges of motherhood, like mom guilt.

Inside Grow You, I help my clients navigate mom guilt from the root cause so they can overcome challenges and live their best lives. It’s like having a go-to expert on call who can help you in a real, effective way. Click here to explore Grow You.

7. Catch yourself in the comparison trap.

The human brain defaults to comparing. This was useful evolutionarily to ensure our inclusion in the “pack” or “tribe” but it’s not useful today when we’re comparing ourselves to our neighbors or to who we see on Instagram. When we find ourselves comparing, mom guilt creeps in with thoughts like, “am I doing enough?” and “if I was a better mom, I would be like her.” None of which is true because we know that what we see is the highlight reel and not the full picture. All moms are human moms, which means they’re half mess, too.

When you notice yourself comparing, just simply catch the thoughts. Allow them to be there. Don’t trust the feelings or actions that come from them. For example, you might say, “I’m noticing myself comparing right now, and that’s all a lie. I see you brain and instead of honoring those thoughts, I know they’re not valid and I’m going to let them pass without taking action on them.” When you acknowledge the comparison as something happening in your mind, you’re not judging it but also not believing it. You’re just aware of it.

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8. Share your feelings with your child.

Instead of hiding how you’re feeling, acknowledge the feeling to your kids, so you normalize it to them, too. This helps you process it, be authentic, and show up as the mom you want to be. Additionally, it helps your kids become more emotionally aware. Your family benefits when they see mom process feelings. All feelings are welcome, and you’re showing them that is the truth. It may sound something like this, “Mommy is feeling really sad right now. You don’t need to feel sad, too. I’ll process this feeling and it’s okay. You can feel however you want to feel.” This shows that you are taking responsibility for how you feel without expecting them to be different or take care of your feelings.

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9. Define what a “good mom” is.

Defining what it means to be a “good mom” to you is freeing. It alleviates so much mom guilt because you have an actual standard by which to measure how you’re doing, just like you would in the workplace. I talk about this in the podcast: Am I A Good Mom? Click here to listen.

A Final Note

Mom guilt often comes and goes depending on how we interpret our life’s circumstances given the season we’re in. If you’re experiencing a lot of mom guilt, there’s nothing wrong with you! I promise. You likely just need help managing your mind so you can navigate mom guilt on purpose. Keep at it my friend, and be sure to join me inside Grow You so I can help you with this, too. XO