EP 11: Navigating Parental Guilt
Navigating Parental Guilt with Compassion and Understanding
Summary
Host: Laurie Groh, MS LPC SAS
In this episode, Laurie Groh MS LPC SAS discusses parental guilt and how to overcome it. She explains the difference between guilt and shame, and debunks myths about guilt. Laurie emphasizes the importance of setting realistic expectations and identifying core values. She also encourages open communication with children and the need for quality time over quantity. Laurie concludes by suggesting seeking support and improving the relationship with oneself.
Takeaways
Guilt is a healthy emotion that can guide us in our relationships with others.
Setting realistic expectations for ourselves and our children can help alleviate guilt.
Open communication with children about our feelings and mistakes can foster intimacy and connection.
Quality time spent with children is more important than the quantity of time.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:49 Understanding Guilt and Shame
04:09 Definition of Guilt
08:24 Feeling Guilty for Losing Temper
09:23 Difference Between Guilt and Shame
10:45 Setting Realistic Expectations
13:10 Myths About Guilt
22:25 Quality Time vs Quantity Time
25:16 Improving Relationship with Yourself
28:36 Seeking Support
29:19 Conclusion
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Transcript
Laurie Groh (00:00.206)
Parenting can be a rollercoaster of emotions, but it doesn't have to be a constant struggle. At Positive Parenting Solutions, they offer a roadmap to transform your family dynamic and create a more peaceful home environment. Their proven techniques empower parents to confidently navigate challenges and connect with their children on a deeper level. From managing temper tantrums to fostering open communication.
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Laurie Groh (00:51.81)
Welcome to the Wisconsin Wellness Podcast. I'm Lori Grow, your host, mental health therapist, and practice owner. Each month we'll showcase the central theme and provide weekly practical hacks, inspiring interviews, and valuable advice from wellness professionals. Our aim is to help you streamline your wellness and mental health journey. So let's start the show.
Laurie Groh (01:20.942)
Hello there, fellow Wisconsinite. Today we're going to be talking about parental guilt. Guess what? We don't have to feel like crap anymore because I'm going to talk you all out of it. After this episode, you will never feel guilt again. You will always feel like you're doing the right thing and nothing will get in the way of that. I don't know. Do you want that? I don't know. Guilt can be so painful that yeah, yeah, I do want that.
When we talk about guilt, is it guilt or shame? That's a big topic. I'm going to go through the definitions for you and hopefully we can get a little bit more clarity on what's guilt, what's shame. I'm also going to go through a few myths that we have about guilt and I'm going to tell you some things that hopefully make you feel better. And hopefully when we think about ourselves as parents,
we can shift into I'm learning every day just like they are. I'm going to make mistakes every day just like they are. I'm going to repair. I'm going to fix the mistakes as best I can. I'm going to try to understand that my children are separate beings than me. I'm going to try my hardest not to put onto them.
my weird stuff, I'm going to recognize the value in helping my child or children find themselves in the way of wandering around the world trying to figure themselves out. Find what fulfills them, what lights them up, what they actually need as far as encouragement, recognizing that our expectations about
our child's life have more to do with us than our children and what they might actually need. Allowing ourselves to be uncomfortable with our children's world is going to be so very different than ours is right now. Trust that they're going to be okay. Trust that they have the tools to figure things out. Help them learn the tools to figure those things out. Think about...
Laurie Groh (03:46.19)
what your actual goal is for them, what do you want them to become. I realize I said before our expectations are separate from them, but I guess what I'm talking about is that idea of what it would mean to do a good job as a parent. Let's start with the definition of guilt and what guilt actually is. So guilt,
typically arises from a very specific action or behavior that one perceives as a violation of internalized moral standards, values, and expectations. It means that that feeling will surface when we violated ourselves in a nutshell. When we violated what we believe we should have done in that specific situation.
Guilt is very situational. Guilt is there so that we can do something when we've done something wrong to someone else. It is there as a ting. Oh, I hurt that person's feelings or, oh, I forgot to call someone guilt. I'm trying to think of some of the other ones I feel that for. Oh, tend to be a bit forgetful. All my friends stop laughing so hard.
So it might be the guilt of, oh, I forgot this, or I forgot to do this for my kid that needs to bring some book back. Let me tell you, there's a lot of things to remember. But the idea really comes from I'm not living up to what I expect of myself in relation to others. It is based on the behavior itself rather than the self. I also want to move.
really pause in on this because we will often feel guilty for thoughts. If I could tell you one thing that can help with your mental health, it's to let go of the guilt when it is in relation to our thoughts. If you sit for 10 minutes, anyone that's ever done meditation or mindfulness activities, you sit there and you just let those thoughts come. You're going to have some messed up weird thoughts.
Do you have to take on all of those thoughts? The reality is no. What we do as individuals is actually decipher and discern what we actually think and what we believe from all the jumbled thoughts coming at us. So if we have a thought of, oh man, I don't not like that person, and then we have guilt related to it, we are now feeling bad for two things. We're feeling bad because of whatever interaction that was, and now we're feeling bad.
regarding ourselves in relation to that. So you're getting like an extra negative feeling with that. Cool, right? Guilt really doesn't have a place right there. Now, it can, if you then yell at that person, it can show up and needs to show up if you are rude to that person and that's against your values. Feeling guilty about thoughts, feeling guilty about feelings. How do I say this? It will get you nowhere.
It will put you in a mental state of despair, disgust, shame, which we'll talk about in a second. I'm sure y 'all have heard shame. It's been a big topic for the last five to 10 years. I would love for you to separate your feelings and your thoughts from the judgment of your feelings and your thoughts. Allow yourself to feel and think whatever you want. You need to be able to do that.
If you stop yourself from thinking and feeling whatever you want, you will have a much harder time deciphering where you are in all of that and where you want to go. You will just be in a place of avoiding pain. When I am talking to clients that comes up quite often, I feel this, I think this, and I shouldn't. And that portion is what keeps them stuck. Great way to release negative feelings, negative thoughts.
is to go towards them with empathy and compassion and kindness. Yeah, you're gonna think that. Yeah, you're human. We think those things. Yeah, not a great thought. Probably not happy about the thought, but that thought popped in because of X, Y, and Z. Okay, a parent might feel guilty for losing their temper with their child. Whoa.
All right, so I can attest to this. This is my biggest guilt trip that I go into. This is one I would say 100 % I'm always working on. I was not a huge fan of getting yelled at when I was young. So when I do that, or when I am short, I feel a lot of guilt from it. Feel the guilt so that you can think of a plan. It is built into our system so that we know, I don't like this, let's do something different.
But if you are feeling the real feeling that typically happens when you lose your temper or when you make a mistake, it isn't usually guilt. It's that big shame at work. It is typically because we are making a connection between that one situation, that one incident, into how we are as a person. That's where shame comes into play. Shame is really vital in human existence. It is
a very important feeling when we think about ourselves living in a group of people. Shame is a feeling of I am on the outs, I am bad, I am flawed, I'm inadequate, I'm... All that fun stuff. It usually has to do with our identity, not our actions. So if we make a mistake, I lost my temper, I forgot about this.
And then we jump into, I'm a bad mom, I'm a bad dad, I'm a bad parent, I'm a bad caretaker, I'm a bad grandparent. We hit ourselves where it counts. We definitely will be in a spot of taking much longer to move through that. It is a much easier process to say, I forgot to pack a snack for my kid today. And my solution is to go there, drop it off, or my solution is to...
message to the teacher or because I know that my teacher has some extra snacks my solution is to provide a box of snacks for the kids for future mess -ups. If I'm thinking that I'm a bad mom because of it, what can I do then? What's the solution? There isn't one. There's no antidote. There's no five steps to being a good parent book. I'm sure, yeah there is I'm sure. But...
There really isn't a way to move through that. It is much too big, much too heavy. It's not realistic to solve problems in that way. You can't solve world hunger in that way, right? You can solve things here and there, one thing at a time. You can look at the big picture and see if there's massive systemic change that you can be a part of. You can't go at it in a situation of yelling at yourself.
I have the wonderful luxury of being a therapist and my job revolving around working with people, working with parents, working with kids. For a long time, I worked a lot with kids, but there's that flip side to it. And the flip side is that there could be some expectations that I would be doing all the right things all the time. The internal expectations, maybe some external ones. Studies do show that shame tends to be higher in their caregivers.
pastors, teachers, tends to be higher in those areas because there tends to be a higher expectation regarding how the child's performing. It took me quite a bit to recognize that I was attaching a lot of myself into what my kids were doing. And sometimes I still will be in that space. They...
do something totally out of character and I'm feeling embarrassed that that stuff comes out in the conversations after and then I have to repair that too. Gosh, parenting's hard, right? But one of the things I want you to take away is recognizing when you might be concerned more about what it looks like and we're human and that's a part of our
culture as well in America, right? All right, so let's go through the myths. Myth number one, the good parents never feel guilty. The reality is all parents experience guilt at some point. Guilt is really a healthy emotion. Again, it becomes unhealthy when it moves into shame, but guilt can be used as a really solid guide. We can talk about that with our kids as well. What's that telling you? Is it telling you...
And maybe we should go apologize. That guilt can be very useful when we're talking about relationships. And feeling guilty doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad parent, right? Guilt and quote unquote good parenting? Is there a correlation there? Do we, if we feel more guilty, are we a better parent? If we don't feel any guilt, are we a better parent? Sometimes I think we tie our feelings to that. That we tie our feelings to...
being a good parent. If I'm not feeling guilty, I'm doing something wrong. All right, another myth is shame is an effective parenting tool. This is shame is something for sure that parents have been using generation after generation. The main point of it, especially generations ago is you got to stay within the group or there's something bad's going to happen. But shame now isn't very useful.
If a kid makes a mistake and you're pointing at them and saying, you're a horrible kid, why are you doing this? What's wrong with you? They're not like really learning anything. Cause actually biologically they can't be learning anything. They are in a state of complete fear. Shame is a fear state. It's really fear of the loss of connection. And as a child, a loss of connection means life or death.
Thinking about that shame as we use it sometimes on ourselves, not great. We use it on our kids, not great. One thing you can do if you're struggling with shame is really focusing on letting that shame go for yourself because much easier to remove it from your child's life if you are not feeling that. A great way to reduce shame is by talking to other parents.
One of my husband's cousins was a great person for me to talk to because sometimes I was just like, oh my God, these kids are driving me bananas. And, or even I think when I was just had my youngest and it just didn't feel right to say that for many reasons. I didn't really feel like I should say stuff like that. Like I just felt like everything I should just constantly be.
happy that I have my son and blah blah blah and life is wonderful and he craps all over himself but it's still so good and I'm not sleepy and still so good. Talking to another mom that says things like, yeah I can remember what it was like not having kids. Yeah that was awesome. I enjoyed that. It gives you room to feel different things. Maybe you're not feeling that all the time. Maybe it's a few times a day.
But that's okay. That doesn't mean that you are getting up and leaving. It doesn't mean that you don't love your kids. It means probably you need a break. Perfect parenting prevents guilt and shame. Another myth. Perfect parenting prevents guilt. Actually, no such thing, of course, as perfect parenting unless my mom's listening and yes, you were a perfect mom. Striving for perfection.
really only sets those unrealistic expectations. So let's undo that. Let's notice when we are watching Instagram and TikTok, you've heard it, you've heard it millions of times, but you can't compare your internal life with someone's outside life. It just doesn't make any sense. So if you're watching a personal trainer, try to remember the fact that they're immersed in that. That's like a
huge pocket of their life and we're not going to compare ourselves to a trainer. That wouldn't make any sense because most of us aren't working out two to three hours a day or planning our meals in that way. Same with the parenting stuff. When you're watching parenting videos there's a lot of times there's so much good information out there. Some of that information is so good.
but there are some that are gonna make you feel crappy. So go through what you're actually letting in your, what you're letting in your mind, what you're letting in your house, what you're letting in your bed at night. Some of that stuff doesn't belong there. I don't need to be watching videos on perfect lunches because that looks so good and it's so tempting to wanna do that. But side note, I don't make my kids lunches. And I also,
know that I would really get into it for a week and then give up. And then I would have a lot of those bento boxes all over my house. Recognize that what's actually important to you. What is the most important thing? I know for myself, I had to make some choices with work, with my husband's career, with having four kids, with... There's just a lot of things going on that you have to choose from. And so sometimes choosing...
to have frozen pizzas is what works because I can play a game of Uno then with my kids or I can draw with my kids then. It doesn't have to be the same for everybody. You can't shoot for all of the values. You can't focus in on, I'm going to be the healthiest person in the world. I'm going to have my kids eat constantly the most organic food.
and nothing artificial get into their bodies. And I'm going to be there with them all the time, devoting my life to them and be the best at my job and work and be this incredible, sexy, beautiful woman that takes constant care of her body so that, I don't know, I can't do all of those things. There would be
If you just listen to them, that those are separate people. That's not one person that is all of those things. So this is the action item here. Figure out your top three values in your family. What is the one thing you want to make sure that your kids have when they leave your house? For me, it is to be able to figure out things and trust themselves.
To me, it's one of the most important things that I think serves myself and other people really well. That is not your value. You don't have to take it on. And maybe it's for you that your kids are eating and living in their most healthiest physical capacity. That can be what you hold value to. Other people, it might be balance. It might be...
passion, that my kid is happy, it can mean so many things, and you get to decide. Of course, your kids have some opinions on things, and so does your significant other, but you do get to decide what value you are holding as the most important. And there's going to be times where they compete. That's the real reason you cannot have all things and be all things, is, yeah, I would love
for my kids to eat healthier and we're working on it. But for me, like I said earlier, spending some time with them, drawing is everything to me. That's like my top scenario. It's like I have my best friends with me and we're at a slumber party and we're just drawing pictures all day. And that's not anything I have to like really try to do. So it's even better. And I get to see how creative my kids are, right?
What are those things for you? For me, playing pretend is painful. I was not very good at it. I would have to be very much in the right mood and I never knew what these little people would or should be saying. Now I used to do play therapy, so maybe I have some stuff attached to that, but it felt like work to me. It felt very much like I had to be thinking about things in a different way. So.
Figure out what those things are if it's video games and you're into them and your kid feels connected to you when you're playing them. That's great. Maybe they're going to be the next video game developer. No, the whole premise of this is to release some guilt you might be having as a parent. Number one thing that I tend to hear parents feel guilty about is that, like, I'm not spending enough time with my kids. One study...
that I probably share with every single client I meet that has kids is the study done on spending time with children now versus in the 1960s. There's a lot of different studies out there and I can include those in the show notes, but it just is really important to recognize that when they look back at what actually was going on, how much time were parents with their kids?
Laurie Groh (22:54.548)
spending time with them. In 1965, moms were spending 54 minutes with their children each day. And as of 2012, that number doubled to, nearly doubled to about 104 minutes. That time, when we think about families back then, we think of a lot of time with them. We think, oh, there's, maybe there was a mom at home, and so there's all this time.
But that wasn't actually what was happening. And fathers in the 1960s spent 16 minutes a day. And by 2012, they were clocking in an average of 59 minutes a day. So good news for your dads. Remembering that can also be really beneficial. So there's another study that does indicate that there might be some truth to the quality of time that's different. Thinking about
it in that regards, there has been a shift in the quality time. That's probably not surprising you very much because we have a distraction device connected to our bodies at most times. So one thing that you can do with the feeling like feeling the guilt is recognizing that first off, sometimes it can be helpful to look at and see how much time you're actually spending on your phone, how much time you're giving to that and thinking about.
What do I actually want to be doing with my time? Side note, great conversation to have with your kids. They will usually tell you a time amount that is much lower than you think. Anyways, kids don't actually need a lot of time to feel loved and cared for. What they do need is you being there, connecting with them. And so if you can try to do that every day to some degree, you're doing enough.
If you are 70 % good enough parent, you're a good enough parent. If you wake up and you're there and you're doing your best, you're a good enough parent. So let's talk about some conclusions here. What can we do? Main thing is that we can look at how we're treating ourselves in relation to the guilt. So how do we talk to ourselves? How can we make the relationship with ourselves better?
Laurie Groh (25:16.014)
by not judging our thoughts and feelings about parenting and about situations, because it's hard and messy and complex. And when we are more compassionate with ourselves, guess what? Kids pick that up. We become more and more in tuned, set realistic expectations for yourself and the kids. If your kid is three, expect them to be three. My sister -in would tell me that.
You can't expect a five -year -old to be an adult. And that always stood out to me as an essential component to parenting and being a part of kids' lives. Realize that their brain is not fully developed, right? We, most of us know that's not happening until 25. So how would we be able to expect our kids to?
understand what sharing is. Sometimes we think that they should know all of that stuff now. Changing your expectations a bit can help because you're not going to feel bad about something that's not even realistic or that nobody else is doing or nobody else can even do. Communicate openly with your children. Talk to them about your feelings. You don't need to overshare that's its own thing, but you can talk to them about feeling bad. You can talk to them about feeling guilty.
forgot this and I don't like letting you down. If you are sharing that with them to have an open conversation, that's very positive for them. If you are looking to get comfort from them that you might want to check, but sharing with them some of that information allows them to experience real life intimacy and human connection. They will then be able to say, I feel guilty. I feel bad.
I feel sad. I made a mistake and I feel really bad about it. They'll be able to do that. Hey, if you think you had a big mess up, just call me and tell me about it and I will tell you one as well. Tell your closest friends that they will typically be like, oh yeah, I did that. I've been there. Focus on quality time over quantity like I'd mentioned earlier and seek support. So if you were.
Laurie Groh (27:37.908)
struggling with guilt and shame and not feeling good enough, go talk to someone. It's a therapist's job to help you with that particular difficult experience. Friends and family can be amazing supports, but what therapy provides is that space for you to do that work because a friend is going to typically give you reassurance, which feels good. They might give you some stories of themselves and
You know, that can help with reducing shame, but it's probably not going to help with your relationship with yourself. If you are feeling very judgmental when you make a mistake, your friends can't do anything to help you with that. Your partner can't do anything to help you with that. That is something internal that is worth focusing on. All right. Thank you so much for talking with me today. And I wish you relief from guilt and
relief from shame. I want to encourage you to join our Facebook group where you can talk about some of these things as well. So we have a community are really working at reducing shame, reducing negative feelings and being supportive. If you don't have any one right now for yourself that feels very supportive, join our group. You can talk as much or little as you want, but it is there and sometimes that's enough.
I hope you over any guilt you're experiencing and move towards a healthier and happier family life. Take care.
Laurie Groh (29:19.086)
Thank you for joining us today on the Wisconsin Wellness Podcast. Remember your wellbeing is a priority and we're here to help support you every step of the way. If you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast for more inspiring content on health and wellness. You can also join our Facebook group to connect with Wisconsin wellness providers by clicking the link in our show.
Take care of yourself and remember that your wellbeing is a journey, not a destination. We look forward to you joining us again next time on the Wisconsin Wellness Podcast. Until then, stay well and stay inspired.
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