Is mom rage a thing?

You might have seen some social media posts about mom rage and you’re wondering, “Is mom rage a thing?”  Feeling irritable, exploding on your spouse or kids, kept awake at night because of an inescapable rage?  More moms than ever are overwhelmed and feeling rage.  Is it a diagnosable mental health condition?  No, you won’t find mom rage in the diagnostic manual, but you will find plenty of moms seeking therapy to help with mom rage.  

Why are moms so angry?  Demands exceed resources 

Most mom rage can be chalked up to a few reasons, and many moms experience more than one of these issues.  First, we can feel rage and anger when demands exceed the resources available.  What are the demands on moms?  Well, you know the answer.  Sports practices, parent-teacher association, monitoring your child’s grades, scheduling doctors appointments, shopping for all of the gifts…the list goes on!  And what are “resources”?  For many moms, time is the most valuable resource.  There just isn’t enough time to do all of these things.  However, other resources include financial resources, energy, emotional support, physical space and alone time.  Mothers can feel a range of emotions when they don’t have the resources to meet the demands.  Rage is often felt in response to the powerlessness that comes from excessive demands.

The mental load  

One of the many demands of motherhood is managing the mental load.  Who knows what size shoes the kids wear, when to register for kindergarten, and when grandma’s birthday is?  Most of the time, it’s mom.  Layer in the emotional labor of settling children’s fights, helping children cultivate healthy friendships, connecting with families in the neighborhood, and more!  The mental load of motherhood is an invisible demand that is usually much more difficult to unload or outsource.  Because it’s invisible and only noticeable when you can’t keep up, many spouses and grandparents don’t realize how much mom is struggling.  Cue feeling alone!  Feelings of abandonment and loneliness also couple with rage for many mothers.  

When our own childhoods weren’t secure

 Another layer to mom rage is a history of disrupted or damaged relationships with one’s primary caregivers.  All moms feel a lot of emotion throughout a typical day.  They are constantly managing the emotions of the household.  However, many mothers didn’t have a healthy foundation of emotional regulation to support this difficult task.  When feelings of powerlessness and loneliness can cue beliefs from the past, such as “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t matter” or “I’m worthless,” we can be sucked back into the emotional experiences of our past.  Most mothers with this struggle are fighting a battle everyday not to pass on their emotional wounds to their children.  However, rage can bubble up when a mother is offering something to her children that was so starkly missing in her own life.  

What can moms do to manage mom rage?

There are a few ways to tackle these challenges to help alleviate mom rage.  First, take stock of the demands and resources with your support system.  If everybody can see what you are managing mentally, it’s easier for partners, grandparents, nannies, or other supports to step in and help.  The “To Do List” shouldn’t be only in your head.  It needs to be made available to the other adults in the home.  Cut back, shift priorities, and outsource where you can.  If cost of services has been holding you back from outsourcing, consider the cost to your family of having a burnt-out or raging mother.    If your family can afford to outsource on a temporary basis, consider hiring a housekeeping, using a meal service, or getting a babysitter to help with the kids.  Try this on a temporary basis and see if it relieves any of your rage.  

Sometimes these small changes aren’t enough.  When a mother can’t figure out why she has mom rage, or she knows it roots to difficult experiences from the past, therapy for moms can be incredibly helpful.  Therapy can help you make sense of your feelings, develop an action plan to get the support and breaks you need, and unravel the impacts of the past so you can lift your best life in the present!  If you’re struggling with mom-rage and the subsequent guilt, therapy for parents can help you.  With the help of our experienced parenting therapists, we can guide you to a more self-assured approach to motherhood without the constant the emotional dysregulation. To learn more about Parent Therapy and how Skylands Wellness can help, click here.