I want you to feel really great as a parent. I want you to get out of mom guilt and instead feel a deep sense of calm. This calm leads to confidence, compassion for your kids, clarity on what you should do, and so many other good things.

What I've noticed, though, is that when moms first come to me, they often feel really embarrassed that they are not already calm. This mom feels ashamed that she yelled at her kid or emotionally checked out or was a little bit too physical. She thinks she should know better or that something is wrong with her. 

Listen to learn:

• Why it’s hard for you to feel calm (and it’s totally normal!)
• How getting calm is like learning to drive a car
• What to do after you lose it on your kid
• Why shame is not the way to change your behavior

If you can relate to that embarrassed mom, I want to tell you that there's nothing wrong with you. Today, I’ll help you learn how to feel more calm and less guilt.

---------------------------------

When You Don’t Feel Calm

You're human. You have a human nervous system and stress response. 

And raising children is stressful. Especially in the first 11 or 12 years, parenting is relentless. The waves keep coming and coming, and it feels like you never get a break.

Sometimes, you might be able to catch yourself before you totally lose it on your kid. This is a great time for a Pause Break. 

When you notice that you’re starting to take your feelings out on your child, just stop. Like you’re slamming on the brakes. It’s going to feel weird and sudden. You can say, “You know what? I love you, but I don't want to yell at you. So I'm gonna go wash my hands.” Then, go and reset. 

Other times, we don’t even realize that we are overwhelmed or frustrated until we find ourselves yelling and losing our sh!t. We act our feelings out on our kid. And then later, we feel really bad about it.

The truth is that, eventually, you always regulate yourself (or else you’d still be yelling hours later). Your brain comes back online, and you stop. The goal is to stop earlier and come back to calm more intentionally. 

How To Get Out of Mom Guilt

I see a lot of moms go into self-criticism with thoughts like, “I'm hopeless. I'm not like other moms. I'm not good enough. I'm not cut out for this.”

We have this subconscious thought that if we’re mean enough to ourselves about how we acted, we can shame ourselves into behaving better. 

But shame doesn’t motivate. Shame creates pain, which just continues the cycle. That’s why we don’t do it for our kids, and I don’t want you to do it to yourself, either. 

As a woman, and especially as a mom, it is so easy to be so mean to yourself. But all that ends up happening is that you feel really hurt, sad and discouraged, and then you take those feelings into the next encounter with your child.

When things escalate and you find yourself yelling before you pause, you don’t need to judge yourself for it. 

Instead, offer yourself the same compassion you offer to others. Just like we teach our kids, your feelings are okay. You might just need new strategies to handle your emotions. 

What To Do When You Lose Your Cool

Self-compassion is so important after you lose it on your kid. It's time to step back and give yourself a bunch of love. You always have permission to pause. Literally just stop parenting for a moment, and go take care of yourself.

Compassion is the way to move towards better behavior. It's a deep understanding of what was happening for you and a validation of that emotion. 

You can use the Connection Tool on yourself the same way you would use it with your child.

Narrate the situation for yourself. Give words to what was so hard. What was the circumstance that triggered your big feelings? Instead of criticizing yourself, you can just say, “So, this morning sucked. That's not how I wanted my day to go.” 

Name the feeling. For example, “I'm feeling really disappointed.” 

Now what do you want to do next? How can you take excellent care of yourself? How can you soothe your disappointment? How can you feel this feeling and let it move through you?

Find a small, soothing thing you can do for yourself that will make you feel a little bit better. When you take care of your emotions, you won’t dump that disappointment or frustration onto your kids. 

Becoming More Calm

Becoming calm is a process that requires a set of skills. It’s not something you are born knowing how to do.

In the beginning, you may not be able to pause and reset until after the fact. That’s okay. You don’t need to judge how fast you were accelerating or how long it took you to put on the brakes. 

You can still give yourself compassion, soothe yourself and then think about how you want it to go next time. How do you want to handle it differently? What limit do you need here? Is there a routine you need to fix?

After a while, you might catch yourself when you’re in the middle of yelling or lecturing. If you notice this, stop, and pause, that’s incredible. As you practice, you’ll notice the acceleration earlier and earlier. 

The long-term goal is to get to a place where you’re not needing to slam on the brakes. You can just ease off the gas and level things out more easily. This kind of calm is a deep sense of emotional regulation where your nervous system is really in balance and you’re able to move through your stress response without as many intense ups and downs. 

I want to free you from the shame spiral. It does not help you. It only hurts. And when you feel hurt, you’re more likely to hurt others. 

I want to offer you the gift of self-love. It’s okay to be kind to yourself, Mama. And things will get better when you do. 

Previous Episodes:

• Episode 2: Getting to Calm with The Pause Break
• Episode 8: Pause & Reset Your Body
• Episode 9: Pause & Reset Your Emotions
• Episode 10: Pause & Reset Your Mind

Free Resources:

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn: 

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn

Childress. I am a life coach and a parent

educator and the host of this podcast. And my

big picture goal for you and your family

is that you feel really great

as a parent. That's why this podcast is called become a

calm mama because I really want you to feel,

like, a deep sense of calm, which then leads to

confidence, which then leads to compassion for your

kids. It leads to clarity on what you should do. It

leads to so many good things. Right? Because

the beyond being calm for you, I want you

to raise an emotionally healthy kid. Right? I want you to have a

kid who also knows how they're feeling and how to

manage their feelings and can overcome

obstacles in their life like fear or insecurity or,

you know, any sort of, like, limiting belief in order to become who they're supposed

to be. So that's this big picture goal.

And I wanted to talk today a little bit about

the process of becoming calm because I think we

might have sort of a misunderstanding

of what it's like. What I've noticed is that when I have

a consultation with a mom or someone who just starts working

with me, that she will come on to

that consultation or to those first sessions and

feel really embarrassed that she's not

calm, that she yelled at her kid or, you know, emotionally

checked out or was a little bit too physical.

And there will be a lot of shame as

if she should know better, especially if she's been

listening to the podcast or even taking one of my classes and

will get in her head of, like, you know, something's wrong with me.

Right? And that's the the definition of

shame is something's wrong with me, and guilt

is I've done something wrong. So I never want you

to own this belief that something is

wrong with you because there's nothing wrong with you. You're super

normal. You're human, and you're having and you have a

nervous system. Right? You have a stress response. And having

children and raising children, that is

stressful. We can make it easier with

having limits. We can make it easier by, you know, emotionally coaching

our kids. We can make our life easier.

But the truth is that there's a relentlessness

to parenting, especially in those young ears. I'm talking,

like, 0 to 11 or 12, where it just

feels like you're caught in a

wave that, you know, the ocean and the waves just keep coming and

keep coming and keep coming. And that's why, you know, if you have

younger kids, you're like, all I wanna do is get a break.

Right? You wanna have time by yourself or time with friends

or, you know, an overnight somewhere because you there's a

relentless relentlessness to parenting.

And then you lose it, and you get frustrated.

And that then creates this

shame spiral of something is wrong with me. Alright.

So I don't want you to own

that phrase. Something's wrong with me. I'm hopeless. I'm not like

other moms. I'm not good enough. I'm not cut out for this.

Because the truth is that

becoming calm is a process,

and it requires a set of skills.

Right? Primarily the skill that I teach in

my program is the pause break, as well as what I call

call mama thinking. So in the in the pause break, I have a

lot of episodes on the pause break. It is essentially

whenever you catch yourself feeling stressed,

overwhelmed, angry, frustrated, you know, at your

wits end that you stop. So if you're in

an interaction with your child and they, like, they wake up too

early and especially, like, just the time change happened recently,

And so they're up earlier or they're, you know, they don't wanna go to sleep

or whatever it is. And you are, you know,

frustrated by them. And you're sitting there trying to convince them to go back

to bed or telling them all the reasons they shouldn't be up, and

you're, like, disciplining them,

or trying to logic them or rationalize or whatever you're doing.

And you can sense that you're getting mad because

they're they're having emotional need that's not being met. They're frustrated,

and you're talking isn't helping. It's not helping them, and

you think it's helping you. But, really, it's your

process of trying to, like, get power back, get control

back, and you're getting agitated. Anytime

you notice that you are

getting overwhelmed or feeling overwhelmed, I want you to pause. Right? And

take that pause break, which just means stop and then reset.

And we reset our body by moving our body in some intentional

way, and we reset our mind by coaching

ourselves. This is temporary. This is not a problem.

I'm gonna get this kid back to bed or, okay, this day is, you

know, we're up now. So let's move on. Whatever you need to do

to coach yourself back to calm.

So that's the pause break. Right? And

what happens what I've noticed is that sometimes

we don't know that we were

overwhelmed or frustrated or we lose our

cool. Right? We lose our shit, and we act our feelings

out on our kid. And then later, we feel really bad

about it. Now, what do you do

afterwards? What I

see most a lot of moms do is they then do that

self criticism. What's wrong with me? I'm not a good parent. You know,

I've I've taken all these parenting classes. I've read I listen to these podcasts. I

read all these books, and I'm still messed up. And, like, you know? Right? You

can end up getting into this space where you feel just really, really terrible.

And the the idea,

right, is that we are thinking, if I am mean enough

to you're not actually thinking this. This is subconscious. But you the

the the theory is, like, I'm I can

shame myself into behaving better. I

can criticize myself into changing my behavior.

I sometimes think of it like a whip. Right? You're gonna whip yourself

into shape. And that actually doesn't

work, unfortunately, because that

whip, it hurts. And when you're hurt,

you end up hurting. Right? They say hurt people hurt others.

Right? What if you're the one hurting yourself? What if you're

the one who's doing that shame and you're shaming yourself and you're

thinking shame is gonna motivate you? But shame creates

pain. That's why we don't do it for our kids. And that's why I don't

want you doing it for yourself.

Compassion is the way

to move towards better

behavior. What is compassion? It's a

deep understanding of what was happening for

you and a validation of that emotion.

So it's an awareness and a narrating of a

circumstance really bringing light

to the situation that is hard

without positively thinking about it. Right? Like that,

you can't, you know, mindset your way out of a negative emotion.

You have to feel your way into a new emotion.

And that means not just going into, you know,

like, what's wrong with me? It's not that big of a deal. You know, I

should be more compassionate towards my kids. And, like, they need to

fix that. I need to be better. I need to have more boundaries. I need

to be stricter. Like, you just criticism. So

instead, what you can do is just say,

So this morning sucked. Wasn't expecting this kid to get

up this early. That's not how I wanted my day to go. I'm

feeling really disappointed. I'm pretty frustrated by this.

How can I take excellent care of myself?

How can I soothe my disappointment?

How can I feel this feeling

and let it move through me? What do I need to do with my

body to allow this disappointment to pass? What do I

need to do to create a a new environment

for myself? Like, maybe that means putting on some music or making

yourself a really nice hot cup of coffee, or, you

know, going for that toast with, like, a heavy slayer slayer

slayer layer of butter. Right? Slathering that butter on or whatever it

is. Right? Just a little soothing thing for you that will

go will make you feel a little bit better. And

taking care of yourself and taking care of your emotions

so that you don't dump the disappointment out on your kid,

which is exactly what we're trying to teach our child. Right? It's okay to be

mad. It's not okay to hit. It's okay to be disappointed. It's

not okay to scream I hate you, mommy. Right? We want

to be able to give our kids new strategies to handle

their emotion. But in what I've seen is

that you as the parent, you're not offering yourself

that compassion. You cannot give what you don't

have. They've that people say that all the

time, but you can't give compassion to your kid if you're

not receiving it from yourself.

So self compassion is so

important after you

lose your cool with your kid.

When you find yourself in that mad

mom syndrome, right, where you're stressed out and

frustrated and overwhelmed, and you've can or you're starting to take it out

on your child. That what

I ideally would love for you to do is as soon as you notice

that you pause and you take that pause break, you put

on the brakes of your

experience. So the pause break is

actually spelled break like take a break, but it

is okay to think about as put on the brakes, Like,

slam on the brakes. Stop really suddenly.

And that is what it's like when you are first

practicing becoming calm. It is

like the the car has taken off

on its own. It's got some speed. It's on a track.

It's got some momentum, and you are putting the brakes

on. It's like, you know,

like, I will you're you're you're, slamming on them. Your their tires are

squealing. You know, you're probably creating some

skid marks or whatever. I think that happens when you break a car, when you

pull on the brakes. And that is going to feel, like,

really weird and sudden and abrasive. Like,

just wait. You know what? I I love you, but I don't want to yell

at you. So I'm gonna go wash my hands. Oh, you know what?

Mommy's getting mad. So I'm gonna move my body. I'm gonna shake I'm gonna do

a little shimmy shake, and then I'm gonna calm down. It is gonna

look weird. It's gonna feel weird.

So, ideally, you're

you're willing to do whatever it takes to not

dump onto your child. And I've

noticed that in the beginning, it's like a

lot of breaking. It's kind of like if you think about t

learning to drive or teaching a kid to drive, how they they don't really

know how to use the brakes and the gas very well.

They, you know, kind of overaccelerate, like, you know, and

then they're like, ah, and then they pull on the brakes and you're like, you

know, you you they put on the brakes kind of too harshly. They don't know

how to slow down. It's just

accelerate and stop and accelerate and stop. And if that's where you are in

your parenting, we are not gonna judge that at

all. We are going to just look at you breaking

and just thinking, yes, you put on the

brakes. We're not gonna judge how fast you were accelerating, how long it

took you, or even if you didn't put on the

brakes. Eventually, you do mama. That's the truth. Because if you didn't,

you'd be still yelling at your kid like hours later. I know you

do regulate yourself. At a certain point, your brain comes back

online and you're like, what is wrong with me? Okay. Okay. And you you stop.

So you always stop. I just want you to stop earlier and stop

intentionally. And if you don't stop, be nice to yourself about it.

Now at the risk of sounding like a total

tool, I'm going like a total, like, you know, jerk or whatever.

I'm gonna talk about having a Tesla. Okay? I told my

friend's daughter that I had Tesla, and she was so mad about it. She's like,

oh my god. That's so wrong. You should not own a Tesla.

But anyway, my husband bought it, and I drive it a lot because my older

my son drives my car a lot. Okay. The

reason why I bring it up is because Tesla has this

thing called 1 pedal driving. And what does that

mean? It means that you don't really have to put on the

brakes that often, that the car, the

gas pedal, when you pull off the gas pedal, it

actually creates braking. And then you can

accelerate, you push down on the gas pedal and it

accelerates. And then if you pull off of it, it starts

breaking, like it starts stopping the car. So you don't

really have to put your foot on the brake. It kind of is just

a one pedal movement. You're accelerating and

you're decelerating until you come to a stop.

To, like, parenthetically, you don't have to have it on that mode. You can have

it be a traditional car where it's just the brake and the gas.

Now, why do I bring this up? I realized

that parenting, trying to move towards calm

is a little bit like this. That our goal

is to have one petal parenting,

where we are able to really regulate ourselves where

we're accelerating, we're getting a little hot, we're going a little too hard, and then

we pull back. And it's a little more of a gentle slowdown.

And then we can accelerate again, that you don't actually the goal is

to, like, not actually need that, that slam on the

brakes thing. That's where we're headed. That's

what's possible. And I have watched like, hundreds of

moms get to that place. Some of them call it,

like, legit calm. Right? It's a deep sense of

emotional regulation, and your nervous system is really in balance. And you're

able to, like, modulate it and move forward and

back through your stress response without going

high acceleration at where you need to slam on the brakes.

That's super cool. That's

amazing. That's what is possible. Are we always,

like, never needing to decelerate? No. We're gonna be modulating

going in and out, of, you know, activated stress

response to dipping out of it. You know that one petal

parenting. But in the beginning or if you have a very

difficult child who is, you know,

spirited as they say or is neuro neurodivergent

or you are recovering from an illness or you're deep

diving through some trauma lately or you're, you know, you have a

stressful situation, your, your your partnership or your

marriage is on is is in a tricky part part of

it. Maybe you're getting separated. Maybe you have an

ill parent. You know, there's so maybe you someone is

unemployed in your family or there's a financial stress. When

you have a lot going on or you have young kids

in general, it's going to be hard to access this one pedal

driving one pedal parenting. It's gonna be difficult,

but that means that you just have to put the brakes on.

Try not to accelerate so much so you don't have to slam on the brakes.

But if you do, slam on them. That's fine.

We're never gonna judge someone who slams on the brakes in order

to avoid hitting a hitting a pedestrian.

Right? You don't have to, like, be like, oh, you know, you

you shouldn't have stopped. No. Never.

Right? It's always good. You always have permission to pause.

As I say, you always have permission to stop. It's like stop

parenting for a second. Like, literally just stop parenting and go parent

yourself. Go take care of yourself.

Now, if you did not press pause, you did not

slam on the brakes, you did not take a pause break, that

means it's time to be compassionate.

It's time to step back and give yourself a bunch of love.

And what does that love look like? I don't think people really explain

it. It really means talking

about what was so hard,

giving words to the circumstance that

triggered all of that big feeling cycle for you.

Going in on it and and, like, saying, like, yeah. Having a 4

year old is hard. Boy, they have a high need for

power. That's tricky. You know? Or I thought it

would be different. This parenting this parenting thing is sucks.

I think it's fine to say things like that. I think it's fine to be

really honest. So we narrate that or narrate

the specific situation. I've made lunches

or I made breakfast, and they asked for waffles. And

I served a waffle, and this kid does not wanna waffle. And

that is irritating. Now what

we tend to do is we tend to if we're gonna narrate, we

narrate on the kid. I you said you wanted waffles, and then

I made one one day, you didn't even want waffles. Like, you don't need to

narrate for your child. That's not that's

not going to be helpful, but you can narrate for yourself

and connect with yourself like, Woah, this is really frustrating. I am

overwhelmed. So we're gonna narrate the situation. We're

gonna name the feeling, and then we're gonna give ourselves okay. Now

what? Narrating, naming, now

what? That's the connection tool. That's what you're doing with yourself.

Narrating the circumstance, naming the emotion. And now

what do you do? What do you need? How can you

soothe yourself? How can you reset

and taking some new actions? So that's when you

have to put on the brakes.

When you, you know, pausing, I

think of it as at any time, you can

pause in anticipation. Like, you're like, woah. I'm

starting to drive real fast. I need to put on the brakes. I need to

decrease my acceleration. I'm starting to get hot. I'm starting to get

starting to get in it. And you can just, you know,

notice that. So that's, like, before you lose it,

you can pause. While you're losing it,

if you can catch yourself in the middle

and pause, that's incredible. So even if you

start in on your lecture and your shame little

sprinkle that you're giving to your kid and the complaining and, you know,

criticizing them and comparing them to their sibling, if you are

in that state and you stop

and you pause, incredible. When you put

whenever you put on the brakes, it's great. Now, also

after. Sometimes we don't know how to

pause and reset until later.

And that's when the criticism comes in. So when it's later,

you can still narrate. Woah, that was

hard. That was tough. That was a really rough night. And

give yourself some compassion,

narrating what happened, talking about what was what

was hard, naming how you felt during it,

how you feel now, and then what do you need to

do to soothe that emotion? And

then when you're able to start doing some thinking, you can be like, okay. How

do I want this to go next time? What do I wanna do next time?

What do I what limit do I need here? What

routine do I need to fix? And and

resetting your your rhythm and your routine and connecting back to limit

setting and things like that. So this episode,

what I really wanted to offer to you is the

gift of self love. It sounds so cheesy.

But I know that as a woman

and especially as a mom, it is so easy

to sit and just be so mean

to yourself. And all that ends up happening

is that you feel really hurt

and sad and

discouraged. And then you take

those feelings into the next encounter with your child.

So that's why I'm encouraging you to practice self

compassion and self love. And the steps of

those are narrating what was hard naming your feeling and

then offering yourself another way of acting

or a way to soothe. Alright.

If this is a struggle for you, like, honestly, this is my

specialty. Like, calm,

I just I just love teaching moms how

to feel better. Of course, once you're better, I

mean, once you feel better, then you are better

equipped to practice gentle parenting or connected parenting.

You're better able to set limits, you're better able to think

clearly about what's going on in your family. And then

that's the other skills that I teach in my classes. So

I I don't want you to listen to this episode and

then feel like, okay. Great. Thanks. But

you don't have to sit in the book a

consultation with me. It's like a free time, you know, free 20

minutes to chat with me, and we can talk about what your obstacles are.

And I'll give you some strategies. And if you wanna talk about working with me,

great. If not, no problem. I'm here to listen to you, learn

from you, and support you. So you

can book a discovery call with me on my

website. We have that, and then we'll also put in the show

notes. And if you're not on my newsletter, if you don't get my emails,

I highly recommend you go to Calm

Momma Coaching. I spell it

calm, and then mama is mamacoaching.com,

and get one of the free resources. The stop

yelling cheat sheet is where I walk you through the pause break step

by step, all the reasons why you yell and how to

stop. And then the obstacles that are gonna come up if

you, you know, do a pause break. I give you strategies of

how to talk to your kids about it and and all of that. An amazing

resource, and it's free. And it's on my website under resources.

And then there's also a couple of other cool resources in there.

That one is all about resetting your your stress response

as a mom and, you know, just different in the

moment things you can do to calm yourself. So that one is super cool.

And, and then we also have one about mornings, like building a better

morning routine. So lots of cool, cool resources.

And once you sign up, once you, you know, get that download, you're on

my newsletter, and then you can get links to, you know, book calls with me

and stay, you know. I send a newsletter on Tuesdays, and then

the podcast one comes out on Thursdays, typically. So unless

I'm promoting a new class, and then I send a bunch, and then it's quiet

again. Okay. I

really would like to free you from the shame spiral, and I hope I've

convinced you that it's not gonna help. It does

not help you. It only hurts you. And when you

feel hurt, you're more likely to hurt others, particularly

your kids. So you can just stop.

You can just be nice to yourself. I promise it will be okay.

You won't get worse. You'll just get better. I promise.

Alright, mama. I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you

next time.