Ep. 105 - How to break up with guilt with Anna Mathur

Worklife juggleHealing
Written By

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/843181627" params="color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

This week, I’m delighted to welcome my friend Anna Mathur back onto the podcast.

Many of you will already be familiar with Anna and her incredible work. Anna is a psychotherapist and a mum of three, and she has a fantastic new book out called ‘Mind Over Mother: Every Mum’s Guide to Worry and Anxiety in the First Year’. It’s a brilliant book for mums, no matter how old your children are.

Anna and I are so aligned in terms of our passions and our beliefs, and we have many shared experiences from our childhoods growing up. In this week’s episode, we talk about where the idea of ‘not being enough’ comes from and how to reach the core truth, which is that we are all enough, no matter what we do or don’t achieve as mothers and in life.

Anna has a real way with words around these deep psychological concepts, which help to make them really accessible and interesting. I hope you enjoy this week’s episode, and as always, we continue the conversation over on Instagram so do hop over and let us know what you thought.

You can download a transcript of this week’s episode here.

Key takeaways from this week’s episode:

Mind Over Mother:

  • On the day of its publication, Anna spent the day in tears and felt a deep discomfort. (04:38)

  • She has worked so hard to feel worthy of love. But she found it overwhelming to be on the receiving end of all that kindness that day.  (05:03)

  • We are always a work in progress. (06:01)

  • The challenge was feeling those kind words coming from the heart. (06:13)

The Core of Low Self-Worth:

  • It comes from a deep sense of unworthiness. (07:20) 

  • Our parents contain the emotions we were meant to feel. (07:34)

  • We’re called to go on a journey of growth and undoing. (08:17)

  • We believe we need to do more and be more than what we are. (08:39)

  • When we have that belief system, our core is not good enough. (08:51)

Peeling the Layers:

  • When Anna started going to therapy, she was scared of being seen. (12:04)

  • A lot of our destructive actions come out of our defective understanding of our worth. (13:03)

  • Getting affirmation is both a source of discomfort and an insatiable hunger. (13:47)

  • Negative feedback doesn’t take or add; it doesn't make you a better or worse person. (14:04)

  • We fill in the gaps with stories to the tune of how we feel. (15:31)

Cutting Off the Generational Problem:

  • During this lockdown, she realised that as a mum, her one job is to be an anchor for her children. (17:24)

  • She needs to manage her emotions to help them make sense of their emotions. (17:29)

  • But to enable herself to do that means looking after herself first and knowing what her needs are. (17:43)

  • We don't feel enough because we are trying to do too much without refuelling. (20:22)

A Mum’s Guilt:

  • A mum’s guilt is almost always laughed about. (22:28)

  • When you let guilt shame you, you end up self-sabotaging. (22:40)

  • So much of the guilt mothers carry around is unjustified. (23:00)

  • Guilt is there to prompt you to take action. (23:13)

  • When you feel guilty, ACT—address it, bring in some compassion, and tweak it. (23:54)

Guilt & Gin:

  • We have normalised defective coping strategies that allow us to continue the cycle of shaming ourselves. (24:59)

  • We have to shift the foundations on which we are holding internal worlds. (25:34)

  • There is also guilt around working too much and merging it with home life. (26:19)

  • For many years, Anna felt guilt around her challenges with mental health. (27:03)

  • Compassion is often the missing link for many of us. We have to tweak it. (28:54)

Pain Is Our Greatest Teacher:

  • There's always going to be pain in varying degrees. (31:06)

  • How we learn from our experiences is a choice. (31:17)

  • Bracing yourself for bad things to happen makes you more brittle. Like a coffee bean, it takes just one thing to shatter us. (32:24)

  • When we are relaxed into a situation, we move through with more compassion and ease. (32:41)

Resources mentioned in this episode

About Anna

Anna Mathur is a psychotherapist, speaker, The Sunday Times’ bestselling author, and a mum of three. She is the host of The Therapy Edit podcast, where she discusses tips, insights and reflections to support her listeners’ mental well-being. 

You can connect with Anna on her website, Facebook, and Instagram.

Previous

Ep. 106 - Why your past doesn't need to define you with Chloe Brotheridge
Next

Ep. 104 - How to heal your relationship with your mother with Brooke Lightstone