You were probably really good at your job. You had high standards, you worked hard, and that combination got you places.  And then you had children...

Suddenly the same approach that earned you promotions and praise might be leaving you feeling anxious, overwhelmed and like you're constantly failing. You're working harder than you ever have in your life and yet nothing feels like enough.

If this sounds familiar, I want to offer you a different way of looking at things.

What if you don't have an anxiety problem? What if the problem is actually more to do with the resources you have right now and the standards you're holding yourself to?

The Rulebook That Worked (Until It Didn't)

Before children, most high-achieving women have a system that works something like this: put in the hard work, get the results, maintain high standards, feel good about yourself. Repeat.

It's a solid system, and for a long time it probably served you really well.

The problem is that this system had some important things supporting it that motherhood has quietly removed.

In that season of life, I'm guessing that time was largely your own. You could finish things without being interrupted and you had some control over your environment. You probably had a clear sense of whether you had done a good job and had evenings and weekends to rest and recover.

In motherhood, most of those things are gone. And yet many of us are still holding ourselves to exactly the same standards we always have, without stopping to notice that the goalposts have completely changed.

You're playing by the same rulebook but you're in a completely different game.

The Resources Problem Nobody Talks About

Here's an analogy I use with clients that tends to land.

Imagine you're handed the biggest, most important project of your career. Except this time, there's no budget, no support team and no clear brief. You're also getting no sleep and have no clear way of knowing whether you're doing it right. Oh, and the project keeps changing its own requirements, sometimes hourly, often at 3am.

Now imagine being told that if you're struggling with the project, you just need to try harder.

You'd know immediately that the expectations were unreasonable. Maybe you'd push back. You would probably tell whoever set those expectations that the project had been set up to fail.

But when it's motherhood, there is no push back. Instead, we ignore the fact that we're trying to meet really high standards with barely any resources and we turn what we feel is the 'failure' of the project inwards. We decide that WE are the problem; that we must be weak, or lazy, or somehow defective for finding this so hard.

You are not the problem.

The expectations are the problem (and the lack of resources to meet them).

Historically, mothers were never meant to do this alone. There would have been a village: grandparents, sisters, aunties, neighbours, all sharing the load. There were no social media feeds full of apparently calm, organised, glowing mothers to compare ourselves to. There were no invisible metrics around whether you were doing enough sensory play or spending enough quality time or achieving a sufficient level of zen while gently parenting.

Modern motherhood has piled on the expectations and stripped away the support at exactly the same time. And we wonder why so many of us are struggling.

When High Standards Fuel Anxiety

For highly sensitive, perfectionist mothers in particular, this collision between high standards and impossible circumstances can really ramp up the anxiety and overwhelm.

If your sense of self-worth has always been tied to achieving and doing things well (and if, underneath that, there's a fear of what it might mean about you if you don't) then an environment where you can never quite feel on top of things is going to feel genuinely threatening.

This is not a character flaw! These patterns usually developed for very good reasons, often rooted in childhood, and they probably worked well for a long time. The issue is simply that motherhood, with all its chaos and unpredictability and invisible labour, is not an environment where perfectionism can thrive in the same way it once did.

And when the strategy stops working, instead of questioning the strategy, most of us just work harder. Or berate ourselves for not being good enough. Or both.

Starting to Spot Your 'Shoulds'

So what can you actually do with all of this?

The first step (and it sounds simple but often isn't) is to start noticing.

Begin to pay attention to your inner monologue throughout the day. Specifically, notice the moments when you feel exhaustion or resistance to slowing down or a low hum of guilt, and a thought pops up that starts with I should.

I should keep the house tidier than this. I should be enjoying this more. I should be calmer. I should be doing more activities with the kids.

When you catch one of those thoughts, get curious about it. Ask yourself 'is this actually important to me?' Or is this an expectation that's been handed to me (by society, by how I was brought up, by comparing myself to other mothers) that I've absorbed without really questioning it?

And then, crucially: do I actually have the resources in this season of life for this standard I'm holding myself to to be realistic or kind?

An immaculate house might genuinely matter to you. Or it might be something you believe you should be pursuing because of what a messy house might mean about you. These are very different things.

Spotting the difference starts to give you some choice back.

You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

This is important to say: noticing and changing these patterns isn't usually something you can do in an afternoon.

We're often talking about ways of thinking and behaving that have been in place since long before you became a mum. Unlearning them is going to take some time, and a fair amount of trial and error, because you're essentially building a completely new way of doing things from scratch.

That's okay. It's also probably some of the most worthwhile work you can do - for yourself, for your relationship with your children, and for the patterns you pass on to them.

Therapy can be a really useful space to slow down and do this work. Together, we can start to untangle which standards are truly yours and which ones have simply been given to you. We can look at where those patterns came from, why they made sense at the time, and what a more compassionate and sustainable approach might look like for you now in this season of life, with the resources you actually have.

Ready to Talk?

If any of this is resonating, I'd love to hear from you.

I'm a psychotherapist specialising in supporting mothers of young children with anxiety, overwhelm and the emotional weight of early motherhood. I offer face-to-face sessions in Formby, Merseyside, as well as online sessions across the UK.

You can book a free 20 minute discovery call via the link below, and we can have a chat about what you're experiencing and whether working together might be a good fit.

You don't have to keep trying harder; there's another way.

Book your call here: https://zcal.co/ruthrenouf