Motherhood, Martyrdom and Superwoman Syndrome!
We go through life – especially as women, being conditioned to think that we must make sure everyone else is okay! We put everyone else’s needs first and worry about our own needs last. As women we are natural nurturers, giver’s and it is easy to give too much, to deplete ourselves until we are burnt out, frazzled and resentful.
We are conscientious in our jobs, working through our lunch breaks, extra responsibilities and checking email at home. We say YES to school PTA, volunteering and generally helping others- Total people pleasing! This can be a deep routed way of being, passed on possibly from generations of women who always say “yes.” It feels intrinsically that what you do. (say yes) is who you are. If you say “no” that is inconceivable.
I think we can be particularly good at playing the Martyr – at measuring our own self-worth and self-esteem by how much we have sacrificed and given up for others. Bench marking our own worthiness. We tell people how much we have done for them, how much we have given up, how long we have waited, etc. Because the idea of putting our own needs at the top of our list is so foreign to us that it is laughable!
When it comes to motherhood, everybody has got a well-meaning piece of advice from family, friends, magazine articles, books, social media, and experts. I really bought in to this myth, that you should always feel like you have no personality of your own. You are now only identified as someone’s mum. Your worry now comes from your children, their accomplishments, and their goals. But this leads to a lot of pressure because your children better live up to these expectations you have for them because you sacrificed everything for their success!
You want to bask in their glory and fulfil your own unfulfilled goals and that means you can then keep tight control of your children and their dreams so that you do not have to go off the beaten track of what your ideals are for them. You must always keep them close for fear that they might break free from the lie that we fall into. But yet we still feel the need to push them in to this ridiculous concept that we hate that we cannot seem break.
I bought into the belief that when we have children, that is it, game over. Your life is now someone else’s. Your children are the jailers to your self-imposed prison, and you must keep up appearances, support all the activities, support the bake sales, fancy dress days, emotional support, lift givers, your house resembling a youth club, all in the name of “good” parenting.
The word “good” is so loaded, isn’t it? We’re told from as young an age as possible to be a good girl, conform, make people happy, play nice, share, do whatever you can for an easy life, never saying no, never have boundaries, your opinions are not as important as others, your reasons do not really matter, keep with what you know, do not mix up the status quo, do as expected, smile, have no needs, motions, dreams or desires, be there for other people because we can’t have our own life can we? That is just greedy and not nice or good. Stick to what you know, and everyone will be happy.
What about our happiness? What about women who are not those mothers, not those women and do not feel comfortable handling over this outdated notion of what motherhood conditioning about what being a woman should look like.
With generations and whole societies of women being thought to say “yes” to every request – to look at putting your own needs last as a measurement of how worthy, how lovable, how needed, and how useful you are, all adding to our Martyrdom equation. There are not many wake up to realise there is an automatic opt in and you must intentionally decide to choose that you do not want this as your normal for you or your children.
My epiphany has been that the demands I have placed on myself are not realistic but also completely self-imposed by myself, my expectations of what I have seen and social conditioning. A recent article I read about Superwoman Syndrome stated that girls as young as thirteen are becoming victims of it. They see their female role model putting in too much focus on obtainable high standards.
I have seen the results of this in the group coaching sessions I do with young women, and it is time to bin the cape. Teenagers feel the pressure, the anxiety the self-imposed expectation because they feel the outside world judging their every move. I do not want this for my daughters and I certainly do not want that for the next generation of young women either.
It has taken me a lot of soul searching, a lot of feeling guilty, a lot of feeling that I am not a good enough mum or letting my kids down by not being a “perfect example” of what being a mum or human being should be. To realise that I must turn my back on these traditional concepts that I have been given and accepted.
The expectations weigh me down, looking at my potential as an almost successful mother, swallowing my opinions and false illusions of perfection as women and mothers. I am allowing my voice and allowing my own choice. It is hard to recognise the tracks that we have been handed and even harder to step away from.
All I know is that is not okay for me. Bearing off the path and designing my own concept for my own family and for myself is a learning process and one that I do not always get right. There is a touch of tradition and lots of help, sometimes lots of expectations from the part of me that expects me to conform, to make life easy, have no opinion and have that easy life.
But I now feel like it is my duty to myself and my children to navigate these new parenting waters. To show my daughters in particular, that motherhood and parenting has not got to equal martyrdom. Where we teach our children that a parent’s needs DO matter and that we are human, learning through this process just as they are. The superwoman cape has been put to one side and in its place lives the messy reality of what it is to be a mum, always trying and that will always be enough.
