Parenthood: How therapy can support you

Parenthood is often presented to us as one of two extremes: either deeply frustrating, boring and limiting, or joyful, life-affirming and wholesome. When there is an acknowledgement that the reality is somewhere in between, we may be presented with parenting “hacks” to help us achieve a balance between our own needs and those of our children. 

Our friends and families come with their own experiences of being parented, and perhaps of being a parent themselves. Governments, health care systems, and even workplaces have an opinion on how we should raise our children and what we should do as parents. 

Whether you agree with this state of affairs or not, it can be helpful to recognise that our real, individual experiences as parents are happening against this backdrop, and that prevailing outlooks and opinions — whether societal, cultural, religious, family or otherwise — can stop us from talking about or even acknowledging within ourselves, what we are experiencing. 

Psychotherapy welcomes — without judgement and with curiosity — the whole range of feelings, thoughts and experiences that arise during parenthood. It can provide a quiet fifty minutes to listen to your voice, rather than anyone else’s. Ultimately it may help you identify what you want for yourself and your family, and support you in putting that into place.

What types of experiences can therapy support parents with?

Although a psychotherapist won’t give parenting or medical advice, the short answer is all experiences. Here are some aspects of parenthood which psychotherapy can support:

Feelings of loss relating to your old life or sense of self

Becoming and being a parent may be accompanied by a sense of grief for the loss of your old life, before having children. There may be sadness but also frustration at how your time and opportunities have become more limited. This may lead to a sense of not knowing who you are anymore, which can be compounded by putting the needs of another or others before your own, causing you to lose track of what you need. Therapy can provide a space to experience these difficult feelings, and support you in recovering or finding a sense of self. 

Your childhood

Raising a child may recall experiences of your childhood. These might have been difficult, or even painful, and it may be helpful to have space to look at those feelings. Or it might be that your childhood was beautiful and positive, but somewhere over the years, those parts of life got lost for you. In this case, therapy may help you recover something from your childhood to bring into adult life.

Our relationship with not knowing and making decisions

We’re all surrounded by the unknown every day and when it comes to making choices in our lives, there is rarely a right answer. Making decisions for our children — young, vulnerable people who we love and for whom we have a responsibility — can make that sense of not knowing more stark. This can be deeply uncomfortable, if not terrifying. Therapy can be a place to express those feelings, and can support you in making decisions that feel right for you and your situation. 

Your development

Childhood is a time of rapid growth and development, but parenthood can be too. The experiences when raising a child may invite you to uncover and use new or neglected parts of yourself. Psychotherapy provides a space to recognise and integrate what you’ve gained. If you’re drawn to this way of looking at being a parent, you might also be interested in Motherhood by Lisa Marchiano, which explores how being a mother can be a process of self-discovery and development.

Conflicting feelings and experiences

Very often parenthood gives rise to conflicting feelings — I love my child, but I’d love a break from her — and odd contrasts — time is flying, but the hours are dragging. Psychotherapy can help lay out all the different, perhaps conflicting, parts of yourself and your experience so that you can understand them, create a relationship with them and perhaps even sometimes resolve them.

Not feeling “good enough”

Perhaps it feels like everyone has an opinion on how to parent. Comparing ourselves to others, or coming into contact with ideas about what we “should” be doing with our children can leave us feeling like we’re falling short. Some judgments are very real, but some may be perceived. Therapy can help sort out the inner from the outer, and what is unhelpful from what you intuit or sense is right for you and your child.

Love, joy, play

Although these feelings and experiences are, on their face, positive, they may not be without complication. Love for our children can leave us feeling vulnerable. Joy can be oddly difficult to connect to if we’ve grown used to its absence. And play and light-heartedness, which are not always valued in our society, may leave us feeling guilty about not spending our time more “productively”. 

A child’s feelings or behaviour

Our children’s feelings and behaviour can challenge us. If we’re uncomfortable with our vulnerability or dislike conflict, it can be difficult when our children demonstrate their fragility or feel angry with us. Like with any other relationship in our lives, our relationships with our children can mirror back to us where there may be an opportunity to further understand ourselves.

Creativity

Having brought someone new into the world — an extremely creative act in itself — we may want to nurture our creativity further but feel blocked or held back in some way. Therapy can help to identify what is getting in your way, and support you in removing the obstacles. 

Sense of being connected to something bigger than oneself

Having children may give rise to a feeling of being connected to your family line: backwards to your ancestors, as well as forward into the future, after death. There may be a sense of being connected to something bigger than your family: perhaps to humankind, nature or life generally. In one sense these are beautiful feelings to have but, like many existential feelings, they can also be terrifying. 

Relationships with partners and wider families

Being a parent can impact our relationships with our partners and wider families in a range of different ways. Perhaps being a parent means there is less time for you and your partner to be a couple. Or you may disagree on how to parent. You may have a family member with strong opinions about parenting, inviting you to step into your authority about how you want to do things. Therapy can be a place to explore these challenges. 

Mental health diagnoses

Alongside any appropriate medical support, psychotherapy can help with mental health diagnoses. These might have arisen after the birth of a child, such as post-natal depression or post-birth trauma (which can affect either or both partners), or perhaps a diagnosis was pre-existing and has been affected by parenthood.

What next?

Most simply, therapy can provide a space to focus on yourself and your world. It can be particularly challenging to give yourself permission to find and keep this kind of space when you’re caring for others. Therapy can provide that regular check-in point with yourself.

This article is by no means definitive, and your experiences might not tally with the examples I’ve provided above. Having said that, if any of this resonates for you, psychotherapy may be able to support you.