Suffering with stay-at-home mom depression? Here are some things you can do to support your mental health & your ability to show up for your kids even when you’re struggling to brush your own teeth.
Depression is common among stay-at-home moms. The sudden loss of identity, social isolation, lack of time/energy for hobbies or creative outlets, and overall sense that domestic labor is invisible, can leave mothers feeling lost, emotionally numb, and unfulfilled. Then, on top of everything else, they feel guilty for feeling depressed, as if this is some kind of personal failing or lack of gratitude.
The cultural messaging we receive around stay-at-home motherhood has become increasingly polarized as our social media feeds (and our brains) are flooded with the imagery of perfect tradwives, feminist critique, and the complexity of navigating family life in an economic landscape that is very different from what our parents and grandparents knew.
Not only do stay-at-home moms spend most of their time in the sole company of young children, they FEEL alone. They feel alone in their hardship and often grow to believe that their suffering is unique. That what they feel is some kind of evidence they are failing at what other people achieve effortlessly, or are failing at “everyday life” that should be “straightforward and easy.”
This struggle is the result of a perfect storm of compounding circumstances: 1) Stay-at-home motherhood is inherently isolating, 2) Stay-at-home motherhood is taken for granted, 3) stay-at-home motherhood requires superhuman levels of mental, emotional, and physical labor that no mere mortal human can ever hope to achieve because we used to accomplish it with community collaboration, 4) That labor is Sisyphean; meaning, it is NEVER ENDING and the drain takes on the distinct hardship of chronic depletion.
When discussing ways to support ourselves during times of depression or declining mental health, it’s extremely important to acknowledge that most things that fall within the genre of self care do not account for the CONTEXT within which we are addressing unmet needs. Meaning: self care does nothing to address deeply ingrained gendered dynamics, systemic oppression, abusive relationships, or other circumstances that deeply impact how we feel about ourselves or what is possible/impossible in our lives. There are always limits to what self care can do to address these deeper, overarching issues.
Self care falls strictly within the boundaries of “things that are within my control.” For everything else, the only thing we can do is practice self compassion, seek out mental healthcare support, and create a game plan for safely removing ourselves from dangerous situations and abusive relationships. If you believe that part of your depression may be a result of an abusive or unhealthy relationship, you can learn more here.
Self compassion is different from self love. Because the advice to practice self love has become so widespread in pop personal growth culture, it very easily becomes yet another way mothers feel like they are failing and everything is their fault. It is too easy to believe that “if I loved myself, none of this would be so hard.” Self love is quite simply too big a leap during times of declining mental health. It’s also not always possible to love ourselves when we have never received love from others. It’s normal to need the love of others in order to feel we are deserving of love.
But where self love is impossible, self compassion can take root. And in order to develop self compassion, we must first determine where harmful social messaging is damaging our ability to offer self compassion.
Social messaging refers to the messages we receive from our families of origin, culture, community, media, education, and exposure to other informational streams. These messages are often indirect, such as a “casual” remark that “those who can’t do, teach” or a passing comment about how “boys will be boys.” Over time, we internalize these messages in a way that forms our core beliefs, and therefore perceptions, of the world around us, as well as our own sense of self.
In order to figure out where we’ve been mislead by social messaging, and how that is impacting the way we see ourself or experience our hardship, we can seek out a skillful therapist who can offer us valuable mirroring and help us determine where we might be confusing a belief with an essential truth. We can also educate ourselves about why some types of people or types of roles are deemed lesser-than and rendered invisible by our larger society, how mental health is reduced to character strength/weakness, and how to identify the tells that we are dealing with an internalized belief or bias.
Here are some more tangible, practical things you can do if you are suffering with stay-at-home mom depression:
Simplify the contents of your home.
Although this one may seem self explanatory, it’s not. Clutter often becomes a placeholder for unprocessed emotions like grief, longing, shame, identity crisis…so clearing out the clutter not only creates a more spacious, tidy, and manageable home environment, it can also help us move through some of these unprocessed feelings. Depression is not the absence of feeling, it is the repression of feeling. And our home environment has a big impact on our mental health.
Hire domestic support.
It is IMPOSSIBLE for one person to manage the labor of household management all on their own. Although it may seem like a great luxury or unnecessary expense, it’s worth considering where you can outsource some of this labor. Maybe that means hiring someone to deep clean once a month, or using a laundry service. Maybe it means using a meal kit delivery subscription, or finding a trustworthy teen to act as a mother’s helper. There is a huge price range for accessing domestic support, and it might not be as far out of reach as you believe. My favorite decluttering support specialist is Alyssa Allegretti.
Take a break.
Easier said than done, right? But breaks are absolutely essential. In any other job, we would never be expected to work 24/7 without any breaks. And while being a parent means always being on call, part of being the parent our kids need is BREAKS. No one can show up as their best self when they are beyond exhausted. Breaks can be claimed according to the age and stage of our children. A break from an infant might look like having a friend over to hold them while we shower, whereas a break from elementary-aged kids might look like sending them to a grandparent’s house for a long weekend.
Get dressed in something you feel great in, even if you’re not leaving the house.
Some people find delight in wearing a beautiful dress even when no one else is around, whereas others find relief in donning the perfect pair of comfy sweats to soothe their sensory needs. Either way, clothes can do a lot for us in terms of how we feel, and therefore how we move throughout our day. Furthermore, dressing for our own sake, even when no one is looking, is a simple way to ease into the kind of self love that is otherwise hard to access.
Spend as much time with friends as possible.
If it feels hard to invite friends over because you feel like you have to clean beforehand, get some coffee dates and playdates on the calendar for public spaces or make plans to attend community events. Think of this as “taking your medicine.” Even if you don’t feel like doing it, do it knowing that connection to others and a basic human need, and we behave differently and feel differently when we have regular human companionship with people who understand what we’re going through.
If you are struggling to make new friends, you can talk to your therapist about ways to plug into your community with kids in tow. It can be common for friendships to fall away after the arrival of a new baby, when people can no longer relate or find their lifestyles no longer sync. Loss of friends or lack of a social life is one of the key sources of stay-at-home mom depression, so treating it like the mental health lifeline that it truly is, can be game changing.
If none of those things are possible, pick the low hanging fruit.
Sometimes, there are simply no personal resources to make a change, so we have to pick the low hanging fruit. Low hanging fruit can include things like: showering, brushing teeth, changing the bedsheets, calling a friend, using paper plates, or letting ourselves buy takeout rather than groceries that week. Low hanging fruit is like emergency-intervention: it’s survival. It’s what we do to get by in order to build ourselves up to a place where we can make other supportive changes.
And, as always, you can hire a feminist therapist who is well equipped to understand the struggles of stay-at-home motherhood, depression, and social isolation. Learn more here.
Ginelle Krummey, LCMHC is a perinatal mood disorders trained counselor.
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