Self-Doubt At A Higher Volume

It is very normal to doubt yourself as a parent.

There are so many decisions to make and things to navigate on any given day. Practical ones as straightforward as how to dress your child for the weather, logistical ones like when to leave to make it on time for preschool pick up, and emotional ones like how to handle a tantrum or rough moment when your little one has big feelings they need help with.

Because there is such a deluge of decisions and different scenarios to tackle every day as a parent from the very beginning, it is easy to doubt yourself sometimes. Even if you have the strongest instincts, sometimes you can have a bit of a wobble on whether you should have done things differently, or whether you are doing the right thing sometimes.

When you are parenting without a village, self-doubt can often be louder.

Without a village, you are carrying so much on one or two sets of shoulders, often with no one to sense-check your thoughts or offer another perspective.

There are fewer people reminding us that what we’re experiencing is normal. Fewer people reassuring us that we’re doing enough. Fewer people helping us see ourselves with kindness, and advocating that we cut ourselves some slack sometimes.

So when self-doubt pops up and there aren’t other voices or perspectives to dilute it, it can feel much more intense.

We may not have a friend saying, “Mine did that too.” We may not have a parent reminding us, “You’re doing brilliantly, by the way.” We may not have someone gently saying, “Be kinder to yourself.”

You are doing everything with less advice, less outside perspective, less encouragement for yourself and kindness from external sources. That can make our perspective tilt towards an unkind view of ourselves, and give rise to inner criticism and lack of self-trust.

All of the worry and doubt about ourselves becomes easier to believe when we get so much less reassurance and just less people to chat to about things. It makes sense that you doubt yourself a little more when there are less people to turn to about things, and there’s less voices of encouragement or people that see things from the outside.

That does not mean that any anxious parts of you are telling the truth, and it doesn’t mean you should take inner criticism as fact.

It means you are doing a bit more work to steady yourself and trust your instincts sometimes while parenting your little humans.

Be gentle with yourself this week.