World Mental Health Day: Motherhood and my mental health

Happy World Mental Health Day!

I have become increasingly fixated upon the link between motherhood and mental health.

I'm not talking about post-natal depression, a condition I feel entirely unqualified to comment upon. I mean general mental health in terms of 'how am I feeling today' and 'I feel a bit low and I don't know why'.

Much like physical health, I believe mental health isn't a clear-cut case of 'ill' or 'well'. In the same way you can physically function entirely competently with a cold or an ingrowing toenail, most of us can function entirely competently with a fluctuating state of mental health and wellness.

But in the same way most, if not all, of us get colds from time to time, I also believe most of us have times of feeling more well, and less well, mentally. Stress, pressure, lifestyle factors, and how we feel about ourselves at the core can all impact how well we feel mentally.

As a lifestyle factor motherhood comes with a degree of stress, pressure and a great deal of being flung into the unknown. How we react and respond does depend to some degree upon our mental health and our levels of self-care.

Deep breath. Here's the honesty bit. I've suffered from a mental health condition on and off for years. All my life, I think. Certainly as long as I can remember. But I've never had a name for it.

I'm not, as far as I'm aware, depressed. I can get anxious but I don't suffer from anxiety as a condition.

I'm well aware of the 'symptoms' of my own particular mental health issue. It's best summed up as being 'my own worst enemy'.

Self-doubt, getting in my own way a lot, relentlessly comparing myself to others but always comparing the best of them to the worst of me so I cannot possibly win, self-sacrificing behaviour rather than asserting my own wants and needs, then resentment at 'once again' falling on my own sword.

Lack of faith in my own judgement, a tendency to make poor decisions then viciously attack myself for the consequences, impossibly high standards for myself that I wouldn't dream of applying to other people, a relentless quest for nothing less than utter perfection in many areas of my life - perfect mother, perfect wife, perfect body, perfect diet, perfect career, perfect friendships - and constant and tedious self-flagellation when I fail to meet these self-imposed and utterly impossible standards.

A conviction that I can cope with more than 'other people' and 'don't need' basic human rights such as privacy, time to myself, my own needs to be heard and acted upon, my own feelings to be expressed and heard and taken seriously. A strong aversion to accepting any form of help - then deep resentment when others take me at my word and leave me to my own impossible struggle.

It's only quite recently that I have come to understand that what I suffer from is known as self-hate and that it has controlled much of my life and many of my decisions for far longer than I care to remember. I have always had a curious way of making life hard for myself, always making the wrong decision then throwing myself into the battle to rectify the consequences, always struggling against an inner or outer enemy - always struggling, but always, always 'failing' on some level. Lashing out at those I love when I am feeling overwhelmed emotionally then hating myself afterwards, apologising out of shame rather than genuine remorse because I wrongly feel I cannot control my behaviour or actions when I am angry or upset, and I know on some level the next time I get upset it will happen again.

It's motherhood that has brought this self-hatred to the forefront and insisted that I acknowledge and confront it. Cherry has reached an age whereby she has become something of a mirror of me. Every decision I make, from the way I speak to her to the activities we pursue and the food we eat - is reflected back at me in tiny, two-year-old form.

Her diet? My diet, because I am not so hypocritical as to stuff myself with chocolate cake whilst she eats carrot sticks. Her emotional expression? My emotional expression, down to the phrases she uses and the manner in which she expresses them. Her anxieties? My anxieties.

Much of this is not spoken. I have never applied the appalling language with which I castigate myself (feckless, useless, lazy, stupid, selfish, idle etc) to either of my daughters verbally or non-verbally, but Cherry is highly sensitive and empathetic, MUCH LIKE HER MOTHER, and there is much she knows that she cannot verbalise.

The most surprising part of all this is how much I like what I see. I strongly love the parts of myself I see Cherry reflecting back to me. Her compassion, her lovingness, her empathy, her strong sense of self. Her conviction that her presence is healing, that she is enough.

All of that is her, but it is me also. Her personality is hers alone, a beautiful concoction of my and Noel's genetics and her own unique Cherry-ness. But her behaviour, her reactions - these are a combination of raw instinct and learned, shaped responses.

I have learned through my daughter that I have a strong sense of self-preservation and an empathetic and compassionate soul. These exist within me as strongly, stronger I hope, than self-hatred. These are what carry me and nourish me, these are the parts of me I have listened to at truly crucial junctures in my life.

I have learned through my daughter that I must heal myself, for her and her sister and for Noel, but more than that. I must heal myself for myself. 

Nobody deserves to carry around a burden of impossible standards and a side-order of near-constant self-flagellation.

I wouldn't wish that for my children and I wouldn't wish it upon myself.

I wouldn't wish it, truth be told, upon my worst enemy.

(If you have read this and thought 'that sounds like me!' then I strongly recommend reading an excellent book called Compassion and Self-Hate by Theodore I Rubin.)

Self-care

So many of us women seem to believe, because we have been taught, that to take care of oneself in the way we would take care of others without even thinking, is 'selfish' or 'self-indulgent'.

How I hate that last expression in particular.

What's wrong with indulging oneself? What does 'indulge' even mean, anyway? According to marketers, aka 24 year old men in skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses who have absolutely no idea what it is to be 1. female 2. a mother or 3. anybody but a fucking 24 year old bloke in thick-rimmed glasses, it means having a bubble bath or eating a low-fat yoghurt.

The sheer lack of imagination is breathtaking, as is the concept that soaking in tepid soapy water or eating reduced-fat sour milk with a chocolate-substitute-covered bit of cereal pulp as an accompaniment is in some way extraordinary, a way to 'thank ourselves', a bit of 'me-time', to 'get away from the daily grind'.

With a yoghurt? Seriously, is that the best you can do? Shouldn't we be able to just have baths and eat, or in my case choose not to eat, those infernal fucking yoghurts without feeling that this is it - this and only this is our prize, our reward for being good girls?

On the flip side the positive language around self-care is equally trite. Magazines and newspapers urge us to 'treat ourselves' to a top we don't want and won't suit us, or 'pamper ourselves' with a 'spa day with the girls', like such a 'treat' is within financial and practical reach and all that stands between us and giggling over Babycham with mud-masks on our faces and cucumber discs over our eyes is the simple fact that we haven't thought of it ourselves.

Whether negative or positive all the language around self-care unites to imply that to look after yourself is a 'treat', 'indulgent', and in some way sinful or 'naughty' because to put one's needs first, even as a 'pampering experience', is taboo. An unnecessary and frivolous extra.

This, of course, only applies to women. For men, self-care, pampering oneself, treating oneself and self-indulgence simply does not exist, or rather, it is known by its proper name of 'doing things I like doing and don't have to justify because the fact that I like it is enough'.

You may also know it as football, cricket, beer, music, films, video games, computers, books, crochet, cooking, cycling, driving, gardening, beekeeping, golf, watching television, painting, writing, meditating, potholing, collecting, or whatever it is that men like to do, which curiously absolutely never features skimmed milk products.

Our boundaries of self-care are narrow and demeaning. Beauty treatments, food that 'tastes just like the real thing!' but won't blow the inevitable diet we're all supposed to be on, shopping. Even genuine healing arts like massage are shoehorned into the catch-all of 'beauty' which is stamped with frivolity.

Looking good is self-care, this we know, as even self-care must have an end-goal of self-improvement and a greater conformity to socially accepted yet utterly impossible standards. But we should feel ashamed of wanting to look and feel good, at the same time, and categorise it as a 'treat' or a 'guilty pleasure' rather than just something we do because we want to and that is enough.

I've spent 33 years thinking my wants and needs are frivolous and unimportant. I find it sad that it's taken two young children to make me realise that as the epicentre of their world, I am the epicentre of my world and it's important that I take care of myself. Full stop.

For a while I have been almost ashamed of the recognition that I have to take care of myself 'for my children' and 'to make me a better mother,' which is entirely true.

But actually I have to take care of myself for myself.

I don't need a reason, or a justification.

I am enough.

All summer long I've had this little fantasy of getting on my bike and cycling to the lido, spending the morning having a nice swim, drinking coffee, reading, writing in my journal, then upping sticks and heading to a Lebanese restaurant Cherry and I used to frequent for lunch, all by myself.

All summer long I've found reason after excuse as to why I can't do it. Every glorious Saturday or Sunday morning while the sun beat down over that lovely hot summer, I've managed to put obstacles in my own way, driven by a compulsion that to do something just because I want to do it, with no goal or end or purpose in mind, is wrong.

I'm not training for a bike ride or a triathlon. I don't need to ride my bike or swim. I don't have an end goal.

I just want to.

It's been a huge realisation, a wake-up call of epic proportions, to realise just how much I entirely voluntarily deprive myself of, just because I cannot give a reason other than 'because I want to'.

So, I think I'm going to the lido on my bike, and for lunch. Today.

Because I want to.