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AIBU?

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To feel not good enough

3 replies

Draineddraineddrained · 13/07/2021 22:46

Just need to vent. I'm having a huge mental health wobble, and feel like I probably need to go back on my medication which I've been off for over a year whilst pregnant. I know I'll feel better if I do go back on them. So I will. But I feel pretty shit that my natural self:

(1) can't be patient with my 4yo daughter, and is always ratcheting between trying slavishly to please her and telling her off. I used to be a great mum. When she was s baby and a toddler. Now I am such a neurotic, needy, moany shouty mess. I just can't handle this age/stage at all, can't pitch myself right and we just keep clashing. I'm finding it emotionally gruelling so I hate to think what it's like for her. I'm just not a good enough mum.

(2) can't give my baby enough. Enough time, enough attention, enough milk - nothing. She's such a good, patient, happy baby and I just don't have the headspace to even look at her much of the time unless she's crying. It's utterly unfair and shit.

(3) can't make my partner happy. I don't know what he needs or wants (apart from more sex, which I try to do as much as I can but I just don't want it anymore and sometimes can't bear to even try) but I know it's not me, and the more I try to unravel it the more horrible, needy and shrewish I hear myself being until I honestly just want to curl up and die with self-loathing. Like I feel so shit about myself I just can't help but project that onto others. I'm just a horrible person to be around.

(4) I can't please my parents. I felt like they had such big hopes for me and can't understand why I've come to basically nothing. Like they keep expecting me to "bounce back" and do something amazing and worthwhile instead of just flounder around as a mother and lacklustre professional and I keep disappointing. I went to see them last week and that's prob why I'm in such a state now, I just feel how much they feel let down by me.

I have such wonderful friends but there's no one I can talk to about this - I already feel I am so known for being hapless and insecure, o can't bear to keep drawing on people, being "poor X". There's no coming back from it, I'll always be seen as weak, failing. I can't keep reaching out for handholds, when I don't have any real problems apart from my own shitty brain, it's pathetic. But I feel like I'll explode or run away or scream if I don't tell someone, how utterly wretched I feel in my own head right now. How inadequate to the simple demands of my nice life. How much I'm going to mess up my kids by having no self esteem and no self control to just push these feelings aside.

OP posts:
Heyyeahyouwiththesadface · 14/07/2021 14:19

I’m sorry you are feeling so low at the moment. I think it would be really beneficial for you to have a chat to your Dr, if you don’t feel able to talk to friends maybe some counselling would be beneficial?
I hope things improve for you soon Flowers

Draineddraineddrained · 15/07/2021 14:39

Thank you @Heyyeahyouwiththesadface Flowers

Feeling a bit better today as partner available to help me with DD4 but generally the same issues persist. I just so wish I was better. The annoying thing is I know why I am so broken, it's all in my childhood, abandonment issues etc, and more recently literal abandonment and bereavement by my mum killing herself (3 years ago now). I wish knowing this stuff made it somehow easier to fix it. But I see myself repeating the same dysfunctional patterns I was raised with. Why can't I just give love, be present, be sane, be the parent I needed for the children I chose to have? When I KNOW how damaging my behaviour at the moment will be. Why can't I stop thinking yearningly of dramatic "end it all" solutions like running away or separating from my partner or even sometimes topping myself, or even something as simple as getting paralytic drunk, when I KNOW that doing those things would utterly fuck up my kids, are the reasons I am this fucked up? I don't DO these things. But why does my brain even go there? Why doesn't it help me to do the right thing, to be calm, to be loving, to be there in body and mind? Why when I KNOW what shit parenting looks like and that it is shit am I naturally gravitating to it? And why can't I push away the self hatred that thought evokes when I KNOW that self hatred is self indulgent, unhelpful and just perpetuates and deepens the spiral? Why does all this awareness not translate into me being BETTER at this than the people who "brought me up"?

Ugh. I just need to go back on my pills. Which will fuck up my milk supply and then I'll have that guilt and anxiety to contend with. But I shouldn't need medication to be a decent functional adult Sad

OP posts:
Heyyeahyouwiththesadface · 15/07/2021 20:45

I shouldn't need medication to be a decent functional adult

Switch it.
“This medication makes it easier for me to function & feel happier”

I’ve come to terms with needing to take mine, I’m still broken but it makes it all more bearable. Personally I think if they could do electric shock therapy and zap my brain into amnesia, so I could start over, I would be thrilled. I could have a chance to be ‘normal’, happy & not me!

Im sorry about your mum, it sounds as if you have had a lot to deal with. If only knowing why you are broken gave you the tools to be able to fix yourself -don’t you wish you could turn your head off?

I’m glad you are feeling a bit better today. Just got to keep going, one day at a time Flowers

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