Hello,
I am a mother of a 3 year old girl. Lately I feel angry and lash out at her very often. Sometimes it happens so fast it even scares me. I would never slap her but I have already grabbed her arm in order to make her go to the bathroom. I admit that even if I do not act, sometimes I imagine slapping her.
For a little bit of context, I mention that:
(a) I have always been a rather easily irritated person and I already had episodes of extreme rage, especially towards my parents.Over the years I learned to be calmer but it happens often to snap.
(b) My daughter is rather challenging and is driving me nuts when she does not cooperate when I ask her basic things (going to the bath for instance). I know this is normal, but it still annoys me. I do try to play, connect etc but nothing works. Even if I give her choices, say "ok, 2 min and then go" after the 2 min are up she says "2 more min". I have reached the point in which the mere fact that she says "2 more min" repeteadly makes me sooo angry.
(c) I have a huge amount of support. My husband is more than hands-on and my parents help me also. I also have a cleaning lady. This is not a issue related to the fact that I lack support in my parenting journey.
(d) I have no hobbies. When my daughter is at my parents (she goes once a week) I go out, sleep but that it is. Sometimes I feel empty when she is not here, like I have nothing to do. Sometimes I feel obliged to stay with my husband but frankly I rather sleep. I sometimes enjoy going out but most of the time I just want to do nothing at all.
(e) I have no sex drive. My husband is not that sexual anymore either. We rarely have sex -maybe once a month and it is not out of desire but rather out of the fear that we have sex too rarely. I lost my interest in sex life completely.
(f) I have a high demanding job, working from home. I work like nuts from 9 to 4-5 in order to save time to spend with my daughter in the evening. I feel like constantly in a hurry. My job is rather stressful but since Zoloft I would say I handle ok the stress at my job. However, I have periods when I turn into an workaholic being unable to disconnect from my job.
(g) I am on Zoloft 50 mg since about 2 years. At first it really helped with my anger issues,but now I feel like it isn't working anymore. I tried going to therapy several times but I really can't find a suitable therapist for me.
(h) I started having trouble sleeping. I cannot fall asleep with some kind of noise (usually I put a series on Netflix on my phone and fall asleep like this).
(i) I smoke a lot and have a horrible diet and don't exercise. I have no motivation to change my lifestyle.
That being said I feel like a crappy mom. I educated myself by reading dozens of parenting books and I realise how much harm I am inflicting to my daughter. If she refuses to cooperate, all of a sudden I flip and yell. I have 0 patience. Before, I used to get angry when things were rough for a couple of days in a row (when she had some kind of leaps and she was constantly angry). Now the slightest scream,of her annoys me. Most of the time I am gentle, but these moments when I lose my control must be so confusing for her.
I tried to control myself, focusing on the fact that she is just a child who is perfectly normal, on the good things such as the way she kisses me and say I love you. Sometimes it works -I even had an entire month without yelling/raising my voice or being rude to her, but just like that I flipped again. Now it seems worse than ever - it's been one month of being mostly irritated. Every single day I get angry (sometimes I do not show it however). Every day I wake up telling that I will stop and make efforts to be calmer and every day something minor happens that makes me burst. For instance, yesterday all was fine, we spent time togheter for about 1h playing and then I said we will play for 5 more minutes than it is time to play with the bath toys and she said nooo i want here. This made me super angry and I raised my voice once again.
I am sad because of the situation I am in. I just want to be happy and calm and spending peacefuly time with my daughter.
I feel trapped.
Thank you for reading. Some advice will be welcomed.