Mother’s Day horror- tips on how to handle it
Family is everything right? No, for a lot of people…
Have you considered that Mother’s day is not a day to celebrate for everyone of us? In particular, how can you deal with it if your relationship to your mother has been a painful issue?
People go shopping for Mother’s day well in advance as the pressure is high!
However, for a lot of people who happen to have a conflicting or even non existing relationship to their mother, Mother’s day can be a rather painful and uncomfortable experience; as it can stir rather painful emotions such as rage, jealousy, grief or loneliness…
Therefore I would like to share some tips for tackling Mother’s Day when you identify yourself with the above mentioned circumstances:
Set or maintain boundaries
Boundaries can be a tricky subject, especially when you have experienced difficult childhood experiences. For example it’s very important to decide what kind of boundaries you would like to have in relation to your mother. Is keeping minimum or no contact ideal for you during this particular day? Something else that you need to think about is how you want to go about dealing with this particular day. Is texting appropriate enough for you? Would no communication be better off? Don’t let the expectations about this certain day make you feel pressured to do something against your wishes.
Do what feels right for you
As I mentioned already don’t get caught up in what is expected of you. As each situation is different, you need to weight what feels right to you regardless of the fact that you are a daughter or a son.
Mother’s Day should not make any difference to you if you don’t feel like it! I realise that this is something that you might find challenging all together, especially when you are coming from a place of appreciating other people’s opinion more than your own…
Stay away from social media
If you anticipate that Mother’s day will be a difficult day for you to handle, why don’t you try to stay away from social media? If you expect that your feed will be bombarded with pictures of happy mothers or children expressing their sorrow because the pandemic has kept them away from their mothers, you can choose to stay away…
Use the day to do something else instead
Since we have been saying that it’s your choice how you want to spend this day, I would say make the most of it in any other way you can think of. Although it might be painful, and your initial reaction might be to numb your emotions or to be super busy as a way of distracting yourself during this day, the idea is to treat yourself as you would treat a friend. Don’t be too demanding on yourself and try to be as much understanding as possible! Sometimes even a change of scenery can be really beneficial, a nice walk, catching up with friends who understand how you are feeling…
Get some professional help
If on the other hand you feel that this day evokes rather strong emotions, ie extreme amounts of hurt, grief, anger or even disruption of sleep; then I would encourage you to speak to a mental health professional.
At the end of the day, if Mother’s day is hard, it’s ok to admit it…
