Ask Amy: Everything Is Fine—Except My Mom Guilt

When our children have a brush with danger, we moms love to punish ourselves for what might have happened. So does society at large. Amy tells a listener how to complete her trauma response and move on from a stressful event.

A listener on Instagram asked:

"How do I move past the mom guilt? I'm the mother to an 18-month-old that loves dogs. We have a rescue. I didn't grow up with dogs. We went for a walk today and came across an informal dog play date that we joined…the dogs were off leash. I asked if it was okay to bring my child, and the other owner said yes. I stupidly at one point let my little one walk away from me.

Another dog came to sniff at her, and my dog kicked into full-on protective mode. The first time I'd ever seen that. My little one almost got hurt. We left soon after that and I never let my child out of my arms again. And once I got home, I Googled and saw, no, you should never take a kid to a dog play park.

I feel so bad, so ashamed. How do I move on?

Amy suggests that this listener is stuck in an incomplete trauma response, which Amelia and Emily Nagoski discuss in their book BURNOUT. It's important, Amy says, to complete the stress cycle, or else you stay stuck in the tunnel (as these authors explain).

In our Ditching Mom Guilt episode, we discussed how mom guilt is a result of magical thinking in your primitive brain. If you're the cause of what's going wrong for your kids, you can also be the solution.

Amy suggests that gratitude-based meditation of "I am safe now, I am safe now" and extra cuddles with the little one can help complete the stress cycle, along with a healthy dose of self-compassion and conscious uncoupling from the undeserved shame all moms, not dads, are made to feel when their children are perceived to be in danger.

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