In today’s episode, Michelle and Taylor tackle a real issue in motherhood: Mom Rage. This can be present whether you work inside the home or out, and it can cause motherhood to feel strained, stressful and more difficult than it needs to be. Michelle walks us through a practical approach to handle these feelings when they arise so that you can begin enjoying motherhood more fully. You can find Michelle HERE.

How To Handle Mom Rage: A Practical Approach with Michelle Grosser

Law professor turned motherhood coach and podcaster with big dreams, growing kiddos, and the world’s sweetest husband. She is passionate about helping women redefine motherhood, and her mission is to support women in understanding and removing anything holding them back from living their lives to the fullest.

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Show Notes:

  • What does hustle like a mother mean to you?
    • I think I have a love-hate relationship with hustle culture. I think if you had asked me a good five years ago when I had a newborn, when I thought about hustle culture, man, I would’ve been so proud to tell you that like I’m running a seven-figure law firm with like a baby on my boob and I’m like negotiating contracts with the baby next to me and like I was bringing her to the office and all these things. And I think as I’ve evolved in my business-owner role and my motherhood role and all of it, um, you still gotta hustle. Like, I still have to hustle, but my hustle now looks a lot more like a sprint, I think. And it has a deadline to it and it has a lot more boundaries around it. So I think my kids can see me hustling really hard and they can also see me letting go and having fun and putting work aside when I need to. 
    • I think we are right now in an era of female entrepreneurs and women in business and mothers in business and women really taking back what it looks like to own their lives. And hustle looks way different from the feminine angle.
  • So let’s talk about mom rage now. What is the definition of this? How can people decide if that’s something they’re struggling with?
    • So it shows up in a lot of different ways. I think we would most commonly think of like the moment that we snap or we just reach our boiling point. It’s normal and it’s happening in all of our homes and it’s showing up in all these different ways. The yelling, the frustration, the snapping. And then there’s the other side of it too, where it’s showing up on the bottom half where it’s like, it’s this tendency to wanna withdraw or just shut down or just numb out.
    • Another one of my favorite things to talk about is the mom guilt and the kind of a ghost side with the mom rage. But with the mom guilt, I always teach that there are two types of guilt. There’s productive guilt and there’s unproductive guilt. The productive guilt, you know, maybe I have a snide comment to my husband and then I feel guilty about it. That’s productive because that is not living in alignment with how I picture my values and how I wanna live and the life I want, the wife I wanna be, and the mom I want my kids to see. And so it’s calling me higher, that type of guilt. And it’s calling me to apologize and do better. Then there’s that unproductive guilt that like, my house isn’t Pinterest-worthy, or my kids don’t have the best Halloween costumes or whatever kind of garbage that we allow ourselves to think and feel guilty about. And that’s the kind of guilt that really I think a lot of moms struggle with.
    • We’re all gonna have moments where we feel like we fall short. And the thing with guilt – that unproductive kind especially – is that there’s only one way out of guilt and it’s forgiveness. So it’s either other people forgiving us or it’s us forgiving ourselves. And as moms, that’s the one that I wanna drive home. It’s like, forgive yourself, mama. You’re doing the best you can with what you have, with what you know.
  • Tell us more about what we can do when this happens and how do we handle the triggers?
    • The first thing I think is just owning our triggers. Like my kids don’t make me lose my ever-loving mind – that’s my own thing that I need to work on. 
    • A lot of times what’s so triggering, at least for me, is the whining, the complaining, all that stuff – it’s their little bodies trying to regulate. So it’s like they’re trying to regulate and I’m getting triggered by it. And that can start a really awful cycle. So what are some things we can do?
      • I think the first thing is to notice when we’re starting to feel dysregulated. [Notice] how it feels in our body. It shows up differently for all of us. The way I teach my kids and the way I teach my clients is like a stoplight. We kind of think about like the green light [when] we’re super regulated (how you and I are right now). We feel good, we’re in our learning brain, we can think, we can focus, we can see other people’s opinions, their side of the story. [When] we start to get a little aggravated we’re kind of getting into that yellow and then that’s where we really wanna notice how it’s showing up in our body. So like when my kids start and it’s like I know it’s coming on, I feel my body just tense up. My heart starts to race. I just like get super quiet and I’m like seething. You know, I’m noticing what those things are for us. Checking all my boxes. 
      • So then I can use the tools that I have to self-regulate. Learn what tools work well for you. I love to take breaths. If I have to remove myself from the room for 30 seconds, I do it – walk around, jump up and down, shake – whatever works for your own body. 
      • There’s external things and internal things – [reasons] why we get triggered. So the external things are things we can control to a certain extent, right? Like sleep (for the most part), our nutrition, how much we are delegating. All of these things we can control externally. And then it’s the inner work and it’s just figuring out why is this so triggering for me? What are my traumas that come up when this [is happening], what’s going on with my inner child? What needs aren’t being met? A lot of times it’s underlying resentment and that’s what’s getting triggered, right? That like, I’m doing this all alone. This is so exhausting. This feels so unfair. This is not fun. So I think just awareness of all of that is a really powerful first step.
    • I think the biggest thing that helps me when there are changes in my schedule is really just reassessing what are my realistic expectations and then adjusting those because you know, you can’t have the same expectations when the kids are around and you’re trying to work you – a successful day looks different.
  • So what are some things you would recommend to work through something like that? [Changes to your schedule]
    • That’s something that I’ve been working through, too. I’ve always prided myself in being very structured and I’m your systems girl and I’m your checklist girl and I’m your procedures girl and like you put a team together and I will like run that. So having these tiny little humans constantly interrupting me and throwing me off my flow and all this stuff, it was a huge mirror for me. [I would ask] why is it so hard for me to pivot and adjust? Why is being so tied to this structure something that’s so important [to] me? What am I making it mean if I’m not getting my 20 things done today and I’m only getting through 10? All of these stories that I had in my head were paradigms that I was invited to reframe and reshift. And then it allowed me to have so much more growth too. You know, this is an opportunity for me to be a little more flexible and grow in my flexibility. This is an opportunity.
    • That’s why I love coaching – because we have so many blind spots. It’s so hard for us to see all of that in our own lives. To sort of work with someone who has different modalities and different techniques and can do this like biography mining, where they’re going through your whole past and kind of pulling all this stuff out, you just start to see these connections that they seem obvious once you see them. You’re like, oh, that’s why I do what I do. And then you can start doing the work.
  • If you were to give somebody three steps to take away today, what are those beginning steps that they can do to start getting a good handle on this?
    • So for the mom rage, I think the first thing is to notice what’s triggering you and trying to examine it in a different way.
    • And then I think beyond that, I think a big part of it is just removing the expectation, the thought, the paradigm that our kids need a perfect parent because it’s not true. So just that can take so much pressure off of us. We’re going to make mistakes, it’s inevitable. We’re gonna lose our minds. We’re gonna snap, we’re gonna have moments that are less than perfect. They’re not gonna make our highlight real, but they’re gonna happen. 
    • And then the beautiful reminder with that is that in the repair process with our children, after that happens, there is so much beautiful teaching and growth and coaching that can happen there and parenting right as they see us. “Hey, I lost it on you this morning” and “I’m so sorry I got upset,” – apologizing, owning it as accountability and as responsibility, right? And then telling them “Hey, next time I’m gonna do this differently.” And then actually following through on that the next time builds trust with your kids and it teaches them this accountability and I care enough and I’m gonna try to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
    • And then I think another thing too is what I call fixing the glitches. We all have them. in our day, just notice, where am I getting triggered most?
  • I’ve talked to a lot of women who struggle to find that community when they’re at home with their kids. Do you have any recommendations? Where do you personally find that? Where have you gotten that community?
    • A lot of it requires getting us outta your comfort zone. So it’s at the park, it’s, you know seeing that mom that you’re like, all right, I think I could vibe with her. And just like striking up a conversation. I see the same woman that walks around my block every day pulling her two kids in a wagon. I’m like, man, one day I’m gonna talk to that woman. I think we’re gonna be friends. I drop off my kids at school and I have to catch myself cuz I’m like, girl, do not just put your head down, drop your kids off, and walk back to your car. Put your head up, smile at someone, and strike up a conversation.
    • We try and we give it time and you know, I think it just, it’s one of those things that just kind of happened. The people that are meant to be in your life, as long as you’re paying attention, you’ll cross paths with them and that beautiful friendship will grow. 
    • It can be hard, but be the first to extend an invitation. And if that sounds really triggering for you because it probably would’ve to me a few years ago, it’s like what a beautiful safe opportunity to stretch and grow. Because that like how you do one thing is how you do everything. Right. So if you can be a little bit bold and ask someone to go to Chick-fil-A with your kids, how’s that gonna translate in your business? How’s that gonna translate into all these other areas of your life?
  • Is there anything else you wanna leave our listeners with today? Any last tip for those struggling with that guilt or that rage or that lack of community?
    • I think my final piece of coaching would just be that when you find yourself in a moment where you’re feeling rage-y, curiosity over judgment every time. Like, well, where’s that coming from? What’s going on here? How can I fix this? Like, what’s showing up? What’s triggering this for me? Instead of – I think how we’re wired and our go-to is just like, whoa, I blew that. That sucked. That was awful. I regret it in all of that judgment. Right? So I try to tell myself, okay, curiosity over judgment and that will just shift so much for you.
  • Where can we find you, Michelle? Where are you? Where do you live on the internet and how can we hang out with you more?

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