Photo by Sasha Matveeva on Unsplash
Mom guilt is the feeling that whatever you give your kids, it’s never enough, and that every hour you spend on your work, your rest or yourself is somehow stolen from them. Most of it isn’t guilt about something you actually did. It’s a debt someone else wrote in your name, which is why it never gets paid off, no matter how much you give.
You’re at work and you’re thinking about them. You’re with them and you’re thinking about work. You handed over the tablet so you could answer one email, and the guilt arrived before the email was sent. You snapped at bedtime, and now they’re asleep and you’re lying there replaying it. Somewhere on your phone another mother is making a bento box shaped like a panda, and you fed them toast for dinner.
I’m a dad, so I won’t pretend I know what it is to be a mother in this culture. But I’ve sat with a lot of mothers on the couch in my office, and I carry my own version of this.
When you’ve two kids, the week is a sprint. Get them up, get them out the door, go to work, bring them to their events, and you’re barely done before it’s time for bed again. And I’d love to tell you I’m immune to the phone. I’m not.
My son tries to limit how much time his mother and I spend on our phones. He was nine when I noticed it. Some deep knowing in his body tells him the algorithm pulls us away from him, and from each other, so he spends his own energy policing our screens. No nine-year-old should have to do that job.
And when I’ve seen a full day of clients and I’m depleted, the pull is still there. “Ah come on, one scroll won’t kill you.” I’m not a perfect parent. I get it wrong. I’ve felt that particular drop in the stomach when I look up from the screen and see his face.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. Good enough was always the job. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the chest, the throat, the belly, and whether something in you softens or pushes back. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If something in you eased a little, or pushed back hard, notice it. Both are information.
Guilt and shame feel alike, but they work differently. Guilt says “I did something.” It points at an act, so it can be repaired. Shame says “I am something.” It points at your whole self, so there’s nothing to repair, only something to hide. Most of what gets called mom guilt is shame wearing guilt’s coat. “I snapped at her” is guilt. “I’m a bad mother” is shame.
Donald Winnicott, the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, gave us the phrase “good enough mother” back in the 1950s. Not the perfect mother. Good enough. In my book I describe what good enough actually means. A child needs three things from a parent. When the child asks, are you there for me, the answer is yes. When the child asks, out loud or silently, am I enough for you, the answer is yes. And the third: a boundary that happens inside the bond, and rules that are the same tomorrow as they are today.
Read that third one again. When you say “no more screens tonight”, or “Mom needs ten minutes on her own”, you’re not failing the child. You’re giving them the third thing. A lot of mothers feel guilty for the very moments they’re doing the job right.
And there’s a bigger reason the debt never clears. In the book I write that the shame we feel is usually another entity’s failure, handed to us to carry. A child feels the parent’s failings as her own shame. And mothers get handed the failures of a whole culture. A world that makes a promise, “you can have it all”, then changes the rules without warning, never repairs the damage, and trains you to blame yourself instead of seeing it. I call that the not-good-enough mother. Your feed is the latest version of her. She shows you a thousand perfect mothers a week and never once says, you’re doing fine.
So you make sense. You’re carrying a bill that was never yours, in a system that profits from you feeling behind.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Family ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So take one specific moment of guilt from this week, and walk it through this.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One slow breath out, longer than the breath in. You can’t look at guilt clearly while your body is braced for the verdict.
What happened
One plain sentence, the way a camera would have seen it. “I said no to the park because I was exhausted.” Not “I’m ruining their childhood.” Just the act.
Where it lands in the body
A drop in the belly. A tight throat. Heat behind the eyes. Shoulders creeping up towards your ears. Stay with it for one breath, with permission to stop any time. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
There’s a voice in there. My teacher Aftab Omer called it the Gatekeeper: the inner voice built in childhood to keep you safe, and you can recognise it by its tone. Critical, shaming, relentless. “Other mothers manage. You’re failing them.” It thinks if it’s hard enough on you, you’ll never let the kids down. Notice it, and notice which coin it’s handing you: “too much” (too angry, too selfish) or “not enough” (not patient enough, not there enough).
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. Who first showed you what a good mother looks like? Did your own mother rest, or did she carry the whole house on one exhausted back? Whose voice is the Gatekeeper using? And what does the world around you demand of mothers that it never demands of fathers? Some of the weight is yours. A lot of it was handed to you.
Feel it and tell someone
Let the feeling be a feeling, not a verdict. Then say it out loud to one safe adult. Not “I’m a terrible mother”, but “I felt awful after bedtime tonight.” Shame grows in hiding and shrinks in company.
One creative action
Separate the guilt from the shame. If there’s something to repair, repair it. One sentence to your child tomorrow: “I was grumpy last night, and that wasn’t about you.” That’s not weakness. Repair is how a child learns the bond survives mistakes, and that lesson matters more than never making one. For the shame, Omer taught that there’s another voice in you, stronger than the Gatekeeper: the Friend. It separates fact from blame and asks one question. “What do you need right now?” Answer it, and do one small thing about it.
One thing to do tonight
After they’re asleep, write down the three moments you felt guilty today. Next to each, write a G or an S. G means guilt: a specific thing I did that I can repair tomorrow. S means shame: a verdict about who I am. Plan one sentence of repair for each G. Then read each S out loud and ask, whose voice is this, really? Whatever you’d say to your best friend if she wrote that line, write it underneath.
Would therapy help with this?
If the guilt comes and goes with the ordinary chaos of family life, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if you’ve had a baby in the last year and the guilt comes with a low mood that won’t lift, scary intrusive thoughts, panic, or not sleeping even when the baby sleeps, that may be postpartum depression or anxiety, and it’s common and very treatable. Talk to your doctor or a licensed therapist where you live. In the US, Postpartum Support International’s helpline is 1-800-944-4773. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Family ground, that means being able to say “I got that wrong, and I’m still a good mother” in the same breath.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Family ground, when the house is finally quiet and the guilt gets loud. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
Your kids don’t need a mother who never gets it wrong. They need one who comes back.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
What is mom guilt?
Mom guilt is the persistent feeling that you’re falling short as a mother, whether you’re working, resting, or just being a person. It usually has less to do with what you did and more to do with an impossible standard you were handed.
Is mom guilt normal?
Yes. Nearly every mother I’ve worked with carries some version of it. Guilt about a specific thing is useful. The verdict about who you are isn’t.
Why do I feel guilty for wanting time to myself?
Because somewhere you learned that a good mother has no needs of her own. But a rested mother who holds a boundary is giving her child exactly what a child needs. Time for yourself isn’t taken from them. It’s part of what you give them.
The Gatekeeper and the Friend come from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
