Sarah is the super-mom who has it all together. She’s married with two young boys and runs a successful practice as a massage therapist. She comes in for therapy because she wants some ideas about how she can practice better time management and cope with stress.

Sarah’s day, down to the minute, is scheduled with all sorts of helpful things. Every act is an act of service for someone else.

Sarah knows she should feel good about the job she’s doing, but she can’t feel anything but exhaustion. People are always complimenting her on her job, her kids, her home. The praise feels good but it is fleeting, and she worries that she can’t keep up with the pace of her own life.

Sarah is very worried about being a good mother, and that people might judge her feelings of dissatisfaction, since she seems to “have it all.” She has few people she can confide in, even her husband has a way of dismissing her concerns out of hand without meaning to. She feels resentful of other mothers who seem able to take breaks or ask for help, but she also judges them for this.

Sarah thinks if she could just work on herself a bit in therapy, she can manage herself better and won’t be so tired and stressed.

Role models gone awry

It turns out that Sarah’s mother was a super-mom, too. Without meaning to, she set up a tough standard for Sarah to live by later in life. Because of her mother’s tireless efforts and seemingly limitless energy, Sarah learned very little about self-care, asking for help, or setting limits.

Sarah learned that the way she could show love was by making sacrifices and putting others first. And while Sarah has a natural talent for tending to the needs of others, she has forgotten to take care of herself. In her quest for more efficiency and personal improvement, Sarah became good at stuffing her “difficult” unhappy feelings. Plus, she’s stuck under some pretty unreasonable personal expectations, and she’s not used to asking for help or saying no.

What love can look like

Through counseling, Sarah began to edit her definitions about what a “good” mother looks like. She discovered that she has a pretty big inner critic who doesn’t like it when she takes breaks or speaks up.

Sarah learned that this inner voice is working desperately to keep Sarah up to the inner standard she has about good mothering. And she realized that in order to love others, she would need to first care for and love herself.

So, she began to cultivate small, healthy habits that put her needs first. She learned to delegate certain tasks and asked for more help from her husband. Even though he didn’t agree with all of her requests, she felt much better at simply being able to start a conversation about what was going on in her world.

She began to trade the hurried, pressured pace of her life with a slow, deliberate and loving stance. She learned to share a little of her own compassion with herself, rather than giving it only to others.

Sarah makes the list

Sarah has made big strides towards protecting herself and her time. Just coming to therapy assured her an hour a week to check in with herself and be first on her list. Twice a month, she attends evening art classes.

It turns out that her husband was more than happy for them to renegotiate the family budget so she could outsource some of the housekeeping and other daily hassles that were adding such strain to her schedule. She says that he seems happier now that she is happier, and they feel like they are on the same team again.

There are still days when Sarah feels rushed or worried that she’s not the mother she aims to be. When this happens, she’s able to notice her feelings and tend to them with the same loving care she freely offers her children, her husband and her clients.

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**This narrative does not reflect the treatment of an actual client.  It is a composite portrait of some of my clients and the concerns that emerge in therapy.  It represents what kind of change can happen in therapy and what the process can look like.