Rewriting The Invisible Rulebook of Motherhood - with Becky Selbie

What if the problem isn’t you… but the rules you’ve been living by?

In this powerful and deeply validating conversation, I’m joined by psychotherapeutic counsellor and coach Becky Selbie (also known as Motherway), to unpack one of the most important - and overlooked - drivers of maternal guilt: the invisible rulebook.

Because when you become a mother, you don’t start from scratch.
You inherit a complex set of internalised rules about what it means to be “good.”

Rules about:

•  How much you should give 
•  How patient you should be 
•  What balance should look like 
•  What success, ambition, and sacrifice mean 

And the problem?
Many of these rules are impossible to meet - and guilt becomes the mechanism that keeps you trying.

Together, we explore how this rulebook is formed, why it feels so powerful, and what it really takes to step outside it.

🔍 In this episode, we explore:

•  What the “rulebook” is - and how it quietly shapes your experience of motherhood 
• The difference between micro conditioning (your personal upbringing) and macro conditioning (societal expectations) 
• Why modern mothers are caught between conflicting rulebooks (the “perfect mother” vs “have it all” narrative) 
• How guilt acts as an enforcement mechanism keeping you stuck in impossible standards 
• The powerful distinction between motherhood (the institution) and mothering (your lived experience)
• Why awareness is the first - and most essential - step in breaking free 
• Practical ways to identify and challenge the rules driving your behaviour 
• How your rulebook may be clashing with your partner’s - and what that creates at home 
• Why rewriting the rules is uncomfortable… but ultimately freeing 

🧠 A key takeaway

You are not failing at motherhood.

You are trying to succeed within a system of rules that were never designed to support you.

And when you begin to see that clearly?
 You stop internalising the pressure - and start reclaiming choice.

🌿 About Becky Selbie

Becky is a psychotherapeutic counsellor and coach who supports mothers to understand their internal rulebooks and build a more compassionate, conscious relationship with themselves and their motherhood.

You can find Becky here:

•  Instagram
•  Website

📣 If this episode resonated

If this conversation made you feel seen, I’d love you to:

•  Subscribe to the podcast 
•  Share it with another mother who needs to hear this 
•  Leave a review - it helps more women find this work 

🔗 Work with me

If you’re ready to stop living by impossible standards and start creating a way of working and living that actually works for you:

→ Book a Motherload Breakthrough Call
(application only - email belinda@theflourishingmother.com)
→ Buy my book: Challenge Your Guilt: How to Flourish in Motherhood, Work, and Life

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to Challenge Your Guilt with me, Belinda Jane Batt, maternal guilt expert, positive psychology coach, and author of Challenge Your Guilt: How to Flourish in Motherhood, Work and Life. This is a podcast for mothers ready to stop internalising guilt and start flourishing in every aspect of life. Let's dismantle maternal guilt, one conversation at a time. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Challenge Your Guilt podcast with me, Belinda Jane Batt. Today I am joined by fellow coach and psychotherapeutic counsellor Becky Selby, also known as Mother Way, and this is a conversation I have been really looking forward to. Becky and I are deeply aligned in our belief that so much of what mothers struggle with isn't personal failure, it's conditioning. We step into motherhood thinking we're just becoming parents, but in reality we're stepping into an invisible rule book, one written long before we arrived. Rules about what a good mother looks like, how much we should give, what success means, how much ambition is acceptable, how patient we must be, how grateful we should feel. In today's episode, we're unpacking that rule book, where it comes from, both the micro personal and the macro societal layers, why guilt is often the enforcement mechanism, and what happens when we start consciously rewriting the script. The conversation goes beyond coping. It's about awareness, deconditioning, and reclaiming authorship over the kind of motherhood and womanhood we want to live. So it's a big one. Let's begin. Welcome, Becky.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Hi, thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

I know. Well, we are we are also friends and we we have uh quite a lot of chats offline, so we've got loads and loads of uh things that we want to cover today. Uh, I guess the best place to begin is uh let's dive a little bit into the rule book as you see it in the work that you do as a coach and therapeutic counselor. What does the rule book mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yes, the rule book uh is a concept that I use in therapy that I was trained in in my psychotherapy training for everybody. So if you just part the motherhood aspect for a second, we all have a rule book. Um, essentially, when we're growing up as kids, we develop these kind of rules that we decide to live our lives by because we take on messages either from our family or caregivers or maybe like an authority figure, school teachers, etc., and society about how to be basically a good kind of person and how to be loved, how to feel safe and secure, how to get admiration. Um, and we write these little rule books unconsciously as small children, and then we take them through our kind of adolescence and into adult life, and often they serve us really, really well. So you might have rules and they're like, I don't know, be perfect or please others or try hard. Um, and you can probably, if you start thinking about yourself right now, if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, what's my rule book? You could probably think back to achievements or things that have happened in your life and think, actually, yeah, that's probably a result of me following a certain set of rules. And then what I noticed when I became a mother and when I uh applied that training to motherhood is that those rules often collide with motherhood, or they they well, they always collide with motherhood and often they turn against us. So, for example, if you have a be perfect rule in your rule book, well, that perfectionism is impossible in motherhood, right? If you have a try hard kind of never ask for help, don't accept help, uh, I definitely had this, uh, and it makes life really tough as a mum. So you've got this like existing rule book, and then what I realized when I became a mother and in my training and working with mums is that we then, and this is to your work, uh, we in we kind of download silently as we give birth this additional kind of like um, I was gonna say chapter, but it's almost like another edition basically of like this societal rule book about how to be a mum. And so you kind of have this double whammy, and that's what I work with in my work all the time. It is um, yeah, it is it is absolutely at the absolute core of what I do with with mums kind of who are struggling, who think that they're not good enough, think they're not doing a good enough job. I have never yet worked with a mum who wasn't amazing and wasn't doing more than brilliantly enough. But once you can uncover your rule book and and identify it, that's when you can then start to kind of see a bit more clearly.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, I mean, this is just so aligned with all of the work that I do as well, and I it it really resonates. I think the the the the different rule books, so you you talk about micro and macro, don't you, as well? I wonder if we could go like just a little bit into that.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah, I guess I suppose when I when I was thinking specifically about motherhood, so going back to that, the two kind of editions of the rule book combined, for me, the micro is working with that very personal kind of um rule book that you've developed growing up. So that's your uh that comes from your family, from like you know, those close around you, those messages that you literally kind of heard or were implied growing up, and then you've got that macro, which is more of the kind of motherhood side of things, which is um, you know, all the all the kind of expectations and the um kind of non-negotiables that that we think exist about how to be a mother, how to feel about motherhood, how to experience it, how to do it really well. Um, and then actually, I was just thinking as I was saying that, there's also it gets so fascinating because I think there's in the motherhood rule book, if that's what we're talking about. So if I talk about like our personal rule book and then the motherhood rule book, in the motherhood rule book, you've also got like historical rules about what it is to be a mother, right? And then you've got more recent ones. So recently I've been talking a lot about millennial mums and gen X. I'm right on the cusp, and I always get very cross Gen X mums uh when I use millennial in my posts. But for millennial and Gen X mums, we grew up in the girl power era. It was the kind of the Tony Blair everyone should go to university eras, particularly girls. And so you've got that rule book, which isn't specifically about motherhood, but it's about you can have it all, and actually, not just you can have it all, you should have it all. You should have the career, you should have the relationship, you should have the uh kids, and you should do it all all at the same time, brilliantly, and that it's possible. So, I guess for me, the micro and the macro is that yeah, it's that kind of your own inner world, family, friends, those kind of directly around you, and how they've shaped your rule book, and then it's the macro, it's a societal messaging, uh, you know. Yeah, I think it's fascinating, it comes from so many different places.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

I um I saw your recent post about the yeah, the Spice Girls era thing, and I it that really resonated because I'd never thought about it from the perspective of how it could be harming us now, you know, like the whole girl power thing. And like when you explain it in that way, it does really make me think that that that kind of uh narrative actually is really harmful to to make out like we can do it all when clearly we can't do it all. And it it was it's interesting how it was, you know. I mean, I know you know it it was tongue-in-cheek in in some ways, particularly in terms of the spice girls themselves, but it it's it's a harmful narrative because we it we build ourselves up and we're like, you know, yes, we should be able to do it all, and you know, but why should we be able to do it all? You know, uh the and actually, why is doing it all a badge of honour in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah, it's really complex, and um, and I think what we what many women tend to do, I know I do this, is you then assume that everyone else is managing to do it all. You kind of, you know, that inner critic voice kind of starts to pipe up and it's like, well, so and so looks like them, they're absolutely nailing it, and you have no idea. I do it on the school run. I see mums and I have this kind of narrative in my head. I don't know them sleeping, they're not my kind of mum friends, but I know them and I kind of know a bit about their life. And and I kind of have this if I'm in a kind of you know a lower kind of point and starting to kind of you know struggle or just find it a bit tough, I will tell myself that they're doing, yeah, they're managing it all, they're doing really well. Like, and it's and it's not true, but there's something that happens for us, and you and you have to just be able to pull yourself back and go, okay, that's not true. Like, no one is managing to do it all, have it all all at the same time. It is literally impossible that you have to make choices and you have to make sacrifices. It's just it it's the promise was never real.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

The promise was never real, absolutely. And I don't know, I mean, I'm sure the answer to this question is yes, whether you agree with this statement, but I I think it has to start with awareness, right? So, you know, even having these conversations, even naming it, calling it um the the play the playbook, the rule book, whatever it is, you know, acknowledging that it exists in the first place, in and and then delving into where it comes from. Like you say, like what's the mic micro stuff, what comes from my own past and my own personal conditioning, what um you know, comes from the societal narrative about what it means to be a good mother. Um, and and actually things like comparison, I think, are really important to remember that you know, just because it looks like someone else is doing really well behind closed doors, you literally never know what is happening in another mother's life. So, and and most of us are are struggling. Um so I think it starts with awareness.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, and I think you and I both do this kind of rewriting it the rule book in our work with with women, with mothers. And you know, you cannot well, you well, you can, you could sit and rewrite your rule book, but but it won't it won't change unless you identify it, understand where it came from, because when you try and kind of do it differently, that's a really quite uncomfortable process at the beginning. It's like you've got to really sit in that discomfort and go, I'm gonna resist the rule book and I'm gonna do it differently. And unless you understand kind of why you developed it in the first place, what it means, you won't be able to do that, I don't think, because it's just it's you'll just get pulled back. So I think the awareness of a the rule in itself, but also the meaning behind it, like where did it come from? Who who who gave it to us? What does it mean? And what does it what does it mean to go against it? Like in our head, like how will we feel about that? Um, so really picking it apart, and some of them, and keeping some of them, right? I often work with women who would describe themselves as perfectionists, and if I was to say to them or to kind of send a message out and go, um, you can't be a perfectionist in motherhood, uh, I'm gonna help you, you should just settle for good enough and I'll help you do that. Those women would would get the ick. There is no way that they would want to do that, and I and I also don't agree with that. I'm like, those kind of rules or those muscles that I often think of them, like if you are, you know, somebody who has really high standards, you don't have to ditch that completely, but you need to have that awareness so that you can choose when to lean into it and when not to, because there will still be times in work or at home where that's really important and really beneficial, and there'll also be times where it's really harming you. And so it's just that, like you said, that awareness of being able to spot it and go, Oh, that rule, that rule is kind of coming into force right now and it's not serving me. How do I, how do I not follow that? What do I follow instead? Like, what are my choices? And feel able to make those choices.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

And I think actually that's a really good point. Feeling able to, and also something that came up for me when you were talking just then was you know, it's it's also about having awareness that we are not everything is interconnected, right? So I hate I I why do I say I hate to bring the term patriarch into it? Because I I I think that that is a word that I know, no, I don't hate to bring patriarchy into it. I just I worry sometimes because I think patriarchy, the word patriarchy can be a very divisive word, particularly when you're trying to engage um with men, which I think is the point that I'm about to try and make. Uh, is that we it is an uncomfortable thing to start unlearning the rules on a micro personal scale, but also on a macro scale, particularly uncomfortable because we then have to engage with the fact that there is a lot wrong with the system in which we are all parenting, uh living and working. And I think for me, that's a particularly hard area of discomfort, and and therefore something we need to lean into even more is this this concept of like we are living in a very patriarchal um system and you know working in and parenting in a system that has never been designed from the ground up to support uh mothers or even families, you know, working parents full stock. So there is so much discomfort, not only in recognizing those rules that sit within us that are really hard to overcome. There is also a huge extra layer of discomfort when you start looking at the systemic stuff and really looking at it in your own personal context, which is something that I am still you know, still struggling with, like doing that work, is when you look in your own family and the ways that you know your personal rule book plays out, it might be in something like maternal gatekeeping and the way that you don't want to let go of stuff, and that might feed into your you know, perfect mother archetype that you have internalized for whatever reason, you know, and and also when you look at your relationship and the way that your um parenting styles play out, and you know, the the way that your the gendered kind of norms that have crept into your family and the the the perception that your children are uh are getting of, you know, what is what does mommy do and what does daddy do? You know, it's it's really confronting work, and it's like that's a whole nother rule book, you know, which it you know, I I don't know about you, but like I find quite difficult to discuss with my partner in a way that it doesn't come across as kind of like man-bashing, patriarchy bashing, you know, it does it mustn't come across like that because we all need to be having this conversation about how this current system is serving none of us, and actually the rule books that we have all internalized um need to be rewritten.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, and I think I think maybe part of the difficulty that you're describing is because you're trying to, in having that conversation with your partner, you're trying to rewrite it kind of on the go, basically. And as you discover more and more bits about like yourself as a mother, as a as a partner, but also discover more and more bits about motherhood because motherhood constantly changes, right? Depending on kind of how old your kids are, what phase they're in, like it throws up new challenges, and so I think it's hard to have that conversation when you're still kind of processing it all and working it all out and and identifying kind of I guess those rules, but also how you feel about them and also what you want the alternative to be. Exactly. Something I often say to people is um just think about that patriarchy is uh and the rules is the difference between motherhood and mothering, and we kind of often just use motherhood as this kind of catch all term, and often I find women will come to me and they have this huge kind of shame and guilt because they they don't enjoy motherhood, and they they kind of confuse that with how any kind of a relationship with their children they kind of confuse it as being the same thing as if I don't love motherhood, then I don't you know I'm a bad mum, I don't I don't love my children as much as I should do or as much as the next woman does. But actually, motherhood is the rule, but motherhood is the patriarchal institution of mother, like of mothers, of motherhood, it's what is expected, it's where all the rules are. The mother ring is is us, it's our relationship, it's it's our being. Motherhood is doing, mothering is being, and and that's our kind of that's our unique everything that's unique about us as mums and our relationship with our children and the bond and the love we pour into them and the the unconditional love and all the extra stuff that we kind of you know that we think about for them. But motherhood is the rule book, it's where it all sits, and it is, it's a patriarchal institution, like it just is.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

I'm glad I'm really glad you you made yeah, you explained that distinction because it's a really important one. Um and I think when it comes to bring it back to guilt, and I said at the beginning in the introduction about guilt being the enforcement mechanism, and I think that so often it is this it is guilt that keeps us as mothers feeling so kind of stuck in this in these cycles. And actually, funnily enough, I had a um I hosted a uh conversation yesterday with a small group of women talking about um, you know, why it is that we're so many modern mothers are feeling so depleted that we are finding it really hard to step into uh roles as villagers, you know, and community building, even though we desperately want a community, we're all feeling so exhausted. Um, I believe that we fundamentally, because of our conditioning, because of the rule books, uh have this very deep-rooted um belief that we are ultimately responsible for our children's well-being, perhaps even our family's well-being. So when that, you know, when we're talking about how we can we can flourish as mothers, and perhaps we have those conversations about where we need to let go of some of the rules, where we need to um delegate, share things more with our partners, make things more fair, um, it's hard for us to let go of some things. You know, this is where the maternal gatekeeping thing, you know, stuff comes into play, because to let go of things that involve our children's well-being feels so like almost like uh it's so risky. So then you get into this perpetual cycle of guilt. So that's why at the beginning, when I was in the introduction talking about guilt being the enforcement mechanism of the rule book, I think it's it really can be because we we feel like any decision we make that that impacts our children, if it goes wrong, it's fundamentally our fault. And and the feeling of guilt that that, you know, can bring is is such that we often can't feel like we can't hand over anything, we can't put anything down, we can't, you know, and that is overplayed with the the all the other stuff in the rule book, the societal stuff about we should be able to do it or we shouldn't have to need to put it down, we should be able to have the job and the the run the family and all the all the other stuff. And then there's also that quiet, sort of, like I said, maybe really deep underlying belief that if anything goes wrong with your kids, it's your fault, you know. Like if you handed that over and it didn't go well, it's your fault. And I think that's how guilt works, you know, that constant feeling that if something goes wrong, it's fundamentally my fault. Do you agree with that, or is that just me?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

No, no, it does resonate, and I think, yeah, I mean, guilt is the role it's playing there is keeping us, keeping us kind of on the straight and narrow, isn't it? It's keeping us in the kind of um within the rules and following them. And yeah, I suppose what I was thinking when you were talking about that conversation, I was thinking about um I I wonder why we feel is there a is there an element of we can't trust people to look after them the same way? Is trust different these days? I think this is another separate topic, but you know, kids don't play outside, for example, anymore. Like like the the the the world of parenting or the kind of psychology of parenting, how we feel about parenting, and I think how relaxed, safe, whatever has fundamentally changed. So I think there's there's an element of that, I think, is that and also with the with the village thing, yeah. I don't know. I think if you can find a group of women that are all in the same position and have kind of or have complementary kind of timetables and kind of availability and all of that, I just it's just so hard now. Like, like women just have mothers, particularly working mothers, but like but mothers have such limited kind of capacity, I guess, is what I'm thinking. Like it's it I don't know why, and I can't compare it because I wasn't a mother 30, 40, 50 years ago, but it feels like our capacity is so um available capacity is so finite these days to give anything more. Like to kind of does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

It does make sense, and it I think it is relevant to talk about how things have changed and and perhaps that safety element, which you know, I there's that thing, isn't it? You look back and you have this like rose-tinted vision of what it was like when you were little, but I I do genuinely believe that when I was young it was so much better for young kids because we did, you know, we did use, and I'm sure it's probably the same for you. We used to go out, we our parents didn't know where we were for hours on end, you know. There it it was a different, um, a different time. And I think it's it it's inevitable that the the change and the way things are now and the fact that we our kids are almost always in the house with us, or if if we're out, they need, you know, we feel like we need to be with them all the time. I think inevitably that's going to have an impact on our capacity. Um, and when they're in, and you know, and and also, I mean, God, the dawn of um AI and social media, and you know, this is a whole unknown quantity that we are not our generation is not familiar with and know how to deal with. So again, that layer layers a whole nother load of guilt because it's kind of like, how do I we manage this? And you know, we're with our kids all the time. We're really tired and exhausted, we don't have the capacity to um do things for ourselves, meet our own needs. We also have this all this worry about if they're in the house, what are they doing? If they're on online, what are they doing? Like, are they safe? Are they and and I I don't know. I think a lot of it, a lot of this worrying, and this is something that came up in the the call that I mentioned as well. A lot of the worrying and the emotional labour and the um it it's always falling to the the women, and it's like it's funny because now that I think I mentioned this to you before the call, it it's funny because a lot of women on the call, we were all kind of saying, Oh husbands are amazing, but you know, our husbands are amazing, but and it's interesting that we need we feel the need to say how amazing they are, because they are, you know, like absolutely, but it's interesting that we feel the need to sort of start our conversations with that. Instead of starting at the point of There's something not working here because even when something is practically taken off my plate, and that's something that came up again, is that our partners. Also, to caveat this, not all mothers have partners, not all mothers are in heterosexual relationships. You know, like we're all different. But I'm so I am very much specifically speaking now to my own personal experience and that of, you know, a small group of women on the call. But we were saying that it was interesting because there definitely seems to be a split of practical um, you know, the men doing the practical stuff, um, which is great and really helpful, uh, but also like this this huge weight and an actual just massive load of emotional stuff that needs to be done, not just emotional, but you know, like all the tasks that need to be done and that family related. Uh, but the emotional stuff is still very much held by the women. And I don't know how that plays into the to the rule book. How does that play into the rule book? Because it is this a gendered norm thing, is this uh we're all so conditioned into believing that um women are the emotion, emotional ones and men are the the doers and the practical ones. Is it is it so ingrained in us that we are when we when it plays out in our relationships and our parenting that the the the emotional stuff just always falls to the women? I like how do we get out of that rule book?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

I don't know because and I say I don't know because I this is a constant kind of like uh wondering that I have like how much of this is primal kind of you know hardwiring and how much like how much of it is learned and how much of it is you know innate um behaviour. And I and I'm just fascinated by that. Like I'm just um and I guess it's only a problem if it's not working, right? Like I like like at my school, my children's school, there's a number of um full-time working mums and stay-at-home dads, um, and so I find it really interesting talking to them about kind of their role as like default parents, and kind of it's been really fascinating, like understanding some of the same experiences that that I've had as some of these guys, and yet there is often, even though the woman is working full-time, she is still predominantly the kind of the mental load carrier, the emotional load carrier. I think it is so complex. What I was thinking was um it just occurred to me that there's a whole other flavour of the rule book or chapter of the rule book, which is um how to be a good girl and a good woman. Because when you said, you know, I feel like why do we all have to kind of apologize when we say, you know, I love my husband, he's amazing, but because it made me think about when when we talk about our about motherhood, we're like, you know, it feels like you have to add the caveat right at the beginning. It feels dangerous not to add the caveat at the beginning of, of course, like I love my kids more than anything. Becoming a mother is for me the single most amazing thing that has like ever happened to me in my life. I am so grateful. It almost feels like like I have to add those T's and C's at the beginning, like the disclaimer, to be allowed to then say, and motherhood is the hardest thing I've ever done, and and I don't always enjoy it. Like it's so that there's that whole that that rule book of like how to be a woman. You know, I I work so much with maternal rage, and we're not supposed to be angry as women. It there's there are there are the more you unpick it, like there's so many rules that kind of that that come into play and kind of collide and we become mothers.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Yeah, no wonder, no wonder it's all so difficult. That's the thing. Two things can be true at the same time, and uh and I I think that all too often we tell ourselves that we're failing, you know, because like you say, because we're not in enjoying it more. But you know, there are moments in mother when you're doing your mothering in in motherhood, the you know, the institution that are just bloody miserable. And it's like I had one the other night when I was doing the knit treatment for my kids, and it was just like, you know, everyone was crying, me included, by the way, and we were all you know, just it's so dysregulated, and you just think this is awful, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

And also, like, I don't know, the the rules about you know, good mums, good mums love crafting with their kids, or good mums love cooking with the kids, like just yeah, it's this there's it's such a rigid kind of this is what a good mum looks like, and also the rule book, like I said before, where where the kind of long-standing existing original rule book for for being a good mother, um then kind of is is in direct opposition with being a modern modern working mother if that's if that's the kind of the route the if that's the setup you've chosen, or the or maybe you don't have a choice, maybe maybe you have to you have to work full-time, you don't have a choice, and they collide completely because how can you be the kind of the perfect mother in the kind of 1950s archetype that you know that we have in that rule book and also be out working?

SPEAKER_00 27:12

It's just you are completely screwed. And if you're not, and if you are I mean, I I I hate the term working mother, and I you know I hate the home the term stay-at-home mum because I think I think even just the terminology is is is troublesome in itself because it it implies that you know mothers that are at home with their kids are not working, and obviously we all know every mother knows that being a mother is work.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yeah, and I and then just to be like, I guess my disclaimer, uh I was a stay-at-home mum for five years. You know, I I was at home full-time with my kids, I left my corporate career and I retrained in psychotherapy, but I was and I struggled with the fact that yeah, I other mums were working, and I was in my mind just a mum. So that internalized misogyny kind of like showing itself um really quickly. So yeah, I agree that the terms are it's challenging to come up with the right terms to describe. Um, but I guess what I was thinking was maybe going back to that girl power kind of that millennial Gen X mother rule book that collides with the original. Um the perfect mother, kind of, you know, the selfless, ever, ever calm, never shouts, always loving, you know, kind of puts everyone else first. Um it's yeah, those two rule books collide, and I think that's where lots of women are finding it really difficult right now.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

I'm just thinking practically, you know, we've both agreed on the fact that awareness is the most important thing. And you know, I think it would be interesting to maybe talk about how anyone listening to this could practically start to think about the rule books that they have been conditioned into and how they might overcome them. So obviously, like in my with my coaching how, and I'm thinking that it would be really a useful exercise to just sit down and write and write down the the rules. Like, so what are the rules of um good mother mothering or perfect mothering that I I have come to believe? So uh a good mother is XYZ, and maybe just write down all of those things um that we have come to believe, and then you know, counter them in some way, you know, with a more realistic uh standpoint. How we can begin to recondition our brains to kind of realize, well, oh, I I've I believe that a good mother is always present with her children. Um, but the actual reality of modern motherhood, perhaps that's column B, let's say, um, is I can't always be present with my children because I need to work to financially support them and you know, all of these things. So maybe the reframe is that, you know, I certainly this is something I work on a lot with the reframe being that it's it's quality over quantity, you know. If I'm with my children for 12 waking hours a day or 16 waking hours a day, or whatever it is, uh, it doesn't mean that that's going to be quality time. In fact, most of that time we'll probably be screaming at each other and or ignoring each other or, you know, whatever it is. Uh but if I am with my children for, you know, a fewer amount of hours because I come home from work and I only have this time with them, um, you know, how can I make that time more quality? You know, because actually sometimes even that time is not very quality. Often when we're tired and we're exhausted and we come home from work, and that's a whole nother guilt-inducing thing. But when I was writing my book and some of the research that I've came across then, one thing was that even just 15 minutes a day of targeted one-on-one time with your child is uh has massive, far-reaching, positive, you know, um implications for their well-being and your well-being. So let's stop aiming for perfection and ever-presence, omnipresence, you know, and let's sort of set the bar a bit lower, but also be a bit be quite kind of conscious and targeted about it. Like I can't be ever-present and I can't be always patient, and I can't be, I can't never flip my lid. But what I probably could aim to do, aim to do, is every day have 15 minutes of targeted time with each of my children where I haven't got my phone and I'm not doing three things at once and I'm not distracted, you know. So I, you know, I'd love to know your take on this. So, what what would you sort of suggest in terms of how anyone listening to this can start to bring awareness to their own rule book and perhaps like find ways to reframe it and move, you know, move forward in a more positive way.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Yeah. So I think the easiest thing, if you want to do this on your own and you're just really curious, I would say start really listening to your inner critic. And when your inner critic speaks up, start kind of almost almost write it down. Like, actually, if you can write it down, write out that statement. So, because if your inner critic is telling you that you're not doing something right or you're not doing a good enough job, then that's a rule. You're effectively breaking a rule or not following a rule, and that's kind of so it's almost like a reverse engineering way back to the rule. And then I would say to someone, write it down and then ask yourself two things. A, like you said, is it possible? And B, does it matter? So if it's possible to be that, be that way, fine. Does it actually matter? Like, what happens, and and maybe a third column, you know, what happens if I don't? Um, and then it kind of evolves, and it's like, okay, so if I don't, what's the alternative? And actually, what's important to me? Like, like I always think so, you know, for some people, I don't know, for some women, nutrition is like the most important thing that that's a non-negotiable, right? They're really, they're really invested in feeling their kids in a particular way, and it's really important to them, and they're not prepared to kind of lower their standards, will be their terminology, right? But they might be less, they might be more relaxed about screen time, for example, and vice versa, somebody else might not. So it's kind of like I think having a look at the rules that you are happy with, the rules that you've kind of you've written yourself and you're happy to keep, and that in the that are non-negotiables that you know you don't want to change. What is what's your what's your inner critic telling you basically? What's that kind of complete bitch in your kind of head? What's she saying? Uh is it even possible? Was it possible in the beginning, like you know, or were you set up to fail? Is that rule one that you just can't ever achieve? Does it matter? And I guess that's like twofold. Does it matter, like generally? And does it matter to you actually? Like, you know, does it matter in terms of I don't know, safety or kind of health or whatever? But does it matter to you as a as a mother, as a family? Um and if you want, if you if you if you kind of say, I don't know, yeah, it is possible, but no, it doesn't matter to me, okay, what's the alternative? Like, what does matter? Um, and so it's a very systematic kind of approach, it's it's it's picking it apart and then kind of almost sense checking it. Um, and what I often say to women is or I use this myself, like kind of do like a cost-benefit analysis when I have I don't know, decisions to make about something we're doing, or I don't know, if like I'm really frazzled, if we've had like a really, really full-on week and it's just taken a lot out of me and my capacity is running low, and for example, the kids have got swimming lessons like that afternoon or straight after school, and I know that I'm exhausted, they're exhausted, I will do a cost-benefit analysis in my head, and I'll go, I can I can follow the rule in my head which says, well, swimming is very important. A good mum makes sure that her kids can swim. A good mum has capacity straight after school to take them to an extracurricular kind of activity, uh, because I'll probably tell myself that everybody else is doing this every night after school. Um, but I will literally say to myself, okay, I can I can take them, but what's the cost? What does it look like after I take them? Because I'm already kind of you know on like 20%, I'm kind of running on fumes, the kids are like, you know, frazzled. Or I can on this occasion break that rule and decide that we're just gonna skip the lessons this week, we're not going. And will will the evening after that will it be better as a result of not doing it or doing it? So if I follow the rule, what does it look like if I don't follow the rule? So it's that's almost like a kind of in the moment one. So rather than like breaking up with a kind of you know, a long-standing rule, it's almost like when one pops into your head, you know, good mums take their kids swimming, good mums don't cancel classes that they've paid for, good mums, you know, take their kids to activities after school, all those things, and I'll be like, okay, but if I do that, there's gonna be I don't have much left today in the tank, and I will probably be probably shouty, horrible mum tonight, and then feel really crap about myself, go to bed feeling guilty, um, or I can skip swimming this week and we can actually sit on the sofa and watch a bonus hour of TV, and the kids will be delighted and they get cuddles, and I get to kind of you know top up a bit of my capacity. So I think there's there's something about like breaking up with rules forever and also in the moment being able to kind of step away from them or step as step around them and go, no, I'm not following it today.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

That massively resonates with me because I did exactly that the first two weeks of this year. We like we entered into January with a horrendous 10-day sickness bug, and I I um when we came out of that, I was I just couldn't be bothered to go to any of the clubs, and I just thought we we're gonna have to just not do the clubs for a couple of weeks. And it it's interesting what you say that one person's rule, you know, one person's like non-negotiable can be this and another can be that. Because for me, that that was an uncomfortable space because I was thinking like you paid for this, and you know, it's important, like you said, for them to learn to swim or blah blah blah, whatever it is. Um, but uh the overriding feeling that in that week when I'd made that decision was just massive relief, you know, to have put that rule down to be like, no, we don't have to, you know, we're paying for it anyway. We don't have to do it if we don't have the capacity. And I think the other thing that you said which really resonated and came up in some parent coaching that I was doing recently was um this percentage, this idea of percentage. And actually, this works really well, by the way, in relationship terms because is it the Brene Brown uh inspired?

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah, how much of you?

SPEAKER_00 37:13

I is it for is it from her? It might yeah, it probably did always.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

It's very powerful. Yeah, explain it. I use it all the time in my work, it's and I use it at home in my marriage. It's it's really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

It's literally just it's literally just uh saying what percentage you're on in terms of your capacity. So at the end of the week, uh when I'm you know my husband works away quite a lot, so he might come back on a Friday, and uh we are really exhausted, and you know, I've had the kids all week, and he's really exhausted because he's had a lot of work to do. But he will we we will say to each other, what what percentage are you on, essentially? And if I say, you know, like let's face it, come Friday, I'm probably on about 20%, maybe 50%. Um, he will just say, Okay, cool. Um, I'll do you, I'll do the double. We call it the double bath and bed. Like, I'll do the double tonight, you know, don't worry about it. Or similarly, it's often it might be on a Saturday morning when we wake up and it's time to take my son to football. Um, he might be like, I'm just so tired, you know. I've just had really late nights every night this week. I'm on a I'm on a 5%. Um, and then I'll be like, okay, cool, I'll just I'll take both kids to football. You can have a lion, you know, we'll do this. Obviously, this is not per a perfect science, but there's something about naming it, and I think it's something that actually, I don't know, dare I say the male brain really engages with, like, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

The reason I think it's really good is because it's the language isn't subjective. So you've got to, you've got to, as a, as a, as a team, as a partnership, whatever that looks like, you and your partner have got to be able to cover 100%, right? Between you. So in that moment, he had 85% available, or he was able to find 85% to cover you for that that double bedtime bath on the Friday night. I think the reason it works so well is it's it we all understand numbers, right? There's no confusion, there's no ambiguity. It's not like saying, Oh, I'm on a scale of one to ten, how tired am I? Like it's different. Um, it's not well, not the one to ten, but it's not saying, Oh, I'm exhausted, because one person's exhausted is another person's, I'm a bit tired. Like, so I think it works, yeah. I do, yeah. I and that might be why it works brilliantly with the male brain. I don't know, but it is, it's quite a kind of scientific kind of quite data. It it de-emotionalizes. That's the term, the term I've just made. Yeah, it's just very factual. And I remember listening to the Renee Brown, it might not even be hers, but that's why I first discovered it on a podcast with her. And she was just saying they used it to yeah, to make decisions. So they would, I think she actually did use the example of cancelling a class or ordering a takeaway, you know, if you're able to, like just making adaptations basically.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Yeah, I think I think that's a really valuable one. And it and in terms of yeah, I mean, I suppose it doesn't directly relate to the the rule book per se, but I definitely I find that a useful vehicle that we use um when we're finding things a bit overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

So um I just wanted to go back to your example where you were saying about um about the beginning of this year and the swimming lessons, and and you said, Oh, you know, and not wasting money. And I was thinking, yeah, it's this is so what I would be be doing with you if you were my client is going, okay, let's pick this apart completely, this whole thought process, this experience, and let's work out what's your existing rule book, what's your motherhood rule book? Because I I don't know if this is the case, but your not wasting money, I would imagine, comes from like upbringing and early childhood, and kind of like that's the kind of like you know, the family ethos or whatever. Like it's so fascinating. So it's like those it's a living, breathing example of those two rule books kind of coming together, basically.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Yeah, it is, and also speaking as a self-employed mother, I think there's also some a lot of um that that like money mindset thing, you know, when you're like earning your own money, you're not like working for someone else, you're constantly kind of hustling, and then it feels like when you you know take this decision to do something that like wastes that money that you're working so hard to earn. Um, I think it's a it's an extra challenge actually when you're in a situation, you know, like that. So I I yeah, I I definitely think that'll be something that I would bring to therapy.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

And my other thing I was gonna say, I meant to say it before, was um when you said about that awareness and trying to kind of work out what are your what yeah, what what what's in your rule book. Um aside from listening to your inner critic, well, this is kind of goes hand in hand, but if you ever ever say to yourself in your head, I should, like a should is like an absolute warning, like warning sign, or like it's like an emergency flare that goes out that says like there's a rule book going on here.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Oh, that's great. Oh yeah, I always say turn shoulds into coulds.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

So if you like that, yes, that's nice.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

If you feel like you should do something, then tell then it there's like it's this really subtle shift which actually really changes how you feel about something. So I should go to swimming, I could go to swimming, or I could sit on the sofa and give us all a break for the night. And there's something very freeing about that.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Yeah, that's yeah, I always respond to it with says who. I'm like, oh says who, and then I yeah, get curious, and I'm like, okay, where does that come from? Like look at us with our coaching hats on. Yeah, it's just really it's fascinating. It's kind of you go into motherhood and you just have no idea of all this kind of information that already exists in your head, like in you, that kind of suddenly gets activated. It's like it's been sat there dormant. You've taken it in like osmosis, kind of growing up from like all these different sources, and then it gets activated.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

And the good thing, and also what feels like sometimes not a good thing, but is ultimately a good thing, is just is is is having is bringing that into awareness and really actively challenging it and being like, I know I hate the fact that these rules are here, but I love the fact that I am becoming aware of them and I have an opportunity to challenge them. And you know, as confronting as that work is, once you, especially in us being so like deeply embedded in this line of work and thinking, like once you have seen it, you can't unsee it. So it's like once you've started freeing, but it's so freeing.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Like once you get through that discomfort and once you start experimenting and you realize that like the sky doesn't fall in if you don't, you know, if you don't do X, Y, and Z. And actually, once you get to see, like you did, and like I said, you know, when you don't do that class and you realize that actually your gut instinct was right, like it would have been a bad idea, it was a better idea to do it exactly how you then chose to do it. You start to get kind of um like proof basically, and you're like, okay, no, that gives you confidence. It's like, no, I can, I can veer away from the rules and I can follow my own instinct, which will get louder and louder the more I try. And there are always positive like effects of doing that. And I think that's where self compassion suddenly comes, like starts to come come back. Like we become just become less hard on ourselves, I think. But it but you do have to get through that discomfort of experimenting, you've got to have the like. Bit of bravery to go, nope, I'm gonna do things differently. I'm gonna start experimenting. And it's gonna feel a bit icky, but I'm gonna just be curious about it and see where it goes.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

I couldn't agree more. And I and I do think that for those mothers who do have partners, it is really important to also do the work of exploring the playbook as a partnership and as a team and looking at and and really having those conversations about what have I learned about what it is to be a mother, a father, a parent, and how how do our rule books conflict with each other? And how does that you know play out in the way that we parent and live? And what are the clashes and the conflicts here? And how can we um like another one of those exercises, I guess, like you know, what are the what are our rules and how do they clash, and how can we how can we make that easier, you know, for our relationship and our family? Because I think a lot of the problems that couples have, I mean, I'm not a couples coach, I'm you know, but I I still see a lot of mothers and work with a lot of mothers who are having a lot of problems in their relationship, most likely because their rule books are clashing, right? So I think you know, that's that's another piece which I think is important when we're talking about rule books is to acknowledge that we have a rule book, our partners have rule books, those those probably clash a lot, you know, they'll be very different. Our conditioning and our upbringing very different. And then, like you said, the macro overlaid on top of it is the societal rule book. So actually, if you're in a relationship doing parenting, you've got three rule books at play, you know. And if you're a single parent, you've got yours and society's, so you've got two rule books. So yeah, it's having that awareness of the fact that there are so many different sets of rules and they're all conflicting with each other. Um, and the only way to move past them is to confront them head on. That's the work we do.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

It is, it's yeah, it's so rewarding when someone gets starts to kind of move through it, it's just the most amazing thing because it just yeah, it makes your life so much, so much better, so much easier. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Um, okay, that's a really great way to bring us to a close and to ask you um if people would like to know more about the work you're doing, uh, how can they contact you?

SPEAKER_01 46:15

So, um, yeah, you can follow me on Instagram. So my Instagram handle is underscore motherway underscore. Annoyingly, I couldn't get it without the underscores. Uh, or my website is motherway.co.uk. Um, and yeah, there's uh free resources, there's information on how to work with me one-to-one, how to join my program. Um, so yeah, just come and find me.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

Definitely do. And also Becky's uh Instagram account is brilliant, I can attest to. So uh definitely go and check her out if you don't already follow her. Um thank you so much for this conversation. We've we've gone just about every direction we could have gone in, but I absolutely love these chats because these are the best ones. They're they're very real and very raw, and there's a lot of um a lot of uh little gems in there. So uh I'm very much looking forward to to getting this out, and um, yeah, I would love to know what people think. And yeah, go follow Becky and we will uh speak again very soon, I should imagine. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming, take care. Thanks for joining me on Challenge Your Guilt. If you found this episode helpful, I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with another mother who needs to hear this. You can also buy the book, Challenge Your Guilt, or book a free call with me to explore how we can work together. Links are in the show notes. Until next time, remember the guilt you've been carrying was never yours to hold. It's time to put it down.