Letting Go of Mum Guilt One Thought at a Time

You love your work. And you love your family. You’re giving 200% to both. But some days, no matter how much you give, it still feels like you’re letting someone down.

Maybe it’s the guilt that creeps in when you're stuck in a late meeting and miss bedtime. The quiet voice that whispers: “I don’t spend enough time with the kids.” This is where self-talk becomes powerful, because how you speak to yourself in those moments shapes your emotional experience.

In this blog post, I explore the impact of self-talk on Mums’ wellbeing. Shifting the way you speak to yourself can lighten the weight of guilt and help you stay focused at work and happily engaged at home, even on the hardest days.

Your wellbeing starts with how you speak to yourself

Self-talk is the constant stream of words that run through your mind. These automatic thoughts can be either positive or negative. Research has shown that positive self-talk is linked to a range of benefits, including improved mental health (e.g., reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression) and physical health (e.g., better cardiovascular function and even increased lifespan) (Mayo Clinic, 2025).

As a working mum, the way you speak to yourself can significantly influence how much guilt you feel on a daily basis. This makes sense, given how deeply your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are interconnected. Imagine it’s bedtime and you’re completely exhausted. Your partner offers to put the kids to bed to give you a break, but your inner voice says: “I should be the one doing this. I’m being lazy.” That one thought triggers guilt, so you push through, ignoring your own need for rest. Instead of feeling connected during the bedtime story, you end up resentful, empty, and unable to enjoy the moment.

Mum guilt can interfere with how you care for yourself and, over time, take a serious toll on your health. Studies show that guilt often prevents Mums from engaging in basic self-care behaviours like maintaining good sleep hygiene, eating well, or exercising regularly (Miller & Strachan, 2020). This is often rooted in the damaging belief that “good mothers” should be completely self-sacrificing, leaving little room for their own wellbeing (Hays, 1996).

But here’s the good news: self-compassion is a powerful antidote to guilt. Research has found that mothers who practice self-compassion are better able to overcome guilt when prioritising themselves (Miller & Strachan, 2020), and as a result, they’re healthier and more emotionally balanced. If you want to feel energised, grounded, and fulfilled (both as a Mum and as a person), it starts with cultivating kind, compassionate thoughts toward yourself.

Where is that guilty voice coming from?

Self-talk is not constructed in a vacuum within our minds, it is a deeply social phenomenon. Daughters often inherit self-talk patterns from their mothers. For instance, daughters who receive direct maternal affirmation tend to develop a sense of self-worth that is more independent of achievement, while those exposed to maternal self-criticism or perfectionism are more prone to self-doubt (Chastain, 2025).

You have internalised many spoken and unspoken messages from your childhood, whether it was the way you received affection, the expectations of success, passive-aggressive remarks, or simply how your mother spoke about herself and her body. All this information has shaped your self-esteem and continues to influence whether you guilt yourself and fear disappointing others.

While your parents have played a crucial role in shaping your self-talk, they are certainly not the only factor. You’ve received many messages from society, through school, media, friends, and more. Religious or cultural expectations, communicated explicitly or implicitly by the world around you, also influence how harsh you might judge yourself.

Understanding where your negative self-talk comes from can help you begin to detach from it. When you realize that the voice playing on repeat in your head is not the absolute truth (but rather an echo of your mother’s self-doubt, your fifth grade teacher’s frustration or outdated gendered expectations), it becomes much easier to reject that guilty inner dialogue and replace it with self-compassion.

No more Mum guilt in your self-talk

Although your self-talk has been shaped by your childhood and later experiences, it is by no means set in stone. With intention and effort, you can rewrite the way you speak to yourself and begin to free yourself from Mum guilt, one thought at a time.

❇︎ Separate your internal voice from external expectations. As mentioned earlier, your self-talk has been shaped in relation to others. For example, you may have been raised with the belief that a woman should cook for her family every night and struggle with guilt at the idea of ordering takeaway. Taking a step back to understand where that belief comes from, and then questioning how it aligns with your own values, can help you release that guilt. For instance, you might conclude that, despite your mother’s views on how children should be fed, it makes sense for you to reduce the burden of dinner preparation in order to dedicate time to your career.

❇︎ Surround yourself with compassionate people. Since your inner dialogue is shaped by your social environment, those around you influence the words in your head. If you’re part of a mothers’ group where everyone voices impossibly high standards and every comment carries the undertone of “not good enough,” you’re likely to develop a harsh inner critic. For example, if another mother mentions how terrible she felt for letting her child watch TV once and you rely on screen time daily just to get things done around the house, the guilt of comparison is likely to creep in. You want people around you who lift you up, who are compassionate not only with you but also with themselves, because their self-compassion will naturally extend to you.

❇︎ Spot and reframe the distortions. Cognitive distortions are unhelpful and unrealistic thinking patterns that twist how you see yourself or your situation. These distorted thoughts can make you feel like you're failing, even when you're doing just fine. One common distortion is all-or-nothing thinking, seeing things in extremes, such as believing you're either a perfect mum or a total failure, with no in-between. For example, you might think: “If I don’t spend every free moment with my kids, I’m neglecting them.” You might also engage in self-blame, even when you’re not responsible for a situation, such as thinking: “My child did poorly on his test, it must be because I’m not home enough.” Once you’ve identified a cognitive distortion, you can reframe the thought into a more realistic one and practice it as an affirmation. To help you spot common distortions and for affirmations ideas, download my Mum Guilt Reframe Sheet.

In conclusion, your self-talk shapes the way you feel. The voice in your head has many origins, includng your childhood, personal experiences, and societal norms. Even if some messages have been deeply ingrained, you still have the power to let them go and rewrite your own script, one rooted in kindness, self-compassion, and self-acceptance.

To better understand the thoughts behind Mum guilt and shift them with kindness, download my free Mum Guilt Reframe Sheet (HERE).

References

Chastain, C. G. (2025). Learning Self-Talk: The Impact of Mother-Daughter Dynamics on the Development of Intrapersonal Communication. Purdue University. https://doi.org/10.25394/PGS.28886795.v1

Hays, S. (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Yale University Press. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300076523/the-cultural-contradictions-of-motherhood

Mayo Clinic (2025). Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/positive-thinking/art-20043950

Miller, C. L., & Strachan, S. M. (2020). Understanding the role of mother guilt and self-compassion in health behaviors in mothers with young children. Women & Health, 60(7), 763–775. https://doi.org/10.1080/03630242.2020.1713966