The Way Out Of Self Shame And Upping Your Game

The standards expected in motherhood are impossible. And most of us don't even notice we've signed up to it until we feel burned out and miserable. .

This episode starts with a poem Jacky wrote called 'Yummy Mummy' - all the ways in which we can try to show we have 'got out shit together' as mothers, whilst nothing goes according to plan.  Because that's what it's like when you deal with frustration by 'upping your game'. YOu keep trying. It looks like effort. It looks like caring. And underneath it is one quiet, relentless message: if I can just do enough, I'll feel okay.

Jacky introduces the frustration triangle - the three places we go when frustration hits. The blamer. The self-shamer. The up-your-gamer. And explores the one she lived in for years. The one that motherhood is particularly good at triggering. Because nobody gives you feedback in motherhood. Nobody tells you you've cracked it, and that lack of validation can trigger old 'not enough' wounds. 

In this episode:

What the up-your-gamer actually is

The moment Jacky realised she was doing everything 'right' and connecting with nothing

Why motherhood is such a perfect mirror, showing you every wound you thought you'd dealt with

The despair magnet - how one rupture can pull in every previous failure until you're not just feeling bad about today, you're tallying evidence against yourself going back years

The shift from perfect to present. 

What the up-your-gamer is really asking for underneath all that effort - and the four things worth getting honest about.

Creators and Guests

Host

Jacky Power

What is Words in the Wilderness?

Words In The Wilderness is a podcast for changemakers, cycle breakers, and anyone tired of flatlining their existence with "fine." Hosted by Jacky Power, the Therapeutic Poet, each episode uses poetry as a foundation for exploring the wobbly, lonely terrain of becoming — of unlearning and unlayering — whether you're leaving a relationship, finding your voice, or simply learning that "I matter" is a truth, not an opinion.

Sometimes with guests bringing professional insight or lived experience, sometimes raw and personal, this isn't a podcast about five steps to fix yourself. You're not broken. Your feelings are wisdom to decode. It's about having a cheerleader in your pocket when the path gets lonely and everyone else is questioning your choices.

for brave souls who've
awakened to their truth
and are now navigating the
wilderness of
transformation

Jacky (02:16)
Hello and welcome to this episode of Words in the Wilderness. Last time we were talking with Lucy Wylde about motherhood, about mattering, and about how isolating it can be. something that she said that we spoke about really stuck with me. That, you know, it's not just about mattering, it's about the frustration that we can feel of...of not being able to get something to work no matter how hard you try. And that kind of wilderness, that wilderness of frustration is something that I know really well and I wanted to talk about today. And I want to start with a poem that is linked to motherhood and it's called Yummy Mummy. And I wrote it one day whilst running the bath for my kids as a way to witness

The desperation that I felt, and don't worry, it's not that kind of a poem where it's gonna be real heart on the sleeve, like crying, poem, it's actually quite funny because I think that's also what poetry can do. It can really help us laugh at ourselves. So this is it, it's called Yummy Mummy. I'd love to be a yummy mummy with effortless grace and poise, serene and pristine as I care for my young boys.

I try to do the right thing, breastfeed, puree my own veggies, create faces on wholemeal pizzas, pirate ships from tato wedges. I teach my kids to talk right, always say their please and thank you, be able to recite nursery rhymes by the time that they turn two. I want to stay at home, but have a witty repertoire.

Whilst my kids listen to audio books in my ultra safe eco car. I've hats and gloves and sunscreen to deal with British weather. I want to show the world that I've got my shit together. But I've just walked around the shops with baby sick on my left boob and I'm a target hit as my two year old holds a loo roll in a tube. I'm sterilizing bottles and opening a pot of baby food and my attempt at making veggies fun is reallyare the rude. My two year old just swore at me, least it was with clarity. Whilst a floating poo in the bath is the source of much hilarity. I'm tired. I'm sore. I want to scream no more. Fair play to you yummy mummies. I don't know how you do it, but please, won't you tell me? What is the secret to it?

What I like about this poem is how we can blindly go into all of these unrealistic expectations, you know, that we need to be swan-like, managing everything, that we need to be following all of the best in practice, you know, make sure your kids eating their veggies, make sure you're breastfeeding, you know, if you are going to give them junk food like pizza, make sure it's healthy in its whole meal, make sure that food is fun.

Make sure that your kids talk right. Make sure that you're with them enough and educating them enough so they can recite nursery rhymes. Make sure you're protecting them. Make sure you're giving them every opportunity for education. Make sure you're prepared. I am not a Tupperware mum that has lots of prepared snacks and things. I am definitely a swing into the petrol station and grab a chocolate bar to stave off the hunger. I mean, it's just, you know, all of these... expectations and yet really what ends up happening is we try and meet them and we will up our game in some way you know and I think that's that's something that I talk about when I'm working with people is what I call the frustration triangle so when we're frustrated really frustrated at ourselves at a situation at life then we can go to one of three places and I made them rhyme because of course

I did, it makes it easier. So we can either become a blamer, a self-shamer, or an up-your-gamer. And I'm not gonna talk about all three today because that would be far too much. But I do wanna tell you about the one that I lived in for years without even realising, and that is the up-your-gamer. And I think there is no place like motherhood that can really bring on your up-your-gamer.

So that's the place that we go to when frustration hits and instead of looking at it, instead of looking at how we can might get help, we just try harder. We white knuckle our way through, we make another list, we research another solution, we sign up for another thing. And really underneath all of that is that message of, know, if I can just do enough, if I can just get it right, then I'll feel okay. And the thing is,

It looks like being a good person in inverted commas. It looks like effort. It looks like caring. But underneath, there's this frantic energy and this desperate need to prove something. When my first was born, I did what I knew how to do. I made a spreadsheet. This is no word of a lie.

During the sleep times, you know, would make a list of when he was sleeping, when he was awake, I made notes of nappy changes, because that had worked before in my job, in my life. If I could just gather enough data, if I could make sense of it, then I would feel okay. And really underneath that, it was my need to feel safe in an out of control situation.

And then of course there was the outside influences. I was not a Gina Ford fan. I was more the Tracy Hogg pickup put down, you know, my God, back breaking work of trying to make my child or help my child, not make my child, help my child, invite my child to sleep, but always looking for the next thing that was going to make parenthood click and...

You know, the thing about motherhood is no one gives you feedback. Well, they give you feedback. They just never give you good feedback. No one says you're doing a good job. And actually the person that you really want to hear it from is your kid because they're the one that you're so connected with and attached to and all they're doing is burping or pooing or crying at you, you know? So you just keep going. So I, you know... upped my games, reading so much on everything I could get my hands on, trying to be the mum who had it sorted. And it's not that any of that was wrong, but it was just so separate from my child, you know, that whilst I was doing all of those things, I wasn't actually connected and more importantly, attuned to my kid. And this is because when we're in that up your game, part of frustration. Really what's underneath it is there are ways in which we need to be supported, guided, nurtured, or protected. It's really an opportunity for us to seek out some kind of reparenting for ourselves. But if you didn't ever get that guidance or support as you were growing up, or not in the way that you needed at specific times, specific emotional moments where it really lasted with you. then you adapt your behaviour, and when I say you, I mean obviously me as well, our behaviour in order to try and feel okay. I want to share with you another poem which really was written after many years of being a mum and it's really about, you know when you start off as a parent you might think, I'm definitely not going to do what was done to me. going to do the exact opposite. If you had an authoritarian parent you're going to be more permissive. You know, if they never had dinner on the table you're going to make sure there's a rigid meal routine or whatever. And I want to share this poem with you as a way to reflect that that view doesn't actually work either because what you're doing there is you're working on correcting your own wounds through the behaviour that you have with your child or the way that you treat your kid. So this is the second poem, it's called Parental Reflections. I'm sitting here and thinking through all the things I didn't do and wondering if I had my time again, would I do to make amends? I told you closer when you were born.

I'd make sure you didn't fall. I'd be available all the time. I'd answer your every call. I'd be firm in my boundaries as much as in my love. I'd tell you every day that you were more than just enough. I'm sitting here, I'm wondering how... that would have changed our now. But I know that those amends would bring different struggles to bear, different ways I'd let you down whilst you've been in my care. And so I sit here beside you, for when you need me by your side, and I'm sure I'll get it wrong again and it won't be good enough that I tried, but I'll try again.and try again until my dying day to help you find your light again, to help you find your way.

Now, I wrote that poem at a time when I was feeling a lot of guilt around something going on with one of my kids. And those, you I'd make sure that you didn't fall. I'd make sure that I'd hold you closer when you were born. mean, they're all rooted in real life things with one of my kids. know, one of my children had to go into an incubator when he was first born, so I wasn't. holding him close and years later he fell off a chair and got on a bump on his head and I felt all guilty about that. So when we have these upsets and these ruptures with our children, it's not even just that it's this present rupture, we can build up all of these other things that happened and that's a different way that we can up our game. I'll call it like the despair magnet. ⁓ my goodness, I haven't done that and I haven't done that. But in this poem, and I wrote this as a way for me to process, okay, so. ⁓

And I want to point out something in it because it felt really true. And I think that it kind of feels really tender. But when I read it back later, something in it made me wince. I'm wondering if you can sense what. I actually, in that line, until my dying day, I made it all about me. It was still this sort of guilt wrapped in love. You know, I'll up my game again. by trying to be the perfect, you know, the perfect mum and be relentless in my availability. But that's not real life. ⁓ you know, there is something about getting real. And I think this is about the repair side of a rupture. And I like the bits where it's sort of like, I'll sit with you by my side.

And I think I changed the lines in the end and I'll try again and we'll try again to help you find your way and to help you find your light. I did change a bit at the end, but I wanted to show you that kind of the first version of it because how even with all of the awareness and everything, how easy it is to slip back into those patterns that we have learned for so long.

And there's a reason motherhood is where so many of us live in your up your gamer mode. It's not just that it's hard, which it is, and parenthood in general, know, for dads as well. But motherhood is a real mirror. It shows you everything that you thought that you'd dealt with. Any wounds, any patterns, it can bring it all right up to the surface.

So what happened when the frustration hit and when my baby wouldn't sleep, when I felt like I was failing? My brain wasn't just saying, this is hard. It was saying, you're not enough. And my up my gamer was my way of trying to outrun that feeling. If I just do more, then I'll feel like I'm enough.

Now by the time my third child came along, something had changed. I'd had therapy from the start and I got help. So when I went back, like I said, be up your gamer. What support, guidance, protection and nurturance do you need? Now, like I mentioned in the episode with Lucy, I was fortunate enough to get help.

And that was paid help, know, someone to come in the home and help during the night feeds for the first six weeks and to help taking care of my son so that I could go and do something for me, which was actually to go back and study and do my masters. Not that that had been the intention. I'd actually got on to do the master's course before I knew I was pregnant. So I decided to continue with that. I, you know, I...

I did a semester and paused and had my baby and then came back a while and sort of fitted it in a schedule that worked with me. But by the time he came along, when he'd waken in the middle of the night, instead of trying to shoehorn my experience into a spreadsheet, I just got really present. It sounds so, I just got really present. But it is a bit like that. I just was like, okay.

Let's double down on what is, because we know that suffering is resistance to the what is, okay? That we can have painful moments, but the suffering is when we're railing against what is. And I really worked on my gratitude of being with him in the middle of the night. And I got really, it was just an amazing experience of being me and him as I was feeding him.

and they were quiet moments. But you know, that wasn't the end of it. The Up Your Gamer doesn't just disappear, it shows up like I said, like I showed with that second poem, you know, it can show up later in life. It's a pattern and those patterns take time to see, let alone change. But when we can start to see it, then that's where change can begin.

So if you're in a place right now where you're trying really hard in some way, you're in that wilderness, maybe it's the wilderness of motherhood, maybe it's the wilderness of change, and you're kind of white-knuckling your way through, I just want to say, like, you're not alone in that. And I think that is part of the human experience. And the trying isn't the problem. The trying is a sign that you care, but there might be an alternative.

So certainly if you identify as an up your gamer, I mean, I will talk about the Blamer and the Shamer roles in other episodes, but if you do find that you're ⁓ consistently in an up your gamer, I just want to invite you to think about what protection, guidance, nurturance and support you might need. And can you get really specific about what that is?

And then can you identify within your circle, call it like a circle of trust, who have you got within your circle of trust that can help you with that? And it might be different people for different things. I think that can be slightly where we go awry, where we look to one person to meet all of our needs. But actually the first person that has to get really clear on what our needs are is us.

And then it can be a bit of delegation work out of handing something out to someone and saying, can you help me with this? But always holding the idea that that's an invitation to them helping us or not. That's not ⁓ always going to be the case. But not to give up in that and to keep on exploring and being curious about how you can get those needs met in a way.

that doesn't burn you out like being an up-y gamer can. I want to share with you, I want to close with ⁓ this final poem, which is one of my favourites. And it's my favourite because it's magical. And I wrote it as a way of turning the mundane into magic. Parenthood is full of mundane moments. My youngest

always used to ask me as we were walking home from school and I always remember like holding his hand and really cherishing holding his hands as we'd walk up and to his primary school and back from it because I knew that those days were numbered. And after I had dropped him off one day at school, I knew that that night he would be asking me, what did you do today, mummy? So I thought about what is it I do each day and how can I change that into something magical?

And so on this day, ⁓ I took the dog for a walk. I went and met the friend for coffee. I saw clients. I saw a kid with his face painted like a tiger and I made dinner and I turned it into this poem. It's called, What Did You Do Today, I strode with wolves on the hinterland, dodged tigers near their lairs, rescued knights.

with rusty armour, saved broken souls from bears. I prepared a courtly banquet, chanted with women so wise. I sewed up fraying heartstrings. I refocused cloudy eyes. I listened with bat-like sonar for the vibrations far underground.

And yet, stretched afar on my odyssey, I was sure to be homeward bound. To pick you up, small hand in mine, to hear your tales so true, of young heroes in their making. Young heroes just like you.

So I hope you've enjoyed that. I hope if you are an up your gamer that you have felt a little bit understood and seen today. I will be tackling the other two corners of the frustration triangle, the blamer and the self-shamer in other episodes. They're just as interesting. I can also fall into those roles as well. So stay tuned.

subscribe so that you don't miss any and ⁓ until next time thanks for listening.