By Pia Klaus
When I became a mother, everything changed.
I had my first baby during lockdown, shortly after moving countries. I was far away from family and friends, surrounded by uncertainty and constantly exposed to frightening news. I went from feeling confident, independent and safe within myself to feeling anxious, overwhelmed and lost.
I remember wondering, Who am I?
Sleepless nights, constantly being needed and the enormous responsibility of caring for another human being brought emotions and fears to the surface that I didn’t even realise I was carrying. And then came the advice. So much advice about how to feed your baby, how to sleep, how to parent, what you should and shouldn’t do. I found myself looking outside of myself for answers when, deep down, I had lost touch with my own intuition. So many mothers experience this in a time of information overload.
But to understand why motherhood hit me the way it did, I have to back up a few years first. When I was 24, I became very unwell and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that I was told was incurable. First, I followed the path of Western medicine and saw specialists, but I wasn’t finding any answers or improvements.
Eventually, I travelled to India for an Ayurveda retreat, where I also attended a workshop exploring beliefs, emotions and the connection between the mind and body.
It completely changed the way I understood myself.
For the first time, I experienced working with my beliefs and subconscious mind in a way I had never learned during my psychology studies. I began to understand how deeply our inner world influences the way we experience life.
And I experienced something I had been searching for without even realising it: I felt truly safe within myself. Around that same time, my physical symptoms started to ease and my body began to heal. I was hooked, and I knew I had to share this work with others. I became deeply interested in the power of the subconscious mind.
Years later, motherhood brought me back to that work in a completely different way.
After almost ten years without symptoms, I experienced another autoimmune flare. Another signal that something inside me didn’t feel safe. Again, I had to look at my inner world and reconnect with my truth and with what felt right for me and my children.
I had to learn that I couldn’t do it all myself. That I didn’t have to be the perfect mother who had everything figured out. I had to learn to prioritise what really mattered and, perhaps most importantly, to mother myself while mothering my children.
And slowly, something changed. I became softer with myself.
I learned that I could ask for help without it meaning I had failed. I could take a break. I could listen to my body instead of constantly overriding it.
I could be imperfect and still be a good mother.
Again, as I felt safer within myself and stopped pushing so hard, my body softened too and, in time, my symptoms settled again.
For me, my nervous system’s cry for safety showed up as an autoimmune disease. For so many mothers I work with, it shows up as anxiety or a body stuck in fight or flight, even when nothing is actually wrong in the moment. Different symptoms, but often the same root: a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe.
So many of us are exhausted from trying to do motherhood “right.”
Because deep down, we can carry the subconscious belief that if we aren’t doing enough, we aren’t enough. It is a kind of programming many of us grew up with: we are only good enough when we perform, achieve and get things right.
But what if we actually believed that we already are?
You are already enough.
Not only on the days when you are patient, present and full of energy.
You are enough when you lose your patience.
When you snap.
When you feel overwhelmed.
When you need help.
When the house is messy and dinner is pizza.
When you have no idea what you are doing.
You are still enough.
This is the work I do today with mothers. Rather than focusing only on the symptoms of anxiety, I help mothers explore the deeper beliefs and patterns underneath them, so they can begin to feel safe within themselves and reconnect with their worth and their own individual way of mothering.
Because anxiety isn’t something that needs to be fought or fixed. It is a signal that something inside us doesn’t feel safe.
Perhaps we don’t need to become calmer, more patient or more perfect mothers.
Perhaps we need to feel safe enough within ourselves that we no longer believe perfection is what makes us worthy.
Motherhood will still be messy. There will be hard days. You will lose your patience. You will make mistakes. You will question yourself. But underneath all the noise, advice and expectations, there is still you. And you don’t have to lose yourself to become a good mother. You don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to earn your worth.
You are already more than enough, even on the hardest days.
Pia Klaus holds a Master of Science in Psychology and is a certified RTT® Therapist. Her approach brings together her background in psychology, her training in subconscious work and her own lived experience of motherhood.
Follow Pia on Facebook and Instagram @piaklaus.therapy and find more information at www.piaklaus.com
