What If the Story You’ve Been Telling Yourself Isn’t True?

There’s a particular kind of thought that shows up a lot in my therapy office.

It usually arrives quietly - tucked inside a sentence that starts with “I know I should just…” or “I don’t know why I can’t get over…” or “Other moms seem fine, so I must be…”

These thoughts feel like facts. They’ve been around so long, repeated so many times, that they’ve taken on the weight of truth. But they’re not facts. They’re stories - often inherited, often shaped by exhaustion and impossible standards - and they deserve a second look.

Here are four I hear most often from the moms I work with.

“I need to earn my food to deserve it.”

What if your body deserves to be fed simply because it exists?

Diet culture has a way of following us into motherhood - and sometimes getting louder once we arrive. Your body just grew, birthed, and is sustaining another human life. And yet, so many moms I work with still feel guilty eating a meal they didn’t “work off,” still hear a critical voice when they reach for something they actually want.

That voice didn’t come from nowhere. It was handed to you - by diet culture, by a critical parent, by years of messaging that your worth is tied to your size. In therapy, we go back to where it started and begin to untangle it. Not to replace it with forced body positivity, but to help you build a relationship with food and your body that’s actually yours.

“Feeling disconnected from my body in postpartum means something is wrong with me.”

What if it means you’ve been through something enormous - and nobody gave you space to process it?

Postpartum body disconnection is so common and so rarely talked about. Your body changed in ways nobody fully prepared you for. Birth may have been hard, or traumatic, or simply nothing like you imagined. And in the weeks and months after, the focus shifts entirely to the baby - leaving your own experience somewhere on the floor, unprocessed.

Disconnection isn’t a character flaw. It’s often a protective response. And it’s something we can work through - gently, at your pace, using approaches like EMDR and IFS that help your nervous system feel safe enough to come back home to your body.

“I should be over the birth by now.”

What if there’s no timeline on healing from something that changed you forever?

Birth is one of the most significant events of a human life. And whether yours was medically traumatic, emotionally overwhelming, or just deeply different from what you’d hoped - you are allowed to still be affected by it. The “you should be over it by now” voice is one of the cruelest ones, because it adds shame to an already tender wound.

Birth trauma is real, it’s underdiagnosed, and it’s something a pregnancy + postpartum therapist can actually help with. You don’t have to keep minimizing what happened to you.

“The version of me before kids is gone.”

What if she’s not gone, but she is just waiting for you to have the space to find her?

Matrescence - the process of becoming a mother - is one of the most profound identity shifts a person can go through. And it’s one of the least supported. The version of you that existed before kids didn’t disappear; she got layered over by sleep deprivation, by the demands of a new identity, by the sheer volume of caregiving that leaves almost nothing for yourself.

Part of the work I do with moms is helping them reconnect with who they are underneath the role. Not to go back to who they were - you can’t, and that’s okay - but to integrate the fullness of who they’re becoming.

So… which one hit closer to home than you expected?

If you found yourself pausing at one of these, that’s not an accident. That’s the thought that’s been waiting for a little more space and attention.

So many of the moms I work with have been carrying these beliefs for years - about their bodies, their births, their worth - and they’ve been carrying them alone. The work of therapy isn’t toxic positivity or “just reframing.” It’s genuinely examining what you’ve been telling yourself, where it came from, and whether it’s actually true.

I’m a licensed therapist in Washington state specializing in perinatal mental health, body image, and the identity shifts of motherhood. I use EMDR and IFS to help moms get underneath their thought patterns - not just manage them. If you’re done white-knuckling it and ready to actually feel like yourself again, I’d love to connect.

New clients are welcome. The first step is a free intro call - you can schedule one starting here.