When Perfectionism Meets Motherhood: A Psychodynamic Perspective on the Postpartum Period
For many women, perfectionism has worked remarkably well.
Perhaps you were the person who excelled academically, built a demanding career, anticipated problems before they happened, and rarely missed a deadline. Being conscientious, prepared, and exacting may have become part of how you understand yourself. It may also have helped you manage uncertainty: if you worked hard enough, learned enough, and did things correctly, you could usually produce a good result.
Then you have a baby.
Suddenly, a strategy that has organized much of your life may stop working in the same way. There are books to read and experts to consult, but there is no instruction manual for your particular baby. You can follow recommendations precisely and still have a baby who will not sleep. You’re carefully planning a feeding schedule and discover that your baby has something else in mind. You can do everything you believe you are "supposed" to do and still find yourself holding a crying baby at three in the morning with no idea what they need.
For a perfectionistic new mother, this can be more than frustrating. It can be profoundly disorienting.
Perfectionism and the Comfort of Right and Wrong
From a psychodynamic perspective, perfectionism isn't simply about having high standards. For some people, it also provides a way of organizing experiences that otherwise feel confusing.
There can be something reassuring about dividing the world into “right and wrong.”
If there is a right way to do something, then I can learn it. If I can learn it, I can do it correctly. And if I do it correctly, perhaps I can prevent something bad from happening.
This way of thinking can protect us from the much more uncomfortable experience of uncertainty.
Parenthood is filled with uncertainty.
Should I pick the baby up or give them another minute to settle? Are they crying because they are hungry, tired, overstimulated, uncomfortable, or simply because they are a newborn? Should we change the nap schedule? Am I creating a bad habit? Am I responding enough? Am I responding too much?
Of course, there are situations involving health and safety in which there really are right and wrong choices. But much of ordinary parenting does not operate this way.
Instead, parenting requires an enormous amount of trial and error.
You try something. You watch your baby. You discover that it works—or doesn't. You try something else. And just when you think you have figured your baby out, they develop, change, and require something different. You are constantly trying to play catch-up to your baby’s development.
For someone accustomed to mastery, this can feel like failure. But it may actually be an essential part of becoming a parent.
What If Uncertainty Is Not the Problem?
There is another way to think about all of this uncertainty.
Rather than seeing uncertainty as evidence that you haven't yet figured out how to parent correctly, uncertainty can become a cue to become curious about your particular baby and the particular relationship developing between you.
I don't know why she's upset.
I don't know whether he needs to be held or needs some space.
What happens if I try this?
What does she seem to be telling me?
What happens between us when I respond this way?
This requires a very different mindset from right and wrong.
If there is one correct answer, the mother's job is to find it. But if parenting is partly a process of discovering another person, not knowing has a different meaning. It creates room to observe, experiment, respond, and learn.
You aren't only learning about babies.
You are learning about “this baby.”
And your baby isn't simply learning about the world. Your baby is learning about you.
The relationship emerges through this process.
The uncertainty that feels so intolerable can therefore become part of what makes discovery possible.
A Baby Is Not a Problem to Solve
Perfectionism can subtly turn parenting into a series of problems requiring correct solutions.
But a baby is not a problem to solve. A baby is another person.
Relationships require something different from mastery. They require flexibility, curiosity, responsiveness, and the capacity to be surprised by another person.
This is one reason rigidity can become difficult in the parent-infant relationship. When a mother becomes preoccupied with doing things "correctly," there may be less room to notice what is actually happening between her and her baby.
The question shifts from:
"What am I supposed to do?"
to:
"What seems to be happening between us?"
That is a very different psychological position.
It allows a mother to develop confidence not because she always knows the answer, but because she increasingly trusts her ability to observe, wonder, experiment, make mistakes, and adjust.
Your Baby Is Also Adapting to You
We often talk about how dramatically a mother must adapt to her baby. That is certainly true. But something reciprocal is happening, as well.
The baby is gradually adapting to the mother.
Every mother has her own rhythms, temperament, voice, touch, tolerances, anxieties, pleasures, and ways of responding. A baby gradually encounters and becomes familiar with this particular person.
The goal, then, isn't for a mother to transform herself into some idealized version of "the perfect mother." Mother and baby are gradually learning one another.
There needs to be enough psychological space for that relationship to develop.
If there is only one correct way for an interaction to unfold, both mother and baby can become trapped inside an imagined standard. Real relationships are much messier. They involve mismatches, misunderstandings, frustration, discovery, and repair.
In this sense, some uncertainty is not merely unavoidable. It may be necessary. It leaves enough room for two different people to discover how to be in a relationship with one another.
When the Strategy That Always Worked Stops Working
This transition can be particularly difficult for women whose perfectionism has been highly adaptive.
Perhaps you survived school by working harder.
You advanced professionally by preparing more thoroughly.
When you felt anxious, you researched.
When you felt uncertain, you made a plan.
When something wasn't working, you worked harder.
These strategies may have brought genuine accomplishments. There is no reason to dismiss them. In many settings, they worked extraordinarily well.
But the emotional world of parenting operates according to somewhat different rules.
You cannot necessarily study your way into knowing what your baby needs at every moment. You cannot guarantee a particular outcome by putting in more effort. Sometimes trying harder simply leaves you more exhausted.
This can create a surprisingly deep identity crisis:
Who am I if the way I have always succeeded isn't working anymore?
A woman who previously experienced herself as competent may suddenly feel incompetent. Someone accustomed to solving complicated problems may be bewildered by an infant who won't nap.
The discrepancy can feel humiliating and unbearable.
“I can manage an entire department. Why can't I get my baby to sleep?”
“I've always been able to figure things out. Why can't I figure this out?”
But perhaps the difficulty is not that she has suddenly become less capable. She has entered a realm in which competence looks different.
Motherhood as an Opportunity to Revisit the Self
There is another possibility within this disruption.
Becoming a parent can allow us to revisit aspects of ourselves that we have long taken for granted precisely because they worked so well.
For a woman who has been successful academically or professionally, certain ways of functioning may have been rewarded repeatedly. Perfectionism, self-discipline, relentless preparation, independence, or the need to stay in control may have helped her earn degrees, build a career, gain recognition, and feel competent.
When a way of being works—and when the outside world admires it—there may be little reason to become curious about it.
Motherhood can change that.
The qualities that helped someone thrive professionally may not translate neatly into an intimate relationship with a baby. A newborn cannot be managed through greater efficiency or persuaded to follow a carefully constructed plan. More effort does not always produce a better outcome. Another person's needs cannot always be anticipated, understood, or controlled.
This can be painful. But it can also create an opening.
A mother may begin to wonder:
Why has it always been so important for me to get things right?
What happens inside me when I don't know?
Why is needing help so uncomfortable?
What does it mean to me when someone is unhappy with me?
Why does not knowing what my baby needs feel like a personal failure?
These questions may reach well beyond parenting.
Motherhood can bring us into contact with ways of managing ourselves that developed much earlier in life but remained largely invisible because they were successful.
From a psychodynamic perspective, this is one of the potentially transformative aspects of becoming a parent. Parenthood does not simply add a new role to an already established identity. It can unsettle that identity enough for us to see parts of ourselves differently.
The aim isn't to discard ambition, conscientiousness, organization, or determination. These may remain important and valued parts of a woman. Instead, motherhood may require the development of capacities that achievement did not necessarily demand: tolerating uncertainty, accepting limits, depending on others, recovering from mistakes, and remaining curious when there is no clear answer.
Grieving Who You Were Before the Baby
There is another experience that perfectionism can make particularly difficult to acknowledge: grief.
Having a wanted baby does not mean that everything about your previous life disappears without loss.
You may miss your freedom. You may miss being able to finish a thought. You may miss your professional identity. You may miss sleeping. You may even miss the version of yourself who felt capable and knew what she was doing.
And sometimes that grief becomes resentment toward the baby.
This can be frightening to admit.
A mother may think, “How could I resent someone I love so much?”
But love and resentment are not mutually exclusive. Human relationships contain contradictory feelings, and becoming a mother does not eliminate that complexity.
You can adore your baby and desperately want an afternoon alone.
You can feel grateful to be a mother and miss your old life.
You can protect your baby fiercely and sometimes resent how completely they need you.
A perfectionistic idea of motherhood may insist that only one of these feelings is permissible. Psychodynamic thinking makes room for something more complicated: both can be true.
The pressure to be a "good mother" can sometimes make these ordinary ambivalent feelings harder to think about. If resentment feels incompatible with being loving, it may need to be pushed away, denied, or transformed into guilt.
Having a place where these feelings can be thought about rather than judged can make them less frightening.
From Being the Perfect Mother to Knowing Your Particular Baby
Perhaps one of the developmental tasks of early motherhood is moving from the question "What is the right thing to do?" toward a different question:
"Who is this baby, and who am I with this baby?"
Uncertainty can then become less of an emergency. Sometimes it can even become information: I don't know yet because there is something about my baby, myself, or our relationship that I am still discovering.
This isn't about abandoning standards or pretending that every parenting decision is interchangeable. It is about developing a greater capacity to tolerate uncertainty, imperfection, difference, and change.
The work may not be to become less caring.
It may be to become less rigid about what caring is supposed to look like.
Psychodynamic Therapy for Perfectionism in New Mothers
Psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy can provide a place to become curious about why perfectionism has become so necessary.
What does making a mistake mean to you?
What happens internally when you don't know what to do?
Whose standards are you trying to meet?
What feelings emerge when you cannot control an outcome?
What happens when motherhood evokes parts of yourself—anger, dependency, helplessness, resentment, need—that may not fit comfortably with the person you believed yourself to be?
Therapy can help a mother understand what those standards have been doing for her psychologically—and why relinquishing them can feel so threatening.
Over time, uncertainty may become something that does not have to be immediately eliminated. Conflicting feelings can coexist. Mistakes can become experiences to think about rather than evidence of failure.
And motherhood can become less about discovering the correct way to raise a baby and more about developing a relationship with this particular child, with this particular mother, at this particular moment.
Start Working With A Psychodynamic Therapist in Washington, DC, Bethesda, MD, or Chevy Chase, MD
If the strategies that always made you feel capable have stopped working since your baby arrived, that doesn't mean you're failing — it may mean motherhood is asking something different of you. You can love your baby and grieve your old life. You can be endlessly devoted and still long for an afternoon alone. Both can be true. Psychodynamic therapy offers a place to become curious about why getting it "right" has felt so necessary, and to make room for uncertainty, ambivalence, and the particular relationship forming between you and your baby. You can start your therapy journey with Nina Van Sant, LICSW, by following these simple steps:
Meet with a caring psychodynamic therapist
Be met with curiosity instead of judgment
Other Services Offered with Nina Van Sant, LICSW
In addition to psychoanalysis, I also provide a variety of services to help clients who are navigating a wide range of emotional challenges and mental health concerns. Other services offered include postpartum therapy, infertility-related stress, therapy for teens and older adults at different developmental stages. I also work with expats and international professionals who are managing cultural adjustment, relocation stress, and the emotional weight of major life changes. Visit my blog or about page for more helpful support!