How to Be the Mum You Want to Be: Understand Your Emotions, Stop Comparing, Start Enjoying Motherhood

How to Be the Mum You Want to Be unpicks the myth of perfect motherhood and reframes what ’a good mother’ looks like. Using her own experience as a mum combined with therapy expertise, psychotherapist Anna Mathur provides a toolkit for becoming a calmer, more patient and more resilient mum. Dismantling how mums come to set impossible expectations of themselves, the book offers evidence-based therapy guidance and tackles taboo subjects such as maternal rage and intrusive thoughts in depth and detail. Anna will compassionately but firmly empower mums with practical ways to learn to trust their gut, see how well they are doing, set realistic standards - and to define which standards are actually important - and therefore see what a great mum they already are. Each chapter provides strategies for reframing ’competency’ in motherhood, to take the pressure off and focus on the issues that truly matter. Containing case studies, journaling prompts and tools that are simple to implement even when sleep deprived. This book will help mums understand that they are the best mum they can be, they just need to see it.

Anna Mathur is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She’s passionate about taking therapy out of the therapy room and sharing her personal and professional experiences to support mums through motherhood. She shares supportive insights on Instagram (@annamathur) and runs regular ’Mental Health’ lives. Anna has appeared on Woman’s Hour and Good Morning Britain. She has been featured in Grazia, Stylist and The Telegraph. Her podcast, ’The Therapy Edit’, has had a quarter of a million downloads, and she has appeared on podcasts including Control Alt Delete, Scummy Mummies and The Midult.