Summary
About why parents snap at their children and then feel deep shame.
You didn't want to scream. You knew it would scare them. That it hurts—not with the kind of pain that goes away with iodine, but deeper, the kind that leaves a mark. And yet—your voice cracks, your hands tighten with anger, and then... then this weight crushes you: "I am a monster. I broke something important in them. I am the worst mother in the world."
You are not bad. You are overloaded.
As a psychoanalyst, I notice every time: parental aggression is not about anger at the child. It is about exhaustion. About the depletion of the nervous system. About internal frustration that accumulates like water in a cracked cup.
A young child is a constant challenge: sleepless nights, endless "mommy, mommy, mommy", a complete lack of personal space. And also—the expectation to be a good, gentle, wise, supportive mother. 24/7. This is impossible. No one can sustain perfection. Screaming is a symptom of overload, not anger at the child.
After the scream—a collapse. Self-devaluation. Self-hatred.
Here we encounter an internal object—strict, harsh, punitive. In psychoanalytic terms, a Superego that does not protect but destroys. It doesn't help you draw conclusions, but whispers: "You should have never given birth. You are dangerous. You will ruin their life."
And this is no longer about today's situation. It is about an internal drama that has lived in our psyche for years.
Where does this come from?
In psychoanalytic therapy, we often see that parental aggression is a repetition. Those who grew up with critical, emotionally cold, or unpredictable parents learned very early to repress their feelings. But those feelings did not go anywhere. They got stuck, they found no words. And now, in a moment of stress, when your child disobeys, screams, or protests—they resurface.
Splitting: you are not a monster, you are divided
Many women who scream at their children experience splitting within themselves:
- One part feels uncontrollable anger, a desire to "fight back"—this is the affective, frustrated part.
- Another part is the gentle, idealized "good mother" who condemns the first with hatred.
This internal conflict often remains unrecognized, but it is precisely what creates deep pain: not just shame, but a psychic fragmentation, a feeling that I am both the monster and the victim at the same time.
Projection and Identification with the Aggressor
Often, a screaming mother does not just snap—she unconsciously reproduces the behavior of someone who once screamed at her. This mechanism is called identification with the aggressor (according to Anna Freud): to avoid feeling like a helpless victim, the child subconsciously "becomes" like the aggressive adult.
You had no container
We can only be a "container" for our child's anger if someone was once a container for ours. If in childhood we were condemned for any aggression or emotion, we had no opportunity to integrate it.
How to change this scenario?
It's not about never screaming. It's about seeing yourself—the real you. The one who gets tired. The one who wants silence. The one who has her own boundaries. And instead of the usual routine of screaming and then hating yourself, we learn to:
- *Recognize tension earlier*, before it breaks through;
- *See in yourself not a monster, but a human* who needs care;
- *Talk to your child after screaming—honestly, sincerely, simply*, not as an ideal example, but for a living contact.
Repair is more important than inerrancy
A valuable psychoanalytic idea is not to avoid mistakes, but to learn to repair them. When a mother says, "I screamed. I'm sorry. It's not your fault," she restores safety. The child learns: emotions happen, but connection can be repaired.
This is a deep hope. Because we cannot be perfect. But we can be **repairing**.
Therapy will not make you perfect. But it can bring you back to yourself.