If I loved my kids so much, why couldn't I control my temper?

We’ve broken much of the stigma around mental illness, addiction and abuse, but we have yet to speak about the explosive outbursts some mothers have at the little people they love most. An honest look at this painful phenomenon

“I have a story that needs to be told, and I don’t want to tell it. But that’s why I will,” Nechamie begins.

We’re sitting in the park, inside a wooden castle to protect ourselves from the Yerushalayim sun, its rays peeking through the slats, dappling our faces in gold.

“I have a problem. I have trouble controlling my anger at my children.

“You have to understand, I’m a normal person. Before all this started, I would have described myself as the ‘cool, calm, and collected’ type. I love my children, I’m a good mother 95 percent of the time, I’m successful at work, I have a great marriage, I’m active in my community.”

“My oldest child was eight months old when I experienced this the first time,” Nechamie continues. “I was expecting my second, so sick I could barely stand, barely function, and my hormones were all over the place. I was trying to change my baby’s diaper, and she was wriggling and struggling. I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden it felt like too much, and I smacked her. She was shocked, and I was even more shocked. And then she began to wail.”

It wasn’t until she was expecting her third child, again suffering from debilitating nausea and extreme irritability, that Nechamie hit her again. She had a toddler, too, and he was clingy and kvetchy, and she began to hit him as well, in fury and frustration.

“I have a vivid memory of reading an article about a woman who used to hit her children, and she heard that there’s a sliver of a second between raising her arm and hitting, and that’s where she learned to take control,” Nechamie recounts.

“I kept trying to identify that tiny moment and catch myself, but it didn’t work. Try as I might, this rage would take over every fiber of my being, turning me into a monster in my own body. At the moment, I felt like a complete outsider to myself, hijacked by this powerful feeling.

“Right afterward, I’d feel this calmness, like there’d been tension released. And then I’d be overcome with remorse and self-hatred. How could I have just done something so terrible? What kind of evil person was I? How could I have hurt a child? My child, who I’m supposed to love and protect?”

Nechamie would promise herself that she’d never, ever do anything like that again. And that promise would last… for a day or two, and then again, the tension would build to unbearable proportions, and she’d explode.

Her husband had no idea what was going on.

“He worked long hours. And when he was home, he was a great, loving father, and I felt so much calmer because there was an extra pair of hands, another adult around to help me. It wasn’t like I was trying to hide my problem from him. It was that I didn’t have the problem when he was there,” Nechamie explains.

Once her third baby arrived, she was no longer nauseous and subject to the hormonal ups and downs of pregnancy, and she was doing somewhat better. But then, after discussion with a rav, she began taking a high dose of synthetic hormones.

That was a huge mistake.

A side effect of synthetic hormones is mood swings, and Nechamie felt these, full force.

“Now, even when my husband was around, I could no longer control myself. I realized then that I couldn’t deny it anymore. I had a major, major problem. And I needed to do something about it, quickly. I could see the fear in my kid’s eyes when I’d explode, could see the way they flinched when I raised my hand, and I knew that what I was doing was damaging them. It was time to come clean to my husband.”