The author, her husband and their four kids at the zoo in October 2024.

I’m standing in my kitchen chopping garlic when my 2-year-old shouts for more cheese crackers. The timer on the oven beeps at me to flip the fish sticks when I hear a loud wail from the living room. My middle son has hit my oldest, and now they’re both clamouring for me in tears.

“What happened now?” I bellow, my nerve endings frazzled from the exhaustion of being a mom to three kids ages 5 and under while pregnant with my fourth.

“Come on, guys! I’m trying to cook dinner. Why can’t we just play nicely?”

Rather than respond with care and empathy for my child who got hurt, I feel like a volcano has erupted right there in the kitchen. Suddenly I’m burning to yell at everyone for everything. I take a huge breath in and hug my son. I direct a dirty glare toward my other kid but eventually hug him, too, and ask that the kids talk about and apologize for what happened.

Then I immediately feel ashamed of my overblown reaction. They’re just kids, and everyone is OK.

The thing is, this incident was par for my parenting. Everyday moments used to catapult me into a fit of rage: a cup of spilled juice, a splotch of marker on the ottoman, running a few minutes late to a social event. I would yell at my kids and shame them for little things, things that all kids do. I knew that what I was doing wasn’t great, and I knew it was probably harming my kids. But I didn’t know how to break the cycle.

I searched for answers, following social media accounts of well-known child psychologists and parenting experts, like Becky Kennedy (who gives phenomenal advice, by the way).

I tried being more patient and empathetic with my kids, and it worked — to a degree. But there was still something inside of me that caused me to unleash on my kids at a moment’s notice. I’d then feel shame, apologise, and the cycle would repeat. I didn’t want to be a rage-filled, yelling, anxious mom. What was my problem?

I had seen talk therapists and cognitive behavioural therapists in the past when I went through a breakup or needed help communicating better with my husband.

But after continued struggles as a mother, I knew I needed to dig deeper.

Oddly enough, my mum had told me about her recent experience of seeing an EMDR therapist to work through traumatic memories from her childhood and how she felt freer, better than she ever had.

In fact, she said she wished she had gone 30 years ago and told me that she and my dad would give me some money for it so I could experience the mental and emotional freedom that they had.

Little did I know, I would exceed their gift and keep going to my therapist every other week for three years, spending over $4,000 out of pocket.

I signed up to see an EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) and IFS (internal family systems) therapist. EMDR is a........

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