Episode 69: The Mental Load and How to Ease It with Dr. Morgan Cutlip
/I don't know about you, but before I became a mom I had no idea how heavy the load would be. Not just the day-to-day tasks of feeding and caring for a family, but all the unseen, unspoken, invisible labor that is a part of modern motherhood. The planning, the home organization, the lists, the mental maps, the appointments... EVERYTHING seems to fall on us at times.
If you ever felt this way, I want to send you compassion and grace for what you are going through. As a mom, I know how it feels and I don't want that for you anymore than I want it for myself. Over the past few years, my husband and I have been slowing chipping away at the inequities in our marriage that were kind of just there by default. In this episode, I hope to get you started on that process for yourself too, so I invited a colleague, Dr. Morgan Cutlip of @mylovethinks to help us break this all down and actually do something about it. She is a relationship coach, speaker, and online course creator and has a Ph.D. Degree in Philosophy. She is a wife and mom of two spirited kids. Working with her father, Dr. John Van Epp, she shares the mission of helping parents feel empowered, stay in love, and ease the burden that surrounds parenthood.
Dr. Morgan will help us understand the load that we carry (often the moms in the relationship) and how to make that load feel a little bit more equitable.
Here is an overview of what we talked about:
The load of motherhood (What it is and How to start working with it!)
How does the mental load happen (even in relationships that were pretty equal before kids!)
Communication tips
Negotiating responsibilities
And if you want to get more personal advice to ease your mental load and find practical ways to approach your relationship, follow Dr. Morgan on Instagram. Her handle is @mylovethinks.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
LAURA: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen and on this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we're going to be talking about the load that parents carry, often one parent in the relationship. And how to make that load feel a little bit more equitable and to have this discussion I've brought in a colleague and expert and just wonderful person, Dr. Morgan Cutlip. She is a wife and mom of two spirited kiddos and has her PhD in psychology and she's going to help us with this conversation.
Dr. Cutlip, thank you for coming on this show. We're so happy to have you.
DR. CUTLIP: Thank you so much for having me, I'm excited to be here.
LAURA: Yeah, we're going to have a good combo. But first why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
DR. CUTLIP: Sure. So, I am a PhD in psychology like you said and I've been in the field of relationships for what feels like my entire life. I've had the biggest blessing of being able to work with my dad who was also in this profession and has his doctorate in psychology and started many years ago taking what he was getting out of private practice and patterns. He was picking up on with couples and singles and people need education. Like people need prevention and so he was kind of like doing courses before courses was a thing and mostly live.
But I started working with him when I was really young, I would go to classes with him, I started speaking with him at conferences, like early college, sometimes in high school and just kind of grew up in the world of relationships and kind of shaped my academic career in that way. And so, we work together now creating courses and content to hopefully be very practical ways of helping and approaching relationships. So, we say, you know, you're shaped by your family. I was definitely shaped by my relationship with my father.
LAURA: That's so cool to hear about. I watch your content and everything. I knew already about this relationship, and it always made me wonder just because my kids are growing up in a setting like that where their mom is actively teaching things, they call me a feelings doctor.
It's really cool to see a grown up who's come out of a family like that where consciousness and awareness and focus on relationships and healthy communication was a part of your growing up. It's really cool to like look into the future a little bit.
DR. CUTLIP: Oh gosh, this is so interesting. This happened today. So, when I was little, my dad and I would play this game on long car rides where he would give me a case essentially like here's a family and they have two kids and this and this is the husband and wife and he would say, what do you think's going on? How do each of them feel, what do you think we should do to help them? And we kind of play this game. I was probably six or seven and it's so funny because I'm driving my daughter to school today and I found myself playing this with her today and helping her analyze it, but I'm like, oh my goodness, hopefully she enjoys it like I did growing up. It was such a happy time to kind of analyze things together and definitely had a huge impact on me.
LAURA: That's such a cool game. I mean a game like that really helps probably with empathy and compassion and perspective taking, learning to see different sides of a problem. Those are beautiful skills that all kids need, whether they go into a field like ours.
[laugh]
DR. CUTLIP: Totally. Totally.
LAURA: Yeah. What a cool thing.
Okay, well thank you for that history piece of it. Now, one of the things I was really excited to talk about with you today was the invisible load that parents carry, often mothers, and something that I think is really a hot topic right now.
We are, at the time of this recording, we are past the one-year mark of this pandemic and there's so much research emerging on how negatively impacted, particularly mothers have been by the increased load that this pandemic has had on us. And even without the pandemic, there was already an imbalance there and here at the balanced parent podcast, we're searching for balance. We know that it's something that you do, not something that you ever done with.
But can we talk about that a little bit? Can you give up me just kind of an intro into this idea of this load of motherhood and what it is and how to start working with it.
DR. CUTLIP: Sure. So, I guess we'll start with the definition and I think I always feel like a little bit silly giving it. But when I learned about the mental load, it's also called what invisible labor. It was so meaningful to have a label for a feeling that is just kind of just exists in the background I think for a lot of people and like you said, especially women, it's funny when I talk about this concept, I will hear from a handful of men and we'll say that's me, I actually do this. And so, I know it's not always women, but that's what the research says.
So, let's start with the definition because I feel like sometimes just defining what feelings feel like can feel really good, like a relief. So, the mental load is essentially the invisible ongoing to-do-list that so many of us carry around in our minds running at all times. It includes things like researching stuff, you know, if you have kids and you're like, oh, you know, what's the best pediatrician or what's the best thing to do this weekend? Is this shampoo toxic? Or you know, all the things that we're constantly researching. You know, organizing events, organizing the home, managing the social life, managing the emotions of family members in the home and then the worry work that is involved in the mental load.
I know for example, my daughter lately is just had kind of like this shift in her amount of anxiety. Well, I'm the one and obviously it's my profession, but I'm sure it would be this anyway. I'm the one looking into that and trying to figure that out. And I think that's the case for a lot of families and a lot of women.
LAURA: I think so too. And I think in all relationships and of course the research on this is biased because it's done primarily with heterosexual couples. But I think that in many relationships there's one person, regardless of gender who takes on some of these roles.
I know for me it manifests a lot in my kind of internal map of my space so that when somebody in the house is looking for something, I know exactly where it is, even if it's not where it belongs. Like I have just this running catalogue of where things are except for my own things.
[laugh]
DR. CUTLIP: Of course.
LAURA: Everybody else is like, it's a lot. How does it happen?
DR. CUTLIP: I mean, I think that that is a huge question, you know, in some ways it's like so ingrained in us in society and kind of who does what and who's responsible for what and where we spend our time and even our conceptualization of time.
I was reading recently, fair play. Like why am I just…
LAURA: I love that book. So good.
DR. CUTLIP: It's so good. And one of the most powerful things she says was how men and women, because that's how she talks about is mostly heterosexual couples, about how men and women think about time differently. Men's time is limited, right? So, they don't do things that are not worth their time where almost we believe that women's time is infinite. And this is a really powerful statement just cause me a lot of falls. Like I listened to my books that to stop me like, oof this is really powerful stuff. And do I see that showing up in my own relationship and other people's?
I think something that I talk about a lot and how I see it coming about is that a lot of times early on in relationships, even before kids come into the picture, we do things for our partners out of just love and care and wanting to be a good partner. I think about early on in my own marriage where I'd be like, you know, I don't mind shopping for the groceries, planning dinner, making dinner and why don't you relax while I clean things up? You know, I'm just doing this to care for you. Really. I'm repeating a lot of what I saw my own home growing up, which we all kind of do and we don't realize it all the time.
But what this did, this is the beginning of something I call piling on precedents.
LAURA: Mm mm.
DR. CUTLIP: I set a precedent that I will cook dinner. I'll shop for the groceries. I’ll plan it and then I'll also clean it up. Now, my husband is a really helpful guy. He doesn't mind doing the dishes or being a part of things, but I took that on without any discussion, without any making it visible. It's another component. A lot of the stuff is invisible. And so, it was my responsibility for a while.
And if you think about all the things in your relationship that you just do to be kind and caring and care for your partner, but you never talk about, it remains invisible. And I think at that moment your partner kind of takes it off their own plate. “Oh great. You do all the holiday shopping, awesome. I'm not worried about it.” And so over time these piles are played very, very full. Throw kids into the mix literally you wake up one day to the next and have a huge increase in the amount of responsibilities that fall on your plate. And so, an already full plate becomes basically unmanageable. And I think that's the breeding ground for eventual resentment and all sorts of other things.
LAURA: Yeah. Okay. So, it sounds like there's a couple pieces here, one is starting to make some of that is invisible visible in your relationship and then there has to be at some point, some kind of conversation. So maybe along the way we've realized that we've kind of, we've filled our plate unintentionally and kind of set these precedents, right? And then now that we're realizing this, we're realizing we're overwhelmed and it's unmanageable, what do we do? What's the next step?
DR. CUTLIP: Yeah, so it's like a backtracking kind of, right?
LAURA: Yeah.
DR. CUTLIP: We have to undo some of what we've done. So I think there's lots of ways of going about this. I think of one kind of small shift is you stop piling on the precedents, you stop doing these things, you know.
I think after kids come, there's a lot of maternal gatekeeping that can sometimes happen and little do we know we're just piling our plates even fuller when we do this, you know? I'll pack the diaper bag, you don't know how to do it or you know, all these different things that we kind of just take care of. And so, I think it's important to recognize how unintentionally we sometimes take things on. And start to make the invisible things visible and involve our partner more.
So instead of just doing stuff because it might be easier and faster, we say, “hey, I'm gonna teach you how to pack the diaper bag so that next time we go out you can take care of this” or “hey, I RSVP'd to this party we're supposed to go to. How about you take care of buying the present?” So, you're vocalizing and articulating all that's involved in taking care of things that usually just happens completely under the radar and out of the awareness of your partner.
So, I think that's one simple thing you can start to do.
LAURA: I think that's so good. I feel like I can hear my audience saying, but “Morgan why would I have to tell them to do these things?” Do you know what I mean? Like that's the objection that I can hear all the time.
DR. CUTLIP: A hundred percent, I know.
LAURA: Why should I? Why can't they just know to do it? What do you say to that?
DR. CUTLIP: Yeah. Okay. So, I have a post that I have shared a couple times and you shouldn't have to ask, but you just might have to.
LAURA: Yeah, right.
DR. CUTLIP: There's a lot of yeah, there's a lot of resistance around asking. So that's why I always start with the piling on of precedents. So, if we can buy in and identify in our relationship, like “Ugh, I totally have done this.” Okay? When we do that, it's nobody's fault. It's no one's fault. But when we do this, we are kind of nudging out our partner and we're almost like handicapping them. So, when then we switch over and we get busier, and we're overwhelmed, and we feel like you should know what to do. It doesn't make sense if we've been taking care of it all along for then us to one day wake up and want them to take initiative.
It's like we have taken care of it for them and now we're wanting them to realize and look around and pay attention to all the stuff we've been doing, like little ninjas invisibly behind the scenes. So, I always say if you think about your partner on a continuum and on one side there is like this resistance to helping, like I have a partner who says they will literally do nothing and on the other side is initiative taking. Take an accurate look, where's your partner fit in? We want our partners to be all the way at the one extreme of taking initiative.
I want that. Who doesn't want that? But if we have piled on precedents for 3,4,5 years, it's going to take some unwinding and so we have to try to move them more towards initiative, especially because most of our partners are not resistant either. So, let's not assume that they are. Let's try to move them more towards initiative by asking. I always say rebrand asking as involving, as teaching, as instructing, not as a burden, but it's something where you're trying to show them.
“Listen, I know I did this before, we can't keep going the way we're going. And so let me show you how this is done. So, you can take care of it next time.”
LAURA: I want to just highlight what you're saying here is that there is this piece of accountability, taking and responsibility taking. And doing that, owning your role, kind of being able to very kindly and self compassionately see like this isn't all on this other person. Some of this is on me too. I've been part of this kind of cycle that we are in, and I have a role in moving us out of this cycle.
I think is such a beautiful thing to be doing. And when we do it, when we approach it from that place of like I know I've been doing this before. I know I kind of just took these things on and we never really had a chance to talk about it. And in doing so, probably felt like I pushed you out or pushed you away. Taking that responsibility can lower defensiveness on your partner's end of things and actually create room.
DR. CUTLIP: Exactly. You know, just to highlight. So, I can imagine some people are listening and they're like, “oh my gosh, now I have to do this,” maybe that makes sense. But it still feels like more to do. You know, I think when we're talking about mental load, I always categorized the way you tackle it is from two perspectives. So, the first is the within, so that's you as an individual. Like what responsibility can you take to do whatever? We can talk about more things that the within can be. But if my partner changes nothing, what can I do? And that's all the internal stuff and this kind of falls a little bit on both of these. But the other is the between.
So yes, there's a lot of stuff you take responsibility for, and you can take a hard look at things. But then also I do believe that there are conversations that have to be had and there's things that need to be renegotiated in the actual dynamic of the relationship, especially if some of the other stuff is not really moving the needle too much. So, the personal responsibility is important, but there is also a need to really come together and renegotiate how things are done and that's also an important piece.
LAURA: Yeah, I absolutely agree. You know, I remember shortly after my youngest was born, I was in the throes of some pretty intense postpartum anxiety, and I had been in a car accident. It was a really hard time in our family, and I just couldn't do laundry anymore. I just couldn't do it. And so, I stopped and do you know what, like laundry happens in our house. I do my own laundry. My husband does pretty much all of the other laundry, the kid's laundry, the house laundry, he does it. But it didn't even need a conversation.
DR. CUTLIP: That’s amazing.
LAURA: It is amazing! I was lucky in that sense though, that that conversation though I think is really important and it can be tricky and scary to go into.
DR. CUTLIP: Oh man.
LAURA: Do you have any tips for folks who are realizing? Okay, some things need to be renegotiated. How can I have this conversation in a way that is actually going to feel like a partnership that we're doing this together, that this is not something that I'm complaining about that's actually going to inspire them to want to be doing more?
DR. CUTLIP: So, I think one of the important things to remember is that relationships just naturally fall out of balance. Whether it's how you divide up responsibilities or how your sex life is going or how you meet each other's needs, that it's really normal for the relationship to be pulled apart by life circumstances.
And so, when you can talk with your partner about getting on the same page in this belief, right? Life's gonna mess up our relationship. We've had changes, we have kids now. You know, things just happen that kind of disrupt our normal rhythm. You don't hit cruise control and just keep going on without ever touching base about your relationship. It doesn't mean that you're deficient or that I'm deficient. This is just something we do to take care of our relationship. It’s that we have to talk about it, especially how roles and responsibilities are handled.
I think the majority of couples probably don't ever talk about how they are going to handle different roles and responsibilities. They probably never have this conversation. And so, to finally have it X number of years into marriage or a committed relationship. Yeah. It's time big deal. We're going to have to do this. You know?
I think some people can feel like I'm complaining or I'm a nag or I'm always bringing things up and it's like, but when have you really had a major conversation about your roles and responsibilities? It's okay to do that. It's normal. It's part of being in a relationship.
LAURA: Yeah. I'm not sure it is normal, but it certainly is healthy and necessary and everybody should be doing it right. I mean…
DR. CUTLIP: The need, they need to.
LAURA: The need is there. Absolutely.
I became a parent while I was in my PhD, getting my PhD in couples and family therapy. So, I knew the statistics on what happens to a marriage after you have your first child. So, my husband and I went to couples therapy while I was pregnant and have those discussions. Those exact discussions. A couple of things though to like of course you have to have discussions around rules and responsibilities. You two grew up in completely different family, is seeing completely different things with completely different expectations of what a person in a relationship does, what a relationship looks like, what a long-term marriage looks like. Of course, you have to have discussions on those things and of course they change over time.
DR. CUTLIP: Yes.
LAURA: You know, every parent who's listening right now can probably pretty confidently say that they are not completely the same person they were when they became a parent. That changes you, it changes your partner too. Changes your expectations, your ideals, your ideas about what it should be like an ongoing conversation that is open and free and without a lot of pressure or it doesn't need to be a bad thing that you need to have this conversation.
DR. CUTLIP: Yeah.
LAURA: Yeah, I love that.
DR. CUTLIP: Yeah, because I think you know, we often say like, okay, when do you talk about your relationship? We talk about relationship when we're having a problem. So, I think, you know this is kind of a big goal, but how do you normalize having regular conversations about your relationship is a big piece.
So, I'll get really specific to go back to the question, how do we have this conversation? I think you can begin with trying to get by in. So, there's two ways. One I'm kind of speaking about now, which is getting buy in that having conversations about your relationship is normal because relationships are not self-correcting, you have to come together and work on them.
I did a video recently where I, where I compared that to like the business world because sometimes you have to make points in different ways.
LAURA: Yeah.
DR. CUTLIP: That can actually capture somebody's buy-in. So, I may or may have not had this conversation with my husband before who is in business, which is you start a business, and you open your doors and things are going well and sales are good. That's not the last time you check in on your business. You're not like, “oh fantastic, this is great. Done. I'm gonna kick my feet up on my desk and I'm gonna watch the money roll in.” No, you have meetings, you check in on your employees’ well-being. You look at the budget and the expenses.
And when you come together as a bunch of employees and you're talking about how things are going, there's always this question of what can we do better? And that's not an attack on how they're doing. That's just how you get your business to grow. And it's no different than how you really have to manage your relationship.
You know, we're doing well. What can we do better? Or this is kind of just slipping a bit this month or whatever. How do we kind of fix this area? How do we address this? What are we going to do together to improve this part of our relationship? So, in getting by, and I think that's one of the ways, I think another way is getting by in around what they'll gain working on this part of the relationship and you're almost like kind of cringe, like saying that, but it's just human nature, you know, what's in it for me?
I think that probably for a lot of the partners who aren't carrying the mental load, it's working out just fine. However, I'm sure that it you could identify as a couple, things that are not going all that well in the relationship or that are starting to suffer. Maybe resentment starting to build and just the tone of the relationship feels kind of off. Maybe there's more snide comments being made or passive aggressive behaviors. Maybe your sex life is not super great right now. You know, I'm sure there are things that would improve if both partners felt the relationship was more equitable and fair. So that's another way of getting buy-in.
LAURA: Okay, you just said two words equitable and fair. And I think that those are really important to just touch on because we know that research shows that when the load is balanced more equitably between caregivers, when there's more egalitarian roles that kids do better, parenting is smoother, the families are happier, but that doesn't necessarily mean everything is equal. And so, can we parse that out a little bit?
DR. CUTLIP: Yes. So, something I like to say is it's not that it needs to be equal, it just needs to feel fair. You know, resentment starts to build when things feel unfair when it feels like you're doing more than your fair share. And so, I think that's a really important piece when you are having that discussion about responsibilities and kind of renegotiating who does what and that's that, you know, listen, it doesn't need to be 50-50. You know, everybody's family situation is different. I've talked with people who, you know, partners are like on a deployment or partners work night shift or partner works two jobs, you know.
And so, the composition of a family situation will affect how things are distributed. But at the end of the day, your gauge is does this feel fair to both people? Does this feel good?
LAURA: Yeah. And to both people because it can feel fair to one and not to the other.
DR. CUTLIP: Yes.
LAURA: I think that you bring up a really good point to that there's all sorts of different structures for families and ways of people contribute to families. I hear about this a lot from families where one parent works outside the home and one parent his home with kids that there is some difference in expectation around who does what based on that, because one person is bringing in the income and seems like unspoken expectation is then all of the other things fall on the one who's at home.
And I think the circles back to this idea of making what's invisible visible because all of the things that those partners, the partner who is at home, does all day very rarely is completely visible, like yes, the kids are alive. Great, okay.
DR. CUTLIP: What did you do all day?
LAURA: What did you do all day?
DR. CUTLIP: It’s the most insulting question.
LAURA: Right? I know. And so, what are some ways that we can go about making these things visible in a way that doesn't seem petty?
DR. CUTLIP: Remember how I said that within and between? So, one other with ends. I have like a category of things called stories that sabotage, which is like the running tapes in our mind that can sometimes either get in the way of us reaching out for help, asking for help, feeling like we deserve. You know, I think that comes up so much when one partner is home full time with kids and the other one is working.
You know, this almost belief system that is because I don't work, I don't deserve a break. And I think that there are lots of stories that we play in our minds that really sabotaged us or even our partners as they're trying to take on more. They can have their own stories that really do get in the way of having a more equitable distribution or even initiating that conversation. This might be where some people start.
Now, maybe I haven't talked about these responsibilities and dividing them up differently because I've got this story in my mind, these expectations that are really kind of crippling my feeling of ability to have this conversation or that I'm entitled to have this conversation. I think another one from the partner's perspective who might be being asked to take on more one of those stories could be when I try to help, I never do it right? So why bother?
LAURA: Mm mm.
DR. CUTLIP: Which I think is when I hear come up a lot. So, I think it's important to take some time and kind of reflect on some of these things. If you're having trouble having this conversation, what are some of the beliefs that you have about how a family should run? Who does what? When do you deserve a break? When do you have the right to ask for help? And kind of dig into those a little bit, which can help kind of move you along and working towards offloading some of this stuff.
LAURA: Oh, I think that's so important, those mindset things and those limiting beliefs are so important to take a look at and notice and figure out like if they are serving your…
DR. CUTLIP: Absolutely.
LAURA: bigger purpose, like if they're actually supporting you.
DR. CUTLIP: Yeah, I always say so, once you can identify them, you know, this is what CBT right? You're like, what the evidence for, what's the evidence against and kind of write it out, I mean, just take some time write it out and then the next thing I think is really important to do, which is take whatever the evidence against is, and kind of restructure that story, rewrite your story and create a one-line mantra.
So, in the moment when that stories starting to queue up and you're like, oh here, it's coming again, you have that one-line mantra to kind of re-center you back in a more realistic story. Remind yourself of the story you've rewritten and then set 1 to 2 goals of behavioral changes that will reinforce the news story.
LAURA: Okay, can we use an example to walk through with this? Would that be okay?
DR. CUTLIP: Sure.
LAURA: Maybe the story of I just, you know, my work is in the home. I don't deserve a break.
DR. CUTLIP: I don't deserve a break.
LAURA: I don't deserve a break.
DR. CUTLIP: So, you know, look at the evidence. Well, do I know other people who don't work outside the home? Do they get a break? What do I think of them if they take a break? Do I feel judgmental about that? You can start to kind of outline where is this coming from? Do you apply this to other people or only to yourself and start working on that evidence? So then maybe you'll rewrite your one liner, and it goes something like the work I do is important, and I deserve a break like everyone else. Right?
LAURA: Yes.
DR. CUTLIP: Yeah.
LAURA: Oh my gosh. Can you put that on a bumper sticker?
DR. CUTLIP: Right?
[laugh]
DR. CUTLIP: Like my shift never ends.
LAURA: My shift never ends.
DR. CUTLIP: My shift never ends. I deserve time to reset. I mean whatever like feels like it hits you in your heart. It's like a compass almost to help guide you when you've kind of lost your way and you're thinking in the moment, right? And then your behavioral change would be something like once a week. I'm going to tell my partner I need to take some time for myself, and you schedule it. Or it might be I'm going to hire a sitter for an hour or two a week and I'm going to go out and like be an independent person for a minute and like exist alone or you know, you can start small and go from there.
And you kind of maybe being this sort of like dissonant state where you're feeling uncomfortable when you're doing this behavior, but when you're tackling it from all these different angles it will, it will take care of it faster.
[laugh]
LAURA: Yeah, I agree. I loved that you said tell your partner, not ask your partner
DR. CUTLIP: I know, I had to watch my words.
LAURA: You did so good. I love that.
DR. CUTLIP: That's even a thing if we think about what I have to ask my partner for them to watch the kids or ask for a break and it's like, oh no, do they ask you? Not usually, right?
LAURA: I know.
DR. CUTLIP: We need to be better at that.
LAURA: I think that there's room for mutual checking in. Like for example, we like any time it's nice, I know that my husband is going to want to go golfing at some point on the weekend. Like I know that that's what he's going to want to do and it's great. It's wonderful. He's a better dad and husband when he's had a chance to be out on the course and that's great. And so, he will come to me and say I really need to go golfing this weekend, when is best for our family and then we fit it in. That's what he would do with us.
DR. CUTLIP: Which is a beautiful way.
LAURA: It’s beautiful. But that's because it's been coached, you know, we worked and worked on it. Whereas like when I'm like there is a yoga retreat coming up, I can go on this weekend or I can go on this weekend, which one would be best for our family.
DR. CUTLIP: I love that. Which is best for our family? That's a great line.
LAURA: Because it is good for our family. These things are good for the entire family, a well taken care of parent, well rested, a nourished parent is a better parent and a better partner. I think it's also really important. I like how you are teaching people to make their own mantras. I think it's really nice to get a nice list of mantras from Pinterest or from Instagram but its way better when you can specifically target them for yourself. And that thought work is so important.
DR. CUTLIP: Absolutely, it has to be meaningful or else it's not gonna really hit home in the moment.
LAURA: Yeah, it was beautiful. Oh well, thank you so much Morgan for helping me with this conversation. I hope that everybody will go and find you on Instagram.
Your Instagram handle is @mylovethinks so definitely head there. She's got a whole series of posts on this exact topic and tons of other ones that will help you have a healthier, more conscious relationship with your partner.
DR. CUTLIP: Thank you.
LAURA: Absolutely.
DR. CUTLIP: Thank you so much. Yeah, I actually, I have a whole course on this topic that organizes, you know what to do, how to do it, how you can word things. I do give some scripts in there, how you can dig into your stores that sabotage. I talk about something called behaviors that backfire. How do you challenge some of those things? And that course is called The Mother Load: Helping Couples Unite to Tackle Them into Load.
LAURA: Well, that sounds awesome. And so, they can find that at?
DR. CUTLIP: On Instagram. We have a blog at mylovethinks.com and there's lots of content there.
LAURA: Perfect. I will make sure that those links are in the show notes so people can find you and take what I'm sure is an amazing course.
DR. CUTLIP: Thank you.
LAURA: Morgan also has one of my favorite courses on boundaries too, a great little mini course with Tracy, that is just lovely. If you need a boundaries course, sorry, I'm plugging your business.
DR. CUTLIP: No, I appreciate that. Always so fun doing that with a doctor, Tracy, she’s amazing.
LAURA: You two together were really wonderful in that course.
DR. CUTLIP: Thank you.
LAURA: Okay, well thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. It was really lovely having you.
DR. CUTLIP: It was lovely to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review. That really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from. And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes, look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus, I share a lot of other really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.