Episode 116: Things We Don’t Talk About with Parent Mental Health with Amanda Gorman
/When it comes to parenting and especially motherhood, there are so many things that we hide or gloss over, dirty little secrets that shame and fear and judgment tell us to keep to ourselves. Sometimes it's the small stuff (like how each of my kids have had YEARS long stretches of sleeping in their clothes the next day to avoid the morning getting dressed battles) and then sometimes it's the big stuff. On this week's episode my guest and I dive into one of the most hidden and shame-laden topics there is in parenthood: Rage. Specifically postpartum rage.
Grab a cup of tea and settle in as I share my own story of the rage I experienced as a part of a perinatal mood disorder after the birth of my second child, and witness my guest's story too. As we share our stories we also discuss how we got support and moved forward, and the ongoing work we're doing. If you've experienced that rush of overwhelming emotions, seeing red, irrational, explosive reactivity, then you know how hard it can be to get support and to manage and I hope this episode is a balm to your soul. And if you haven't, you'll likely still benefit from the experience of witnessing another's story. There will be pieces that resonate for everyone.
In this episode with my guest Amanda Gordon of the Finding Your Village Podcast, I will be discussing:
Rage as a symptom of a perinatal mood and anxiety disorder.
What parents can do in addition to therapy for their mental health
How to support non-birthing partners with their own mental health struggles.
Be sure to follow Amanda on Instagram as well. Her social handle is @findingyourvillage. And if you want more resources about birth, postpartum, and parent mental health, her Finding Your Village Podcast will be a good listen too!
To learn more about developmentally appropriate behaviors, CHECK IT HERE.
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!
Amanda: Hey Laura, how are you?
Laura: Hey Amanda, it's so nice to get to chat with you. I'm really excited to talk about this topic.
Amanda: I am too. So the topic being perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and things that don't get talked about quite as often or enough in my opinion and we're doing a podcast swap collaboration where this is airing on both our Podcast. I love doing episodes like this and so to kick things off. We can both introduce ourselves for each other's respective listenership so that they can no kind of who is talking today. So if you want to go first.
Laura: Absolutely. Well, Amanda, I just want to say how honored I feel to be able to be in your space and on your podcast, I know you carefully select the people who come on and you create a really safe space for your listeners. And I just really appreciate being able to be here and have this conversation.
I'm Dr. Laura Froyen, I have my PhD in Human Development and Family Studies with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy. I'm a mom to two kiddos who are nine and 6 and a half and so I know lots of your listeners are on the, you still have the littles, I'm on the other side, I'm in middle childhood and I want to tell you it gets so good. I mean it's so good when they're little, but it's so good when they're big too.
There's challenges of course, but yeah, and so one of my biggest passions is supporting families and feeling more connected and grounded in themselves and starting to live in alignment with their true core values, their priorities, their goals for their family, getting rid of all the kind of society's expectations of ourselves and really living into what what matters most for us. So I'm excited to have this conversation from that place. what about you, Amanda? I would love for my audience to get to know you a little bit too.
Amanda: Yeah, well, thank you so much. Thanks for your kind words and thank you for that introduction. I feel the same way. Thank you so much for, you know, agreeing to share this space with me and for um just encouraging that reminder of the importance of having a safe space and a place to have these conversations about topics that don't always get talked about enough for a myriad of reasons. So I am Amanda Gorman, I am a mom of two as well. Mine are 3 and a half and 5 and a half I'm glad you said your yours is 6.5 because the half is very important to them.
Laura: Yes, I mean my, my 6 and a half, almost seven as she will tell you. But yes. Yes.
Amanda: Yes. And we have even gotten down to define it as my 5.5 year old defines it as a young, 5 and a half or an old, 5 and a half as she gets closer to her birthday. So I have two kids as well and we're kind of spanning that gap of like early parenting days to, I'm just just on the other side of like toddlerhood and you're on the other side to where I am headed next. So I love that progression and and I love the encouragement that you gave as well that it gets better.
And I'm seeing that it's fun. It's like that bittersweet of I am grieving the loss of those baby days in the toddler days, but I'm also just rejoicing in where my kids are today and like what our connection is like and what they're capable of like this saturday for instance, we have had a cold going through our house and thankfully like I'm not in the thick of that cold right now, but my husband was and I was up with the kids this week and so on saturday morning, we both wanted to sleep in like he was not feeling good and I was just tired from caretaking and my kids like watched cartoons on saturday morning and that was the first, I was like, oh my gosh, we're at that stage of parenting where they can watch saturday morning cartoons like I have arrived
Laura: They're like, like pivotal moments where you're like, this is peak parenting right here.
Amanda: Yes, exactly.
Laura: New Level unlocked.
Amanda: Yes
Laura: And achieved.
Amanda: Exactly like I know it's not gonna happen every saturday and that's fine, but I was like, oh my gosh, this isn't, this isn't the first and this is great. I love the extra hour that I got while they were watching cartoons. So anyways to go back to just finishing my introduction. I am a childbirth educator as well and host of the Finding Your Village Podcast and I also work in the space of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders by way of being on the board of director for Postpartum Support international Georgia chapter.
So this is something that is near and dear to my heart from a personal perspective as being a survivor of postpartum depression and postpartum O. C. D. And also just in the work that I do every day with families in Georgia.
Laura: Wow, that's so beautiful. Well, I didn't know you had such a personal connection to this. I'm really glad to hear that you have recovered and you're on the other side. I also experienced perinatal mood disorders, mind manifested more in anxiety and rage which doesn't get talked about very often. And it's hard to as you know, I'm sure you relate to this as professionals we have. It's almost like the world wants us to have this kind of persona that things are perfect for us that we don't suffer from the same things that the average person suffers from.
But that's not real. I've never hidden those things from, from the folks that I work with. It's where real human beings and there are things about early motherhood that are really challenging early parenthood too. You know, I think one of the things we were talking about when we first started chatting was that dads get overlooked in this conversation so much. So where do you want to go with this? Where do you want to?
Amanda: Well, I think that you touched on two things that we definitely want to talk about today. I also personally understand the term rage as it relates to dealing with a mood disorder and anxiety disorder, particularly in the postpartum stage. And so I think that we should maybe start there and I absolutely want to talk about like spouses or partners or dads and how they are impacted by these mood and anxiety disorders as well.
So, let's start by talking about rage as being a symptom of postpartum depression or another type of perinatal mood or anxiety disorder and what that looks like, what that feels like and kind of stuff that goes beside it.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Do you wanna start there, you're kind of the expert there. What, how, how is post, like, how is rage related to these postpartum kind of, cluster of disorders that come up? How is it related? How, like, why, why do we see it? And you know, for those of you who are listening and have experienced it, you might even be feeling like right now, like, oh, there's there's there's there's a name for this, you know? So what does it look like? Yeah. Get start us off.
Amanda: Yeah. and thank you and I personally would not call myself an expert of just, but just like, someone who has personally experienced it and deeply concerned with other people that are experiencing this and don't have language to talk about it or have a safe place to go and so that's just kind of my posture about it.
But from my personal experience, when I had my second child, I had um prenatal depression, I had postpartum depression. It was a really tough season, but also it was, it was a very great season and the fact that I was welcoming my second baby and had a beautiful birth experience with him and just like on one hand felt that kind of bliss of having two kids and two babies and like this is my dream, this is, I can't believe this has come true and this is wonderful and kind of being in that family cocoon.
So I experienced that on one hand, and on the other hand, I had some negative symptoms, feelings, emotions, sensations that were going on with me from the prenatal depression and from postpartum depression and so the rage came out when I would feel really overwhelmed um with my emotions and probably wasn't processing them. I don't know, I, I hesitate to say like I wasn't processing them well because that kind of sounds judgmental and I don't, I don't judge myself for how I was feeling and what I was dealing with, but but I don't think that I was processing them in a healthy way, that was that I was actually like taking the time to process them.
Laura: Yeah. So like we're in survival mode, but a lot of the early postpartum period, we are parenting, you know, we're both in the US were parenting in a system that is not set up to support young families, families with young children. You are, human biology demands a village, not just like you need the village, but demands it.
Our babies come out and they are so dependent. I mean quite capable and wonderful not to like bash on babies are so awesome. They can do so much, but they really need a lot of support. They need a lot of time. They need a lot of, you know, there they're demanding little beings and they need it and and it's hard because we have no universal paternal parental leave. You know, we have none other supports that we biologically need and evolutionarily are designed to have, you know, so there's a reason why why when we're all women are all, you know, or people with uteruses are altogether that are cycles sync up and so that we can get pregnant and have babies at the same time and help each other out.
You know, and it's so we can nurse each other's babies and it's just it's weird just there's so much that go so much lack of support. There's so much on us and then we have to push it down and then there's also those feelings that you were speaking to that, I think lots of us experiences like this is our dream come true, this is what we wanted, what we desperately hoped and prayed for that. We, you know, have seen ourselves doing since we were perhaps even little kids, you know, for many of us it's something that's the culmination of a lot of hopes and dreams and then to be stuck in a place of feeling dissatisfied or out of control or overwhelmed or angry.
Yes, we feel like we are betraying ourselves to, you know, and there's this there's this pressure to look like you have it all together or this pressure to be happy and satisfied. Yes, and not be a full human and we just don't give ourselves, I think, I think we just don't give ourselves permission to be full humans with big messy feelings to the both. And we demand either or of feelings, you're either happy or you're mad and you can't be both. You know?
Amanda: I do and the not only the pressure that goes along with that, but also the guilt I particularly felt very guilty about like, but this is what I wanted. This is a dream come true and I am so thankful to have this little baby and to have my adorable little two year old and to see them, you know, get to know each other and to see her love on him. I mean it was precious and
Laura: and it's like the most therapeutic word is it's not,
Amanda: it was not a but it was an and I also had a lot of stuff going on, I had a lot of a lot of negative emotions to process, I had a lot of experiences and some trauma to process and it came out one of the symptoms was rage and so I definitely felt kind of more of the stereotypical postpartum depression, feelings of sadness.
Weepiness, tired those kind of symptoms that most people think of when they think of postpartum depression, but I also was experiencing rage and it would come at times when I would feel overwhelmed and maybe maybe especially in those times when I was really feeling guilty and really feeling like confused by my and feelings of feeling love and appreciation and feeling tired and sad and just you know, processing or experiencing trauma and the rage would also come out when I was touched out, especially after breastfeeding, so I breastfed my son I breast fed both of my kids and that was just, you know, that's just part of my, my lived experience and my story and I remember sometimes maybe after particularly like cluster feedings and he would just be eating a lot and then my two year old would also want my attention and I wanted to give it to her and sometimes when he was done nursing.
I would just kind of, I would have this overwhelming feeling, sensation is the better word for it sensation in my body. I would be overcome with rage. Like I would just like gripped my fists and grit my teeth and I think I was holding in my rage as a, as a protective mechanism so it would not come out in any way of my baby because towards my baby or my kids because I think I was also scared of that sensation in my body.
Laura: Oh my God, Amanda can just talk about how scary this is. So I know that this is the opinion of you've experienced this, you might be feeling lots of guilt. How can we feel this raged towards our family, towards our, you know towards the situation that we're in that we chose. But but it's scary to be in the midst of of those feelings of feeling so out of control and feeling so overcome. It's scary. It is, it was confusing and and it was scary in particular because I was like what is going on with my head? What's going on with my body? Why am I gripping my hands and white knuckling it physically, literally, why am I, why is my jaw so tense and why do I feel so much anger right now?
And I would, And then I would feel like it would kind of be this, I don't even know like 10 seconds feeling and behavior of like I'm done nursing, I am done. Like I do not want anybody to touch me right now. I feel very irritated. I feel tense in my body. I need to put my baby down um Because I'm irritated and touched out and also I want him to be safe because these feelings that I'm having in my body and my emotions are scaring me and I'm also being very protective of my baby that I would not want any any of this crap that's going on inside to come out towards him or my daughter.
Of course yeah and it was just it was just kind of like A cluster like it was a wild experience of like 10 seconds of feelings and sensations. And I just remember kind of scratching my head. And this is one of the things that I came to my therapist about and I started seeing the therapist that I see now. I started seeing her almost 3 and a half years ago when my son he's 5 and a half now. 35 and a half important. And I started seeing her. I started seeing her when he was I think around three months old.
And I went to see her because of these sensations because of the depression that I was feeling and because of like OCD tendencies that were heightened like at their highest. And I had already had before. But they were the symptoms were like screaming at me during this time. And so I went to go see her for that. But I want to flip it over to you to talk about your experience because you said that you also personally know what rage feels like. So I would love to hear your part of your story.
Laura: Absolutely. I mean, so my experience was very similar. I had some trauma during my pregnancy. I was in a car accident, I had um birth trauma with my first that was kind of re triggered with my second birth, you know, and I had a physical disability from my car accident at the time. I've recovered from that disability now. And but at the time I was dealing with chronic pain, chronic debilitating pain.
And so, you know the way that I like, I think about it is that when when we are in this kind of these survival modes, right? And we have all the stress on ourselves, We have this um nervous system that is very tender and delicate and shaky and and quick to to be triggered, right? And so we have these moments where we if we're nervous system is overcome, we get shunted kind of down the levels of our brain into our fight or flight system.
Just like a three year old who is not getting what they want, get shunted down this the levels of their brain and we have three levels are executive brain, our limbic system where emotionality happens and then our primal brain, where are fight flight and free system lives, You know? And so when, when we think about rage happening, that's the fight response. It's a very natural normal fight response.
And so I started working with a therapist as well. My husband is a therapist. I'm so I'm a trained therapist myself, and sometimes I feel like we're the worst, getting the help that we need. And then my husband was like, I think it's time. And so I went back to a therapist that I had a relationship before, but, and I was lucky to be able to get in. I know that that's something that for folks who are experiencing these things right now, the weightless Times are are are huge. They're astronomical. So at some point, I think we can maybe talk a little bit about things that are helpful while you're waiting to get into a therapist because, the wait times are just no matter what, if you find the perfect therapist, it's the everybody is seeing a therapist right now, therapists are maxed out and therapists are experiencing kind of a collective trauma from these past two years as well. So they're setting healthier boundaries and taking fewer cases.
So, anyway, the um, you know, so really understanding that for myself was helpful that this, that these this rage was a signal from my body that something wasn't okay, that I wasn't okay. The rage was a symptom and an automatic response, not something that I had volitional control over. And so if we think about guilt, usually guilt is about something that we have a choice over, you know, we feel justifiably guilty when we make, you know, a mistake that we we chose to make, we were speeding and clipped a car or something.
You can feel guilty about those things. And guilt is not necessarily a terrible emotion, but when it comes to experiencing feelings of rage that we don't act on, but that we just really, you know, those are automatic responses. And so it doesn't always make a ton of sense to feel super guilty or shameful about those things because we don't have control over when we get triggered and are down in our fight or flight system. In fact are the fight or flight system is designed to take away our choice and control because when were we perceive threats? Our bodies want us not making decisions,
They want us reacting out of habit, out of, you know, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, that's what they want us doing, you know? Um, and so understanding that was really helpful for me and kind of releasing some of the guilt and shame that went with those feelings, understanding that this was something that my body was doing to protect me to keep the space, um, that my brain didn't doesn't know that my screaming baby and melting down toddler because my kids were the same age difference. You know. So I mean having, I mean you know this is the other thing too is that we often are having babies when our oldest ones are like at the hardest age.
You know? So there are 2 and a half they're finding their voice their fighting for autonomy and that's all happening when we have an infant. So I mean it makes sense that our brains might perceive those things as a threats. And so that allowed me to embrace a little bit more of grace and compassion. Self compassion. So self compassion was instrumental in my healing process. I'm a regular self compassion practice of just offering myself. Grace was really helpful. And recognizing too that so many of my symptoms were an attempt to control that which cannot be controlled.
You know I the my anxiety has almost always manifested in control and I think you know someone who's experienced OCD-like symptoms, you probably, that speaks very much. Yeah. So the the other piece of that that's been really helpful for me is acceptance. Really working hard through compassionate acceptance of what is you know um as opposed to resisting what is trying to guess what it is or change what it is. You know what I mean?
Amanda: I do. I absolutely do. That's something that I did not understand or embrace because I couldn't because I didn't have that as a tool in my toolkit, I didn't understand that until I was at my bottom in the pandemic and I got sober and I went through recovery and like that whole journey and I went through some DBT therapy dialectical behavioral therapy for those that have not heard of it and one of the core tenants and that is radical acceptance and that is when I, I understood that and it took all a long time. It took several like interactions, that topic, like it had to be said several times for me to get it and be like, but I don't like that, so I'm not going to accept that because I deeply do not like it. So those can't live in the same space and then that was me fighting that understanding and then surrendering.
Laura: Yeah, so, I mean, that's the thing though, is that like, that radical acceptance doesn't mean that we like it right, right? It doesn't mean that we condone it or think good or celebrate it just acknowledging it as it is
Amanda: Exactly. It just, it just is and it took so long for me to kind of surrender to like exactly that I don't have to like it and both and and I can accept it, I can just accept that it is what it is like right now, it just is, and I remember now I'm moving away from, you know, those early postpartum days, but this has just been part of my journey. I went through intense recovery and came home and was kind of reintegrating into myself and my family and I just had this like kind of silly small moment, but it was very meaningful for me personally where of this idea of radical acceptance, where I was like, oh maybe I do get it finally.
And one day I was doing something in the kitchen, my son was two and like, right, fresh at two in the throes of exactly what you just described and I was doing something, you know, turned away from him for 30 seconds, whatever and he had taken on our kitchen table, he had taken a whole can of Lacroix and the salt shaker and poured both of them onto our kitchen table and was making like an ocean in the kitchen table and I just saw this, I looked over and saw him doing this and I first reacted like, oh no, like stop, this is not good.
But I also kind of observed myself accepting the situation and not freaking out of just like going over to him with like calm reserve of like, I'm going to remove him from making the ocean, like we're going to stop the mess and then it is what it is. Like, I'm just going to clean it up, that's the next best thing for me to do. I'm going to clean it up and I'm going to, you know, steer him in the direction of playing with something that is more appropriate and not as destructive and so and that's what I did and it just wasn't a big deal.
And before though when I was in the throes of all of the mental health stuff, I was going on in addiction and all of this stuff, it was a very big deal. I think I would, I don't even know like I would have like probably yelled and just gotten very emotionally dis regulated and I just watched myself be okay with it. Like it wasn't an okay situation. I wasn't like, oh sweetie, how cute your ocean. Like I was not condoning the behavior. I still did the thing of, you know, like directing and something appropriate. And I cleaned it up.
But I just watched myself kind of like, except it was like, okay, well this just happened and it just, this was like such a small moment that maybe nobody else would think about, but for me, I still think about it, you know, like a year and a half later. So that's to me that's my example of moving from not understanding. I like how you put it compassionate acceptance. or radical acceptance. Not understanding that to embracing it of like it just is okay. What's the next right thing I can do.
Laura: Yeah. And it and it it just is and it doesn't mean anything. So I think a key piece of understanding radical acceptance is that the meaning that we attach to things that happen has to get severed in order for that acceptance to be there. So it doesn't when, you know, I think so many parents can identify with that kind of that seeing red, that comes over you when you saw him dumping with Lacroix in this salt. And and it blocks us from being able to interpret that as for what it really is.
A two year old who's exploring physics and his world who is a scientist who was experimenting and and you know, and and doesn't know that if he dumps the Lacroix on the table, it will spill onto the floor. Doesn't know that if he wants to explore dumping the Lacroix, he needs to do it into the sink or into a bowl where it will be caught. Doesn't understand those physics and this is just a kid who's figuring out his world when we get blocked from that, we attach different meaning to it. This is a kid who's just trying to make my life hard. I don't have the energy or time for this. I'm a bad mom.
If I had been watching this, wouldn't be happening, we have all these stories just that flood our brain and that's what's causing the red, you know, us to see that we think it's so often we think it's the kid or the thing that is causing us to see red and it's not, it's it's the flood of thoughts is the flood of meaning. And so radical acceptance is part a huge part of it is finding those chords of meaning that we tied a thing very like gently, very kindly, very compassionately clipping them. I'm you can't see you all can't using my fingers like this is like clip, clip clip, like, oh there's that there's meaning that I've attached to this and is that meaning real?
So like if my kid dumps Lacroix on the table, does that mean I'm a bad, inattentive mom? Of course not. No. Does that mean my kid is just out to bug me and get under my skin? No, of course not. There's just been too. And we just clipped the meaning and it makes it does make the acceptance so much easier.
Amanda: Yes, that is so huge. And for me personally, um when you go through recovery and you go through like a 12 step program, one of the things you do is you identify your defects of character. And so for me, a big one that I identified was going into victim mentality. I don't like the phrase playing the victim. because I instead say fall into the well of victimhood and then I have the choice to just climb right back out or just like sit down there and like wallow and I was very used to sitting and wallowing and so I the meaning that I assigned that situation was like yeah of course the universe is out to get me.
It wasn't even my kid, it wasn't even like it was just like the universe is out to get me like here I am trying my darndest and like why does this have to happen to me on a Tuesday? Like why can't I have it easier? That was the immediate story that went through my head because that is part of my defective character and and just being able to identify that and like you said, just gently clip that that string clip that cord of like I don't think the universe is out to get me. I think that this is just my son exploring the world and this is what was available to him. And so that just happened like it's okay, it's not and he's one thing
Laura: He's telling me he needs water player, like he's telling me like I should put him into the bathtub with cub you know, like that's like you know, communicating with me. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. And so I think like so we were thinking about like giving some people some tools as they're waiting to get into their therapist.
So I love that self compassion of regular loving kindness. Practice. It is beautiful and it's proven to change the brain proven to shift the brain to be more compassionate. It's proven like very well documented scientific fact and beyond mindfulness. So when we do compassion based self compassion based mindfulness and we compare it in a study against just a regular mindfulness program. The self compassion based my influence has better results.
So that is something to start with. Selfcompassion.org is the website run by the you know the leading self compassion researcher. she is fabulous and has lots of free guided meditations and exercises. So that's a free resource. You can start doing immediately figuring out what you were just talking about, Amanda, figuring out the the thoughts and the meaning and the negative flood of meaning that you are attributing to the things that caused the rage.
So writing down your triggers, I guess if everybody knows the things that make you feel sad or anxious or kind of get some things going within you that you don't love. It's like you're not showing up as your best self um and you're trying to push it down instead write them down. You know, don't push it anymore. Get it out, get it onto paper and then start taking a look at the thoughts that lead up to it.
The story you're telling yourself and start constructing a story that actually leads you where you want to go because if your story is of course this would happen to me, why do things always happen to me? There's very like that boxes you into a one path, right? The outcomes are narrow, right? And so figuring out, okay, what do I want my outcome to be and what thoughts and stories are that could support that outcome.
And that are believable to me too. And so that's the other thing. We have to make these things believable. So if our immediate thought is I'm a terrible mom and we try to replace it with like I'm a wonderful mom, our brain is gonna be like, like the, am I allowed to swear I don't have the bullcrap meter goes off in our brain. It's like, no, I don't believe that, you know, and so we have to have, you have to stay, have statements like I'm doing my best right now or it's natural for me to make mistakes, you know, some, some very believable thought around those stories that or this, you know, this incident has nothing to do with my ability as a parent, you know, whatever, whatever it is.
So make it believable. I think that those are,, and then, you know, and moving towards acceptance of what is this. I feel like I like having three, three Things. Right? So three everything's self compassion, working with your thoughts and story. and, and learning to accept as opposed to try to change and control.
Amanda: Yeah, I think those are great tools that, um, folks can do themselves. Like you said, if they're on a wait list to go see a therapist or even if you do see a therapist and you usually just go once every two weeks, two weeks is a long time in between sessions. So what can you do in the in between time? And one other thing that I will add from my own experience is the power of support groups of people that are going through similar situations that that get it. Like, you know that that phrase, like I feel seen, you know, that entering a space intentionally where you have the opportunity to feel seen.
And so, you know, there's 12 step programs for for, there's a 12 step program pretty much for everything. It's not just for alcoholics or you know, people that are addicted to a substance. There's also like codependent, there's emotions anonymous. I mean there's so many 12 step programs that are support groups that are available online that are free, but If 12 step is not your thing, which it's not everybody's thing.
There's also just support groups that are either led by a therapist or led by appear that have been trained. there are some of course I'm gonna plug ps I postpartum support international. There's a whole directory. If you go to their website on support groups, therapist led. Pure lead. And that's just a nice thing to add to your tool kit as well. so that you can feel seen so that you can have a chance to kind of like vent or even just gain some perspective because a lot of the things that I learned um were in a group setting, like, oh, I didn't think about that, I didn't know that or oh, that's an interesting take on that.
Laura: So yeah, and she thrives in secrecy, right? And so moving bravely into a space where you're sharing and open. can you a beautifully kind of a beautiful way to combat shame, you know? And also I think I do think that helping, especially for parents, you know, in in my realm and what I do is I do a lot of teaching on on child development and helping reframe their behaviors. and that does help Recraft the narrative and the story.
So I do think, you know, if this is if you are feeling overwhelmed by your child's behavior that is likely age appropriate, really digging in. There's some great series of books um there's a wonderful website that has just a kind of a huge list of what of developmentally appropriate behaviors through, like I think it goes through the teens. I can grab you the link for that for the show notes. But really digging in to child development can be helpful as well.
Amanda: Yeah, I think that's a great point of view and to go back to our theme, I think of both and something that I think it is important to, for someone maybe to hear and to acknowledge is that part of the struggle of parenting, I think is the both and of attending to your own needs and your own emotional regulations and kind of putting things in your toolkit for yourself and being, you know, tuning into what your kids need, being attentive to that and responding in an appropriate way. And so there's a learning curve for both.
There's a learning curve for how to process our emotions because unfortunately, that's not something that's really emphasized. It wasn't emphasized when I was growing up, I heard a lot from other people. You're shaking your head. No, like, like, it was not emphasized for you either. And so there's a learning curve for that, and then there's a learning curve for understanding what your kids, um what's appropriate for their age, what milestones are, you know, how kind of how to help them too, and, like, that's just a big task and it's not, and it's, you know, thinking of acceptance, it's it's not good or bad. It it just is like, there's both.
And so I just wanted to speak to that of there's a both and for that, and like, just acknowledging that it's a big, it's a big task and in one day, if you need to be more focused on your own emotional regulation and just, like, really more tuning into yourself and what you need, so that you can show up whole maybe the next day and tune in a little bit more to your, to your kids needs the next day.
That's all right. I mean, and I'm not talking about of course neglect or anything like that. I'm just talking about like if there's a guilt story going on your head of like, well how am I gonna, you know, help myself? And then also read these articles about what my kids are supposed to be doing. Like, you don't have to do it all at once and like that idea of compassion, right? Of, of accepting where you are and what you're capable of and for that day or that hour.
Laura: Absolutely. And you know, I know that probably parents are tired of hearing this phrase of putting your own oxygen mask on first, you know, but it's true, like we can't do anything for our kids if we're not taking good care of ourselves. We, the reason we feel like we are drained and run dry and run ragged is because we poor in without, you know, without filling ourselves. So thinking about about ourselves as a, as a well, that's kind of bubbling up and overflowing into others is really what I want. My family is thinking about and picturing when they are doing themselves and so having that, that well within themselves is so important.
Amanda: Yeah, I totally agree.
Laura: And, and you know, to, we've been focused a lot on mother's or the kind of the person who carried the child or the child or who was the primary caregiver of the infant because of course not all babies enter a family through birth., but, there's also the non, you know, primary care, non birthing partner to consider too. And the research is quite clear that,, you know, at least on dad's, which is where we have most of the data.
So data, you know, we haven't done not nearly enough work to incorporate,, you know, non heterosexual couples in this research, but the data on heterosexual couples is that dad's experience postpartum or perinatal mood disorders at a rate that's pretty similar to to their partners, to their birthing partners. And so that's something that like, does not get talked about nearly enough. And the support systems, of course, it's something that we need to be advocating for more support for moms.
But there are systems there, there's, you know, there's organizations that are attempting to raise awareness and that support culturally just isn't always there for dad., And unfortunately in heterosexual couples, dad, most dads primary support person who they go to for emotional support is there partner. And if their partner is taken out by a perinatal mood disorder, then that support person is gone for them. And so building a robust systems for dads is also really important. Yeah, the research on the way that men rely on their female partner is, is shocking and somewhat devastating to. So when we think about longevity and marriage, there is a net benefit to men being married.
They live longer married men live longer than their single counterparts, whereas women who are married live a shorter amount of time than their single counterparts. And there is an emotional toll on women and it doesn't ultimately benefit any of us, you know, because men often who lose their wives are bereft and and and struggle um to find emotional support because they kind of put all their eggs in one basket. and so I think really I just want to advocate for everybody who's listening to, you know, to understand that you're, you know, if you're married to a man, um he might not be okay to, you know, he might be struggling as well.
They go through hormonal changes as well. So the bonding hormones that flood our systems also flood. There's they have, you know, have very similar brain changes. they experience similar sleep deprivation, which causes brain changes to and yeah, so I would just love and lots of love and compassion for dads as well.
Amanda: Yeah, and I completely agree with everything that you just said and especially the, you know, the societal implications, the cultural implications, it's hurting all of us, right? It's not like, like it it just kind of sucks that that there's a net benefit for married men. It sucks for married women, but it also sucks for the men that like they're raised to culturally kind of push down their feelings and that it is not invited for them to process their feelings in. I mean going back to what we were talking about earlier, like none of us were really, I trained with the importance of processing feelings, I didn't understand that or learn that like literally like you should process your feelings.
I didn't learn that until I was 33 years old, I was two years ago and, and I'm a woman and so that is something that I think was even more available to me than maybe my husband for his friends or men in general and to me. I can really hold space for that and and be sad about that, like it's it's both and like I had going back to that, but I had a hard time I experienced, you know, para natal mood and anxiety disorder and I can also hold space for like my husband and his struggles. It doesn't mean that like I can only have space to feel bad about myself and maybe this goes back to the victim mentality that I naturally go to, but if anybody else can relate to that I just kind of wanted to speak to that that like it doesn't have to be one person or one group that we kind of, you know, feel sadness about or feel like they were given a disservice.
I think that we can collectively hold that space and be like, wow, okay, this is actually hurting all of us, impacting all of us and what can we do, what can we do about it? You know, it just kind of starting with that acknowledgement, the acceptance of where we are now and then also challenging ourselves personally to do maybe one small thing in the direction of that goes counter to what was not serving us before. And so one thing um and I'll check with my husband after the fact because I haven't asked him, but I'll say it now and hopefully he'll be okay with me sharing this and if not, I'll edit it out. but one thing that he has been going through recently is he has reckoned with the fact that especially with the pandemic that has exacerbated every problem under the sun, right?
He has acknowledged that a lot of the relationships that he had that were, that were his support system has fallen to the wayside, and he absolutely was relying on me even more to be his support system and a lot of times I was not available and that left him feeling a lot of negative feelings and so he has proactively gone out of his way to reach out to, you know, his buddies and his male friends to say like I would like to, you know, talk more regularly, like hey, would it be all right with you when I'm going through a tough time, would it be okay to text you? Would it be okay to say like, hey, are you available for a call? And the amount of vulnerability that it took for him to do that is incredible.
Like I just want to acknowledge that., and so for any man, any spouse, any partner, really regardless of your gender, I am speaking to the male side of things more because that's, you know, my experience with my husband and then that's kind of more of my understanding, but just in general, like that is that is very difficult. That is not the norm. And thankfully his effort was received very well and I imagine I make up the story in my mind that that may have even been relieving for the guys that he reached out to
Laura: Absolutely!
Amanda: Wow. Like I could dang I could use that to like I'm glad that you reached out and those are some of the anecdotes that I've heard from him as a response to these, you know, efforts, but like that it was a challenge for him. That took effort. That took intentionality. Um and so like that's just another thing that I'll say is something you can add to your toolkit, but also don't want to belittle the the challenge of that and the courage and vulnerability that it would take to do that.
Laura: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, so much vulnerability. My husband has been having a kind of a similar awakening experience. And I do have his permission to talk about his experience. He over the winter read from the book Man Enough, by Justin Baldoni., and it really digs into the cultural issues and how they're harming men. how the way we view masculinity, the way we, you know, the way we treat our boys, the way we raise them to be, you know, you know, not emotional, not soft, you know, um, how much it harms everybody, just like you were saying, so that it was a great book for my husband to read.
And he has had to be very brave and very vulnerable in reaching out and building new relationships., and part of his awakening to kind of the emotional world is, is there's some grief for him now. He spent most of his life, you know, if we think about emotions on a spectrum, right? So there's, you know, the positive end of emotions where you have big joy and excitement and wonder and delight.
And then there's this negative side of the emotions where there's, you know, despair and grief and sadness and disappointment and frustration. You know, if we think about that range and you can't just cut off one end of the spectrum. Right? So if you dampen down the negative feelings, you also dampen down the positive feelings and he has just come to realize that he was living kind of a half life very kind of emotionally closed up and muted life, you know, and so he's starting to see the world and more vibrant emotional colors. and there's grief with that, that he's missed years of his kid's childhood. I'm not fully able to access the full range of human emotion. It's hard.
Amanda: Is it so hard? And thank you for sharing that and thank you for your husband to, for, you know, allowing you to kind of share that, because I think that this is this is exactly what we set out to do in this episode, and this conversation is like, talk about the stuff that not everybody brings up, the kind of stuff that's like under the surface that's brewing and then, and just bringing it into the light and speaking to what you said before, like that's how we dissipate shame. Just like, let's talk about it, let's bring it up. And the thing that I love about podcast and I imagine you might feel similarly is the intimate connection of like having someone, like, I'm in someone's ear, you're in someone's ear, like, that's like a conversation.
Yes. And so I don't take that responsibility lightly. And so I challenged myself to bring up hard topics and vulnerable topics for that reason of like, maybe in that setting someone hearing this will encourage them to to take one small step towards acceptance or challenging themselves or doing the next right thing. and or maybe they'll just feel seen or feel heard.
Laura: And not so alone. Yeah, thank you so much for this conversation. It was so good and so important.
Amanda: And 100% agree
Laura: Honestly, rather healing for for me to, it felt very good to be vulnerable.
Amanda: Yeah, I am so glad that you were open to accepting my invitation and I just, I love this conversation. So thank you.
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 um and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @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 to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this