Shownotes
Today on the podcast, I am interviewing Tracey Yokas, the author of Bloodlines: A Memoir of Harm and Healing. She is here to share her experience of navigating a teen mental health crisis with her own daughter, including the struggles and what she learned through the process that helped them both cope and heal.
You’ll Learn:
- The true cause of eating disorders (it goes much deeper than you might think)
- A mindset flip to help you navigate hard times
- Why addressing the behavior is not a long-term solution
- How to support yourself so you can show up for your child when they’re struggling
Today, 10 years later, Tracey’s daughter, Faith, is healthy, and they have a beautiful relationship. I think you’ll love this conversation about compassion, sitting with your child in the struggle, hope and much more.
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Prior to writing her recent book, Tracy earned her master's degree in counseling psychology, and she lives in Newbury Park, California with her family, her cats and her fish. And when she's not writing about mental health, she can be found playing with paint, glitter, and glue. She loves to bring people together through art in order to help women in their journey towards authenticity.
A Teen in Crisis
I’ve described Tracey’s book as a story about healing from grief. In this case, Tracey’s mom passed away suddenly. Her daughter, Faith, had been close to her grandmother, and her grief showed up in the form of eating disorder, self harm, depression and anxiety.
Faith’s first symptom appeared about three weeks after Tracey’s mom died. She suddenly wasn’t as hungry as she usually was. She began eating less, and that quickly escalated into not wanting to eat anything at all. Tracey knew pretty quickly that she was not consuming enough food to stay healthy. Faith also started doing self harm in the form of cutting.
Tracey describes the overall experience of this time as devastating. Their lives were “normal”. Then, it was like a switch was flipped and it no longer was. It was isolating, terrifying, as if the rug had been pulled out from under their feet.
Tracey withdrew from her friends and activities and committed (to an unhealthy degree) to her daughter’s recovery. She did the research, read the books, went to the appointments - did everything she could to try to solve the problem.
She now sees that she was operating under a lot of false assumptions about what she was supposed to do and how she was supposed to be. And wounds from earlier in her own life were exacerbated by this perceived loss of control over her family’s well being.
There were so many pieces that came together to heal Faith, Tracey and the rest of their family, including residential treatment, individual, couple and family therapy. Tracey says that, for them, learning to truly understand compassion between human beings was a “hugely life changing” part of the process.
Unhealthy Coping Strategies
As we talk about so often on this podcast, all behavior is a strategy to communicate, cope, or change our circumstance. Tracey’s story is no different.
Through this crisis, she learned that eating disorders are really about someone struggling in their own life with powerlessness, control issues and low self esteem. It’s much deeper and more complicated than wanting to look thinner. In the book, she says, “Eating disorders are an unhealthy attempt to change low self esteem, and their coping mechanism for being terrified of not measuring up.”
Often, eating disorder and self harm behaviors like cutting go hand-in-hand. You might see someone get into healthier eating habits, but then the cutting resurfaces, or vice versa. It’s an attempt to replace one coping strategy with another. Symptoms keep popping up because there is a deeper root cause that hasn’t been healed.
When you understand that disordered eating, self harm or other symptoms are a strategy for something that's going on inside, you can realize that it's not against you as the parent. It's not personal. It's not because you did something wrong.
Tracey shares that, looking back, she thinks it did her family a disservice to be so hyper-focused on the behavior. This is easy to do because the behavior is what you see. It is what scares and overwhelms you. But it’s also easy to get lost in the behavior (the symptom) and lose sight of compassion for the deeper struggle.
Navigating a Teen Mental Health Crisis
When Tracey saw her daughter suffering in this way, she says she hit an emotional rock bottom. The baggage she’d been carrying with her throughout her life came to the surface. She realized that she couldn’t actually control anyone but herself.
As a mom, you’re going to want to eliminate the pain for your child. You want to fix things for them. But you can only actually do your own work.
Tracey breaks down her healing journey into three parts: self care, self trust and self love.
Self care. Tracey shares that for nearly two years, she was missing the point that her therapist was asking her to do the same thing that she wanted her daughter to do - take better care of herself.
She thought that everybody else had to be okay first. But she learned that , while she needed to facilitate the best treatment she could for her daughter, she also had a responsibility to take care of herself and heal herself.
Tracey believes self care is totally misunderstood by many people. It’s not just about the external stuff. It really comes down to understanding our own patterns, tendencies and coping mechanisms, and choosing strategies that move us toward connection rather than away from it.
Her own experience of self care looked like a return to a creative practice. She says, “I could never have imagined where, ultimately, creativity would lead me and all the benefits I would get from it.”
Self trust. When you don’t trust yourself, you don’t have an inner guide for making decisions in your life. When things don’t go the way you envisioned, what will you draw from?
Tracy says self trust is about staying connected to yourself, being okay with each step of the process and trusting the reasons behind your decisions.
Self love. This one is really hard, especially if you haven’t had a loving relationship with yourself in the past. But when we heal, our kids inevitably heal because we interact with them differently. I love what
Moving Toward Compassion
Tracey writes in her book about becoming a compassionate witness of Faith and of her pain and struggle:
Instead of reacting in fear, despair, and confusion, now, at least on the outside, I could respond differently. Calmness, concerted, and focused had required discussion with the therapists, input from Faith, trial and error, and lots of practice for which life afforded me opportunity.
Over time, I improved. I learned to sit on the floor, breathe, remain quiet and very still, preventing my own body and my own emotions from being hijacked.
I could witness Faith's pain without trying (at least most of the time) to intervene or to fix. Without floating away on waves of my own anxiety. Without being swept up in currents of fear.
This is really what compassion looks like. Sitting on the floor, breathing. This is what your kid needs.
Tracey goes on to write: Sweaty and spent, Faith would calm down because she would always eventually calm down. The big feeling cycle always ends. You're just there to be a witness. The problem solving, dealing with the behavior, talking about it can all wait until later.
I am so thankful to Tracey for writing this beautiful and sharing her story with us on the podcast. She is a wonderful example of what becoming a calm mama is all about.
If you or your child are struggling, please reach out to get the support you need. Get in touch with a therapist, Tracey, me or a trusted family member or friend. You are not alone.
Connect with Tracey Yokas:
- Read the book: Bloodlines: A Memoir of Harm and Healing
- Visit Tracey’s website to learn more about her work
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Follow Tracey on Instagram and
Transcripts
Welcome back to become a calm mama. Today on the
Speaker:podcast, I am interviewing Tracy Yocus,
Speaker:who is the author of a memoir called bloodlines,
Speaker:a memoir of harm and healing. And on the
Speaker:podcast, we talk about her journey as a mother of
Speaker:a teenager who went through a mental health
Speaker:crisis, particularly dealing with eating disorders and self
Speaker:harm in terms of cutting. And Tracy so
Speaker:beautifully describes in her book and on this podcast sort
Speaker:of what the struggle was, like, what how hard it is to have a
Speaker:child going through a mental health crisis, and then some of the things that
Speaker:she learned through the process that helped her cope and
Speaker:heal and have, her daughter heal as well.
Speaker:Now, this memoir is written 10 years later, and so
Speaker:her daughter is healthy and and they have a beautiful
Speaker:relationship, and her daughter gives her permission to share her story. I
Speaker:wanted to first just let you know that if this
Speaker:episode might be difficult for you to hear about these
Speaker:things or it might if it might scare you to think about
Speaker:a teenager going through something hard, like, maybe you have a 4 year old and
Speaker:you already have some anxiety about them when they're teenagers, you don't have to listen
Speaker:to this episode. Like, you could just skip it. But if you have a a
Speaker:daughter or a son who has some mental health issues and
Speaker:you are struggling with them and you you're worried about them or
Speaker:you're in any sort of area of your life or your kids,
Speaker:either they have a medical crisis or they have a health mental health crisis,
Speaker:then this episode is gonna be really, really helpful for
Speaker:you. I'm gonna just tell you a little bit about Tracy, and then we're gonna
Speaker:hop right into the episode. Like I said, Tracy Yocas is the
Speaker:author of Bloodlines, a memoir of harm and healing. The book came out
Speaker:this past year. Tracy earned her master's degree in counseling
Speaker:psychology, and she lives in Newbury Park near me with her
Speaker:family, her cats, and her fish. And when she's not writing about
Speaker:mental health, she can be found with playing with paint,
Speaker:glitter, and glue. She loves to bring
Speaker:people together through art in order to help
Speaker:women in their journey towards authenticity. And she
Speaker:creates safe spaces where art words and vulnerability
Speaker:meet. I think you will love this episode with her. You're gonna
Speaker:love listening to her and learning more about her journey.
Speaker:Yeah. We talk about how important compassion is and
Speaker:what it's really truly like to sit in a big feeling
Speaker:cycle when your child is really struggling and how to be that
Speaker:compassionate witness that we always talk about on this podcast. So without
Speaker:further ado, let's get into it.
Speaker:Alright. I am so excited to introduce to you all
Speaker:Tracy Yocus. I introduced her in our, intro.
Speaker:And so welcome, Tracy. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm very
Speaker:excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah. I was just
Speaker:telling you that we just met, and it's so great. Like, you know, so nice
Speaker:to meet you. And I was saying to you that I loved your book. If
Speaker:you could just tell us a little bit about your book, the title,
Speaker:and kinda share a little bit about it, and then we'll get into, like, all
Speaker:the part that I loved and the nitty gritty of it all. Oh, the juicy
Speaker:goodness. Yes. Thank you. So the name of the book is Bloodlines, a
Speaker:memoir of harm and healing. I like to start out by saying
Speaker:2 things. 1 is it took me over a decade to write it, so it
Speaker:was definitely a labor of love. And I didn't
Speaker:realize as I was going through the process, but it was a huge component.
Speaker:Coming back to the page over and over and over again was a huge component
Speaker:in my own healing journey, so I just like to set the stage
Speaker:with that. And I also like to say that I feel
Speaker:like it should be obvious, but it's not in today's day and age that I
Speaker:have my family's permission. We are all, in our own ways,
Speaker:very passionate advocates for talking about mental health,
Speaker:mental illness, recovery. So I just like people to know
Speaker:right off the bat that, yes, I had my family's permission
Speaker:to tell our story. Yeah. Right. Because the book is
Speaker:a very intimate journey into kind
Speaker:of a year in your life when you were handling or dealing with a
Speaker:mental health crisis with your teenage daughter, Faith, at
Speaker:the time she was in 8th grade. Yeah? Like, 13 to
Speaker:14? Correct. It was the summer. My mom passed away
Speaker:suddenly the summer before her 8th grade year. So it started a little
Speaker:before that, but then, yes, through that and slightly beyond.
Speaker:Yeah. And and now she you know, a decade later, she's like a grown
Speaker:adult, and so we can all feel very hopeful that the things that
Speaker:you learned through that experience and what faith learned and how you grew together
Speaker:really set you all up for, you know, the the future. Of course,
Speaker:it's not perfect. None of us have a perfect, you know,
Speaker:Mary Poppins world. We're all dealing with things, but you both
Speaker:created and your husband too a foundation for having these deeper,
Speaker:meaningful, connected conversations, and how to support each other, and
Speaker:all the tools and stuff we're gonna get into. So beautiful. Percent.
Speaker:Yeah. Thank you. So, I was
Speaker:kinda summarizing that the book is about, you
Speaker:know, healing from grief, which
Speaker:I do really think about grief in a very specific way. It's not
Speaker:just sadness. It's like a loss of something that you cannot get
Speaker:back. And then this case, it was your your mom passing away
Speaker:suddenly like you said. So you're in your grief process. Your daughter
Speaker:was close to her, so you're both kind of experiencing grief.
Speaker:And then generational trauma, so your own kind
Speaker:of childhood woundedness and whatever you brought to parenting,
Speaker:which we all do. And then how that
Speaker:affected faith and what kinda showed up for her was this eating disorder,
Speaker:self harm, depression, anxiety. So it is,
Speaker:like, precipitating things coming into the to the soup
Speaker:and then what, you know, what that journey looked like for faith.
Speaker:So we're gonna talk a lot about kind of your experience
Speaker:having a child go through a mental
Speaker:health crisis, in particular, her eating
Speaker:disorder and and self harm. So I wondered if you could just start by
Speaker:talking to us about what you learned about eating disorders
Speaker:and, and self harm in that process.
Speaker:Because for a lot of us, you know, if you haven't dealt with that yourself
Speaker:or had a family member, you're thrown in. You don't even know what
Speaker:you don't know what you don't know at that time. Mhmm.
Speaker:Exactly. Yeah. And well, thank you for that intro. That
Speaker:covered a lot of ground. Yes. So that
Speaker:was her first symptom about 3 weeks after my mom passed
Speaker:away as you eloquently pointed out. And just anecdotally,
Speaker:the more of these conversations I have, the more often I hear the same
Speaker:story that the young person experienced the loss
Speaker:of someone significant in their life, and that precipitated a much
Speaker:more significant mental health crisis.
Speaker:So I hope that whoever studies this sort of
Speaker:thing, is really doing some more
Speaker:in-depth work around that because it feels to me and, again,
Speaker:I am, not a clinician. I do have a master's degree in
Speaker:counseling psychology, which I had before my daughter became ill, which back
Speaker:then was just one more thing I used to punish myself for somehow
Speaker:being unable to prevent, you know, this from happening to us.
Speaker:But, I really think there's a a piece of something missing there. I
Speaker:don't know what it is. I don't pretend to know what it is, but something
Speaker:about this idea of loss at that critical phase
Speaker:in our development in those teen years
Speaker:that we're we're missing about how to help our kids with that experience.
Speaker:But that aside, yes, I mean, she woke up one day, and she just
Speaker:suddenly wasn't, you know, as hungry as she was, and she began eating
Speaker:less. But that very quickly escalated
Speaker:into not really wanting to eat anything at all. And I knew
Speaker:quickly, so it was not something that took months months months to identify.
Speaker:I knew pretty quickly that she was not consuming
Speaker:enough food to stay healthy through puberty, and she was an athlete and all the
Speaker:things. So we went to visit the pediatrician
Speaker:who, for the first visit, was, you know, you need a little more
Speaker:nutrition. Let's try this, that, and the other, and me patting myself on my
Speaker:back because, you know, yeah. That's good mothering. I didn't, you know, do
Speaker:all whatever. So, I mean, obviously, we know
Speaker:already it that did not help, and so it was a kind of a steady
Speaker:decline. So what I learned about any dis disorders,
Speaker:which I hope people really hear this because I
Speaker:think we're so skewed in
Speaker:this culture about the female form and food
Speaker:and weight and body image. And, you
Speaker:know, the idea that thinness has been so popularized and is so
Speaker:important, it can be easily missed by people who don't have experience with these
Speaker:sorts of things that this is a serious mental illness. It is a real
Speaker:illness. It's not someone who's just vain, and this was
Speaker:reinforced as we got into the treatment with her first therapist
Speaker:and nutritionist. Eating disorders are not
Speaker:about retaliation to us as parents. They
Speaker:are really about someone struggling in their own
Speaker:life with powerlessness and control issues and
Speaker:someone who really has low self esteem.
Speaker:And I know that was true in my own case in my childhood, which I
Speaker:try to chronicle in the book, my own journey and the patterns in
Speaker:my family early on with weight, food, and body image issues.
Speaker:And I didn't really overlay that with myself until much
Speaker:later down the line. But these are
Speaker:not ways that were just like, you know, oh,
Speaker:I'm you know, I just wanna look better, so I'm
Speaker:gonna not eat at all. I mean, it's much more complicated than that. Yes. For
Speaker:sure. I loved it in your book. You said,
Speaker:eating disorders are an unhealthy attempt to change low self
Speaker:esteem, and their coping mechanism for being terrified
Speaker:of not measuring up. And I have shared on
Speaker:this podcast about my own struggle. I am in recovery for eating
Speaker:disorder, and it it really was like to
Speaker:hear see one sentence like an unhealthy attempt to change low self
Speaker:esteem and then a coping mechanism. And one thing we talk about
Speaker:on this podcast a a lot is that all
Speaker:behavior is a strategy to communicate,
Speaker:cope, or change our circumstance. And
Speaker:when we go into you you we're gonna wrap up the podcast later
Speaker:about talking about compassion. But when you really
Speaker:deeply understand that the it's a strategy
Speaker:for something that's going on inside, even if it's an eating disorder
Speaker:or self harm, and it's not against you, it's not personal, it's not
Speaker:because you did something wrong, It's just where they're
Speaker:at. That's their way that they have found to relieve the
Speaker:pressure or, you know, get control back or or
Speaker:maybe control the way they look or or the way they appear.
Speaker:And, yeah, just really deeply
Speaker:understanding that I think is so helpful for for anyone who's
Speaker:struggling with themselves even like, oh, I'm in restrictive dieting or I'm
Speaker:overeating or whatever it is because I don't feel good inside.
Speaker:Not because I have, I don't know, I'm lazy or
Speaker:I'm not I don't know whatever negative self talk we have.
Speaker:How are eating disorders and self harm tied
Speaker:together? Because I do see this in my practice a lot with young
Speaker:women, young girls, that it kinda go together. And I I you
Speaker:really articulate that in the book, and I wondered if you could share about that.
Speaker:Well, I appreciate that. I mean, that was something that I learned through doing
Speaker:my own research. So why that is true, I don't
Speaker:really know. I mean, it's just been proven in study and study and
Speaker:study after study that it is true. And what I
Speaker:am trying to do in the book, which is not a clinical
Speaker:way of describing these things, but is to broaden the perspective because
Speaker:we all have unhealthy coping coping mechanisms.
Speaker:They might not be classically identified as self harm the
Speaker:way we mean it when we're talking about what happened in my family
Speaker:situation or when we're talking about it in a clinical setting, but
Speaker:I feel that way that many of us, most of
Speaker:us, all of us, use some form of cope
Speaker:coping mechanisms sometimes that could be
Speaker:considered self harming. So for me Overeating. I mean,
Speaker:overworking, over shopping, like, you know, not
Speaker:balancing my own budget, spending money when I don't have it, or Drinking
Speaker:an entire bottle of wine every night. Yes. Exactly. Self flagellating
Speaker:even is self harm. Right? If I if I look good and I got it
Speaker:all together and I'm super mom, but then deep down, I'm always just
Speaker:criticizing. Like, you talk about that. You're yourself self out flagellating.
Speaker:That's self harm. Right? Like, we're hurting ourselves. And so, yes, all
Speaker:of these are strategies. I do like one thing that you pointed out in the
Speaker:book was that and I think this is really helpful if someone has
Speaker:a a child who's kind of in the self harm
Speaker:cutting, you know, essentially we're talking about cutting,
Speaker:and also restrictive dieting or
Speaker:overeating or bulimia. That as one as
Speaker:one gets kind of, settled, like, the if you've like,
Speaker:okay, I'm eating well and I'm not I'm not overeating, I'm not undereating,
Speaker:There you'll see the coping I mean, the cutting come back. And then
Speaker:cutting declines, and you might see the anorexia, or the
Speaker:bulimia, or the restrictive dieting come back. And I was
Speaker:like, woah, those are really tethered. And,
Speaker:it's like when you lose one coping strategy,
Speaker:sometimes you just replace it with another harming
Speaker:one. And, like, until you really replace all, like, both of
Speaker:them with new strategies, you might see this back and
Speaker:forth. And, you know, as a parent, you're like, we've already
Speaker:dealt with that one, and then it's back. Like, I I, yeah,
Speaker:wondered how much you saw that kind of back and forth. Well,
Speaker:100%. And, I mean, that was the way that one of
Speaker:the, women who ran one of the clinics that my
Speaker:daughter attended described it as the whack a mole. You know, as soon as
Speaker:you get one symptom down, something else pops up, and then you're working on that
Speaker:one. Something else pops up. You know? And that's exactly
Speaker:what our experience was like. And, you know, you're also talking
Speaker:about teenagers, so there's already, like, the
Speaker:whole teen aspect of things that is chaotic in and of
Speaker:itself. And, again, I'm gonna say this. I might sound like a
Speaker:broken record by the time we're done, but it's like, we
Speaker:all do that. Yeah. So it maybe is more
Speaker:certainly more dramatic when the behaviors are endangering
Speaker:someone someone's life. That is something that was very true
Speaker:in our circumstance for my daughter, and, especially,
Speaker:self harming has an addictive quality to it so that
Speaker:the person needs to engage in more of it to feel the same internal
Speaker:relief. And, again, I just wanna say the reason
Speaker:I wanted to be so open and vulnerable about this with
Speaker:our story is because, first of all, of how many people are
Speaker:experiencing things similar to what we are going through. We
Speaker:know, especially post pandemic, all the metrics are headed in the wrong direction.
Speaker:So we just have to start talking about this stuff. But it's also
Speaker:because if we take just a slightly wider
Speaker:view, I mean, we all have the tendency to judge, and,
Speaker:like, we're just gonna be honest about it. Like, people listening to this might be
Speaker:like, oh my god. That's so this, that, and the other. But if we just
Speaker:broaden out a little bit, it's really not that different than so many
Speaker:things that any of us engage in when we're not feeling great about
Speaker:ourselves. So and I'll be the first person to say me. I
Speaker:mean, I did not my own coping skills were
Speaker:not great at this time. So how did I cope? I gained £40
Speaker:over the 1st year. I drank a lot because
Speaker:my need to numb the pain of what we were experiencing
Speaker:was just so high. And, also, because of the
Speaker:type of past that I had, I had no other skills,
Speaker:but this is not conscious. Right? I'm not I didn't sit down going, I'm going
Speaker:to Oklahoma. I'm gonna do to cope? I'm gonna eat and drink. Yeah.
Speaker:No. I mean you know? But because of my past and the
Speaker:issues that I didn't even realize I was fully grappling with,
Speaker:I didn't have other healthier ways to deal with the pain
Speaker:that I was experiencing and feeling so powerless to help my
Speaker:child. So, again, I I'm just trying
Speaker:to show we're, you know, normal people sitting here. We're not you know,
Speaker:whatever, and yet these things can happen. They can happen to
Speaker:anyone. So if you are listening and this is your situation right
Speaker:now, I just want you to know that you are not alone.
Speaker:Yeah. It's so good. I think I was laughing about it's not
Speaker:conscious until it is, then when you become really aware of your
Speaker:strategy, then they lose a little bit of the, like,
Speaker:effectiveness. You know, I'm like, my new one of my strategies
Speaker:right now is, I do a little, like, boredom
Speaker:online shopping. And I can I I there's, like, a certain period
Speaker:of time during the week when I think I'm a little restless, a little and
Speaker:I, like, find myself buying stupid stuff? And I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker:doing it. Like, it must mean that I have some
Speaker:unmet need or something. So even, like,
Speaker:looking on the outside, you would be like, well, that's such a terrible habit. It's
Speaker:not. Sometimes we do harming 1, sometimes we don't. But we
Speaker:the more aware we are of why we're doing it and what's happening.
Speaker:And I love that you said symptom. I think it's so
Speaker:beautiful to think about these behaviors, especially in a mental
Speaker:health crisis like this as a symptom
Speaker:because, like, in the medical world, right, a symptom is
Speaker:because there's a root cause. And so, yeah, if you just
Speaker:keep trying to prevent this symptom from happening or
Speaker:prevent this behavior, we're gonna do abstinence over here and we're gonna, you
Speaker:know, take all the sharps, which you need to do. But also,
Speaker:your daughter had to kinda get to the bottom of where she was coming
Speaker:from, what was going on inside, and learn that self inquiry
Speaker:and that root the root issues. And that's what we
Speaker:all have to do. Right. I agree. And I think, you know, that that
Speaker:was part of our journey was just enough time going
Speaker:by that she had the work that she was doing in her own
Speaker:therapy and in treatment and all the steps that we took
Speaker:to start to mature a little bit and explore what was going on
Speaker:in her. And I think, you know, that's such an important point
Speaker:because a huge part of this book, and we'll probably touch on
Speaker:it again, but is we can only actually do
Speaker:our own work. So as parents, of
Speaker:course, especially as moms, we want to fix,
Speaker:we want to eliminate the pain. I mean, that's a normal
Speaker:thing to feel, especially then we want the behaviors to stop
Speaker:because the behaviors are what we see. They're what we're experiencing.
Speaker:So, you know, that's chaos every day. That's impacting
Speaker:everybody in the family. That's all the
Speaker:angst and everything going on, and there's very little
Speaker:reprieve from that when you're actually in the throes
Speaker:of, you know, the the situation in full force.
Speaker:But, ultimately, I think it did us a disservice, and I
Speaker:again, this is not something I could have identified at the time, but it did
Speaker:us a disservice to be so hyper focused on the
Speaker:behavior. It's not like we didn't know there was more going on, but, again,
Speaker:because the behavior is what you see, the behavior is what you experience,
Speaker:the behavior is what scares you, the behavior is what
Speaker:overwhelms you, it gets very easy to
Speaker:get lost in that aspect of it, and that's where we
Speaker:can lose our compassion if we even know how to have
Speaker:it in the first place. It just becomes very complicated
Speaker:when you're facing these things day in and day out and day
Speaker:in and day out. Yeah. Yeah. I think we think,
Speaker:oh, if we can get them to just stop, like, just eat a banana, and
Speaker:everything will be okay. Right. I think there was, like, one part in your book
Speaker:where, like, she ate a banana and you're like, okay. And, you know
Speaker:but then you find that there she's cutting again or you know? And it's
Speaker:just you know? It can be so
Speaker:difficult to have those behaviors, and we're they're
Speaker:scary. Right? They're like health her her health, her well-being,
Speaker:her physical body was, like, in danger. And so as a mom, it's
Speaker:very scary, of course. It's one thing if
Speaker:you have, like, a perfectionist kid who's just really obsessed with their homework, you're like,
Speaker:that's not healthy, but, like, it's okay. But, like, it's
Speaker:okay. Like, college, here we come. Yeah. Like,
Speaker:it won't hurt them that much. I mean, we but we are still worried. But
Speaker:when you see somebody hurting their body, it could be you're like, just stop doing
Speaker:that, please. And she's like, I can't, and it's feels
Speaker:so difficult. You're both kind of at odds. I
Speaker:wanted to get into because I have
Speaker:coached a lot of people through my career that have gone
Speaker:through these mental health crisis with their teens or their even their younger
Speaker:kids or their young adults. And I wasn't real
Speaker:as I was reading your book, really kind of, like, the visceral
Speaker:experience of how all encompassing it is and the toll of it.
Speaker:And I wanted you to talk a little bit about it so that it can
Speaker:normalize for those who are going through it. I love you
Speaker:said everyone else went about their lives.
Speaker:We went to appointments. If that doesn't
Speaker:summarize what it's like when you have a kid in crisis, I don't know what
Speaker:else does. It's like yeah. So I wanted you to
Speaker:tell us a little bit more about, like, what that was like to
Speaker:lose sort of, I don't know, time and all
Speaker:and all that. Yeah. What was it like to
Speaker:experience the that loss? Yeah. I mean, the short answer is
Speaker:devastating. You know? I mean, whatever normal
Speaker:means, you know, whatever that is, our lives were normal.
Speaker:And then literally almost like the flip of a switch, they
Speaker:know it no longer was. And so that looked
Speaker:different over the course of time, but the ultimate
Speaker:fact remained the same that we had been going about our lives, and
Speaker:my daughter had her life and her thing and my husband and I when we're
Speaker:you know? And then we didn't. And it is hard
Speaker:to describe to someone who has had no experience with
Speaker:something like this, how isolating it is, how
Speaker:terrifying. I mean, I think, of course, when you someone
Speaker:says something on the surface, oh, yeah. That must be really hard. But
Speaker:unless you've actually experienced what it means to have
Speaker:your the rug pulled from under your feet relative to every
Speaker:part of your life, So withdrawing from my own friends,
Speaker:withdrawing from my own activities,
Speaker:I was so
Speaker:committed in a very unhealthy way, I wanna say.
Speaker:Again, I didn't understand it this way at the time. It was just what I
Speaker:needed to do. I'm gonna solve this. I'm gonna get on this. I'm gonna do
Speaker:the research, read the books, learn the thing, solve the problem,
Speaker:and that is a product of sort of
Speaker:the my again, my childhood and the kind of enmeshed
Speaker:and overidentified relationships that I experienced on one
Speaker:hand. And so you
Speaker:mom mom world a little bit. There I mean, I wanna, like people
Speaker:will listen to this podcast because they're like, I want solutions. I wanna have to,
Speaker:like, figure out how to parent my kid. Right? Like, there's this
Speaker:almost misbelief that if we had more information,
Speaker:it would be okay or something. Like, we could find the right
Speaker:blankety blank. So, yeah, it's like your own trauma and your own
Speaker:background and hyper productivity and solving your problems and things like that,
Speaker:coping. But then also there's a fallacy in in
Speaker:mom world, I think, that yeah. 100%.
Speaker:I mean, I completely I could not agree with you anymore. 100%.
Speaker:I mean, it's just an entire misunderstanding.
Speaker:And as you already said, we're gonna get to self care again later. But, like,
Speaker:what is the point of self care and what you know, why do we,
Speaker:as moms, actually do need to put ourselves first and and
Speaker:just let go of the myth that that means we're selfish or fill in the
Speaker:word that's right for you? All the all the things that are tied up in
Speaker:that, which is a lot. But 100%, I mean, I was
Speaker:operating under a bunch of false assumptions about what I was
Speaker:supposed to do and how I was supposed to be and then having
Speaker:those core wounding from my way, way, way, way, way, way back
Speaker:of not being good enough and all of that stuff being
Speaker:100% ignited and exacerbated
Speaker:because of the loss of control over my
Speaker:family's well-being. That's a fallacy. Of course, I actually had no control,
Speaker:but I didn't really know that. You had no control in the beginning, and you
Speaker:so you didn't really lose anything, but the perception that you lost it, that you
Speaker:had to get it back. Yeah. Uh-huh. Exactly. Exactly. Which was, you know,
Speaker:large part of my journey was actually
Speaker:changing my thinking on things. Mhmm. So it's not
Speaker:like, you know, it's it's not a Cheryl Strayed book where I
Speaker:walked, you know, 1500 miles, and suddenly, I'm like a new person. I mean,
Speaker:I emotionally walked probably 1500 miles, but you know what I'm saying. I
Speaker:do. Yes. I mean, we just we don't even know the baggage a lot
Speaker:of the time that we carry with us because we're conditioned
Speaker:before we have thoughts and words and, you know,
Speaker:we're going back to really old business, and we just know what we
Speaker:know, and we don't know what we don't know. And when it comes to
Speaker:this kind of stuff, until there's a reason, we don't even question
Speaker:any of that. So it was like I didn't have a reason to
Speaker:question, to this degree. Like, I had
Speaker:had relationships, friendships particularly,
Speaker:not pan out time and time again, and that was very painful. But
Speaker:until it was my daughter, till the suffering
Speaker:was so extreme, and the person I
Speaker:love most in the entire world far more than I loved
Speaker:myself was suffering, and there was nothing I
Speaker:could do about it that I hit my emotional rock bottom and
Speaker:realized I I can't go on like this.
Speaker:Like, my work is the only work I can actually do, and
Speaker:I need to start doing it. Yeah. And I do
Speaker:wanna clarify for anyone listening, including us,
Speaker:because we have a lot of agency. We actually
Speaker:do. We have a lot of influence over our kids and our family.
Speaker:But we don't need to change the circumstance
Speaker:to feel better. And I think we get stuck on, like, once I can
Speaker:solve this problem, quote, unquote, problem that my child is having,
Speaker:then I'll feel better or then we'll be okay. And it kind of is
Speaker:flip. It's like, let me get be okay in this
Speaker:circumstance and figure out how to come to peace, which
Speaker:is actually just such a mind fuck to say, like, let me get to let
Speaker:me come to peace with my child arming themselves and starving. Like,
Speaker:that it that's so counterintuitive, but it
Speaker:actually is a big part of your journey was sort of getting to a
Speaker:place of, I really can't fix, quote,
Speaker:unquote, fix, nor is it my job to fix faith, your
Speaker:daughter's name. And, you know, so I've gotta figure out
Speaker:something else. And you started to pivot and grow inside
Speaker:of yourselves and and heal. And you're, you know, the a memoir of harm and
Speaker:healing is really your story more than it
Speaker:is Faye's, like, her memoir is gonna be different
Speaker:when she writes her story. 100%. Yeah. You're telling
Speaker:your journey in this book of, like, what you were
Speaker:working on with your therapist and what you were learning by going to, you know,
Speaker:whatever parent ed stuff and all that.
Speaker:So if I before we go there, I wanna talk all about what you learned
Speaker:and, like, the the things that you shifted. I just wanna,
Speaker:like, put a pin right where we were just were because it really
Speaker:is hard. That period of time, it was, like,
Speaker:October to you know, really
Speaker:till the end of the till the next school year, start the whole school year,
Speaker:that, you know, people are going you had to cancel the 8th grade trip.
Speaker:She didn't get to go to DC. You know, your holidays were
Speaker:wonky. You didn't get Thanksgiving was kind of a shit show. Like, it just was
Speaker:like though that granular
Speaker:experience of it being so
Speaker:odd and off, and, like, everyone's, like, what are you doing for summer? Are you
Speaker:going to summer camp? And you're, like, we're going to residential.
Speaker:Like, I just I just feel
Speaker:for you in that period of your life and any mom who's going through that.
Speaker:It just it's like you feel like you don't belong in the mom world
Speaker:anymore or something like that, or as your family is broken.
Speaker:And yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, if you
Speaker:feel like I mean, what you just described is a perfect
Speaker:reason why people isolate. Because, you know, why are
Speaker:you gonna wanna go out to coffee with your friends if they're gonna be talking
Speaker:about dress shopping for prom or, you know, all the
Speaker:things, like like you said, DC, when none of
Speaker:that is within your realm of possibility?
Speaker:So you already are terrified and exhausted
Speaker:and overwhelmed and all the things, and then you, of course, are gonna
Speaker:withdraw from your life because it seems like there's
Speaker:nothing you have nothing to say. There's nothing that you can
Speaker:add to those conversations, and you don't wanna hear those conversations because
Speaker:your child isn't able to participate in any of those activities.
Speaker:So why would you wanna be present to listen to people talking about how
Speaker:great x, y, or z is? So on one hand,
Speaker:it makes complete sense to withdraw from your
Speaker:own life and to withdraw from activities and even things
Speaker:that maybe don't involve, like, your normal school mom
Speaker:friends or whatever, but, like, everybody's going about their lives and you're
Speaker:not. The other side of that coin, though, is
Speaker:that the isolation is,
Speaker:a vicious cycle, I guess, I wanna say. So you're
Speaker:feeling, at least I did, I only speak for myself, feeling
Speaker:so bad because of, again, my some of
Speaker:my skewed thinking about what I was supposed to be doing and what I did
Speaker:could control and what I couldn't and all the things that that
Speaker:exacerbated within me. So that pulled me further and
Speaker:further and further away. Yes. So
Speaker:Yes. You you isolate because you can't relate or you don't feel
Speaker:relatable, but then you actually then are
Speaker:even more disconnected within yourself and others. So then you're like, well,
Speaker:something's really wrong with me, and I'm really now a mess. And you just yeah.
Speaker:You keep spiraling Right. Away from becomes a self
Speaker:fulfilling prophecy because, like, you don't wanna be around anyone.
Speaker:You're convinced no one wants you around, and, you know, this shit's hitting the
Speaker:fan everywhere, so why would you be around anyone anyway? And that
Speaker:was definitely a part even though she wasn't presenting it to me that
Speaker:way. Why my therapist kept asking me what I could do
Speaker:was, you know, encouraging me to figure out for
Speaker:myself what was something that would enable me to
Speaker:be less alone. And part of the process I I
Speaker:should say part of the process excuse me, part of
Speaker:the process requires us to not be alone in the
Speaker:sense of going to treatment. So as treatment escalated,
Speaker:so did our participation. It was required. So, when
Speaker:she ended up going to the eating disorder clinic, that's where there was
Speaker:couple therapy and family therapy, and I had gotten in my own
Speaker:individual therapy right away. So I don't wanna say
Speaker:we never were around other people because we
Speaker:were, you know, which can
Speaker:be validating in the treatment setting. I mean, that's why, you know, they do
Speaker:it. But it's it's it's hard to describe
Speaker:if you haven't been through it, but it's a a different quality of
Speaker:togetherness, and it's not the
Speaker:things that you used to do that gave you joy
Speaker:and peace and contentment and connection and
Speaker:all those things that you get by being in relationship and
Speaker:community with people doing joyful things, going
Speaker:to therapy in a family group setting is
Speaker:really not that joyful, especially starting out.
Speaker:So it's it's a it's a different granular quality that
Speaker:anyone who has had to do it will know exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker:Yeah. But it's a very it's based on a
Speaker:symptom almost. Right? It's based on a circumstance.
Speaker:Although we do create communities around what kids our kids go to this school or
Speaker:they're in this program or whatever it is. But we have these relationships
Speaker:either within that community or outside that community that aren't just
Speaker:about that. Like, we go to coffee or we go for a hike or, you
Speaker:know, we, like, get together for a book club, like, stuff like that. That's
Speaker:not let's talk about our child's, you know,
Speaker:painful behavior. It's you get to you
Speaker:have a little more freedom in what you're gonna discuss because it's the you know,
Speaker:the environment's different. Exactly. Mhmm. And, you know, it's
Speaker:it's not, not that it should be, but it you know,
Speaker:it's, again, it can be reassuring, but it's not, like,
Speaker:fun to hear other families talking
Speaker:about the struggles with their children. So it's not
Speaker:like, you know, you're going to family group therapy and you're gonna come out and
Speaker:you're gonna be, like, energized and be like, yeah. That was
Speaker:awesome. I mean, you know, that's just not what it's about. No.
Speaker:Yeah. Everybody is in pain and that's what you're talking about.
Speaker:So, yeah, I kinda yeah. I wanted just to really, you
Speaker:know, every it becomes all in con encompassing when you have a child
Speaker:who's in mental health crisis or ill. Like, I've also had clients who've
Speaker:had kids with illness, you know, and they're in the hospital all the time and
Speaker:they're, you know, their child has a lot of, physical problems,
Speaker:and that is really drains on your time, your money, your
Speaker:connectedness with others, your health, your marriage, just so much
Speaker:toll. So just to normalize that. And then, also,
Speaker:maybe give hope because that was a period of time,
Speaker:and it started to shift. It felt like in the book, like,
Speaker:almost as you shifted, she shifted. And,
Speaker:I do notice this in my work where and in
Speaker:myself. Like, if I'm struggling with
Speaker:one of my children's behaviors or I'm anxious or I have a lot of fear
Speaker:or I'm very angry or something like that, we're almost like in a
Speaker:we're stuck in it. And I sometimes
Speaker:call it, like, magic. It's, like, energetic. It's not. It's actually
Speaker:compassion, the but we shift and we
Speaker:kind of take care of ourselves, we understand our child in a
Speaker:different perspective, see it from their lens, then they can
Speaker:maybe see it from their own lens with loving care, you're
Speaker:caring for yourself. It becomes sort of that becomes yourself fulfilling
Speaker:prophecy of, we're okay.
Speaker:And then you become okay, and your child
Speaker:needs to believe that. I like how
Speaker:your therapist said to you, faith wants to see you taking
Speaker:care of yourself. Faith wants to know you're doing okay.
Speaker:And I think that's so important as a mom because we
Speaker:sometimes think I don't get to until my kids are okay.
Speaker:And there was a couple different lines on that in your book,
Speaker:how it's like you're only as happy as your unhappiest child or
Speaker:whatever it was. And it's like, no.
Speaker:That's actually not true. And I think of it this way, like,
Speaker:say my kid is struggling with something and they're sort
Speaker:of wondering if they're gonna be okay. And they're, like, see all
Speaker:the adults and all the parents staring at them, like, woah, that's, you
Speaker:know, you're a bad kid, you know, they're not doing their homework, or they're acting
Speaker:out, or whatever it is. And then they look at you, and
Speaker:you're like, oh, god. I don't know. It's real this is bad.
Speaker:Where do they get their hope from? They're like, even the person who loves me,
Speaker:knows me the best, cares about me the most is terrified. Like,
Speaker:I'm fucked. Like, I feel like a little kid even is like, I
Speaker:I obviously, I'm screwed because my mom even thinks I'm a disaster.
Speaker:And we shifting into, like,
Speaker:I'm okay. You're okay. We're gonna get through this.
Speaker:You're strong. That building that up and then your kid looks at
Speaker:you and sees that, I think that is is really, really
Speaker:important. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's
Speaker:a lot to say about that, and I I agree, again, agree with everything you
Speaker:said. But for sure, like, where I talk about this
Speaker:most in the book, anyway, at least I think, is in relation to
Speaker:the decision to, send our daughter to residential
Speaker:treatment. I mean, obviously, the message we
Speaker:were not trying to give her was that she was so broken
Speaker:that she couldn't even stay home anymore, Like, that the situation
Speaker:was so bad to your point that there was nothing
Speaker:we could do, and, like, we were so scared and all
Speaker:the things, except that was all sort of true only in the sense
Speaker:of there was nothing we could do, and
Speaker:we were all terrified that her self harming had escalated to the point
Speaker:where she could easily have accidentally died by suicide or
Speaker:maimed herself or something. But, you know
Speaker:yeah. So here we all are, this big system
Speaker:and all the people in it and the parents saying
Speaker:to her, like, this is so bad that this
Speaker:is what you have to do. Again, that's not the message we were
Speaker:trying to give her, but it makes sense that that would be especially
Speaker:someone who is struggling with mental health issues. So, you
Speaker:know, they're we're not talking about someone who's fully capable of being
Speaker:rational with, you know, their thinking. So
Speaker:it definitely compounds the problem. And
Speaker:I use the word system specifically not only in relation to, like, the
Speaker:medical system, but I I'm a family systems person in terms of a
Speaker:family as a system. So to your point, if one
Speaker:person in the system begins to change, then
Speaker:the whole is impacted because that's how it works. There's
Speaker:no choice but for that to be true. I do wanna be careful not
Speaker:to imply that somehow magically as
Speaker:soon as I was able to be more accepting, you
Speaker:know, the the sun came out and there was a rainbow
Speaker:and, you know, we lived happily ever after. We we are, in
Speaker:fact, living happily ever after to your point, not
Speaker:perfectly because no one is perfect, but it it wasn't
Speaker:it wasn't so immediately cause and effect. But And that's
Speaker:not the reason to do it either. Exactly. Oh, let me get better than my
Speaker:q it's like, no. Let me just figure out how to be okay.
Speaker:Right. Let me just this is the worst thing that could ever
Speaker:happen to me. I'm in the absolute hell and
Speaker:I still get to be a human and
Speaker:have all the scope of humanity, all the feelings. I get to
Speaker:feel joy. I get to feel sadness. I get to, you know,
Speaker:feel productive. Whatever it is that you want to, you know, feel,
Speaker:you get you're entitled to that.
Speaker:Yeah. So let's get into how what that what what that was like for
Speaker:you because I have kind of in my head looked at
Speaker:your healing journey in these three areas of
Speaker:the first was no. I don't know about first, but, like, for me with the
Speaker:way I read it, like, self care, like, you began to
Speaker:understand. Like, Kim was, like, Faith wants to know you're doing
Speaker:okay, and Faith wants to see you taking care of yourself,
Speaker:and you start to do some some things there. And then
Speaker:self trust and then self love. Like,
Speaker:self love for me is, like, self love, self acceptance, self kindness, self compassion. It's
Speaker:all like this one bucket of Yeah. This thing that is, like,
Speaker:basically self love. So wondered if you could speak
Speaker:to those things, like, how did you tap into deeper levels
Speaker:of self care? What did that look like? How did you tap into some
Speaker:self trust when, you know, everyone is like,
Speaker:send her here, do this. You should have this kind of therapy, this modality, you
Speaker:know. She should be home, or she shouldn't be home, whatever. What did you
Speaker:how did you find that? And then, like, this self love and self acceptance. So
Speaker:you can kinda like it could be a soup. You can talk about all of
Speaker:them. Yeah. Well yeah. So one thing I should say
Speaker:starting out, especially with my therapist, is she asked me that for over a
Speaker:year, maybe closer to 2 years, and I completely
Speaker:100% missed that she was asking me to do the same thing that
Speaker:we wanted my daughter to do, like, take better care
Speaker:of myself. I was so lost again in that
Speaker:low self esteem and that ruminating, all the thinking that I had
Speaker:relative to, again, being an outcropping of a particular
Speaker:type of childhood. And this is not to blame my parents. I
Speaker:mean, like, I have more compassion for my parents, myself,
Speaker:my daughter, everybody, than I ever had before now that I've been through this
Speaker:journey. So it's not about that, but it is about understanding what constrains
Speaker:us. So I was very constrained in that department and,
Speaker:yeah, had a completely skewed view that, you know,
Speaker:a good mother fully self sacrifices. Like,
Speaker:everybody else has to be okay first. And, you
Speaker:know, if you even get to put yourself on your list, you know, maybe you
Speaker:run out for a mani pedi, which, of course, I love, or a massage.
Speaker:That's all great. But yeah. So the first thing I had to do when I
Speaker:finally realized well into this process
Speaker:that I had hit my emotional rock bottom, that I actually couldn't
Speaker:control anyone else but myself, that actually
Speaker:seeing a representation of my low self esteem on a piece of
Speaker:paper in an in an exercise we did in residential treatment and
Speaker:seeing that my daughters closely resembled mine,
Speaker:like, that there were reasons for that and that that was
Speaker:my responsibility, that taking care of myself, healing
Speaker:myself, starting all of this work was my was where
Speaker:my response yes. I have to facilitate the best treatment I can for my daughter
Speaker:as a mom. That's my job, but I have to do my own work.
Speaker:And so when she asked me and I finally realized, oh, okay. I
Speaker:do have to start taking care of myself. I had to get
Speaker:quiet. Like, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what I
Speaker:needed. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know where to look.
Speaker:So I just I had never learned how to tap
Speaker:into my intuition or why that would even be important or what it
Speaker:even meant. So I just kinda got quiet for a
Speaker:little while, and the thing that came to me was a return to a
Speaker:creative practice because I had been a very creative child. And
Speaker:that was another part of me that I just kind of lopped off. It was
Speaker:like, if you can't make a living at it when you grow up, you know,
Speaker:it's a waste of time, and nothing could be further
Speaker:from the truth, first of all. And I could never
Speaker:have imagined where, ultimately, creativity would lead me and
Speaker:all the benefits I would get from it, but then it
Speaker:was just a matter of using it as a
Speaker:vehicle. Again, this re really wasn't as conscious as it is
Speaker:now, but tapping into my own
Speaker:self, creating, getting back into
Speaker:finding color and texture and words and
Speaker:listening to inspirational,
Speaker:speakers or reading an inspirational book and pulling parts of that
Speaker:out and applying that to myself and understanding
Speaker:bumping up against that same discomfort that if something
Speaker:doesn't look the way I want it to, so my perfectionistic tendencies
Speaker:and my want to control the process, and what do you do
Speaker:if something doesn't look the way you want and you wanna rip it to shreds
Speaker:and, you know, scream at the sky. It it sounds
Speaker:a little dramatic because it was back then, to be honest. Like,
Speaker:I did not really have any kind of relationship with
Speaker:with myself except demeaning and mean.
Speaker:And we can try to hide that as much as we want to from the
Speaker:world, and we can put on a smile, and we can do all the things.
Speaker:And, you know, we're we're ultimately, we're not actually
Speaker:fooling anybody, especially our kids. Not our cell ourselves or our
Speaker:kids. Yeah. For sure. Mhmm. Because that plays out in
Speaker:ways that are some ways that are obvious, in many ways that are not obvious.
Speaker:But, anyway, it was such an important part of
Speaker:beginning to understand what taking care of
Speaker:myself really meant, which I believe self care is totally
Speaker:misunderstood by people in general today. For me, yes, all
Speaker:the external stuff is great. I love all the external stuff, but I'm but
Speaker:self care in terms of understanding our own patterns,
Speaker:our own tendencies, how all of that self harming
Speaker:stuff that, you know, we do, the coping mechanisms
Speaker:that for me, you know, I'm trying to move away from the word negativity
Speaker:because coping is coping. And, like, we have coping mechanisms because
Speaker:they help us cope. Yeah. So but for me, like,
Speaker:the more unhealthy ones move us away from connection
Speaker:rather than towards it. And so why am I choosing those
Speaker:things? Why am I drawn to doing that? Why,
Speaker:you know, am I so convinced, not that I I no
Speaker:longer am, but that, you know, I'm such a shitty person. Like, I'm not I'm
Speaker:actually awesome. Like, where I'm resilient. I'm all these things.
Speaker:You know? So I guess what I'm trying to say is my
Speaker:relationship with all of these things, you know, you
Speaker:start where you start. You just start, and then it
Speaker:all morphs and changes over time. But self trust, I
Speaker:mean, yeah, I didn't have that.
Speaker:And I think when you can't trust
Speaker:yourself, you don't know what
Speaker:well you're drawing from in terms
Speaker:of how to make decisions or what's
Speaker:guiding you. So our values can fall into that. I didn't know I
Speaker:didn't have a conversation about my values until I was in my forties. Like,
Speaker:I didn't even know that was a thing, or, like, I could pick my own.
Speaker:You know? Like, my family never talked about that. It's family of origin.
Speaker:So just one more example. So why is self trust
Speaker:important? Well, particularly in the context in which you mentioned it.
Speaker:If we are having to make decisions, and we're basically on our own because don't
Speaker:let anybody fuel you. We're we're basically on our own Yeah. When
Speaker:our kids are ill for a number of reasons. How are
Speaker:we making those decisions, and what happens when they don't turn out the way
Speaker:we they hope we hope they will? Because, inevitably, that's
Speaker:gonna happen. So how do you stay connected to
Speaker:yourself and feeling, to your point, like, that sense of
Speaker:agency or, okay, what's next, And being okay
Speaker:with each step of the process is
Speaker:trusting the well from which you're making these decisions and
Speaker:how you feel about yourself in the process. And I totally,
Speaker:you know, didn't really understand that as we we were
Speaker:going through all of this. And I think to your last
Speaker:point, the self love, I mean, that is really
Speaker:hard. You're someone for
Speaker:whom, you know, saying, oh, I love myself or, like, like, I have a
Speaker:book somewhere that said, you know, look in the mirror every day and say, I
Speaker:love you to your reflection. I mean, that literally made me wanna barf.
Speaker:Like, there's just, like, no. So the I but the idea
Speaker:of allowing myself to think, I wanna allow myself to like
Speaker:me and, you know, work through all of this
Speaker:stuff again as part of
Speaker:the process that became
Speaker:true. I didn't, like, set myself
Speaker:that particular goal one day where I woke up and said, by the end of
Speaker:this month, I am going to love myself. Although I don't mind
Speaker:it. I don't mind it as a goal. Like, as a life coach, you know,
Speaker:we talk a lot about intention and goal setting, and I'm like, yeah. You
Speaker:could do that. And like, just move the needle a little bit. Like, go ahead,
Speaker:mamas. Just decide, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna love myself more this month than I
Speaker:did last month. Or certainly be open to the possibility.
Speaker:Yes. I remember, like, bridge thinking is like,
Speaker:I'm gonna love myself. I'm going to consider loving
Speaker:myself. I'm gonna be willing to consider loving myself.
Speaker:Like, whatever you gotta do to get closer is
Speaker:great. Mhmm. 100%. And I mean, I totally get Again, I
Speaker:probably said this already, but, like, if you
Speaker:are someone like, I thought everybody thought the way that I did because that's just
Speaker:what we think. Like, I thought everybody overruminated. I thought
Speaker:everybody had these people pleasing tendencies. I thought everybody,
Speaker:you know, had levels of enmeshment and codependency. I thought
Speaker:no one knew what a boundary was, you know, because I didn't had never even
Speaker:heard of that. I mean, we just assume, you know, that, like,
Speaker:we're human, so we're kind of all the same. And we kind of all are
Speaker:the same, but we're also super not the same. So
Speaker:if you're someone who didn't have a childhood like mine, you may be going,
Speaker:god. I mean, you know, like, what the
Speaker:hell? All the all these things. But, like, a lot of us
Speaker:who whether you're you know, you like the the
Speaker:phraseology of, like, emotionally immature parenting
Speaker:or my also specific brand was,
Speaker:narcissistic parent. Yeah. New person. Yeah. Like, neglect and
Speaker:rejection. So there is a whole other level there of
Speaker:thinking and feeling that was true for me that it was a
Speaker:shock to realize not everyone has. So these
Speaker:are patterns. Right? So when we talk about self care, for me,
Speaker:I had to become aware, and it took a long time,
Speaker:that this was my reality. Like, I really did not know that for
Speaker:and I've been in a lot of therapy. I really did not know that for
Speaker:a very long time through the process and then what that meant
Speaker:about what I had to learn about the things you're talking
Speaker:about, about self care, about self trust, about self
Speaker:love, and why those deficits existed for me
Speaker:and that that was my work or your, like, reparenting language.
Speaker:You know, whatever way you like to say it, it ultimately kinda boils down to
Speaker:the same thing. Yeah. We heal we heal,
Speaker:and our kids inevitably heal
Speaker:because we interact with them differently. That's just what happens, like you said, about
Speaker:the system changing. I have, like, 100 thoughts going through my head of
Speaker:things I wanna say right now. I remember for
Speaker:me doing, ACEs, the Adverse Childhood
Speaker:Experience Survey. And it was when I was in a parent
Speaker:education program, oddly enough, that was very intensive when I learned
Speaker:nonviolent communication. And we did a lot of
Speaker:intensive work in that program and I we did the ACES. And
Speaker:to see my childhood quantified like that, I
Speaker:my score is 9 out of 10. And, I was like,
Speaker:woah. Like, woah. Oh, ah. I the other people are like,
Speaker:1, 2. My husband did it. He's like point 5 ish.
Speaker:Like, I was like, oh, we all have different
Speaker:stories here and different experiences and different things we're healing
Speaker:from, and that journey is gonna look unique, and that's
Speaker:okay. Yeah. Well and what I wanna say about that is I'm really glad
Speaker:you brought that up because I my score is probably the same as your
Speaker:husband's. So I never identified
Speaker:myself as an adult living with any kind of trauma because I
Speaker:didn't see myself in that kind of language. Yeah. So it
Speaker:is very important to have identifiers like that, and
Speaker:I they serve a very important purpose, but they're
Speaker:also completely missing out
Speaker:on a whole realm of persons
Speaker:like myself who didn't have any of those experiences,
Speaker:and yet then so I'm in my fifties. By the time I
Speaker:figure out finally that the relational trauma
Speaker:I experienced was so high that I actually now do
Speaker:have a diagnosis of, you know, chronic PTSD
Speaker:Mhmm. I would have
Speaker:laughed in your face a few years ago if you would have told me that
Speaker:was me. Mhmm. So so, again, it's
Speaker:just that's why these conversations are so important because,
Speaker:yes, there's people who see themselves very clearly and their
Speaker:experiences, and they're validated, and they understand through
Speaker:metrics like that. But there's a whole host of us
Speaker:who don't have that kind of experience who are left out
Speaker:going, I don't fit in here. I don't fit in anywhere. So
Speaker:that's the key. Little t traumas. Sometimes we think of them that way. But
Speaker:Right. In your story, you really talk about having a
Speaker:neglectful, almost absent parent. Right? Your mother was
Speaker:just very unavailable, emotionally unavailable. And so, yes, we do
Speaker:need better metrics to describe how
Speaker:how your parenting affects you. How you were parented affects
Speaker:you. And, you know, most anyone listening
Speaker:to this podcast is, like, working very hard to not be
Speaker:neglectful or too permissive or too authoritarian
Speaker:because we want to be, like, that guiding steady
Speaker:beat, you know, that's present and compassionate and loving.
Speaker:And that is what you found
Speaker:in your journey of getting to that place with faith.
Speaker:It's not like you weren't very attuned to
Speaker:parent, like, or very present and, like, you were, like, super involved in her
Speaker:life. But there's this little, like, not little, but
Speaker:this, like, little piece of your story that is
Speaker:so, so important. And it's late in the book
Speaker:that you talk about it. And it really is when you learn to
Speaker:I the way lang language I use is to become a compassionate witness
Speaker:of faith and of her pain and
Speaker:struggle. And there was, you know, so so much
Speaker:beauty in this one page, that I
Speaker:was wanting you to read what you wrote for us.
Speaker:Because when well,
Speaker:I teach this concept a lot about being
Speaker:compassionate with your children when they are in pain.
Speaker:I have phrases like be comfortable with your kids' discomfort.
Speaker:And, you know, fix fix it, change it, stop it, solve it is one of
Speaker:the things I say. Like, we don't we wanna get out of that fix it,
Speaker:change it, stop it, solve it. It's not an emergency, like, really
Speaker:slowing down. Sometimes we then call that legit calm,
Speaker:deep calm. And in your process, it's
Speaker:very so clear you go through this process of self
Speaker:love, self care, self trust, and you get to these deeper, deeper
Speaker:levels of calm, which this podcast has become a calm
Speaker:mama. And that is what I'm always trying to get
Speaker:us towards. And then when you are
Speaker:there, you're able to show up the way that you showed up. And so
Speaker:I wondered if you could just talk talk through that. It's
Speaker:247, if you just I can read it and talk through
Speaker:it because, ultimately I mean, I think one of the things that I had to
Speaker:discover was that
Speaker:again, I agree with everything you said, except we have to back the bus up
Speaker:even further. So that I
Speaker:thought I was being compassionate. I thought
Speaker:that taking my daughter to appointments and putting my
Speaker:life on hold and doing all these things was compassion.
Speaker:Mhmm. Mhmm. And what I had to come to realize
Speaker:with my therapist was that there's those things are important,
Speaker:but human to human compassion is about more than taking
Speaker:somebody to appointments. It's so true. And to your point,
Speaker:like, so so we can talk about compassion, and we can talk about
Speaker:healing, and we can talk about lots of big words, which I
Speaker:think most of us, I realize now,
Speaker:take for granted that we all mean the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:So, you know, we don't. We don't. And
Speaker:so that was what was such a shock is, like,
Speaker:you can think you know something, and you can, you
Speaker:know, be it can be only the tiniest sliver. And
Speaker:so, yes, coming to this understanding
Speaker:relative to compassion between human beings, why
Speaker:that's important and what it means was a hugely
Speaker:life changing part of our process for sure. Yeah.
Speaker:Okay. Before you read it, I'm gonna read this one part that you wrote because
Speaker:I think this is, like, where you started. You said, I had no
Speaker:trouble telling Faith I loved her. But conversations around the harder
Speaker:emotions, they were usually Theo, your husband, and me
Speaker:talking, Faith listening, and us minimizing her feelings or
Speaker:full on arguments. It's like, that's
Speaker:so much what parenting looks like in
Speaker:these in, like, little homes everywhere. And then
Speaker:how you what you get to, what you're about to read is where we all
Speaker:wanna be getting to, and it's that journey from
Speaker:tucky, tucky, tucky and telling, telling, telling and dismissing
Speaker:or, like, sure. You get to be sad, but it it's like this other
Speaker:thing that you do is so beautiful. So go for it. Just start there. Thank
Speaker:you. Thank you. And I just wanna say, like, it's completely makes sense that most
Speaker:of us parent that way because we were parented that way. Yeah.
Speaker:So that's why these conversations are so important. I think the younger
Speaker:generations I see my adult nieces and nephews with young kids.
Speaker:They're so much smarter about this stuff. Mhmm. But I want us older
Speaker:folks to be less afraid to
Speaker:understand that things about how we learned
Speaker:are just not that healthy and great. Like Yeah. It makes
Speaker:complete sense. So let's just be like, okay. I know
Speaker:there's other ways. You know? It doesn't mean we're bad people. It took me a
Speaker:while to figure that out, but, you know, it's okay. Like, it just makes
Speaker:sense. Okay. So, yes, from where you asked me to
Speaker:start, when this regulation happened, because, of course, it
Speaker:did, Faith would cry. In her bedroom or the living
Speaker:room, she might fall to the floor, curl into a ball, and
Speaker:wail, painful thoughts, feelings, and emotions pouring out
Speaker:of her. If Theo was home, I ordered him to the garage, and
Speaker:he'd usually comply. Progress. Instead of reacting
Speaker:in fear, despair, and confusion, now, at least on
Speaker:the outside, I could respond differently. Calmness,
Speaker:concerted, and focused had required discussion with
Speaker:the therapists, input from faith, trial
Speaker:and error, and lots of practice for which life afforded me
Speaker:opportunity. Over time, I improved. I learned to
Speaker:sit on the floor, breathe, remain quiet, and very
Speaker:still, preventing my own body and my own emotions from
Speaker:being hijacked. Okay. Just pause there because I'm gonna read it again because it's like
Speaker:this is really what it looks like. Sit on the floor,
Speaker:breathe, remain quiet and very still,
Speaker:preventing your own body and your own emotions from
Speaker:being hijacked. That's this
Speaker:that's it right there. What I think even what you
Speaker:said, like, the younger generations, like, they're good at it.
Speaker:They're it's very hard for any of us to do this.
Speaker:When our child you describe a little a girl who's on the floor,
Speaker:curling into a ball and wailing and painful thoughts and feelings and pouring out of
Speaker:her, and you're gonna sit and remain quiet,
Speaker:your brain is like, the mom brain in that moment is
Speaker:broken because you're like, I should be doing something.
Speaker:But if this is doing something. It's actually the
Speaker:thing our kid needs. And then go on to I could witness
Speaker:there. I could witness faith's pain
Speaker:without trying, at least most of the time, to intervene or to
Speaker:fix without floating away on waves of my own
Speaker:anxiety, without being swept up in currents of fear.
Speaker:It made complete sense to feel terrible when she felt terrible. Pithy
Speaker:quip. A parent is only as happy as their least happy child,
Speaker:but that dynamic exactly was what required my attention.
Speaker:Sweaty and spent, Faith would calm down because she would
Speaker:always eventually calm down. Occasionally, when she
Speaker:wanted to, we'd talk about what had upset her, usually something
Speaker:to do with school. But often, she was too exhausted for words,
Speaker:and I'd encourage her to recuperate with rest, sleep,
Speaker:music, art, or by watching a lighthearted TV show.
Speaker:Perfect. Perfect. Is I I it's so good. It's so beautiful, Tracy. Thank
Speaker:you for writing this book and for for
Speaker:remembering the deep, deep pain and the moments that
Speaker:you so beautifully talk about in this book. And I
Speaker:just sweaty and spent, Faith would calm down
Speaker:because she would always eventually calm down.
Speaker:In in this podcast and in my work, I call it
Speaker:big feeling cycle. And I use the word cycle because the cycle always
Speaker:ends. And it's better than a temper tantrum
Speaker:or a meltdown because those don't there was that. How do you like, if you
Speaker:can remember that this will come to an end and you're just there to be
Speaker:a witness, problem solving, dealing with the behavior, talking about it
Speaker:all later. And I just think you
Speaker:really beautifully demonstrated what becoming a
Speaker:calm mama is all about. Like, just
Speaker:so so beautiful. So I I do I
Speaker:do recommend your book. Like, I've already sent it to some clients because I'm like,
Speaker:you guys need to read this, because they're going through this this
Speaker:thing right now. So tell us how to buy
Speaker:your book, which is obvious, but, you know, tell us how to buy your book.
Speaker:And, and maybe just a little bit if people wanna follow you or what
Speaker:you do. Wonderful. Thank you. So it is available everywhere books are sold.
Speaker:So wherever is your favorite place to buy your books from, you'll find it
Speaker:there. So there's that. And then, yes, I have a website.
Speaker:It's my name, tracyyokas, tracyyokasandthewordcreates.com.
Speaker:And I am endeavoring to build a community. You know?
Speaker:I'm I'm, inviting anyone, moms in particular,
Speaker:but anyone who's interested in learning about this stuff, who's
Speaker:working on their own toolkit, who's trying to understand how to make more
Speaker:conscious choices in life, how to be more connected, compassionate, and
Speaker:grateful to come on over and check it out. Yeah. So the book is
Speaker:Bloodlines, a memoir of harm and healing. So be
Speaker:sure to get a copy. And I read it I read it really fast. I
Speaker:just spent the afternoon you know, I read really quickly, but I
Speaker:I could not put it down. Like, it's really
Speaker:compelling the way that you wrote the story. And so it's it's
Speaker:like it's it's a little juicy. So, you know, not to,
Speaker:like, make your life juicy, but it was it was
Speaker:just really compelling story. So I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming and being
Speaker:so honest and sharing with the call mamas and,
Speaker:yeah, super grateful. So thank you. Thank you so much.
