Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Beyond the Sessions segment of the Securely Attached podcast. I have Dr. Rebecca Hershberg and Dr. Emily Upshur here with me today on this beautiful world Mental Health Day. So welcome.

Dr. Emily (00:55):

Hi.

Dr. Rebecca (00:56):

Of course. Pleasure to be here today of all days.

Dr. Sarah (00:59):

I know it’s so fitting right?

Dr. Emily (01:01):

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca (01:01):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah (01:01):

So because it’s World Mental Health Day, I thought we could do something a little different. Instead of answering a listener question, I thought we could focus on some of the things that feel like in your guys’ opinion, in our inside peak, in the lives and minds of parents and families. What are the barriers that we are grappling right now as a society in terms of parental mental health, maternal mental health, the surgeon general just came out with a big statement about the crisis that is the mental health of parents in our community right now. Our culture, yes, I think we all can agree mental health is critical and we could talk about why, but it’s not as accessible as I think it could be, and that’s a problem, and we wanted to talk about ways to combat that today.

Dr. Rebecca (01:57):

Yeah, I think it trickles down from the top, right? So I think the surgeon general calling attention to, I think it was something like parenting as a risk factor or something I think is really, really helpful. I think for a long time parents have felt like society doesn’t value that work, and it’s just sort of something you do on the side when in fact it takes so much energy and resolve and is all encompassing and society hasn’t built in the supports for that. I mean, first of all, just looking at the cost and the extent to which insurance companies have made it virtually impossible for practitioners to participate in plans which then make mental health services unaffordable for a vast majority of people. Then you’re talking about childcare. If you’re a parent and you need mental health services, then by definition, your afterschool hours are potentially very busy with your kids or with a job. In which case then when you get home at night, you need slash want to be with your kids, and so then you want to do your mental health treatment perhaps during the daytime. If you’re working, that becomes impossible. I mean, I just think the whole structure of parenthood and families is not arranged in such a way and appreciated by society in such a way that a parent taking the time out of their day to take care of themselves and their own wellbeing is valued or possible.

Dr. Emily (03:39):

Yeah, I’ve seen some improvements with this with the silver lining of covid, right? With a little bit more virtual access to care, which obviously doesn’t trump some of the very important societal barriers that you’re mentioning, Rebecca, in very specifically cost. But also I think there’s a little bit of a, this is maybe more anecdotal, but a little bit of moms help themselves last, at least I’m talking about mom’s parents are obviously bigger than just moms, but moms and parents seem to be last on the list of priorities. And so I think that’s another unspoken barrier or cultural barrier that we as a society are grappling with, which is this an afterthought or is it okay for it to be at the forefront? Right. Is it okay for that to be a priority even over the long list of needs that your children and your family have?

Dr. Sarah (04:41):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so Rebecca, I’m hearing from you an appropriate list of systemic issues that are barriers to parentals, parental mental health, Emily, there’s this, the stories we tell ourselves, the cultural internalization of the martyr parent and what…

Dr. Rebecca (05:00):

But I think those are related. I don’t think it does enough of a service to think of them as two separate things. I think what you just said is spot on. It’s the cultural internalization. How could you possibly think of yourself as a priority if all of the messages in terms of the way society is structured, suggest otherwise?

Dr. Sarah (05:19):

Yes.

Dr. Rebecca (05:20):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (05:20):

That’s very true. Another thing that is coming to my mind that seems like a big barrier or a disruptor actually, I would say in parental mental health is kind of this new phenomenon of, I don’t have another way of describing it, other than the parenting industrial complex that has emerged in social media in the last 10, 15 years, probably more, even more in the last five years of parents being inundated and almost sucked into a vortex that they almost become dependent on of seeking information about parenting compulsively online and getting so much of their information about parenting online. That becomes this intense just sort of ecosystem of shame, fear, dependency. I feel shame. Then I seek reassurance by going online. I become scared that I’m doing it wrong. I feel shame. I go back and it’s just this loop of, I don’t know, I think it’s really messing with parents’ heads. I think there’s so much noise that they’re having to sift through on top of what is already kind of a noisy thing to raise children. And I don’t just mean decibels in your home that’s also noisy, but I mean, you’re constantly getting a lot of things. You have to kind of decide is this important? Is this not important? But it’s gotten exponential with the social media parenting world, I think.

Dr. Emily (06:53):

Yeah, I mean, I think it speaks a little bit to how do I, not any of these discreet things are going to work, and I think the reason why we emphasize mental health sort of in a more formalized systemic way is that you’re going to figure out in our, or at least our goals are for you to figure out how to do this in a way that feels genuine and and culturally relevant to you as a parent, and not strip away you as a complete person and make you do this other rote parenting jargon or this parenting scripts, or we want you to figure out how you feel seen and heard and how you can feel self-regulated enough to show up in the ways that you genuinely are. I believe that parents are experts in their kids. I believe parents know their children the best, and so how can I help you be the best you rather than give you a script or give you.

Dr. Sarah (07:48):

But I do think, I mean, don’t get me wrong. I post on social media, I feed the beast, and I think there is a big difference between content and companies and infrastructure inside of this parenting industrial complex that is literally designed to make you doubt yourself and to feel as though you need to keep coming back to be a good parent, to know what to do, because you couldn’t possibly know on your own, like you were saying, Emily, it’s so antithetical to what we’re trying to do…

Dr. Rebecca (08:19):

And you left out the bottom line so that you spend money.

Dr. Sarah (08:22):

Exactly.

Dr. Rebecca (08:23):

I mean, it’s the same as the makeup and lotion.

Dr. Sarah (08:29):

Absolutely don’t age, but if you’re going to age, you better be spending your money on our products, otherwise you’ll be ugly. And that would be terrible. As a woman, this is feeding into the same fear of parents. You are not going to do this very well and you will mess up your kid, and so you better be checking every single day to make sure you haven’t missed a new rule to follow.

Dr. Rebecca (08:52):

Advisors that are going to benefit or whoever makes all the money from social media stuff. And I also think, I mean, Sarah, you do post, I post also, I think there’s people who post a gazillion times more than we do.

Dr. Sarah (09:07):

Well, I think what and how we’re posting too. I don’t think I’m trying to scare people.

Dr. Rebecca (09:11):

Well, also that you’re a clinical psychologist with an expertise in kids and families. You actually know what you’re talking about, and you rely on science-based theories and strategies, however you want to say.

Dr. Sarah (09:28):

I would love to say, because you have fantastic content that is very well researched.

Dr. Rebecca (09:33):

Well thank you. Mutual admiration society. No, but I really just mean, look, there’s people who have our similar qualifications with whom we might disagree, but there’s plenty of people out there who don’t actually have any qualifications, who have had a couple kids, and they’re wonderfully photogenic. And so they become stars on social media with regard to parenting. And it’s dangerous because they don’t actually, and again, I’m not pointing any fingers. I actually, contrary to how it might sound, I don’t have any name in mind. I’ve just seen it where people will take something that has decades of scientific support and make a blanket claim that it actually is really harmful to kids and there’s a compelling background and this person is tremendously well put together. And so it sounds really compelling and there’s a lot of confidence with which it’s stated and it’s a hundred percent not true. I mean, it’s the whole thing. It’s fake news generally.

Dr. Sarah (10:31):

I know it’d be making me think of there’s this stuff going around right now about the hurried child syndrome and one, that’s not a thing. That’s not a DSM five diagnosis. And also people are thinking it means if you tell your child to hurry up, you’re going to give them an anxiety disorder. And it’s like, no. The idea of the hurried child comes from culturally making children grow up faster than they should, not rushing them out the door in the morning. And also there is no evidence, no research, no science, scientific evidence that suggests that telling your kid to hurry up is going to give them an anxiety disorder. And yet it’s like this is the tricky thing about social media. Someone will post me and it’ll get just this wave.

Dr. Rebecca (11:11):

Of traction

Dr. Sarah (11:11):

Of traction, and then people see it from multiple sources and they think, oh wow, multiple, this must be true. It’s dangerous.

Dr. Emily (11:20):

But I think the danger is also a rebound though, because then there are people who are like, this is all nonsense, and so I’m just going to parent the way I feel like the way I was parented sort of rebound into I know how to do this when again, maybe you do maybe, and also maybe there’s more science, there’s more research, there’s more evidence behind a different approach. But now you’re so turned off by being sort of overshadowed or bombarded by all this stuff that you’re like, I can’t do this. I’m going to go back to this old way.

Dr. Sarah (11:58):

But either way, that is a disservice to parental mental health because on the one hand, for the former, you’re just getting scared and kind of getting compulsively sucked into the vortex and always doubting yourself That’s not good for your mental health or your kids. Or you’re like, well, I can’t participate in any of this. I’m going to go kind of pull away. And now I’m an isolated parent trying to figure this out by myself without support, and that’s not good for our mental health or the mental health of our kids and our family. So it’s like how do we support parents? I think this is kind of our mission in general in the work that all of us, all the three of us do. I know you guys well enough to know that. How do you help parents feel like they have a place where they can get good information so that when they need support, they’ve got a place to go, but then you teach ’em how to fish instead of fish for them?

(12:54):

Because I want parents to feel empowered to just trust themselves and get into the mess a little bit and know they’re going to be okay. And that’s hard. And I think that’s a big issue that is leading to a lot of anxiety in parents. And I think that the Surgeon General’s acknowledgement of the declining mental health among parents is definitely, at least in part, contributed to by this phenomenon that is relatively new. This is really the first generation, maybe generation and a half of parents that have ever had to deal with this kind of just, I don’t know, social media informed parenting. It’s really intense. Didn’t exist one or one and a half generations ago.

Dr. Rebecca (13:43):

I feel like we’re talking a lot about the problems and there are so many, and we could get deeper and deeper, and obviously it’s not an episode of Beyond the Sessions without my coming back to blaming the patriarchy in some way. And I do think there’s a way that, again, when parents feel isolated from each other and all the villages that used to exist don’t exist, it benefits people who are interested in making money. I think that’s actually there, and I don’t think it’s necessarily that useful to dwell that long on that without going into what can we do? What can we do in a hundred years, hopefully society will look different, blah, blah, blah. But today and tomorrow, the things that occur to me are voting for people who value parenting and measures and proposals that value childcare benefits and reproductive freedoms. I mean, I think there’s organizations that do advocacy work around those, that giving of one’s time or one’s money. I think seeking one’s own mental health support and it’s an act of rebellion, right, is sort of, okay, I am going to prioritize myself. I am going to make this a thing. I don’t know. What else do you think?

Dr. Sarah (15:06):

Well, I mean, I think there are important to expand on some of the things you were saying, really thinking about supporting advocacy work around paid family leave and changes in the workplace that support parents better. And even on a very basic level of just talking to your employer about what are some of the ways that you are interested in supporting parents. I do work sometimes with companies where I’ll go in and do parental support groups or workshops for parents or employee facing things that the companies just want to give their parents acknowledgement and support because they want to retain parents. And just asking your companies that you work for, is there a way to create some sort of programming for parents to help them feel seen, supported, give them a place to know that they’re valued and acknowledged for the work that they’re doing. The second and third shifts that they’re doing outside of work and work with so many people who they work all day, then they go home and they parent, and then they log back on to work because they had to take off hours from their workday to go parent, and then they’re working until, I don’t know, 10 o’clock at night.

(16:35):

That’s so unsustainable. And so even just workplace awareness of the load of parenthood is a huge thing that could really support parental mental health, especially for parents who are working parents.

Dr. Rebecca (16:53):

And being vocal about it. I mean, I think there actually has been a little bit of a shift since C because in Covid with everybody working virtually our kids were visual. Visual, no, visible. Visible. It’s sort of like you couldn’t, everybody saw, wow, having two little kids is a big deal. They’re on the screen and they’re ruining your house or they’re coming in. There was that news from where the little kid came in, the anchor. So I think it became more clear how much it is to handle. And so people felt less self-conscious about saying, I have a kid I need to get home to, or I can’t work from this hour to this hour. And that’s helpful. But I think we have to keep speaking up because the next thing would be like, and I can’t log back on at seven because you know what? I’m tired.

(17:42):

And there is all this research from other countries showing that other work structures actually do lead to more productivity that day, work week or part-time days or what I don’t even remember in this country. I think because of the history of Puritanism where it’s just like work, work, work, work, work. No pleasure, no pleasure, no pleasure. That has bled into so much of day-to-day life, even from however many hundreds of years ago, that it’s this idea that you could actually be more productive by working less is just not something that so many people can hear or are willing to take the leap to be in the forefront of. And if we’re continuing to be vocal about it, then hopefully there’s movement there.

Dr. Sarah (18:25):

And I think just to generalize a little bit of what we’re saying, what I’m hearing is on the one hand, it’s about advocacy to try to change systems voting for people who actually care about these things, being supportive, calling your congress person or making sure that you’re being aware of movements to help create these changes, these structural changes. But even this sort of individual thing of advocacy in speaking up, advocacy in having a boundary in modeling your priorities out loud. I think there was something I was reading about how if when fathers take the full paternity leave that’s offered to them, it changes company culture because that wasn’t happening. Most mothers take their full maternity leave and fathers will take a part of the paternity leave offered, but when fathers start to consistently take their full paternity leave, the workplace culture shifts. And I think it’s setting a tone. So even just this individual activism of modeling, prioritizing your own mental health, your own family’s needs, and that actually has a ripple effect. It helps your own mental health, but it also helps change things systemically as well.

Dr. Rebecca (19:55):

Particularly if you’re high up in your company or you’re a person of privilege whose job is not at risk. I think in some ways it’s up to those people ideally to take those steps who don’t have to fear for job security or that they’re easily replaceable, that sort of thing.

Dr. Sarah (20:15):

I also think, and I feel strongly about this, that it’s important. You can’t talk about parental mental health and not talk about social media use and looking at your algorithm and looking at how you’re feeling after you get off of it and just checking in, is it impacting your mental health? I now, with every single patient that I work with or client that I work with, I always ask them about their social media use or their screen use, and I didn’t use to used be diagnostically relevant, and now I wouldn’t do an intake without getting some data on that because it’s so interconnected with our mental health. It impacts sleep, it impacts self-esteem, it impacts anxiety, it impacts all kinds of things. So I do think it is important to just check in, do a little audit. It could be as simple as getting in the habit of being mindfully aware when you get off of an app to just check in and be like, what’s my mood right now?

(21:22):

Is it better than when I got on? Is it worse than what I got on? And if it’s worse to think maybe why do I need to do a little audit on who I’m following? Do I need to retweak my algorithm a little bit? Because this is another thing I think is, so this fd up about how algorithms work is the things that give us the most anxiety online are the things we tend to put our eyeballs on for a touch longer. And so the algorithm, I cannot say that word today, but the algorithm will then feed us more of the thing that makes us anxious, which is so messed up.

Dr. Rebecca (22:01):

But again, and who makes money, again, I’m going to beat that point. I think it’s so important that we teach our kids that I think it’s, it’s not a coincidence. Whoever’s making the algorithm knows very, very well that they’re sending you things that make you anxious. They know the research. Why? Well, maybe they’re not that interested in your mental health. Maybe you are. Being emotionally and mentally healthy is not something that they’re going to, right.

Dr. Sarah (22:35):

I think that that is at all absolutely factual. I mean, the data there is research. They have leaked emails.

Dr. Rebecca (22:42):

And so then it’s up to you because they’re not on your side. They’re not going to protect you.

Dr. Sarah (22:47):

And again, I’m not saying never return to social media, not a realistic thing, and just be an educated consumer and be a mindful user. And I mean, physiologically, notice how your body feels before and after you log on and off so that you can start to get a sense of how you want to titrate that because you got to fight for your own mental health. Unfortunately, no one else is going to do it for you. And like you said, there’s a lot of systems in place that might actually prefer it if you weren’t mentally well. And that is sad and a huge problem and also something we have to kind of think about and name. So I think those are some good strategies. I’m glad you brought it back to what can we do. I think that’s critical.

Dr. Rebecca (23:41):

Yeah, no, I agree. I think otherwise we just end up depressed, which is antithetical to this episode.

Dr. Sarah (23:49):

I know, right? Well, I hope everybody does one thing that is in the service of their mental health today. This is an invitation. Just check in. Just go inward and say, what do I need now? What does my family need now? What do my kids need? Just what do I need? Because we don’t do that often enough. We are really constantly, that’s another thing. Parenthood just pulls us out of ourself and into the bodies of our children so often that it’s really easy to forget. Just like, oh yeah, that’s right. I got to eat. I got to take a shower. I got to drink some water. I got to get some sunshine.

Dr. Rebecca (24:25):

Right, right. That it doesn’t have to be that complicated. It doesn’t have to be. I’m going to find a therapist and it can be like, I’m going to have a sandwich.

Dr. Sarah (24:32):

Yeah, good sandwich.

Dr. Rebecca (24:35):

Oh my God. Sandwiches for the win.

Dr. Sarah (24:36):

Yeah, go get yourself a sandwich on World Mental Health Day. We love you guys.

Dr. Rebecca (24:42):

Thanks everyone for listening.

Dr. Sarah (24:44):

Bye.

Dr. Rebecca (24:45):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (24:47):Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.