Paige (00:00):

There’s an enormous amount of overlap between diagnoses like depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, psychosis in the general population and in the perinatal population. And yet there are a lot of signs and symptoms and interventions that look very different for new and expecting mothers and birthing people. This is a delicate time and we need to make sure that people who are supporting and treating understand these illnesses and what works best to help people feel like themselves again.

Dr. Sarah (00:40):

Becoming a mother is one of the most transformative experiences in one’s lifetime. And when looking for support navigating this massive transition, it’s imperative to find a mental health provider who understands these unique challenges that are unique to motherhood. Today I am so excited to be joined by two incredible experts who are leading the charge in changing how we support mother’s mental health. Rebecca Geshuriis certified in perinatal mental health, internal Family Systems and brainspotting. She’s currently co-authoring a new book When Good Moms Feel Bad: Using Internal Family Systems to Remedy Distress in Motherhood that will be released next year. And Paige Bellenbaum is the founding director and Chief External Relations Officer at The Motherhood Center of New York, an organization providing life-changing treatment and support for mothers during the perinatal period. In this conversation, we’ll dive deep into the types of training that goes into the myriad treatment approaches that are common in working with mothers at places like the Motherhood Center. Rebecca is going to talk about her innovative use of internal family systems and how she applies this model for moms specifically. Plus, we’ll share actionable tips for finding a provider who truly understands this vulnerable period, highlight the systemic gaps that too often leave mothers falling through the cracks and offer hope for breaking cycles and doing things a little bit differently. So whether you’re a new mom, a professional, working with birthing parents, or someone who wants to better understand the complexities of maternal mental health, this episode is full of essential insights. So let’s dive in.

(02:20):

Are you a mental health clinician looking to expand your skills and equip yourself with tools to best support mothers? I am so excited my group Practice Upshur Bren Psychology Group is going to be partnering with The Motherhood Center to offer a very special training called The Good Mom Bad Mom Loop: Using Internal Family Systems to Support The Mental Health of Moms. This 3-hour experiential training led by Rebecca Geshuri, an IFS and Perinatal Mental Health certified clinician, focuses on the unique mom parts that mothers navigate as they juggle competing needs for themselves and their children. The training will help participants learn to identify and work with components of their client’s inner system that perpetuate these challenges and support moms in finding self-trust and joy in mothering. The workshop is being offered both in person at The Motherhood Center in Manhattan and live streaming virtually on Thursday, February 27th, making it accessible no matter where you’re located. And for clinicians in New York State, this training is approved for three continuing education contact hours for eligible mental health counselors, psychologists, and social workers. But space is limited, so make sure to go to upshurbren.com/IFSTraining or just click the link inside the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast to secure your spot now to learn this truly transformative approach for supporting maternal mental health.

(03:43):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(04:13):

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Securely Attached podcast. We have a very special episode because we have two guests who have each been on before in their own episodes, and they are coming together to have a power episode on maternal mental health, and I’m so excited. Rebecca Geshuri is here. We have Paige Bellenbaum from The Motherhood Center. This is a powerhouse. Thank you so much for coming today to talk about this.

Paige (04:44):

So excited to be here.

Rebecca (04:45):

Yeah, thanks for having us, Sarah.

Dr. Sarah (04:48):

And for all of you who are listening to this episode, I’m going to put links to Rebecca and Paige’s past episodes in the show notes, so you can go and familiarize yourself with them too, because they’ve got some incredible knowledge to share. But today we’re talking specifically about how do we support maternal mental health and why there’s a particularly important need to get specific on this. Paige, do you want to talk a little bit because you run the mother, you’re big up in the motherhood center. First of all, can you share with our listeners what the Motherhood Center is and what your mission is? And then Rebecca, I want to kick it to you because you also do really important work with mothers.

Paige (05:32):

Absolutely, Sarah, and thanks so much for having us here and giving us the opportunity to talk about such an important topic. So the Motherhood Center for your listeners who haven’t heard of us before, we are a clinical treatment facility for pregnant and postpartum women and birthing people that are experiencing what we refer to as perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. The acronym for that is ps. It’s what most people know of as postpartum depression or the postpartum, also known as maternal mental health conditions or illnesses. And we provide everything from support groups to outpatient treatment with perinatal therapists and medication management with reproductive psychiatrists who specialize in meds that are safe and effective to take during pregnancy and the postpartum. And the thing that we run and operate that doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the tri-state area. And there’s only one other program like us on the entire East coast is our perinatal partial hospital program or our day program, which is for women and birthing people that are having a really, really hard time taking care of themselves or their babies in the perinatal period. And it’s intensive treatment, but the beauty of it is that it helps women and birthing people feel much better, much faster.

Dr. Sarah (06:52):

And importantly, I feel like, is that they don’t have to separate from their child.

Paige (06:57):

Which is so important. Keeping that dyad connected. And by dyad I mean the mother and baby, the attachment and bonding is so critical during this time, and so ways that we can keep moms and babies together, ways that we can provide moms with the tools and skills to feel confident in their ability to care for their baby and connected to their baby. That dyadic relationship is everything. So yes, we have an onsite nursery, we skilled childre providers, we do dyadic. We have one dyadic group therapy every day. And Diadic work is such an integral part of the program.

Dr. Sarah (07:39):

Can you talk briefly just what dyadic work is in case people are familiar with that?

Paige (07:43):

Yeah, it’s all about attachment and bonding between mother and baby. We have this thought that once we become mothers or birthing people, that it’s instinctual that we just know what to do and that we’re going to feel this automatic attachment bond, unconditional love for our baby. And for some people that’s the case, but for a whole lot of other people not, it takes time to develop a relationship with your baby as it would with anybody else that you’re meeting for the first time. And for a lot of mothers, that bond isn’t there or it feels small or people feel as though it’s supposed to or should look like something else. Some people have a lot of fear holding their baby, even getting close to their baby because they’re afraid that they might accidentally hurt their baby. Or on the opposite side of that, moms might feel hypervigilant around protecting their baby, not wanting anyone to get close or touch their baby. And so we help through dyadic work, mothers and babies develop healthy attachment, and that has everything to do with setting up that dyad success moving forward.

Dr. Sarah (08:57):

I mean, I call the podcast securely attached for a reason. I’m a big believer in the attachment relationship, but that all sounds so critical and I’m excited to talk more about the work you guys are doing. Rebecca? Yes, I’m so glad you’re here.

Rebecca (09:11):

Thank you.

Dr. Sarah (09:13):

You want to share a little bit about your specializations with mothers and how, because your work is very different than what the Motherhood Center does, but super synergistic.

Rebecca (09:22):

Totally synergistic. I think we need both and all moms really just need to be supported in all different ways. I’m what I would call a holistic therapist, so I’m always thinking about mind, body, spirit. We’re whole people. We have lots and lots of layers. The primary modality therapeutically that I use is Internal family systems. And the reason that I love that modality is because it really takes into account all parts of you. Every part of you is welcome, even the parts that can feel scary, like parts that want to hurt yourself or want to hurt the baby. And sometimes you do need medication and all the time we also really need support. So we’re re-parenting in a way where we’re mothering ourselves when we go into therapy or we go to the motherhood center for a group. And by the way, Paige, I’m so excited to come and see your space. I’ve never gotten to tour it before, but I’m getting to go in February. So excited for that.

Paige (10:37):

So exciting.

Rebecca (10:41):

And so the moms that I typically see in my practice come in because they feel like they’re failing at everything. They feel like they’re failing as a mom. They feel like they’re failing as a partner, they’re failing themselves. So there’s a huge tug of war inside their systems at all times, trying to care for the baby and trying to care for themselves and feeling guilty if they care for themselves. And there’s just a lot of shoulds that are going on, lots and lots of what we would call inner critics inside. So my work is really about helping moms tease apart all of those different facets of themselves and welcoming them so that they can understand what is really truly going on, where that comes from. There’s lots of different factors why we develop parts of ourselves that feel like we’re failing and that shame us on the inside. So getting to understand and know and really befriend those parts is helpful to building and building self-trust and self-compassion, and also hope and hopefully to bring some ease and some joy into parenting again, because it is hard work. I’m not going to lie. I have three kids myself, and it’s sometimes challenging to be able to do everything and be everything to everybody all the time. So yeah, that’s it in a nutshell. I guess I could say more.

Dr. Sarah (12:26):

Well, we’ll get into it. I think because the reason why I wanted both of you guys to come on here is, I mean, I think we all work in a really similar way, but we come in at it from different entry points. I think Paige, you see a lot of really acuity. You see it when things are really starting to crack.

(12:46):

And Rebecca, my sense is you are also, I mean that happens too, I imagine with the parents that you work with, but my sense is you’re also coming at it from a lens of beyond symptoms in the moment. How do we look at this sort of internal constellation of parts? And I definitely want to make sure we talk a little bit more about what IFS is because I think it’s really, really beautiful treatment that I’m deeply inspired by. And I love your point, Rebecca, that there’s both, and I think we have to look at symptoms, we have to treat symptoms, we have get in there and make everyone safe and treat acuity, and we still have to do this deeper work of understanding what is the core issues that are getting manifested in this particular way. But I also think, and as evidenced by your guys’ deep and specialized training in these areas, this is kind of unique to a particular population. Why do you guys feel like there is a real critical need for people who are treating mothers to have specialized training in maternal mental health and in the postpartum changes that happen and the vulnerabilities of this unique population? Paige, I’m wondering if you want to kick that off and then Rebecca, I’m sure you’ll have plenty to add.

Paige (14:18):

Yeah, Sarah, I want to borrow your word unique. This is such a unique and specific time in a person’s life, in a woman’s life, going through nine to 10 months of pregnancy, giving birth, caring for a fragile little human being, especially if you’ve never done this before and you have no idea what you’re doing because let’s be real, there is no such thing as maternal instinct. We have science to back up that partners and fathers have as much maternal instinct as we do. It’s not something we’re born with. We learn how to care for a baby for our children. It’s like starting a new job, sometimes the hardest job we’ve ever had. We learn it as we go along, and it’s such a special time that requires a woman, a birthing person to do things with her body and her mind and her relationship with herself and others, and almost no other specifically, no other time in their life looks exactly like this.

(15:26):

And so it is so important that when women and birthing people are looking for care, support, treatment, they are working with providers that have some level of expertise in this area. I look at it specifically through kind of the clinical mental lens arm of this, and I think about treatment, and one of the greatest analogies that I try to make is let’s use physical health as an example. If I wake up one day and my back really hurts and I think I have a herniated disc and I go to my primary care physician and I say, doctor, I have this terrible pain in my back and my primary care physician says to me, that sounds awful, but I don’t treat that. I need to send you to a specialist, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in treating that particular condition that you have. Here’s a referral, you need to go there.

(16:21):

And the reason why that PCP made that referral is because not what he or she does. There are experts out there that specialize in that area, and I look at maternal mental health in the same way. We have generalized psychiatry, we have generalized mental health services and treatment, but this is a very specific time in a woman and birthing person’s life. We are not only dealing with caring for supporting the mother, right? We are also doing the same for the baby and the relationship that mother has with the baby, whether she is pregnant or postpartum. We are not just taking care of one person, we are actually responsible in taking care of two, and we need to have specialists in the area who understand how to do that and what the very specific and unique challenges look like in motherhood. I so love what Rebecca said, and although we are a clinical treatment facility, we embrace so many of the same holistic concepts. If you’re going to a treatment provider who doesn’t understand the intricacies and the layers of this enormous transition of matrescence.

Dr. Sarah (17:36):

Yeah.

Paige (17:36):

You’re going to miss so much. You’re not going to be able to join that patient or client where they’re at. You’re not going to be able to help normalize the experience that they’re going through because you don’t know much or anything about it, and you’re not going to be able to intervene in a way that’s clinically appropriate because that patient in front of you is experiencing things that are indicative to the motherhood journey. There’s an enormous amount of overlap between diagnoses like depression, anxiety, O-C-D-P-T-S-D, psychosis in the general population and in the perinatal population. And yet there are a lot of signs and symptoms and interventions that look very different for new and expecting mothers and birthing people. This is a delicate time and we need to make sure that people who are supporting and treating understand these illnesses and what works best to help people feel like themselves again.

Rebecca (18:39):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I also want to add just my dream is that all clinicians would have this knowledge and be able to call themselves specialists because there’s like 17 million moms in America alone, and we all need support that is attuned to what we actually need. So that’s just my long-term dream, and I think that all of us here on this call are just working little by little to try to get that to happen.

Dr. Sarah (19:25):

As evidenced by, I mean, Rebecca, you do trainings, Paige, I know that the Motherhood Center is getting started. One of the gold standards for the kinds of trainings that you give, not just to the mental health professionals, but to anybody who’s working with others, pediatricians, primary care physicians, giving them that language often. I mean, pediatricians especially are usually the first line of screening for postpartum mom. You’re not seeing your OB for six weeks, you’re going to see your pediatrician in three days, seven days postpartum.

Rebecca (19:57):

Well, and then you don’t see your OB every month after that necessarily. And every little sniffle that your baby has might set off your anxious part and you’re calling your pediatrician and you’re going into the office, so you’re seeing them over and over and over again. So yeah, it’s not just therapists and OBGYNs and midwives that need this information. It’s everyone.

Paige (20:27):

Yeah, I always say anybody who comes in contact with a newer expecting mother birthing person needs to know what these conditions look like and also needs to challenge themselves to understand motherhood in the greater context and the broader context. We’re not doing the best we can unless we understand the maternal experience. I was on a Instagram live this morning with a pediatrician from a practice here in Manhattan and bless them because they actually screen, there’s not a lot of pediatricians out there that screen for maternal mental health conditions, particularly postpartum depression. This practice does screen and that’s wonderful and has a level of awareness. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because this particular pediatrician has lived experience. She had postpartum anxiety after the birth of both her children. So she gets it. She knows and she brings that experience into her work. But one of the things that we talked about was celebrating the fact that she screens but screens once in that entire year. And what we know to be true about maternal mental health conditions, they can onset at any time during pregnancy and up to one year postpartum. And if they aren’t treated in that one year or two years, if you put it both together, they can continue onto three, five years because they haven’t been successfully treated. So even in that conversation, celebrating the fact that there’s psychoeducation around this and screening, but we got to screen every three months if we’re going to catch this, right? We have to be always paying attention to it.

Rebecca (22:01):

Well, and also just to add, not just screening, but knowing how to talk about the results. Because I often get moms who will say, well, my OB or pediatrician gave me this assessment, but then they didn’t do anything with it. And so either the mom is going to not answer truthfully or answer, but then feel completely cast aside when she says, I feel depressed most of the time, and nobody does anything about it, doesn’t give her a good referral, doesn’t just come into the room and say, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry that you’ve been dealing with this. Let’s talk about how we can get you some help. So I think that that’s the step two that gets missed a lot. And then mom just feels worse, unfortunately.

Dr. Sarah (22:56):

Which is even further reason why more mental health professionals need to get specialized training in treating maternal mental health issues. Because I’ve spoken with a lot of pediatric practices and anecdotally they have said to me, we do want to screen, but we are reluctant to screen because if there are positive results, we don’t have any resources for them. And so we don’t want to open that up if we can’t close it. And so we don’t open it up. And that’s heartbreaking to me, and I can empathize with that. I think there’s on some level, a good intention behind that, but I think it really drops the ball. And it is a systemic issue that these pediatric practices and ob, they need more people to refer to that specialize in this. And I think hopefully that’s growing, that more and more people are becoming, are getting postpartum support, internationals trainings. There’s a couple, like Celine Institute has some great trainings, but this needs, like you said, Rebecca, there’s a whole lot of moms out there. We really need to have resources so that when first line defense screening happens, then they’ve got somebody to send them these mothers too that’s going to be able to do what they need to do.

Paige (24:27):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree with that more. And I’ve heard the same concerns as you, Sarah, from both pediatricians and OB-GYNs. And too, when I first started doing this work many years ago, I was like, how can you say that this is your responsibility? There’s nobody else holding moms. But I’ve also come to appreciate that these specific disciplines are also very maxed out themselves. We have a healthcare system that puts a lot of pressure on get ’em and get ’em out. You spend 10 minutes with your OB, GYN, you can’t cover a lot there. You got to check the boxes and move on to the next one. A lot of pediatricians operate in the same way, and it’s hard to open up that can of worms when you’re working on such a rigid schedule. I’ve heard countless providers say, I know about it. Sometimes I think I see it, but I’m afraid to ask the question for that very reason.

(25:22):

Where am I going to send them? And I think, look, we’re in a very particular, and I don’t know if exciting is the right word. I know we’re not interested in getting political here. I will say we are in a point in time where we have made more progress in the right direction as it pertains to maternal mental health than ever before. And in the past couple of years since the Center for Disease Controls come out with their alarming statistics around modern death in this country and that the US has one of the highest maternal death rates in any developed nation, which is egregious, and that the leading cause of those death rates is a combination of mental illness and substance use, it has really pushed levels of government into action, federal, state, local. We are seeing change happen. It’s not enormous, but the conversations are happening. At least they have been. And that’s promising.

Dr. Sarah (26:20):

Yeah, I hope that they continue.

Paige (26:23):

I hope they continue too. But yeah, we’re seeing now ob gyn stepping up in a different way. We’re seeing models like collaborative care, right? We’re seeing more and more OBGYNs become informed on prescribing SSRIs to treat depression and anxiety. So they’re getting those skills and training to be able to do so, but we have a million miles to go.

Dr. Sarah (26:51):

And I think if parents are listening, maybe they’re planning a pregnancy, maybe they have kids, maybe they’ve experienced postpartum depression and just really want to have a provider in later in their maternal experience that understands that. Are there certain things that you guys encourage parents to be asking providers, whether it’s a mental health provider or a medical provider or any other, how do you encourage people to advocate for themselves and make sure that people have some type of specialization in this area?

Rebecca (27:27):

That’s a really good question. I think I can speak from a therapeutic lens. I think the most important thing in therapy is that you feel heard and understood by your therapist that you feel some kind of connection to them, even if they have the most knowledge in the whole wide world, if you don’t feel safe to be able to explore your deepest innermost feelings with them, your parts are not going to let you. You’re going to have too many protectors in the way that are going to say, no, this person isn’t safe. I don’t really want to talk about what I’m really feeling. So that’s a little bit of a vague answer in a way because there is some intuition that you’re calling on to inform your decision making process. So first, see that they have the knowledge and the experience and the training, and then talk to a couple of different people and see who’s a match for me. Because I think also advocating for oneself in our patriarchal, not sort of in our patriarchal society, moms have a hard time doing that, and that’s something that needs to get worked on in therapy and otherwise as well.

Paige (28:54):

I mean, I would add to that, and that was so beautifully said, is ask questions, right? Have you worked with pregnant and postpartum women before? What are some of the most common themes or things that you notice come up in the work that you’ve done with new and expecting moms before? Do you have any training in the area of working with new and expecting moms? Just for our listeners, I don’t ever expect anyone to remember acronyms because I can and because they’re hard and there’s so many of them. But like you said, Sarah, postpartum Support International has put together a very expansive series of trainings for all disciplines, therapists, MDs, doulas, lactation consultants called the PMHC, the Perinatal Mental Health

Rebecca (29:44):

Certification.

Paige (29:44):

Certification. Thank you for that, Rebecca. And we’re seeing more and more clinicians and providers get that training. And it’s a starting point. It allows providers to become more familiar with the types of issues and challenges and struggles and symptoms that new and expecting mothers experience and face. It gives them a language, it gives them an understanding. It opens up their eyes to what interventions and supports and treatments work best when women and birthing people are struggling with maternal mental health conditions. So there are ways to get kind of a better sense of whether or not somebody has experience in training in this field. And to your point, Rebecca, like, gosh, if we could only pull out a magic wand and empower mothers in particular, you are worth it. You get to ask these questions because you are worth it, and you deserve to be supported by and treated by somebody who knows what they’re doing and has experience in this area. And I almost wish that more than anything because we spend so much time as mothers doing for others, caring for our children, putting them first, not putting our oxygen mask on, so worth it to be paired with somebody who knows what they’re doing.

Rebecca (31:09):

I feel like I just want to give you an amen when you said that. Yeah, amen.

Dr. Sarah (31:17):

I love that. And I agree with both of you. It’s like, oh man, we are so trained from such a deep space in our psyche to be, to not take up space, to not make waves, to not be the squeaky wheel because that could make somebody uncomfortable and being able to, and I think that that can perpetuate a lot of vulnerabilities in the motherhood space. I don’t want to say that that’s going to guarantee you have a perinatal mood and anxiety disorder, but I imagine that sense of I am able to know what is going on for me. I trust my experience. I know when something doesn’t feel okay, I feel like I have a right to take up space and ask questions, that that would be a pretty protective factor when dealing with any sort of emotional, psychological, physical shakeup to your life. We know motherhood definitely can be.

Rebecca (32:21):

I think one thing I’d like to add to that, that you’re alluding to here, Sarah, is that when somebody has experienced trauma like Big T trauma or even what we’d say, little T trauma, maybe even just stressful situations in their life, sometimes it is hard to trust that intuition. And so it’s important to find a practitioner who is trauma informed. And you can ask that particular question, are you trauma informed? And tell me how, because people who really understand the effects of trauma are going to hold you differently. They’re going to hold you with kindness and compassion in a way that is, I want to say maybe heart centered. It’s like a felt sense of that. And really what we’re doing is mothering in session. And you don’t have to be a mom to be an amazing therapist of moms. I know lots of people who do this work, who are stellar clinicians who aren’t moms, but they’re doing beautiful, beautiful work because they have that trauma informed background and they have this specialized training about trence and what PMM a DS are. So I think it takes some healing to be able to trust yourself, and there’s little steps along the way. And like Paige, I loved your questions. I think that all leads to that road of self-trust.

Dr. Sarah (34:17):

Yeah. Yeah. Rebecca, I’m thinking too, as we’re talking about trauma-informed care, and we’re talking about different ways of understanding how, yes, the transition into motherhood in and of itself can be very, very impactful and in some cases very disruptive and can cause a tremendous amount of distress, which we don’t normalize enough in our society and name and help people make a story about that, that makes them still feel empowered and hopeful, but that when we enter that threshold, we bring everything with us. And I know a lot of the work that you do specifically speaks to integrating that, right? Helping parents understand there’s some things very specific to my experience of motherhood and my birth and my relationship with my child, and any sort of maybe hormonal or physiological symptoms that I experience as a result of that, but that I carry all these parts into that. And you have this really beautiful way of talking about it through an IFS lens. And for people who are not familiar with IFS one, you definitely should go back to Rebecca’s episode. But maybe Rebecca, could you give us a teeny brief overview of if FS, and then explain how you are, because you’re pretty much pioneering this movement of using IFS, you’re transposing IFS onto maternal mental health care specifically. This is the beginning of this inside of the world of IFS.

Rebecca (35:55):

Yeah, thanks. I mean, this is just so exciting to me, the basic concept of internal family systems is that we all contain multitudes. So there’s lots and lots of parts of ourselves that we are contending with on a day-to-day basis. For example, and this is the silliest example that I use all the time because I think it’s just relatable. There’s a part of me that wants to go to the party tonight, and there’s a part of me that wants to just stay at home in bed. Both parts are important to your system, and they’re both welcome. So Richard Schwartz is the creator of IFS, and he says, all parts are welcome and there are no bad parts. So another really fundamental viewpoint of IFS is that we don’t pathologize parts.

(36:54):

They’re all welcome means that they all have a purpose, they all have good intentions, and sometimes parts lead our systems a little bit more than others. So for example, in the case of a postpartum anxiety, maybe your anxious parts are just really activated all the time because of how you were raised, what your early childhood experiences were for yourself. B, because of our societal expectations, what are the messages that you’re getting about being a mom looking perfect all the time, doing the right intervention for your kid? And Sarah, I mean, your work also is so important in this because so many kids don’t fit the mold of what is easy for us. And that can set mom’s anxious parts off. They’re perfectionist parts, they’re inner critics, and then coupled with whatever their experiences were in their own childhood. And also, let’s not forget, physiology hormones are powerful and lack of sleep. When we’re parenting young kids, we’re not getting good sleep. And then I’ve got teenagers and going through menopause and all that, you’re not sleeping again. So there are these critical periods of time in a woman’s life where hormones do activate some of our parts. So IFS is great for any kind of condition, any kind of mental health disorder. And I’ll caveat the word disorder because I actually don’t like using that word at all.

(39:01):

Because I think inherently it has a pathologizing tone to it. And if you really believe in the conceptualization that we’re all made of parts and there are no bad parts, then those two things don’t jive. So what I’m doing in my work is really with my understanding of mares. And I’ll also say that I’m not doing this work alone. I’m writing a book with someone named Jessica Soci, and we’ve been developing this work over the past couple of years, and we call it mom parts. So there are, in our work, we’ve found that there is an expectable set of parts that arise during mares essence, and we see them over and over and over again. And so we’re writing a book about it because it’s our passion and we can’t stop talking about it. But when moms really can start to understand these parts that pop up in their systems and become what we would call in IFS terms polarized, they’re sort of fighting against each other inside of you, that creates a lot of distress.

(40:23):

And so we can alleviate a lot of that distress by understanding, okay, where did these parts come from? What is their purpose? What are their hopes and fears for you? If your anxiety didn’t do the job that it’s doing right now by keeping you on task all the time, by making you do your makeup every morning so that you look perfect, right? If it didn’t do that sort of thing day in and day out, what other job would it have to do? Well, it could be a whole number of things that would actually be a little bit less distressing, saying, I’m not saying makeup is bad. If you like makeup, that’s great, but just in this…

Dr. Sarah (41:08):

The feeling of being like, I can’t show up without this mask. I got to put on the face. I think what you’re tapping into there.

Rebecca (41:15):

Exactly. Exactly. And so if you’re putting on makeup for the joy of putting on makeup and the creativity of it, then that’s amazing. And that’s what we would call self energy. Because another thing about IFS that’s just so beautiful is that we believe that you are born with a self, and that’s a self with a capital S. And you could conceptualize that also as your true essence or your soul or just really who you truly are when it’s not covered up by all the different parts of you that are activated when you’re under stress. So yeah, that’s in I guess a nutshell what the work is. And it just seems to me in my experience, in my practice with clients, that it helps people take a breath and slow down. It’s a very somatic experience. Also meaning that IFS uses body sensations to help you get in touch with what you’re feeling, what the emotions are, and identifying the parts of you that need attention. So it can feel, I sometimes say to my therapist, it feels like I just got a massage, an internal massage.

Dr. Sarah (42:44):

That feeling of integration, it’s very comforting. And one thing that’s coming to mind. So we’ve talked about the word mires essence a couple times, and I’m realizing not everyone probably knows what that means. Rebecca, could you just give us a quick definition of what matrescence is?

Rebecca (43:02):

Yeah. Matrescence is the developmental stage of becoming a mother. So much like adolescence where there’s a huge hormonal upheaval and parts of you reconfigure into a new person. matrescence is just like that.

Dr. Sarah (43:22):

Just later on in the timeline. Yeah.

Paige (43:27):

Yeah. So love the way you speak of this, Rebecca, and the work that you do. It’s so groundbreaking and necessary. And also for my own personal self learning how to embrace all the parts, how difficult that can be as a mother, as a person, even at the parts about me that I don’t really like, there’s still room for me to have a relationship with them that looks different. And that’s just mind blowing, right? It’s like mind blowing to me. And as you’re talking about these parts, I would be remiss not to add, and I know that this is at the root of your work, and I like to share this because I think it also adds a supplemental visual, is the work of the psychoanalyst, Selma Fraiberg, who we all bow down to because she really introduced us to so many of these concepts, that famous paper she wrote, Ghosts in the Nursery, even just the title of that is so powerful and connects so well with what you’re saying is that when we enter the proverbial nursery of motherhood, which is exactly what it is, the nursery equals motherhood.

(44:48):

We bring so many ghosts in there with us, and it is these parts, right? It’s our history, it’s our relationship with our own parents, friends, family members. It’s our trauma. It’s what we’ve been through as a human being. We don’t just wake up the day our baby’s born as a brand new person. We enter that new relationship with ourself, with our whole full and entire history. And how does that show up in this nursery? And I think one of the most beautiful things that I notice in my work with mothers is so many of them who, if they have unfortunately had a lot of trauma experiences in their life, if they had a difficult relationship with their own mother or parents or other people, this innate fear of what if I show up the same way? What if I am that person? What if I do the same things to my own baby that that person did to me? And that awareness and acknowledgement of, and what if you don’t, right? You also have the opportunity to do something very different. And so many mothers just having the honor to watch them move through their motherhood journey. We have people who graduated from the Motherhood Center back in 2017 when we opened, and now it’s like eight years later, and they have kids that are eight years old, and they’re like, I did everything different because I recognize I had the power to do that and break the cycle and change it. And that’s so powerful.

Rebecca (46:28):

That’s empowering.

Dr. Sarah (46:32):

And Rebecca, so I love your work. I was lucky enough for you to come and do a trading With Up Your Bren, my group practice in Westchester. It was so incredible. And so we’re actually, so Paige and the Motherhood Center and ups, your Bren and Rebecca, and we’re partnering up to do another training in February. And I’m like, ah, I’m so jazzed. And this time it’s going to be virtual as well, so it’s like a hybrid training. So before we just did it in our office, which can only hold 30 people. So now we’re opening the same training up to a much larger audience. And so I cannot wait. I want to do it again because my favorite thing about the training was, I know there’s a lot of parents obviously, that listen to this podcast, but there’s also a lot of mental health professionals that work with parents who listen to this podcast.

(47:23):

And I will say as a mother doing your training and as a psychologist doing your training, I both felt like I had this really powerful way of looking at how I work with mothers and actually all parents frankly, but I also felt very healed as a mom. People were literally crying because it is so experiential and it’s not therapy. I don’t want to dissuade people. It’s not like we’re sitting here doing group therapy, but there is a very powerful internal experience that happens in your work because you do invite people to look at their own parts.

Rebecca (48:06):

I had a teacher in high school, it was my French teacher actually, who said, if you can’t teach it, then you don’t know it. And so I feel the same way about learning your own system. And to be a good mental health practitioner, you really need to know your own parts. And that’s the best way to integrate the information to identify what your parts are in there and start befriending them just like you’re asking your clients to do. To me, that’s just the most powerful. I mean, I think quite frankly, I’ve done a ton of training. I’m a certified IFS therapist, but I think my biggest education is my own therapy. Thank you for also the sweet words about the training that we enjoyed it immensely. Oh, good.

Dr. Sarah (49:10):

Paige, you are going to love it. It’s so good.

Paige (49:12):

I’m so excited. And another, just shout out for personal Therapy and growth. This is how we continue to be better at what we do is understanding ourself better and differently every day.

Dr. Sarah (49:27):

So for those of you who are listening who might be interested, I’m going to share a little bit of info about this training because I think it’s actually going to be really valuable to a lot of people. So it’s going to be on February 27th, it’s three hour, and it’s going to be both in person and hybrid. So we will be at the Motherhood Center in their amazing facility, and then also we’ll be streaming it through Zoom for those who can’t come in person. And that also allows us to open it up to a larger audience who may not be local. And we’re super lucky because we’re able to offer CE credits for it too, which I think is fantastic. But, so I’ll put a link in the show notes and the show description for how to get information on it. But if you’re need to click right now, you want to go to upshire.com/ifs training. And yeah, we really hope everyone joins us. It’s going to be a really great time, and there’s going to be a fun little schmoozy meet. And afterwards too, for those of us who can come in person, which I’m super excited and I’m so excited to see. I haven’t been to the Motherhood Center yet, so your facility is like, ahh. Everyone talks about it.

Paige (50:41):

We are over the moon to have you there, both of you there to have everybody who registers to come in person or virtually. Yeah, I mean, it’s so funny. This place used to feel so huge in the very beginning when we started with three women in the day program, and now we have 24 here today, and now it feels super small. But nonetheless, we can’t wait to have people come and see the space and have a little bit of mingling afterwards. And gosh, just so thankful for this collaboration. There’s nothing better than being with people that you could finish each other’s sentences that make your arm hair stand up on end. So I know that this is just going to be great.

Rebecca (51:21):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Paige, I’m so excited.

Dr. Sarah (51:26):

And of course, for people who can’t come to the training necessarily, I still think there’s just such a wealth of resources that are put out by both of your practices. Do you guys want to share a little bit about where people can connect with you guys and the work that you’re doing and other trainings that you have for clinicians who are interested?

Rebecca (51:48):

Yeah, I mean, people can just go to my website, rebecca kri l mft.com, and I’m getting together a new newsletter that I’m going to put out in the beginning of next year and some fun things that I’m planning. And again, like I said, Jessica Soci and I are writing a book, so that’s going to be published in 2026. And the current title of that is When Good Moms Feel Bad using Internal Family Systems to Remedy Distress and Motherhood. So we’re working feverishly on that to get the manuscript in, and hopefully then that will just be a resource for any mom to pick up, no matter what stage your kid is in, what stage of rece you’re in, I think this book is going to be great, even for grandparents. So it will run the gamut.

Paige (52:51):

I’m going to be one of the first people to buy that book. I cannot wait. And for people that are interested in learning more about The Motherhood Center website is the greatest place to start. You can find us at www.themotherhoodcenter.com. You can learn more about maternal mental health there. You can fill out an online new patient inquiry form, and one of our care coordinators can get back to you and talk to you a little bit more about what symptoms you’re experiencing and what support you might need. If you’re a provider. We have a provider website. You can go and actually refer patients and learn all about PMAD research and upcoming events. And we do offer free trainings for providers in the general public to learn more about maternal mental health. So you can always register for one of those for free. We’re also going to be offering CE credits probably in the second quarter of 2025.

Dr. Sarah (53:45):

Yay.

Paige (53:47):

So if you’re looking for education or treatment or anything in between, please check us out.

Dr. Sarah (53:54):

And I’d highly recommend signing up for both of these women’s newsletters. But seriously, I mean, Rebecca, I know you’re going to be putting out more content soon, but Paige, The Motherhood Center newsletters are so informative and so helpful, and so that’s a really great free resource for everybody. So definitely sign up for that.

Paige (54:12):

Thanks. The only other thing I forgot to mention is on top of doing what we do, we are committed to defeating the stigma that surrounds maternal mental health. And we use our social media channels to do exactly that. So our Instagram is basically dedicated to normalizing the hard parts of motherhood. And if you’re one of those people who is on Instagram and you’re seeing only the perfect pictures of moms that are blissed out, loving every minute of it thinking this is the best thing that ever happened to them, follow us. Because we’re talking about the truth and what motherhood really looks like and feels like,

Rebecca (54:46):

Again, another. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. That is all I ever want is to de-stigmatize what moms go through. So I wanted to also add, if you’re in California, because we were talking earlier about how there seems to be a shortage of trained people. I actually also have a business called Second Street Collective, and the business is mostly made up of people who are specialists in maternal mental health, and they run their private practices out of Second Street Collective. So that’s another resource you can go to second Street collective.org. If you’re in California and you want to find somebody either in person or via telehealth.

Dr. Sarah (55:33):

Amazing. And we’ll link all of this in the show notes and the show description so people can go follow and find you guys and get those resources. Because your mission to get maternal mental health access to more people, to normalize it, to celebrate it is so inspiring. I love both of you. I love that. I’m friends with both of you. I feel so lucky. And yeah, I just hair sticking up on my arms. Tingly, Paige.

Paige (56:03):

I know, right?

Rebecca (56:05):

I know. This was fun. You guys.

Dr. Sarah (56:07):

So fun.

Paige (56:09):

This was great. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Rebecca. I can’t wait until we all get to see each other in person in February.

Rebecca (56:14):

I know.

Dr. Sarah (56:15):

Yes.

(56:23):Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be so helpful if you can leave a rating and a review wherever you’re streaming your support makes a huge difference and helps this podcast reach the ears of more parents and professionals just like you. And if you’re interested in learning more about the Good Mom/Bad Mom Loop training that we’re hosting on February 27th, you can go to upshurbren.com/IFSTraining. That’s upshurbren.com/IFSTraining, or just go to the episode description to access the link. I’ll see you back here on Thursday for our next Beyond the session segment on the Securely Attached podcast. And don’t be a stranger.