Stephanie (00:00):

Hard work doesn’t equal love. I think my mom worked as hard as she felt like she could, and we don’t have a relationship, and I don’t want to make that same mistake of I do everything for you, and then you’re 18 and you didn’t see the warmth, and so you hate me anyway. And none of all of that hard work even matters.

Dr. Sarah (00:28):

Parenthood has a way of bringing up parts of our past that we often didn’t even know were still triggers for us, and that is even more true for those parents navigating complex trauma. Today I’m joined on the securely attached podcast by Stephanie Foo. When Stephanie was diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or C-PTSD, she left her job and dedicated herself to healing a journey She beautifully captures in her book What My Bones Know. Now as a mother, she’s navigating what it looks like to raise a child while carrying the weight of complex trauma, as well as the common worries and challenges that just about all new mothers face. In this episode, we explore why it can be so hard to regulate our nervous systems while caring for our kids how relational healing plays a crucial role in breaking cycles. The tools that have helped Stephanie most since becoming a parent and why finding support is so essential for all new parents, whether or not you have a history of trauma.

(01:37):

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.

(02:07):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the securely attached podcast. Today we have a really, really incredible guest. We have Stephanie Foo here. She’s the author of What My Bones Know, and I’m so grateful for you to come on the show. Thank you for being here.

Stephanie (02:27):

Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here. I’ve listened to a bunch of episodes, so.

Dr. Sarah (02:32):

I’m so glad. Yeah, so one of the episodes that precursed, this one was an episode that I did with Jacob Ham, who is a mentor of mine. He also had a big impact on this book that you wrote in your life. So I was curious, before we get into that, maybe we could talk a little bit about your journey to writing this book and your experience and where you are right now in motherhood.

Stephanie (03:02):

Yeah, so in 2018, I think it was in the beginning of 2018, I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD. I had always known that I had depression and anxiety. That was something that I had suffered from since I was an adolescent. But having the diagnosis of complex PTSD made me sort of realize how big of an impact my childhood truly had on every day of my life. And at the time, I was a producer at this American Life, and I quit my job. I quit everything, and I just dedicated my time to researching and healing because it was also, I was suffering from a lot of panic attacks. I was having problems with relationships. I was just like, I need to sort of get a lock on this and understand myself once and for all. And so I went on this big healing journey for a couple of years that did culminate in me doing a few months of therapy with Dr. Ham. And I think when I was diagnosed, the other thing was I started looking for literature to help me feel less alone and to figure out what to do next. And there was nothing from a first person perspective and everything was pretty pathologizing and very medicalized and usually for therapists.

(04:38):

And so there was nothing for the individual, nothing that made me feel like a human being. And so I told myself, okay, if I’m able to heal from this, I’m going to write that first person narrative because I knew how important that would be for making people feel seen and not complete freaks I felt when I was first diagnosed. So yeah, that was a couple of years ago. The book is done very well. I’m very blessed to say. And in 2023, I did have a baby, and now I am grappling with what it is to be a mother who has complex trauma and how to take care of him and also myself. That balance.

Dr. Sarah (05:42):

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s a huge task for anyone. As we all know, if you’ve entered into motherhood, I think we can all understand that it’s just a hugely transformative experience. But when you come into that, when you cross that threshold with your own experience of trauma, whether you’ve done the work to move towards healing it, I mean, it’s kind of a lifelong process to heal chronic trauma. And if you, it’s like this giant extra task that can’t totally be uncoupled with it all. So I very much appreciate how open you, I mean, I think I read your book. I listened to it because it’s funny. I feel like I never have time to read books. I like to consume my books through my ears.

Stephanie (06:37):

Ever since becoming a mother, I only listen to books. I get it. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (06:42):

It’s like every time I, reading a book is such a time luxury.

Stephanie (06:47):

Right, when you have the time, at least you can listen to a book while you’re washing dishes or rocking.

Dr. Sarah (06:53):

Right? Yes. But I specifically made a very intentional choice to listen to the audible, the audio version of your book because it has a really unique feature. You have the actual recorded sessions from your therapy work with Dr. Ham embedded into the audio book, which I’ve never seen done before. And I thought that was so cool and unique, and it was really interesting to get a peek into that. How did that come about?

Stephanie (07:25):

Well, I was a radio producer. I worked at this American Life at Snap Judgment, and so my inclination is to record everything. I always record everything. And the reason why Dr. Hum wanted to work with me was he was like, if we record these sessions, maybe you could do something cool with them. We could make a training module or you could make a podcast about it. You could do whatever you want with it. And I was like, absolutely. That sounds rad. Maybe this will be a radio story someday. But what was really fascinating about it was that the recordings actually became a big part of the therapy, which I had not anticipated.

(08:11):

Just being able to, I think when you leave a therapy session, everybody kind of knows that feeling of like, oh, you have some revelations, you took something meaningful from it, and then you walk back straight into your office or to your child or whatever it is, and then it sort of disappears immediately and you forget or whatever it was. And then you kind of have to be reminded of it last week or the next week. Dr. Hum always says that the first session is sort of the template, and then you just have to keep doing the first session over and over and over again in different ways. So I think what was great about putting it all in recordings is I could transcribe them and I could go back and I could look and I could say, Hey, what really happened here? And you are kind of being a jerk here. Why were you doing that to me? And it really taught me how to resolve conflicts with him. It taught me how to see myself better. I could really watch myself get triggered. I could watch myself become hypervigilant and avoid asking him the right questions. It was really illuminating. And so of course, a big part of that I wanted to put in the book. It was a huge part of my healing process, and since I had these recordings, I felt very comfortable sharing them, and so I slotted them in there.

Dr. Sarah (09:39):

Yeah. I wonder too, just to set it up for people who aren’t as familiar with C-PTSD, maybe we could talk a little bit about what it is and why it’s pretty, it’s not that well known or understood. I think you’ve done a really incredible and important job of bringing it into a more just the conversation of life. People are, like you were saying, when you found out you had that diagnosis, you went and all the information you had was really written for therapists. It’s not for the person receiving the diagnosis. And it is tricky to read. I mean, I think in general, the idea that we can Google and have all this information is I think it’s helpful and can be really challenging if it’s not contextualized or given delivered in a relational safe way, your mind can go. It’s just hard to decipher all that. So I feel like you’ve done an amazing job of helping change some of the language around it. But for people who aren’t as familiar, could you share a little bit about what C-PTSD is and how that might be different from PTSD? The more formal one?

Stephanie (10:53):

Yeah. So complex PTSD is when you are exposed to trauma many, many times over the course of years. So if you get in a car accident that you could get PTSD from that single incident. But it’s like if you got in a car accident every week for years, that’s what having Complex PTSD is kind of like. But the thing about that is that unless you are some insanely unlucky person, you’re not going to get in a car accident every week for years. The way that that trauma happens is through relationships. If you are in a domestic partnership with somebody who is abusive, if you are exposed to child abuse, that was the source of my trauma, was I survived a lot of child abuse and neglect. It can come from living in a war zone. And so it changes the way that we view human beings and the way that we can trust others. And so the healing process needs to be more relational, therefore, and more about how do we come to trust and love other people? How do we interact with them? How do we feel safe in relationships?

Dr. Sarah (12:18):

And that’s so important because I think when we think about trauma, this idea of not feeling safe, and we can understand what is happening for someone when they’re having moments of activation, when their trauma response is being activated, but when you’re looking at it from the outside and you don’t understand all the backstory of why a person’s trauma response is being activated, what you can see on the outside can be really confusing to decipher. And so I think this is where a lot of the stigma comes or the misunderstanding or the challenges of when you live in a world where your entire internal blueprint of what I can expect from others and how I should be maneuvering myself through the world to stay as safe as I can is based on everything is dangerous, that you’re constantly in, they’re a low level or a very high level state of fight or flight all the time, but that makes it so hard to, you don’t have access in those moments, which are probably more often than they’re not happening to feel like connection with somebody. Because we can’t feel connection and safety in threat. They’re kind of mutually exclusive.

Stephanie (13:43):

Right? Yeah, absolutely. I think that how it becomes very relevant in parenting is because I think most mothers are already hypervigilant, especially with young children, really, really young children, babies, because they are so vulnerable. And so when you take that and then you ramp it up to be in even more of a fight or flight state, I think it can make it difficult to bond with your partner with the child itself. It’s hard to make those loving connections and feel that joy when you are so terrified all the time.

Dr. Sarah (14:24):

Yeah, because I mean, if you think about it, just from a strictly neurophysiological standpoint, we think about our ability to co-regulate with a baby, to attune to their cues, notice when they’re becoming upset, and then use our calm nervous system to soothe them. And even people who have trauma histories are pretty good at this. I feel like actually people with complex trauma are actually hyper attuned to the nervous systems of others and the threat responses of others. Because you’ve had to develop that hyper attunement to stay safe. You needed to know the subtlest cues that you, the person in your life who wasn’t safe, that they were going to be threatening to you. So you get good at tuning in, but what the piece that’s missing is the calm, calm, nervous system to share.

Stephanie (15:25):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (15:26):

Is that something that you can relate to that experience?

Stephanie (15:30):

Yeah, I think that was especially pronounced in the newborn phase. I think it was really hard to have that calm, nice time to share because also there’s just so blah, they’re nothing, they’re not styling at you. They’re not giving you anything positive to go on really. I mean, they’re cute, but they’re not attuning with you in any kind of way.

Dr. Sarah (16:01):

It’s not reciprocal in that way.

Stephanie (16:03):

At all. All they’re doing is crying at you and you’re freaking out just being like, let me calm you down. Let me make you feel better. And I feel like the only time that you’re really getting any sort of, okay, I’ve done the right thing is when they’re sleeping. And so yeah, I think that was really difficult at first. I don’t know. I feel like another thing about complex PTSD though is it can make you really good at dissociation. And so I do feel like weirdly, for me anyway, I can project reject calmness or silliness or cheerfulness even when I’m feeling pretty sad or lonely or whatever it is with him because of my ability to dissociate. But I think one of the side effects of that is when you are so good at attuning to others and putting other people’s needs first and trying to placate your abuser or everyone around you, it is very easy to disappear as a person and to have your needs not be seen and not be met. It’s also just for mothers in general, very difficult to not disappear as a mom to disappear into that role, to put your kids first in every possible way. And so I think, again, all of these things are normal parenting, especially mothering experiences. I think they get ramped up quite a bit when someone has complex PTSD. I got very wrapped up in perfectionism, in attuning to my child at all times, to never getting irritated at him, to always meeting his needs. And of course, that’s impossible. And when they’re young, you don’t know what their needs are a lot of the time because they can’t communicate with you. And so I think that really freaked me out when he was crying and I couldn’t figure out why. And I was like, are you gassy? Are you hungry? Are you tired just running through this list and flipping out? I can’t at two. It was really challenging, and it’s really been challenging even now to try and exist as a person to not completely disappear and to be even aware of my own feelings and needs sometimes.

Dr. Sarah (18:51):

Yeah. No, that’s so insightful, and I think it makes me think of the fact that a lot of the work, and you write about this in your book, and this is pretty typical when we’re talking about healing these deeply, these attachment traumas, these complex relational traumas, is to learn how to create this safe relationship with another person, again, to be able to take up space, to not disappear, to be able to weather conflict and repair it with one another. And that’s a lot of the work that you did before becoming a mom. But then there’s this unique relationship with a baby where it is a relational, it’s a relationship of course, but it’s not bidirectional in the same way as a healthy adult relationship is. And so it’s almost like you’ve done all this work to rewrite your blueprint and have a sense of I can be safe, I can be vulnerable, I can have needs, I can repair, rupture with another person. I can feel love and love someone else. And then you have a baby and you’re like, all that’s still true, but it’s not the same set of rules again. It’s like you have to level up your blueprint and be able to tolerate not receiving a lot of it back.

Stephanie (20:08):

And you have to relearn what rupture and repair looks like.

Dr. Sarah (20:14):

How is it different with a baby or than it is with a grownup in your experience?

Stephanie (20:20):

I mean, every single thing is different, but in many ways it’s actually simpler repair often between us looks like hug and you just give a big hug and cuddle and kiss the cheeks, and that’s repair. I don’t know any adults that I could repair like that with. I don’t think they would like, but sometimes I say, sorry if something happens, I don’t know. I step on him, whatever I tell him. Sometimes I think repair sometimes looks like distraction a lot more with a kid because I’m trying to put him, it’s winter, it’s cold as balls right now. I’m trying to put him in his giant puffer suit. It takes forever. He does not it. He’s screaming. I’m just like, yeah, I know. It’s really uncomfortable. I mean, that’s kind of the same. I’m trying to practice the similar thing as I would with adults of just like, I’m affirming your feelings right now, but then you also have to also be like, look, your foot’s coming out of your pants.

(21:46):

You have dogs on your feet, look coming out of your pants. Or Hey, do you want to wash some Elmo because they’re losing their mind or whatever on the train. So yeah, I think I wouldn’t try and distract other adults as much. But yeah, sometimes I feel like, and a lot of these things that I’ve practiced with him, I’ve practiced with him since he was a newborn in terms of changing his diaper and being like, oh, I know you’re uncomfortable. That’s uncomfortable. And I know he had no idea what I was saying, but I feel sometimes I am repairing or practicing repair or interacting with this future version of himself, of him that’s going to be able to understand more what I’m talking about. Sometimes I feel like I’m interacting with 18-year-old son.

Dr. Sarah (22:43):

Well, you’re setting the blueprint for 18-year-old son. I think a lot, and we could talk a little bit about the concept of rupture and repair a little bit, but I think a lot of times we think about repairing ruptures as apologizing or making sure the other person isn’t mad at us or knows that we didn’t intend to hurt them. And that’s a part of it, and that’s important, but especially when you’re in a relationship where you’re constantly, I always talk about an attachment relationship, kind of like the metaphor I use is it’s like you’re knitting a quilt and every single micro interaction you have with that child is a stitch in the quilt. And we’re going to drop stitches. That’s normal and it’s fine, and it’s not going to damage the integrity of the quilt. But we do put a ton of pressure on ourselves to never drop one, we think.

(23:36):

But the reason why I say this is because think about how the stitches that are going to fill up this child’s quilt, and that’s I think why in the case of complex PTSD or these relational traumas that are happening chronically throughout childhood, there’s just rupture up, rupture, rupture, rupture. There’s no cumulative micro itsy, itsy minuscule, but billions of them moments of attunement and safety. I think we think of rupture and repair or even attunement as these big moments of, I got it right, but really it’s just being with someone in every second of our lives that we’re having some type of conscious connection with each other or unconscious connection with each other, and chronically feeling that this sense of general safety and that I am seen by this person totally and that they’re interested in my experience and want to keep me safe.

Stephanie (24:36):

I mean, with Dr. Ham who has helped me a lot, I was freaking out about this exact thing with him. I was like, I know how many stitches are the right amount of stitches that I need to make. How many stitches dropped before he is absolutely screwed for the rest of his life and totally traumatized, and I don’t know, I feel like I have no sense of it. And he told me about TRO and his studies on the still face experiment and essentially his work on rupture repair and tranic found that the most securely attached children were only really having their needs met and having their mother pick up on them 30% of the time, which meant that 70% of the time there was rupture and 30% of the time there was repair. They were being totally seen. And I was astonished by this number because it is relatively so small. And then I was like, oh, okay, so I should be intentionally trying to make only 30%. You’re completely missing the entire point. The point is that you have so much space to fuck up before it goes bad, and actually the fucking up is a good thing. You need those ruptures in order for the child to know that bad things are going to happen in life sometimes you’re not going to have your needs met, and this is how you ask for repair. This is how you make repair, and essentially mom is there and she’s trying. Yeah. So that was really reassuring to me.

Dr. Sarah (26:37):

That’s so reassuring. Also, I even, because I’ve seen these stats and I think it’s so important, really be very clear whether you have a trauma passed or not, every mom is worried that they are going to fuck up their kid. It’s an inborn fear that comes with the new mom brain. I think. And it’s funny you were saying, especially in the postpartum period, that heightened sense of fight or flight is because you’re so vulnerable there. Actually, we know from research on brain changes in pregnancy and in postpartum that there are actually structural changes in the brain that do create a more sensitive fight or flight response, and that’s how our species has survived. It’s evolutionarily based.

(27:25):

It’s really hard on the mom’s nervous system, but it’s very good for our species, for a mom to be hypervigilant about keeping her child alive. That’s a good thing for the human species. And so our brains are wired for this, but also that means we’re going to be really white knuckling it a lot of the time, and it’s like knowing that can help us relax a little bit. It makes you think of something else you were saying too, which is that when you got that information, instead of hearing, I get to be human with my kid, I get to be a person who doesn’t have to be constantly controlling how perfectly attuned I am. You went straight to, okay, so I’m going to measure out how much I can mess up and I’m going to factor in X amount of permission to mess, which is so understandable, but it’s like this like, oh, we want to control even how much we allow ourselves to not do it right.

Stephanie (28:27):

Yeah. I think I’m very mean. Obviously, control equals safety for the abused child or this idea that if they are perfect, they will be safe. And that has been a very debilitating idea to break for me that perfection is safety. But I think too, when you have complex PTSD, a lot of the time you don’t have great relationship with your parents. For many of us who experienced childhood trauma, and I don’t really know what a healthy adult child and parent relationship looks like, I’m estranged from both of my parents, and so I have this immense terror that he isn’t going to want anything to do with me. And it’s like this crazy fear where I feel like I need to be perfect now. So he will love me 20 years from now. And that is such an unhealthy way to parent. I recognize that that is, I don’t want to put this pressure on him for showing me love or making me feel loved or anything like that. He needs the space to be who he is. And so there’s a lot of fear there that I’m operating on that has required a lot of work.

Dr. Sarah (30:06):

Oh yeah.

Stephanie (30:08):

To deal with.

Dr. Sarah (30:11):

Can I ask you too, and feel free to, if this feels too personal, we can cut it, but do you find that the part of you is, I imagine there’s many different parts that show up in parenthood, but the part of you that’s like, oh my God, if I’m not the perfect parent, he will leave me. Is that part how you always feel, or is that a part that shows up sometimes it’s like how when you feel like your most whole integrated self as a parent, I’m tapped into my true just innate wisdom and connection with my kid, and the rest of that noise kind of disappears. Does that fear still drive it? Or are there times when you’re like, I’m not afraid of that. We’re just here together right now?

Stephanie (30:55):

Oh, it’s not a 24 7 thing. No, definitely not. There’s moments of real connection and attunement and just pure joy, especially now that he’s older. There’s a lot of fun. And then especially again, now that he’s older, we have such a good bond that I do feel more confidence in like, oh, I think I am a good parent. I think I’m doing this right. And yeah, the fear has lessened. Now that I know that I can actually, I feel confident in making mistakes around him. And also, I used to be really terrified about leaving him. I travel a lot for work, and so sometimes I have to be gone for a couple of days and I was like, oh, this is going to mess him up. But at this point, I come back, he comes and he runs and he gives me a hug, and everything is good, and we still have an incredible relationship. So yeah, I think that feeling comes up sometimes, especially when I feel like I’ve messed up something. But a lot of the times it is just the day-to-day of, put food on the table, get dressed, play, let’s go to the park.

Dr. Sarah (32:14):

The little mini micro stitches of the blanket that aren’t this magical fireworks moment necessarily just life, but you guys are just synced up and having a life together that feels safe.

Stephanie (32:29):

Totally. But I mean, it took work to get here. I mean from when he was born, but also all the work that I did before, a lot of work over the years. So it’s not, yeah, I dunno. It wasn’t easy.

Dr. Sarah (32:46):

No. And you were saying when they’re a newborn and they can’t give you those facial cues or those verbal cues that, Hey, this is working. I’m feeling safe with you. You have to just guess. And the absence of their capacity to affirm that our efforts are landing for them is really hard. And then couple that with the fact that you’re just a postpartum mom who’s brand, just you’ve been birthed as a mother too. It’s really hard. I think that’s why the postpartum period could be so difficult for a lot of parents.

Stephanie (33:26):

Hormones are wild and out. I had PPD, I had D-MER, which is when your levels of dopamine, I think drop when letdown happens. And so I felt like I was being sucked by dementors for the first minute of breastfeeding every single time. That was really rough. I had a C-section, so I was recovering from that. I also have Ehlers Danlos, which is maybe tied to complex PTSD, and so I couldn’t walk for two months or three months. I couldn’t walk for three months. And so it’s a lot. It’s a lot. Yeah. It’s not an easy time. I think postpartum is literal Hell.

Dr. Sarah (34:25):

Yeah. I mean, it’s like we were saying before, it’s like you go into, everyone crosses that threshold with what they bring with them. And if you have a lot to bring with you, that can really stress your system a tremendous amount.

Stephanie (34:37):

And I mean, I think there’s all this evidence now that shows that the main factors for PPD and for a lot of postpartum mental health is how much support you have. And again, if you have complex PTSD probably don’t have a good relationship with your parents. Your parents are probably not there helping you in so many other cultures. This is the time when you are held by your family. Your mom is there, you get to be somebody’s baby. Even as you are taking care of your own baby and you’re adjusting to this new role, you still remain somebody else’s baby. You are swaddled and you’re fed and you’re massaged if you have C-PTSD. If you don’t have a great relationship, if you don’t have a family, then you’re alone doing this. A lot of us live farther from our families as well, especially in America. It’s such sort of a culture that focuses on independence, which is why rates of PPD are higher here than anywhere else. But I think that helplessness and that trying to do everything, that trying to be everything to this very, very needy new being, while nobody is taking care of you, that is so gutting, and I think it can bring on these waves of mother hunger too, and sadness for yourself and for baby you, your inner child, for mourning the loss of your parents once again. It’s really hard.

Dr. Sarah (36:22):

Yeah. Have you done any, I know that you did a lot of work before you were pregnant, but in having your child and becoming a parent, has there been work that you’ve done that you’ve found particularly helpful in processing some of that? Maybe what comes back up, I’m thinking, I could imagine that if you have childhood trauma, that not only in your relationship with your child, that your child and all the things that your child is maybe receiving that you didn’t receive because you’re working so hard to give them, that could be really activating of a lot of painful memories and grief that you have to process. But I also think that, like you were saying, just you if human being who’s becoming a mom in the absence of a mom, of your own mom. So I feel like there’s just all these different layers of reprocessing trauma that can happen in motherhood. Some of them related to the child, but some of them related to your role as the mother and your inner child too. So have you found anything since having a child to be helpful in helping you move through some of those things?

Stephanie (37:47):

I think trying to get better at asking for help and receiving help has been really important from community. Having a mom group has been really, really helpful. I joined my neighborhood mom group on Facebook and we have a WhatsApp group. And just having this community of moms, I mean, I have a bunch of mom friends whose babies were born the same week as my son, so we’re all going through the same thing at the same time. And we have a babysitting collective where that’s nice. You really need help. One afternoon you can ask another mom for help, and then you trade off, you know.

Dr. Sarah (38:33):

You built a village.

Stephanie (38:35):

Yeah, you have to build your own village. It sucks that you have to do that, but it’s necessary. So it’s been really excellent and IFS has been helpful in some ways, just trying to make space for the inner child and her grief and her feelings and everything. And then I think one of the worse things, the hardest lessons, but the best lesson that happened is I had a really nasty concussion. I fell backwards trying to take a car seat out of the car. Oh no. Then this was right before a break from daycare. And so I just still went hard post-concussion on taking care of my kid. I was rocking him all the time, which was just shaking my inflamed brain. And my concussion got worse and worse and worse to the point where I had, I couldn’t move. I had to just lie there in the dark for a week, and I recognized that I had to pull back and take care of myself sometimes or else I physically, emotionally, mentally, everything would not be able to take care of my child. And so also that experience, I had to step back. I let my husband step in a lot, and then I really saw that also when that happened. My mother rage abated a lot, and I was like, and so now it’s a good sign for me when I start getting really, really angry, I start being like, oh, my inner child needs something.

(40:38):

My needs are really not being met. I need to figure out a way to step back and give some stuff to my husband or call in a sitter or whatever it is.

Dr. Sarah (40:53):

That’s such a powerful insight. And I’m sorry I took a concussion for you to realize this, but in getting that space to sort of realize in the absence of being a hundred percent on a hundred percent of the time, I could see that things can, it’s almost like an exposure therapy, like an accidental exposure therapy of like, oh, I didn’t do, I didn’t make it perfect and everything was okay. And in the absence of doing all the things, you had to sit with your own needs. And I could actually notice that they weren’t being tended to. And it sounds like you were able to say, that’s not okay with me. I have to care for myself too.

Stephanie (41:42):

And really grappling with the consequences of it. If I don’t care for myself, X, Y, Z is going to happen, all these things are going to happen. I’m going to become resentful. I’m going to be angry. I’m not going to be as present of a mother. I’m probably going to miss attune more. I’m going to fight more with my partner, and my child is going to see that and he’s going to see this increased conflict. I am going to not be as healthy. I’m going to be really tired and hungry, and I’m going to get sick more. And so I will physically not be able to care for my child.

(42:28):

I’m going to have to pass ’em off anyway. And so seeing all of this laid out in front of me, I was like, okay, so I actually do have to take care of myself in order to take care of him. And I think it’s, again, it’s a mistake on making because they need so much and the sleep regression happens, they get sick, whatever. And then you drop everything and you give completely of yourself, and then I get angry and then I pull back a little. It’s a cycle.

Dr. Sarah (43:00):

I think. And sometimes we just have to give everything even when we don’t have it. But that can’t chronically be the way we approach parenting. And it’s interesting you’re saying all these things, if I don’t take care of myself, all these things that drive most of my parenting fear beyond all the time are actually going to happen. It’s almost as paradox, the harder I parent out of this fear that I could mess up at any moment and all the bad things will happen, actually burns us out in a way that could risk us being taken out of commission. And the result being the things we’re afraid of do happen. It’s this catch 22. It’s like when we can actually give this sort of parent child balance, this sort of family-centered approach versus child-centered approach of like, I am me. You are you, I have needs. You have needs. It’s all important. And everyone kind of finding that balance, finding that dance between whose needs are going to be met, but making sure that in the aggregate we both are tended to.

Stephanie (44:12):

Yeah, I think I’ve been really having to grapple with the fact that hard work doesn’t equal love. I think that was my mom’s mistake too. And I think looking at that has been very instructive. My childhood has been very instructive. I think my mom worked very hard to put me ferry me from Chinese lessons to piano lessons to volunteer at my school, do everything. But she wasn’t very warm and she was obviously very resentful of me for all of this. And I don’t want to be that. I could see that happening. I could see a future in which I’m totally burnt out and resentful because he’s taken my career and my life and everything, and I don’t want to feel that way. And like I said, hard work doesn’t equal love. I think my mom worked as hard as she felt like she could, and we don’t have a relationship, and I don’t want to make that same mistake of I do everything for you, and then you’re 18 and you didn’t see the warmth, and so you hate me anyway. And none of all of that hard work even matters.

Dr. Sarah (45:37):

That really speaks to the generational transmission of trauma, how trauma begets trauma. When a parent who’s holding in all of this sort of distorted understanding of what relationships and what safety and what love really looks like and feels like because they didn’t get it, because it wasn’t available to them, it’s really hard to pass it to show up in parenthood with that, with capacity that wasn’t transferred. And instead what was internalized is a sense of fear, transactional, I’m going to do this, so you’ll do this. I think, and I understand when people have histories of trauma, there is this really profound fear that I’m going to pass this on whether I want to or not. And I think that desire, that awareness that I don’t want this to get passed down to my child can almost swing us in the other direction of parenting from a different place of fear.

(46:43):

But when we parent from fear, whether that fear is because I’m just blindly holding the internalized fear that was passed down to me that my parents held or a new fear that I have this awareness that I don’t want to pass that fear, but now I’m parenting from the fear of not passing it down, fear still gets in the way. And so that work of being able to say it makes sense that I feel scared and I have to find my own internal sense of safety. I have to find my trust in myself that I can love my child and they can feel loved by me, and one day they probably will love me back, but they don’t have to. This is that one, it’s not completely one directional, but it is like we love our children. They just do love us back, but we don’t love them so that they love us back. We love them because we love them and because we love them and they feel so loved, they love us back. That’s the thing. That’s where you only have to get it right 30% of the time because you’re just being a human. You’re just being a person with a child. You’re not trying to maneuver it. And to be fair, we’re all trying to maneuver something at times, but we have to balance that out with just being kind of in it.

Stephanie (48:05):

Yeah, I think the love, yeah, it’s been interesting for me to really grapple with the fact that it isn’t hard work that creates love. It is love that creates love. Love makes love, it makes love. And so yeah, set, creating the conditions in which love becomes most easy and joyful and pleasant is pretty important.

Dr. Sarah (48:37):

And it’s hard, and it probably starts with loving ourselves and finding a way to love the child inside that didn’t get that love and let them know, Hey, you didn’t get this, but you have it now because I’ve got it for you. I work with a lot of parents who didn’t have that, but they’re so shocked at how much love they have for their kid. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is finding the connection to the love for yourself, the self-compassion, that internal sense of filling the love that just exists inside of you for you. That’s what didn’t get wired initially.

Stephanie (49:21):

So true. I had that same thought. I was like, I’m probably not going to love this kid very much. And then boom, oh my God. But yeah, the problem of loving yourself always the kicker.

Dr. Sarah (49:40):

And that’s why those early relationships are important, right? Because it’s this huge thread of babushka dolls. We can’t disentangle all the things that our previous generations have given us, but it is helpful to know that we can interrupt these cycles, but not by controlling it all, but by letting go of a lot of the control and by saying, okay, I’m not going to focus on controlling all these pieces so that this doesn’t happen again. It’s about letting go of that control and being able to say, I’m going to just be here. And then being amazed at what you’re capable of because we do. We’re very hardwired. It’s very innate in our nature to attach, and we’re very hardwired to attach. Kids just attach to us. It’s, no one doesn’t attach. It’s just the quality of that attachment relationship that matters, not will it happen or not. And so just letting, I don’t know. I feel like that’s, in the years I’ve been working with families and studying attachment, I feel like if there’s one thing that I want any parent to know, it’s like, don’t worry about getting it right all the time. Just trust that in the not worrying about getting it right all the time allows you to be relaxed enough to be with your kid and with yourself, knowing it’ll be messy and it won’t be perfect, and there will be ruptures and trust. I can repair them. And then we just go one day at a time to live.

Stephanie (51:33):

Yeah. Kids are resilient and life is long, and it’s never too late. I was definitely, at one point, I was really focused on the secure attachment thing, and so I made an appointment with Dr. Ham because I thought, I read all of, I read about the still face experiment, and I read about the Strange Situation experiment, and I was sort of trying to conduct these experiments on my own child to see, are you securely attached right now? But I was like, it seems like it. Well, I don’t know. I’m not being evaluated by a professional. And so I made this appointment with Dr. Ham for him to evaluate basically the strange situation thing where I would leave, and as soon as we came on the video screen, my son came up behind me and he leaned his head on my shoulder and he was like, oh, what’s going on here, mom? Dr. Ham was like, how do you still feel like we need to do this? Look at him. That’s a securely attached. Just look at him, pay attention. And I was like, yeah, I think I probably need to trust my instincts on this more than anything over.

Dr. Sarah (53:05):

And yeah, he just felt that love that your son had in that moment, in a strange situation, right, because he was sitting in a room with his mom and a stranger.

Stephanie (53:16):

But yeah, kind of a strange situation, I guess. But yeah, I laugh.

Dr. Sarah (53:22):

I mean, it’s not like the typical protocol, but…

Stephanie (53:24):

It’s not the exact protocol.

Dr. Sarah (53:26):

But when we think about an attachment system, attachment response is a threat response. It’s just when I feel like I’m not sure if I’m safe, my attachment system gets activated. And it could be like when I’m terrified, but it could also just be like when your kid is sitting on a couch with you and another person they don’t know, and they’re just tuning into you and your nervous system to see, is this safe? You feeling calm with this person so I can feel calm with this person? But the fact that he’s tuning into your response means that’s his attachment.

Stephanie (53:58):

And in doing that, Dr. Ham is really modeling what I should be doing with my son, which is just sitting and appreciating these moments, which I feel like I’ve gotten to do much more over the past, whatever, six months. And yeah, I guess sometimes there are still moments of just like, I’ll cry in front of my child and then I’m like, oh my God, now does he feel like, is he ruined? Then I’ll watch him and I get to see in a situation where there’s somebody else in the room and there’s me. I just see that he has so much curiosity and he has so much confidence in exploring that curiosity. And I know that curiosity doesn’t happen with fear, and I just don’t see him exhibiting very much fear. And when he does exhibit fear, he comes to me and he’s comforted, and then he grabs my hand and he’s like, let’s look at it together. And I’m like, okay, let’s go look at it together. And I feel like that to me is so validating. That’s the thing that makes me think, I must be doing this right? I’m doing this differently. I’m breaking some cycles here. I’m doing a good job. And that’s the moment where I’m allowed to let go of the fear and just enjoy and be present.

Dr. Sarah (55:30):

That’s all you can ask for. And you worked really hard to be able to do that.

Stephanie (55:33):

I did. I worked so fucking hard.

Dr. Sarah (55:38):

And you shouldn’t have had to work that hard, but I’m really glad that you did for you for their inner child. I’m glad she got that from you.

Stephanie (55:46):

Yeah, I’m happy for all of us.

Dr. Sarah (55:48):

Yeah, big family now. All the inner children and the outer children.

Stephanie (55:53):

Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Sarah (55:55):

Yeah. So you’re working on a book now specifically on, is it sort of the next chapter of What My Bones know?

Stephanie (56:05):

Yeah, I think so. I think it’s, it’s about parenting with complex PTSD. It’s not a Dr. Becky Gooden side book that already exists. It’s not how to parent. It is not about how to parent with C-PTSD. It’s more about how to be a parent with C-PTSD. How are you taking care of your inner world as you go through this very challenging experience, I guess.

Dr. Sarah (56:39):

Yeah. Well, that I can’t wait for that to be birthed at some point. I definitely want to read it or listen to it.

Stephanie (56:47):

Thanks. Yeah, it’ll probably take a minute. I have a kid now.

Dr. Sarah (56:53):

Yeah. Take your time. If people want to follow you and your work, if they want to read your books, where can they connect with you?

Stephanie (57:03):

My book is available everywhere books are sold. Amazon bookshop.org, your local bookstore. I prefer as always you buying from your local bookstore, but of course, if you are into the audio book, audible and Spotify both carry it. I think it is free to listen on Spotify if you have a premium account. And my Instagram is @foofoofoo and I post little tips and fun things there sometimes if you want to follow along.

Dr. Sarah (57:37):

It’s pretty delightful. I like your Instagram. Okay, thank you. And if anyone is interested in listening to the episode that Jacob was on, Dr. Ham came on and did an episode on the podcast. It ended up being one of our most popular episodes of all of 2024, so it was like he’s a gem.

Stephanie (57:59):

It’s a great episode.

Dr. Sarah (58:00):

I’ll put that in the show notes if anyone wants to listen to it. It was a good one, but it was so lovely talking with you.

Stephanie (58:07):

It was really fun.

Dr. Sarah (58:14):

Healing from trauma is complicated. It can feel painful, confusing, and overwhelming, but breaking free from old cycles is possible. If you are looking for support in healing trauma, addressing attachment wounds or simply help to feel more connected and grounded in your everyday life, working with a trained mental health professional can provide you with that safe space to begin your healing journey. My group practice Upshur Bren Psychology Group offers therapeutic services for those in New York state and virtual coaching nationwide. We use evidence-based strategies to help individuals, couples, and parents develop the skills you need to build safe and healthy relationships, nurture growth, and move through your day with more joy, authenticity, and ease. Go to our website upshurbren.com. That’s U-P-S-H-U-R-B-R-E-N.com. To learn more about our services and to schedule a free 15 minute consultation call to get our recommendation of supportive resources that best align with your unique needs, or you can just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast and get a link to schedule your free call. I appreciate you being here, and don’t be a stranger.