382. Why good moms feel bad (and how to stop letting your emotions run the show) with Rebecca Geshuri

Rebecca Geshuri (00:00):

Maltrescence, the developmental stage of becoming a mother is sometimes associated more with postpartum, but I really think that it’s a spectrum across the lifespan of being a mom because with every age, your kids change, you change.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:25):

Feeling self-doubt, guilt, and self-criticism in motherhood is far more common than we talk about. Even among moms who are deeply loving, invested, and doing an incredible job. Hi, welcome to Securely Attached. 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 that I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so that you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. Back on the podcast this week is therapist and co-author of the new book, When Good Moms Feel Bad, Rebecca Geshuri. In her work, Rebecca tailors an Internal Family Systems approach specifically for motherhood, helping moms develop a deeper and more compassionate understanding of their inner dynamics.

(01:24):

In this episode, we talk about why so many capable, loving, and deeply invested mothers still struggle with guilt, shame, and the sense that they’re never doing enough. We explore how cultural expectations of the “good mom” get internalized, how self-criticism becomes a coping strategy in motherhood, and how understanding our internal parts can help us respond to ourselves with more compassion instead of judgment. This is a conversation about naming the invisible emotional labor of motherhood, creating more internal safety and redefining what it actually means to be a good mom. And spoiler, you’re probably doing better than you think.

(02:04):

Hello, Rebecca. Welcome back.

Rebecca Geshuri (02:13):

Thanks, Sarah. So good to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:18):

I’m always happy to see you, always. And for those of you listening, Rebecca has been on the podcast a number of times, and you have talked a lot about this really cool way that you’ve taken IFS, internal family systems, and parts work, and really translated it to the unique experience of motherhood. And now you have a book that is out now, and it’s called When Good Moms Feel Bad. And I’m just so excited to talk to you about this book today and all of your incredible work you’ve been doing in this space.

Rebecca Geshuri (02:52):

Thank you so much, Sarah, for having me and for helping us amplify this book and get it out there into the world. It’s been a while that we’ve been working on this and you’ve been there from the beginning. Well, maybe not exactly the beginning, because I think the beginning is really a long time ago.

Dr. Sarah Bren (03:15):

Isn’t that crazy? These ideas have so many years before they turn into the fruit of the labor.

Rebecca Geshuri (03:23):

Yes. Oh my gosh, totally. But you were there at a very important point where we really started to hone exactly the way we wanted to say what we wanted to say. So I’m just glad to be here today.

Dr. Sarah Bren (03:37):

It was fun watching that catalyze, but I’ll link the first interview that you did in show notes to this episode, so people can go back and listen to that. And I definitely encourage you to do that because you really get into … In the first episode you did with this, you got really into what IFS is and how you approach working with mothers from an IFS lens. But just so that people are familiar enough, can you talk a little bit about what IFS is and how that then gets translated into your work with women and mothers specifically?

Rebecca Geshuri (04:18):

Yeah. So fundamentally, internal family systems is a non-pathologizing modality of therapy. And the reason I call it non-pathologizing is because the concept is that we all contain a multitude of parts and no parts are bad. They all have good intentions. And so if you come from that beginning philosophy, then there’s so much more availability for healing. So the concept would then be that there are a few different types of parts. There are proactive parts in you that are what they call managerial parts or managers, that proactively are trying to help you stay out of some kind of pain. All parts are really just trying to protect you in some way, but those managers are really proactive. And then there are what they call firefighters, which are parts that are reactive and they don’t really care what’s going on. They’re just going to try to put out the fire.

(05:27):

So an example of that could be even like scrolling on your phone all day long or eating a lot of ice cream or sometimes firefighters come out like rage, even suicidal parts would be firefighter parts, parts that just want to take you out of the pain no matter what the consequence. And then underneath those two parts are exiles. And those are really sort of the baby parts, the parts of you that are hurting, the ones that have narratives like, “I am bad,” or, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I don’t matter.” And so those managers and firefighters are really trying to protect those parts. So when we were sitting in our offices seeing all of our clients, and also by the way, working on our own mom parts, we started to see the same ones kind of pop up again and again and again in the context of motherhood.

(06:34):

And matrescence, the developmental stage of becoming a mother is sometimes associated more with postpartum, but I really think that it’s a spectrum across the lifespan of being a mom because with every age, your kids change, you change. The more you learn about yourself, the more you learn about your kids. I’m a totally different mom now than I was 22 years ago when my oldest was born. And with each of my three kids, I’m a very different mom and I never thought that that was going to be the case. When we had kids, I said, remember saying to my husband, “We’re going to be the same parents with all the kids. It’s going to be fair. They’re going to have all the same opportunities and all that stuff.” But the truth is, is that I’m different and each of them needs something different from me.

Dr. Sarah Bren (07:36):

And each of them probably elicits different parts of you.

Rebecca Geshuri (07:40):

100,000 million percent.

Dr. Sarah Bren (07:43):

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we can never be the same parent for each of our children because we’re in a relationship with that human and they’re different humans and so the dance is different.

Rebecca Geshuri (08:00):

Yes, completely different. Yeah. And if you can learn to ride the waves of that or to use your metaphor to do the dance, it can actually be really fun and enjoyable. But if you’re clawing your way up the riverbanks, just mixing metaphors all over the place here, but that’s kind of how I picture it in my mind. In early motherhood, sometimes I felt like I was literally crawling up the banks and I needed to learn how to flow down the river instead. And this part’s work has really transformed how I parent and also just the compassion that I have for myself. So this work is really born out of not just professional experience, but personal experience of being a mom.

Dr. Sarah Bren (08:53):

Yeah. And in the book, you really talk about the mother’s inner system. Is that informed … It sounds like that’s informed by a compilation of you getting glimpses into the inner systems of all these women who you’ve worked with, your own reflections on your own inner system. Can you talk a little bit, help our listeners know what that means to have a inner system?

Rebecca Geshuri (09:25):

Yeah. Well, so just to go back to the concept of parts and containing many, many parts, like just for a silly example, like there was a part of me this morning that was like super excited to come on here onto this podcast and see you and like have this conversation because it’s super fun and it’s like what I’m passionate about. And then there was another part of me that was like, “Ugh, I’m getting over a cold and I kind of just feel like going back to bed.” But both parts can coexist and oftentimes moms get really polarized inside. So there are parts that congregate under kind of what we call two teams. So there’s team kid, those parts are really focused on the kid, no matter how old they are. And there’s also a group of parts that are congregating around what we call team, what about mom?

(10:22):

And those parts really are focused on what mom needs, but oftentimes we get pulled in one direction or another and that’s polarization. That’s like one has to take over the other. And the truth is both teams actually are really important because moms matter just as much as kids matter. And sometimes we have to call on certain parts to lead when, let’s say there’s a safety issue, like your three year old is about to run into the street.

(10:55):

Your team kid parts have to mobilize and get, and that caretaker maybe is like, “Oh my gosh, got to get the kid and make sure that they don’t run into the street.” But once that crisis is over and you realize, “Oh my gosh, I’m late for my meeting and actually I’m 10 minutes late for my meeting and my boss is going to be really mad at me, ” then you kind of flop over to team, “What about mom?” So that’s kind of going on all the time inside.

Dr. Sarah Bren (11:32):

I mean, I can relate to that. I’m constantly battling with like … And I think the polarization is a very apt way of describing because I do feel like in motherhood, it doesn’t ever feel like this gradual, gentle shift back and forth between the two. It’s usually like, “Oh my God, this. ” And then, “Oh my God, this. And oh my God, you. Oh my God, me. ” And it’s like where I just feel sometimes like I’m being literally paddleball with a shuttled back and forth because of crises and one, that does a number on my nervous system, but also I imagine it concretizes or crystallizes these pathways of like polarization like needs are only really emergencies and when is there … It doesn’t make for a lot of balance or graceful moving in and between the two, let alone can we both have our needs met at the same time calmly? When does that get to happen?

Rebecca Geshuri (12:38):

And then to complicate things, going back to something we were talking about earlier, that new motherhood really sets you up in a way for what’s to come. So this book is really for all moms. It doesn’t matter how old your kids are, but postpartum or early motherhood is sort of a foundation. And what tends to happen is that during that period of time when you’re very open, literally, figuratively, metaphorically, you have to be really open in order if you’re birthing a baby, of course, physically, but even if you’re not the birthing parent, you also have to be open and vulnerable to connect with the person that you’re raising. And so that kind of also opens up what we call like the perinatal portal, which is a portal to your past. And sometimes I had a yoga teacher once who said something like, looking at your kids is like looking in a mirror and sometimes what you see isn’t always pretty.

(13:58):

And I take that to mean that there’s an opportunity here that having kids brings up stuff from your past. It’s just the reality of it, but if you’re willing to use that as an opportunity to heal some old wounds, then it doesn’t leave you in a place where you’re kind of displacing whatever those feelings are onto your kids. And you can maintain a good connection with your kids and with your partner, but most importantly with yourself, because quite frankly, quote unquote, good mothering is really about the relationship you have with yourself first. It’s kind of like putting on that oxygen mask just to be cliche about it, but you really have to have a good relationship with yourself.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:50):

Right. Well, because it’s an incredibly vulnerable time and the stakes always feel so high, but it’s interesting because you’re talking about, okay, so the perinatal portal is this like basically a threshold you step through when you become a parent that both like by nature involves a tremendous amount of vulnerability and openness to this new experience, to connecting with this new being that you’ve created and just also connecting with this new you that has been birthed as well, this mother.

Rebecca Geshuri (15:21):

Yeah, 100%.

Dr. Sarah Bren (15:22):

But also, so there’s all this new stuff, I would imagine, like new parts, new roles, new identities, new parts of ourselves that get crystallized in this moment, that continue to show up anew in future parenting moments. But then what I’m understanding is this is a portal which is two directional, right? So also our childhood stuff, old stuff that maybe we’ve had a pretty good handle on pushing away or keeping out of our conscious awareness. It resurfaces and kind of comes right through that portal with us into motherhood. So like when your colicky baby can’t settle or when your four year old is having like a rage fest just screaming their head off at you, parts of you that maybe have unresolved stuff around expressing acute dysregulated rage are going to come up.

Rebecca Geshuri (16:24):

Right. Imagine if you had a parent yourself who was raging all the time and the only thing you want for your parenting life is to not be like that. And then all of a sudden your four year old is having this tantrum and you can’t stop it and you find yourself falling into that pattern because that’s what you have learned and were modeled and it just, you know, that’s the knee jerk reaction. But again, I would want to remind moms that that is only a part of you, that racheful part, it’s not all of you. And I think that concept can be so helpful and so settling in a way just because if you can untangle yourself from that and remember, that’s not all of me, then you can actually slow yourself down and untangle what your own inner baby parts from what’s actually happening in front of you with your kid.

(17:40):

And then you can get really curious about what’s happening with your kids’ experience because they’re having their own experience and they need you to just to be curious and be there on their level. But we often get triggered at the same ages as our kids. So like that rageful or that four year old that’s having that tantrum, that rageful part in you is probably somewhere also around age four. And that’s not necessarily true 100% of the time, I think, but I think that tends to be pretty common and you wouldn’t want to put a four year old in front of another four year old to help them regulate. Four year olds don’t know how to do that. That’s why they need grownups. So our own inner moms can then be the grownup inside of us to help regulate.

Dr. Sarah Bren (18:40):

Now is the inner mom another part or is that the integrated core self? Yeah, that’s what we call- “I’m me. ” That’s right. “I’ve got all of us and I’m going to help you, my inner four year old, I’m going to help you, my actual four year old, and we’re all safe and I’m going to just take over from here.”

Rebecca Geshuri (18:59):

Yes. That’s what we call what Dick Schwartz who founded IFS or created IFS, he calls that the self with a capital S and we call it the inner mom because it’s a little bit more relatable for moms and it just makes sense inside a mom’s system. It certainly makes sense inside of mine to picture that as like a really loving, compassionate, tender, kindhearted, open, curious mom who just really wants to know about what’s going on, honey. Just sweetheart, can you tell me about your pain?

Dr. Sarah Bren (19:41):

I love that because the idea of a good mom, when a good mom feels bad, right? There’s this fear I think we all have that maybe we’re not a good mom, that we’re a bad mom and maybe that we’re just pretending or faking it or we’re a fraud or an imposter and someone’s going to find out that we have no idea what the heck we’re doing. But what is so beautiful about this idea that you are giving women and anyone, there’s this inherent trust that we all intuitively have a maternal mother within us that just knows what we need, what our baby parts need, what our children need. Now we can’t always access it. I don’t want to make a parent feel that they’re like, “Well, no, I don’t always know. ” And it is not intuitive. It doesn’t always feel intuitive, but that we are built with this on the inside. It’s already there. We have the capacity for it and it makes sense that it’s not always accessible, but that’s so … I don’t know. It’s so empowering and like trust giving to me, this idea of the inner mother that we all have.

Rebecca Geshuri (20:59):

Yeah, you’re born with that. You’re born with it, it’s your birthright. And no matter what happens to you, even really horrible things that happen to you, parts get kind of created because they need to protect you from that, feeling that pain that happened before, but the self or this inner mom doesn’t get destroyed. And so we are just learning again how to access it. And it takes some intentionality to learn how to access it again. It’s not just a switch that you can flip back on. If it was, we’d just all flip the switch and it would be great. But again, there’s so many beautiful opportunities to heal our wounded selves and I just, I like to think of this as something bigger than me or one-on-one, right? If we could do this for the world, imagine what that would be like.

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:17):

As we’re talking about how motherhood can bring up so much self-criticism, guilt, and emotional overwhelm, I want to pause for a quick moment to share a little bit about the work that we do at my group practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group. Motherhood already asks you to carry so much, the logistics, the emotions, the decision making, the constant mental checklist running in the background. And if you have a child who needs extra support, that load often grows even heavier. Suddenly you’re managing multiple providers, different offices, different schedules, and trying to hold it all together on top of everything else. At Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we are really intentional about not adding to that burden. We work with children, parents, couples, and families all under one roof, so you don’t have to piece care together from different places. You can get support for your child, support for yourself, and support for your whole family system in one coordinated collaborative space. Our goal is to help you feel more grounded, more supported, and less alone in carrying everything. When some of that mental load can be safely outsourced, it creates more room for relief, connection, and sustainability in everyday life. With both in- person and virtual services, we offer flexible options designed to meet families where they are. You can find a link to Upshur Bren Psychology Group in the episode description wherever you’re listening or visit upshurbren.com to learn more. All right, now back to my conversation with Rebecca Gushuri.

(23:54):

And so tell me a little bit about the book. So how do you take … If someone’s reading this book and they’re like, “Okay, I feel like a bad mom sometimes.” Or this idea that I have an inner mother that I have access to, how do I connect with that? Because I’m trying to think of the mother who’s like, “Yeah, maybe I could go to therapy and that would be a great…” And please, I’m always encouraging of that, but maybe you’re just curious about how do I connect with that part that you say is inside of me?

Rebecca Geshuri (24:31):

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good question. So first of all, I want to say the book is obviously not a replacement for therapy. And if you’re dealing with a lot of trauma, please still read the book because it’s going to help and also please find a practitioner that can help you work through the things that you’re going to find out while you’re reading the book. So in the book, we have actually journal prompts too. So it’s not a journal, it’s a narrative book, but we encourage you to have a journal and a pen with you while you’re reading so that you can write things down and track what you’re finding as you’re reading. But we take you through what we’ve been calling the mom parts method, which is a way of getting down to the root of what’s hurting. And so it starts with identifying your parts and you can’t really do the work if you don’t know what your parts are, right?

(25:39):

So we kind of help you go mining for that inside yourself, and that starts with a visualization. And actually on my website, I have the meditation actually recorded. So if you want an audio guide to that meditation as opposed to reading through it while you’re going through the book, then you’re welcome to download that for free.

Dr. Sarah Bren (26:05):

Okay. We’ll link that in the show notes then.

Rebecca Geshuri (26:08):

Yeah, that’ll be helpful, I think. So step one is identifying your parts. And then those parts have … And we’ve come up with these 32 parts that are the most common that we kept hearing about over and over again. Like I said, in our work with moms and groups and one-on-ones and even…

Dr. Sarah Bren (26:34):

Wow, 32, that’s way more than I was expecting. I mean, I know it’s complex to be a mother, but 32 parts.

Rebecca Geshuri (26:42):

Yeah. Well, and we had more.

Dr. Sarah Bren (26:45):

Wait, give me an example of what you mean when you say 32 parts. What are some of the parts?

Rebecca Geshuri (26:50):

Well, some of the parts, for example, are … I’m looking at a list here because I have a menopausal brain, but an angry part would be one, or a depressed part, or a numbing part, or an inner critic, or a perfectionist, or an anxious part, or a caretaker. So I’m hesitating because in IFS therapy, it’s kind of protocol that you don’t actually name somebody else’s part as a therapist. You allow the client to really come up with the name for themselves. But we’ve found that it’s also very validating to offer a mom, I hear an anxious part, and actually I was doing a mom part salon yesterday with a group of moms, and one of them said at the end of the group, it was so validating to see those 32 parts in front of me and to be able to pick which ones made sense. And of course, a mom can name their own part and that’s totally allowed. Right.

Dr. Sarah Bren (28:12):

Well, and at least in my understanding of the way I integrate IFS when I’m working with clients is describing the part and naming the part are sort of different, right? I might say to someone that, “How old is that part? That part sounds like a really young part or that part sounds really anxious.” To me, that’s describing it and then they’re usually like, “Oh yes, I know exactly how old that part is.”

(28:37):

And this is, by the way, I am not a formally … I don’t do exclusively IFS. People don’t come to me knowing that we’re going to do IFS. I don’t even tell them about IFS parts work ahead of time. Someone will be telling me something and I’ll be like, “Huh, that sounds like a really young … How old is that part of you? ” And they always have an answer no matter what. They don’t need to know anything about IFS. They’re always like, “Yeah, I think that part is like eight years old.” And they’re usually surprised by how well they know that answer because what I love about IFS is I think it’s just a nomenclature or it’s a way of describing a phenomenon that is just human and we all innately kind of know it because it’s just, I mean, I’m biased, but I genuinely think it encapsulates a lot of the human experience in a way that people can relate to.

(29:36):

I don’t think it’s like this new discovery, it’s just a new way of describing this phenomenon and that people can really understand and relate to. And then when you ask someone like, “How old is that part? How old do you think that part is? ” They usually know the answer and I think that speaks to the veracity of this thing, but then when you … So you might say a A mom. Is that an anxious part or an angry part? Or you have these 32 parts that you’ve identified, but that’s really a descriptor of the quality of the part. The person themselves is going to know who is my anxious part? How old is my anxious part? What does my anxious part look like and sound like? Because they live in your head and you know who they are.

Rebecca Geshuri (30:20):

Yeah. Well, not only do they live in your head, they live in your body. So that’s another really important tool which the visualizations help with, which is getting to go what we would call bottom up as opposed to it being in your thinking mind because body sensations are really clues to hearts. So if you feel your heart racing, maybe that’s your anxious part. Maybe it’s some other part. I don’t know. But that’s a clue to get curious about, huh, what’s going on? Why is my heart racing right now? Maybe if I put my hand on my heart for a second and I just notice, then maybe I’ll be able to get some clues. One thing that I came up with to help me do that, and also to kind of … Moms always want practical tools of things that they can do because sometimes these concepts can feel a little bit esoteric.

(31:30):

I came up with this acronym slow, and it’s really simple. It’s just the S is soften your body. So maybe you close your eyes, maybe you soften your jaw, and you just notice what you’re feeling in your body. Those are your sensations and your clues to parts. And then the L is for listen. Listen to what you’re noticing, what you’re feeling, what you’re hearing, and just stay with that. And then O is open your heart to what’s here. So maybe there’s some sadness that comes up when you open your heart, or maybe the anxiety surfaces even more. And just see if you can stay open to that. That’s curiosity. And then W is for wait. And wait for messages. Wait to see. Can you listen to what the part’s hopes and fears are? Why are they there? How long have they been there? So that’s a really easy way to remember, especially when you’re activated, because you know you’re in a part when you’re activated.

(32:49):

If you start screaming at somebody, you’re like, “Okay, wait a second.” Even if you just feel your heart start to beat really fast, you know that you’re probably being led by a part as opposed to being led by your inner mom. So yeah, so moms, when they get activated, they need a way to remember quickly how to find some more calm in their system to bring on some more self-energy or what we call remedies. And because when you’re activated, you’re not really in your executive functioning, you’re not in your neocortex, that thinking mind, you’re back in your limbic system. And your limbic system is all about fight or flight. And if you continue to be activated, I read somewhere once that it takes almost an hour to get out of that activation cycle from a neurophysiological standpoint. And so if you’re trying to get somewhere or connect with your kid, you might not have an hour.

(34:01):

And also you don’t want to do damage, quite frankly. You don’t want to have a fight with somebody necessarily. So this acronyym slow is just a way that I’ve found to help quickly remember, oh, okay. If I just can slow myself down a little bit and get curious about what’s happening inside of me, I might be able to head off that conflict at the past insad of having to repair it later, if that makes sense.

Dr. Sarah Bren (34:36):

Yeah. That’s a useful thing. I feel like we could all benefit from that reminder, that cue and that sort of shorthand for being able to say, “Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m getting real hot. Hold on. Let me slow down.” And which maybe already is in a parent’s lexicon, but this idea that in the slowing down, I’m actually going to go inward and see, well, is there a part of me that’s actually grabbed the control panel because it’s trying to protect me from something that feels too overwhelming or too uncomfortable or too scary or that I don’t think I can handle a memory or a fear or a worry I have about my kid or something I don’t think I can handle that my kid’s going to show me, whatever. So it takes that reflectiveness just a step further to be like, “Oh, some part of me needs something right now, actually.

(35:31):

What do I need?” And that’s driving this reaction versus what is my kid doing? What is going, what’s the environment demanding of me? And that’s important too, but it’s like if we don’t do that internal step, again, like talking about that polarization that happens in parenthood where we’re like always going to the child’s needs and then flinging over to some urgent need of ours that didn’t get met until it exploded, it’s like this helps us to learn to not be so reactive and not be stuck in this sort of extreme ping ponging either because it’s like, I can try to figure out in the moment what my needs are too, as I deal with the needs of my child. And this is where both of us are getting heard and seen and felt at the same time. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of work to be kind of … This internal mother has work to do because she’s mothering us and she’s mothering our child and she’s us, so we are. It is a tall order, but if we don’t do that work, things are still way harder.

Rebecca Geshuri (36:42):

Yeah. Well, and I can see also how like the inner critics can tend to then come in and shame us for not doing it right, even like not doing the slowing down right. We’re not doing therapy right or whatever. Those inner critics are pretty strong and loud and send us into these shame spirals. But again, just like any other part, those critical parts are protecting us. And so if we can be curious about them too, then maybe we can stop the cycle of going into the shame. In IFS, they always say we go slow to go fast, which I think is spot on because you can’t just barrel through life. We’d like to. And I mean, listen, I live in the Silicon Valley and it feels like everybody’s barreling through everything all the time. You got to be the first to do everything. You have to be innovative and sometimes I think- It’s a lot of pressure. It’s just a lot of pressure. And we put that pressure on moms in our society and it’s not really that helpful because we already have enough pressure inside of us to be good moms.

Dr. Sarah Bren (38:18):

Yeah. So, okay. You are helping parents identify their parts, you’re giving them tools to slow down and notice which part’s coming up in particular moments. What else? What happens after that?

Rebecca Geshuri (38:32):

Right. Then what? So we also started noticing that there are multiple truths about being a mom. For instance, being a mom is hard. That’s just a universal truth that I think a hundred percent of us can agree on, right? My kid is a work in progress and so am I. That’s a truth. So we have a bunch of truths that, again, we kept really landing on again and again that validated what those parts were feeling. And so when your caretaker part, for instance, is really activated and it can hear you say, “Yeah, gosh, being a mom is really hard. It takes a lot out of me. ” And there’s just so many things to deal with.

(39:35):

That can help kind of settle the part a little bit and also then help you get to what’s underneath all of that, which is what we call the inescapable vulnerabilities of motherhood, which there are only two, it’s shame and grief. And so some parts will kind of have more shame associated with them and some parts will have more grief associated with them. And that’s very personal. It depends on the person’s experience. Sometimes it’s both, but the truth is I often find with my clients that they always end up at grief somehow, even with the shame. There’s just so much grief in motherhood. We just are losing a lot. We’re gaining a lot too. Motherhood’s not all bad, but we do have to morph and change to become moms however you become a mom. And so we’re kind of mourning the loss of our identity pre-kids and maybe mourning the loss of what motherhood, what we thought motherhood might be like, maybe what our kids would be like. I mean, there’s all sorts of reasons why you might feel grief. Maybe you feel grief because you lost your mom and now you’re a mom and your mom’s not here to see you become a parent.

Dr. Sarah Bren (41:05):

So just to make sure I’m understanding this right. So obviously motherhood isn’t all shame or grief. What you’re saying is when motherhood is joyful and motherhood is engaging and motherhood is peaceful and connected, usually our integrated core self is the one that’s participating in running that. Our inner mother or our integrated core self is at the control panel for the majority of the time when things are going okay. It’s that when those really, really charged emotions that usually from our whole life until this moment can create really reactive part responses to protect, because we don’t want to feel guilt or grief and we don’t want to feel shame. Those are very uncomfortable, very destabilizing emotions. And so there’s a lot of built-in protections against feeling them and having to grapple with them. So when with something elicits grief in us or elicits shame in us organically, we’re very vulnerable in those moments to a protective part coming up, pushing our integrated core self off the control panel, grabbing it.

(42:23):

I’m thinking of like inside out because the movie was like very much IFS informed and like you have like an Inside Out too, you had the anxiety part just totally take over the whole control panel. And because the idea of grieving a loss, losing something you want, or the idea of being embarrassed or being ashamed or not being good enough was like too anxiety provoking. And so that part just took over.

(42:52):

And so it’s just that there’s certain, like you said, inevitable vulnerabilities that are very likely to sort of like throw chaos into the system and get a protective part to just kind of like jump in front and take over. And if that’s the four year old part, you’re going to be operating off of four year old regulation skills and probably make things worse, not better, even though the intention is to keep us safe. Exactly. That makes sense to me a lot actually. It really validates the experience of motherhood, right?

Rebecca Geshuri (43:23):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah Bren (43:25):

A bunch of kids inside of me trying to keep me from feeling overwhelmed and bad about myself.

Rebecca Geshuri (43:30):

Yeah. And they all have such good intentions. How sweet of them really to try to do that for you. It’s lovely in a way when you think about it. It’s just that it doesn’t really go well in a relational way. It’s hard to have a relationship with another human, whether it’s your four year old or your partner or your boss or your friend or your coworker or whoever, if you’re activated. You just can’t be in connection if you’re in that kind of reactive mode.

Dr. Sarah Bren (44:06):

And so that’s kind of the idea of, because the subtitle is about transforming guilt and anxiety and anger into compassion, confidence and connectedness. That’s the goal, right? Is to have self-compassion, to feel confident in your ability to show up in the world as a parent and to feel connection.

Rebecca Geshuri (44:26):

That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And so one thing maybe I’ll also say about shame and grief just to kind of clarify some things. Grief is a natural emotion and it’s not one that we want to rid ourselves of. It’s kind of like medicine from the inside out. We have to process what hurts, what we’ve lost. That’s a normal reaction to something that we’ve lost. And yet it’s a little bit taboo in our society to be out with that. Shame on the other hand is really a misunderstanding about who you are. You are not bad, but shame says you’re bad. And so we kind of have to untangle from that. So I just want to make that difference between grief and shame. They’re in the same category because we naturally kind of go one way or the other. And sometimes I’m crossing my hands because sometimes it’s both.

(45:34):

But so then the final step of this process is bringing on more self-energy, which are the eight Cs of IFS. And we call those remedies because you have those remedies already inside of you and remedies are things that heal. So that’s your internal medicine, right? So those eight Cs are compassion, calmness, curiosity, creativity, calm, clarity, connectedness, confidence, and courageousness or courage. And so we have, again, visualizations in the book that kind of help take you through each of these steps so that you can identify your parts, identify the truths that resonate for your parts, which inescapable vulnerabilities are the ones that are more associated with those parts. And then which of these remedies do you need the most of or that you already have on board, that you already feel in your system that you can then direct towards these parts that are hurting. And even as I say that, I can feel in my body how that sort of buzzes when I feel that.

Dr. Sarah Bren (47:02):

That’s crazy you just said that because I also had that when you talked about the idea of like, oh, I already have some resources that I can direct towards those. I got this buzzy sensation of like, “Oh, that feels so comforting to me to know that I can do that for myself.” And it was this overwhelming sense of safety in trusting myself. That’s so weird that you had that same physiological sensation though.

Rebecca Geshuri (47:31):

Yeah. I mean, well, I also believe that we’re really connected to one another energetically. We’re not in this world alone, and so it’s actually not that surprising to me that you felt that.

Dr. Sarah Bren (47:48):

My energy healer would probably be really happy that you reminded me of that. She was on this podcast. She’s incredible.

Rebecca Geshuri (47:55):

Oh, I’ll have to listen to that one.

Dr. Sarah Bren (47:57):

Yes. It’s been a huge journey for me to realize because I am such a science-y person. I’m not at all woo-woo. And I have had so much opportunity to learn humbly that our bodies are energy, that’s not woo-woo, that’s science and electrical energy that moves through our body and also through our body out into the world and into and in between other people and other spaces. And that’s just matter, right? Yeah. Physics. But I don’t know. I just, in being able to give myself permission to be able to say, you’re allowed to just feel things that you can’t make sense of in your intellectual mind and to just be curious and be open. And even in the work I’ve been doing, I’ve been doing a lot of training in somatic therapies and it’s just like, oh yeah, there’s so much we can’t just … There’s so much more than what we can say and know.

Rebecca Geshuri (49:06):

Well, we don’t even really know. Yeah. We don’t really know our whole brain capacity. We know like 5% of how our brain works. I mean, that’s mind blowing, no pun intended, but that’s why these sort of somatic therapies like IFS, somatic experiencing, brain spotting is another one, EMDR. All of those modalities of therapy really start with what those energetic sensations are and with having an openness and a curiosity towards listening to what is happening because I also do brainspotting and sometimes people will say, “I don’t know why this story is coming up right now.” Because I was talking about something completely different before, but it’s coming up and I’m like, “Okay, just go with it. Just see where it leads you. ” And that happens a lot with our parts. If we just listen to what they’re trying to say, then we might be able to hear them also.

(50:17):

But if we just keep barreling through and say, “No, I don’t want to listen to you anxious part.” No, I don’t like you. I don’t like being anxious. That’s a part too. So I don’t like it part to step aside and give us a little space and maybe then we can listen to the anxious one a little bit more, but I think that’s an important point.

Dr. Sarah Bren (50:44):

Yeah. I’m so glad you wrote this book. It’s just, this is exciting that this is now kind of so accessible to people. But if people want to connect with you, they want to learn more about the book, where can we send them?

Rebecca Geshuri (50:58):

Well, you can send them to my website, rebeccageshurillmft.com. And there’s links on there to buy the book. There are visualization or meditations that you can download for free on there and some other fun little things. I do therapy one-on-one in California in the Silicon Valley, like I said before. So if that’s of interest, then you can contact me through my website for that. And also I have a business called Second Street Collective, which is in Campbell, California, and it’s a collective of licensed therapists, many of whom actually specialize in parenthood or reproductive mental health, family systems, kids, teenagers, neurodivergence, kind of everything actually. Amazing. Yeah. And so if I’m not available, there are 10 other people who can help.

Dr. Sarah Bren (52:09):

Amazing. That’s so great for anyone listening in California.

Rebecca Geshuri (52:13):

Yeah. And telehealth also.

Dr. Sarah Bren (52:15):

That’s the thing, it’s so hard to find people that are licensed in your state to do all this work, so it’s good to have a Rolodex across the country. But thank you so much. Everyone go out and get this book. Rebecca, thank you for sharing all of your wisdom again with us, and I can’t wait to see you again soon.

Rebecca Geshuri (52:33):

Thank you so much, Sarah, for having me.

Dr. Sarah Bren (52:41):

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